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On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote: This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding.
You and Day9 are being sort of intellectually dishonest if you can think there is a such thing as a forcing function and no such thing as a counter. The only reason forcing works is because you make something that the opponent 'has to respond appropriately to or lose', which is..... 'doing the counter.'
That being said, I get the gist of the argument that you shouldn't focus too much on unit v. unit spreadsheet counters, since well positioned zerglings can kill helions even though helions are the 'zergling counter,' for example. But there ARE counters in the game, they are just ideas and overall compositions and positions countering one another more than specific units.
Day9 and friends would do better to clarify what is a counter and what isn't, rather than just take exception with the word itself. What he really takes exception to, understandably, is as he's said, the 'prima guide unit counter spreadsheet.'
Really though, even that.... it's good to know that helions 'are really good' versus zerglings, that banelings 'are really good' versus marines and 'not very good' against marauders. So pretending such 'counters' don't exist at all is a disservice.
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Ok, I am in bronze league, and I have up to gold and some plat down. I keep on making workers up to about 100, and get 100 army. Once I have that done I attack. I do not feel comforatiable with timing attacks yet. Reason I am not promoted cause I am tired of facing terribad bronze nubs. So I will be waiting for the leagues to reset.
The reason I am so good for my league is due to my 2000 pt terran friend who played me when I first got the game. What he would do is harass the living hell out of me and destroy my whole base with a couple workers left, and said rebuild. After over 100 of this games you can see why I am so good. I have beaten him a couple times.
I can do some bad micro, except sentry micro, and keep a decent, and keep a decent macro. Once I get late game 2+ bases my money skyrockets, but hey thats still pretty good for a person of my caliber. I know unit compositions that beat what.
As a protoss if you can learn to split an army with FF and pull back colossi, you can easily beat most bioballs. Zerg just 6 pull me or fast roach. This is easy to fend of. Proper wall off and 1 immorital does the job. I have never gone into a late game were I could of ended it earlier.l
I guess I just need to take Day9's advice and just go fucking kill him. I guess a couple losses wouldnt be to bad.
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On December 15 2010 15:29 Bane1998 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 06:46 TheToast wrote: This however I do take major issue with. There are no such things as "counters" as Day9 has said there is only forcing and responding.
You and Day9 are being sort of intellectually dishonest if you can think there is a such thing as a forcing function and no such thing as a counter. The only reason forcing works is because you make something that the opponent 'has to respond appropriately to or lose', which is..... 'doing the counter.' That being said, I get the gist of the argument that you shouldn't focus too much on unit v. unit spreadsheet counters, since well positioned zerglings can kill helions even though helions are the 'zergling counter,' for example. But there ARE counters in the game, they are just ideas and overall compositions and positions countering one another more than specific units. Day9 and friends would do better to clarify what is a counter and what isn't, rather than just take exception with the word itself. What he really takes exception to, understandably, is as he's said, the 'prima guide unit counter spreadsheet.' Really though, even that.... it's good to know that helions 'are really good' versus zerglings, that banelings 'are really good' versus marines and 'not very good' against marauders. So pretending such 'counters' don't exist at all is a disservice. you have to differentiate between
counter A 'has to respond appropriately to or lose'
counter B 'autowin'
the term counter is noob unfriendly so day9 and others don't like it
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not a bad list. a lot better like 4gate into diamond-blabla or any other get rich in 5 minutes advices. i want to point out that my personal problem at silveleague right now is that i play 75% against opponents, without timing/bo/forcing or anything else. this totally destroys my game against the 25% which have and this prevents my from climbing higher.
i realy think about just cheesing my way up to avoid this lowleage-chaos which prevents you from getting better, because a lot of you enemys are playing totally screwed.
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Canada13372 Posts
On December 15 2010 16:31 pantaray wrote: not a bad list. a lot better like 4gate into diamond-blabla or any other get rich in 5 minutes advices. i want to point out that my personal problem at silveleague right now is that i play 75% against opponents, without timing/bo/forcing or anything else. this totally destroys my game against the 25% which have and this prevents my from climbing higher.
i realy think about just cheesing my way up to avoid this lowleage-chaos which prevents you from getting better, because a lot of you enemys are playing totally screwed.
Wait, so you want to cheese to move up to gold where you will find players who have build orders that you have been losing to? I do not understand your problem which I would love to help you fix.
