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| Riddell United Kingdom. June 16 2012 18:53. Posts 7 | Profile # |
Hi all,
After being in silver league for 2 seasons, I finally got promoted to Gold league last season, but after a less than great W/L ratio in Gold league have been demoted back to silver league. I suck at this game.
This post is a bit of a cry for help/chance to vent so here it goes.
I have been playing Starcraft 2 since season 2 and with a full time job, only have time for about 5 games a week. I have watched countless Day9 dailies and recently have been watching Filtersc's tutorial videos. Now, according to everything I've read/seen/heard, you can easily get into high gold/low platinum using macro alone; constantly building probes, not getting supply blocked, constantly spending money. I'm struggling to see how this is possible.
I have been practising focusing on only macro for a while now and more often than not still get crushed. Here's is a replay from today which I feel is typical. Link
I need another perspective on this; is my macro as good as I think it is? What can I do to improve?
A few other questions:
• I pretty much do one opening (3gate sentry expand) against all races. Is that recommended?
• I never attack/harass until max/near max because I'm so scared of my opponent. How can I stop that?
• Realistically, how high league wise can I expect to get playing only ~5 games per week?
TLDR: Silver league Protoss looking for a plan to improve and stop sucking at SC2.
Any help much appreciated.
Last edit: 2012-06-16 18:54:54 |
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| Abusion United Kingdom. June 16 2012 19:22. Posts 184 | Profile # |
just wondering... why play to improve if you only play 5 games a week? Why not play for fun?
To answer your questions. Your macro will never be as good as you think it is. Your early game build looks fine but a 3 gate sentry expand is terrible against Terran. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=266786 this is a good place to start to get openings for each race.
Losing that probe is needless in the early game. Just make 2 of your probes attack it and when it runs away put your probes back to mining. When you scout with your probe you see the terran walled in. This could be absolutely anything So you need to scout again to know what he is doing. To do that poke with the zealot and stalker you made. If you would have poked you would've seen about 6 marines. This can tell you a lot. If he's taken gas he hasn't put it into marauders so it would be some kinda of tech play such as banshee or, he's early expanded but we don't know. If you don't know you need to scout and to scout we need a robo bay!  this comes down pretty late to what you saw. You send a probe up his ramp at around 8:10. You see medicavs and a bunch laods of marine marauder. The earliest medivacs come out of a 1 rax expand is around 9:30 so he must be doing some kind of all-in. (which he was... badly). You scout this and still don't react. You make cannons in your main? Why? And also you don't make any units off of your gates after scouting this at all. These are the main problems I've seen. Once he kills your nat its pretty much game over.
Another thing you spread your obs out around your base and you have no idea what he's doing at all. The reason you're scared of your opponent is because you don't know what the heck he's doing. So in your eyes he could be doing anything and everything and could be coming out you with a bunch load of units RIGHT NOW! So 1) scout better and react on scouting 2) your build is not very good vs terran (but thats not why you lost) 3) scout better
To answer the additional questions. Don't attack/ harras until max until you've got the basics down. That's to force mistakes/ hit a timing. Your opponent will be making enough of them.IF you only play 5 games a week you will improve slowly but you will improve. GLHF |
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| Salivanth Australia. June 16 2012 20:20. Posts 823 | Profile Blog # |
My question is this: If you only have time for 5 games a week, how do you have the time to watch countless videos? At your league, with your play-time, it's far more effective for you to play instead of read TL / watch videos. As for openings, I suggest these. Keep building workers constantly and build pylons when needed.
PvT: Gate, Gas, Core, Chrono out 2 Stalkers, Nexus, 2 Gates, Gas, Robo. Transition to Colossi and get 3 more gates. Take a third and 2 Gates when the Terran takes his. Get a Zealot-heavy army, and get Charge at some point. Attack at max and win.
PvZ: Wall off your natural with your first few buildings. Forge, Nexus (cut probes), Gate, Cannon, Pylon (resume probes), 2 Gas. Get an early weapons upgrade from your forge. Get 4-6 gates, make 6-8 Sentries and take a third. Get a fast Robo, make 2 Observers, then constant Immortals if you scout roaches. Go up to 8 gates. Go for Colossi when you can. (This is never vs. mutalisks, and after beating the roach army vs. roaches.) Attack at max and win.
PvP: Gate, Gas, Core, Gas, Robo, 2 Gates. First gate makes Zealot, Stalker, Stalker, Sentry. Deny a proxy pylon with first 3 units. Get a fast Immortal, then an Observer. Go Colossi when he's not able to attack you. If he's expanded early, make Zealots, 2 Colossi, and Colossus Range upgrade and kill him. If you see him expand late enough, match his expansion, go up to 6 gates when you can afford it, and try to stay ahead in the Colossus count. Attack at max and win.
Last edit: 2012-06-16 20:24:05 |
| | <@Wikt> so you are one of those nega-fans <@Wikt> that hates the company that makes a game and everything they stand for <@Wikt> but still plays the game <@Wikt> (like roughly 30% of blizzard's player base, maybe much more...) |
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| DESTROIN Canada. June 17 2012 23:48. Posts 6 | Profile # |
| as a protoss that has worked my way up from bronze to diamond with no rts experience , if feel that u should practice a one base all in many times to the point were u dont miss probes or miss chrono ' s after u have build't up your mechanics to better point u should start doing a specific macro build against every race example 1 gate expo vs terran ,ffe vs zerg . my hole reasoning behind this is that if u cant even manage a one base eco with out floating alot resources or getting supply blocked u cant handle a 2 base eco yet . also be careful when u watch day9 talk about macro builds and the meta-game, beacause i believe that in gold and lower its usual to see 1 base all ins 90 % of the time, and the i also feel like the meta-game does not apply till high gold . practice makes perfect |
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 Brow23 Germany. June 18 2012 00:08. Posts 105 | Profile # |
beacause i believe that in gold and lower its usual to see 1 base all ins 90 % of the time,
....NO! |
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| Mesha Bosnia-Herzegovina. June 18 2