If you mean that because they dont have build orders or timing it becomes difficult for you to learn timings and improve against them? I feel that you should be a bit more worried about learning your own build orders and timings and use them to get out of silver. Also, as someone who has climbed from bronze to Platinum atm I can say that if you learn to spend your money and macro better than the other player (note: not better since you can always improve your macro) you will move up and into gold. And build orders are always smart and general strategies are a good idea to improve your game play.
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On December 15 2010 16:31 pantaray wrote: not a bad list. a lot better like 4gate into diamond-blabla or any other get rich in 5 minutes advices. i want to point out that my personal problem at silveleague right now is that i play 75% against opponents, without timing/bo/forcing or anything else. this totally destroys my game against the 25% which have and this prevents my from climbing higher.
i realy think about just cheesing my way up to avoid this lowleage-chaos which prevents you from getting better, because a lot of you enemys are playing totally screwed.
If your opponent doesn't have any timing, his macro is bad. If you are in gold or lower, if you simply spend all your money and they don't, you'll win. Just check up on what he's doing periodically since the initial scout won't tell you anything (except sniffing out cheese).
Another viable gold or lower strategy is just make whatever can mildly deal with anything. Marines, hydras, or stalkers. As long as you macro, you'll win.
Scouting in lower leagues is hard, so just macro hard and be aggressive till you get to a level where if people have to play decently to get there, and the scouting will make more sense.
Another thing that rushed me out of lower leagues is learning to deal with a turtler. Most gold and lower level players are terrified to leave their base. They turtle and make a billion void rays behind a billion cannons. Let them. Practice map control. Take 5 expos to his 1 base void ray (they always mass something that can hit both air and ground). Run him out of minerals. When I stopped trying to kill people in gold and lower, and instead just starve them out while controlling the whole map, I won a lot more games. Just suicide an overlord, get an observer, or scan to see what his 'imma mass ____ and win' unit is, and be ready on your 5 bases with a mildly decent counter for when he runs out of minerals.
It really was eye opening to me when I stopped trying to kill them and just started working on starving them to death. It's satisfying too. I had one game go like:
20 minutes go by... I'm camped outside his 1 base with my 5 bases.
Me: How you doing in there? Him: Not too good. Going to move out. Me: Ok -me destroying his 1 base army with a 5 base '300 food push'- Him: gg
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On December 15 2010 16:31 pantaray wrote: not a bad list. a lot better like 4gate into diamond-blabla or any other get rich in 5 minutes advices. i want to point out that my personal problem at silveleague right now is that i play 75% against opponents, without timing/bo/forcing or anything else. this totally destroys my game against the 25% which have and this prevents my from climbing higher.
i realy think about just cheesing my way up to avoid this lowleage-chaos which prevents you from getting better, because a lot of you enemys are playing totally screwed.
Sorry bud... but this isn't micro stakes on pokerstars. You cant blame some terrible lotto player for you losing your roll. If you're playing an opponent without timing or build orders or knowing how to force units then you should be winning that 75% of the time plus at least half of the 25% with players who are capable. Perhaps you should try to share the actual reason as to why you are losing instead of being a typical elitist TLer.
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My irl friend, after 100 1v1s, is still 0 points Bronze. I really am curious/hopeful to see if I can make any improvement to his game after a small tutoring session one of these days. He just plays so arbitrarily and doesn't put value on a) mouse speed/efficiency or b) changing his strategies appropriately based on what the enemy is doing.
e-- and man, honestly, fuck some of the things that day9 says. most everything he said back when i watched him (sc2 beta mostly, now i just watch streams/gsl) was really good and i imagine it's the same way, but a lot of things he says are just, imo, so fucking wrong and bad to say.
the two things that come to mind: there are no "counters" (gross oversimplification. a better sentence would be: in certain situations a unit that should be a counter can have that status nullified), and back when zerg was really, imo, underpowered vs terran he would say ZvT was fine and Zergs, as a collective worldwide, just hadn't figured out how to play. then when TLO would play some random game no-queen FE'ing to roaches and win he'd act like that was evidence he was right -- that shit just pissed me off so badly. he should have just said "i am neither a zerg player nor a top-tier zerg player so i will not comment on the balance." calling a MU fair when the entire world of Zerg was more or less raging and getting buttraped was just obnoxious.
i feel like i may be off-topic now but maybe not really?
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put everything down one rank and it sounds about right. Your Platinum description is more like Low/mid diamond.
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good list, but to be honest i think you separate the divisions too much. there is very very little difference between sliver and low diamond. the difference in skill between high diamond a low diamond is much greater
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On December 15 2010 18:27 mofisto wrote: good list, but to be honest i think you separate the divisions too much. there is very very little difference between sliver and low diamond. the difference in skill between high diamond a low diamond is much greater you'd think that but i've realized, from rl friends' rankings, that sc2 skill diversity is huge across all leagues. it just so happens that diamond has the diversity of like, 5 more leagues or something =p
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On December 15 2010 16:04 Kybuar wrote: Ok, I am in bronze league. I do not feel comforatiable with timing attacks yet. Reason I am not promoted cause I am tired of facing terribad bronze nubs. So I will be waiting for the leagues to reset.
On December 15 2010 16:31 pantaray wrote: i want to point out that my personal problem at silveleague right now is that i play 75% against opponents, without timing/bo/forcing or anything else. this totally destroys my game against the 25% which have and this prevents my from climbing higher.
i realy think about just cheesing my way up to avoid this lowleage-chaos which prevents you from getting better, because a lot of you enemys are playing totally screwed. I really feel you guys, same for me. I play very good, the problem is I'm in bronze : people are so bad, they don't play standard and do stupid pushes so I can't figure timings and end up losing a lot. But if I was in Diamond I would totally own, because like I said, I'm very good.
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Day9 is basically Jesus at this point. He says some pretty smart things, but people take them too seriously, and most importantly far too litterally. When he says things like "there are no counters", I'm pretty sure he means that seeing everything in terms of counters is detrimental to your game.
Back on topic, I don't know how you can get to diamond as zerg without knowing how to deal with terran mech, and different unit composition. When they come with marines and tanks, sure they will come with less stuff than they should but it'll still have a catastrophic outcome if you don't know what you're doing.
As someone who's been in every league I strongly disagree with the idea that macro will get you to diamond without anything else. I do agree that it's the thing most people should focus on the most though.
As for cheese, I don't know if it's because I'm on the EU server but I see it in like 1/20 game at most, at every level. It's really rare here.
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I'm in plat 1v1 (9-5 stats) and diamond all RT with around 65% win, and these are the stuff I'm not good at: Bronze League + Show Spoiler +2) Memorization of all hotkeys for your race and consistent use thereof. 4) 1 basic opening build order for every matchup.
Silver League + Show Spoiler +1) "Never stop making workers" 2) "Never stop making army" 3) Ability to keep money low while macroing off 1 base and not attacking, it's ok to slip while multitasking
Gold League + Show Spoiler +3) Ability to macro off 2 bases and keep money low while not attacking. It's ok if you slip while trying to multitask.
Platinum League + Show Spoiler +1) A TIGHT opening BO for each matchup. This means that when you want to make a pylon, you make it when you have 100 minerals, not 200 and not even 125. You need to be almost perfectly tight for at least the first 3-5 minutes of the game. 2) Comfort with 2 base play including multitasking, it's ok to slip on 3+ bases 5) Ability to "smell cheese" 6) Ability to react effectively to scouting information 7) Basic knowledge of timings (example: this terran is going 2 barracks marine rush, but I know that if I 14 hatch I can get a crawler up at my natural before he arrives, unless he attacks with 3 or fewer marines, in which case I can defend with drones).
Most of the time I make up for not knowing the game too well or having a specific build order by playing faster. I play zerg, and most games I've played against protoss and it's been a really close game it's normally been something like 60-70 apm vs my 150-180 apm.
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The answer is easy
-Just win
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On December 15 2010 17:09 Bane1998 wrote: 20 minutes go by... I'm camped outside his 1 base with my 5 bases.
Me: How you doing in there? Him: Not too good. Going to move out. Me: Ok -me destroying his 1 base army with a 5 base '300 food push'- Him: gg
That reminds me of a game I had in a tournament once against a guy in diamond with 500 games played or so. Bo3 ZvT. First game I lost on Blistering Sands to a Thor push with 10 SCVs at around 9 minutes, I didn't have enough dps with my roaches and lings to take down the Thor and wasn't proficient with hold position on lings.
Second game was on Shakuras Plateu where I did a baneling speedling bust at around 6 minutes and he had one tank and one marine behind his supply depot barracks block.
Third game was on Steppes of War, and watching the game from his point of view was hilarious. He scouted my main base and my expo going down. He was camping at his choke and built a couple of siege tanks and a thor. At regular intervals he saw me run a single ling into range of his tanks, before I started harassing with mutas. He continued making thors and turrets. He got his expo and more turrent and more thors. At around 20 minutes he scanned my third and saw I had it, and around the same time creep started going up the ramp to his natural. At around 25 minutes he has his main and natural, 25 thors and around 20 turrets defending his base. He pushed out as I did a doom drop into his main and killed everything that didn't fly away.
At this point I couldn't kill his thor army at all, but since I had creep over the entire map and 8 bases, I just played guerilla with corruptor ling, killing off everything that was away from the thor ball by a tiny bit.
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I wish people would stop generalising leagues and acting as if bronze leaguers are bunch of window licking mouth breathers. The skill gap between High Bronze and Low Plat is probably not that different tbh. Yes all the really bad players end up in bronze at the bottom but not everyone is that bad. Ok most of us aren't pro like you people seem to think you are, but as most of you probably never played in the leagues below were you are now you aren't really qualified to say much at all. yes better play will get you promoted, winning more will get you promoted. but as someone as already said, random timings, general stupidity and other such things happen more often than not. I'm a bronze player, and I'm terrible, I'm not interested in lists of improve this this and this and you get silver. I'm going to improve in everything I can, and until I am good enough then I don't want promoted. I don't want to be beating people because of this, i want to be crushing players because I am much better at everything.
So stop being so elitist and labelling people. We know were our problems are and we are working on them, writing idiot proof lists isn't helping anyone, in fact its insulting and condescending.
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I am a high Plat window licking mouth breather :D and according to the definitions of what is important to do in each matchup I probably sit in between Silver and Gold. Half of the games I play are against Diamond players as well. I think it's a good checklist but perhaps a bit too optimistic for each league, I will say that pretty much macro only got me to where I am from Copper in the beta. Perhaps also that I have 2Gate Robo practiced pretty well and it can combat a lot of builds pretty well in the lower leagues, having a build against each race such as OP stated is an important point.
I think for the players that are struggling with the confusion of timings and what the hell your opponent is doing in the lower leagues, just ignore things like timings and impressive micro and focus on your macro. Most of my wins come from me just having more units and from playing many games having a fair idea of whether my army will beat the other player's army if I engage. My observation is that in the lower leagues it is more important to how you play by focusing on what you are doing, in the higher leagues it is more important to how you play by analysing what they are doing.
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On December 15 2010 21:25 Mr.Brightside wrote: I am a high Plat window licking mouth breather :D and according to the definitions of what is important to do in each matchup I probably sit in between Silver and Gold. Half of the games I play are against Diamond players as well. I think it's a good checklist but perhaps a bit too optimistic for each league, I will say that pretty much macro only got me to where I am from Copper in the beta. Perhaps also that I have 2Gate Robo practiced pretty well and it can combat a lot of builds pretty well in the lower leagues, having a build against each race such as OP stated is an important point.
I think for the players that are struggling with the confusion of timings and what the hell your opponent is doing in the lower leagues, just ignore things like timings and impressive micro and focus on your macro. Most of my wins come from me just having more units and from playing many games having a fair idea of whether my army will beat the other player's army if I engage. My observation is that in the lower leagues it is more important to how you play by focusing on what you are doing, in the higher leagues it is more important to how you play by analysing what they are doing. What in particular are you suggesting is too optimistic?
Note that it's "basic micro". When I say basic, I don't mean fancy pants FF splitting, or marine stutter step or whatever. I mean things like keeping zealots in front of stalkers, being able to attack move correctly and being able to run PAST 2 hellions with a bunch of zerglings and then pressing "stop" as opposed to just clicking one hellion.(Ok maybe the last one is a bit more difficult since I was playing a high plat friend of mine while off-racing as zerg and he WTF'd when I destroyed his 2 hellion push with a flank of speedlings...)
Also, like 90% of the things listed there are macro oriented, so it's not like what you're saying disagrees with what i posted.
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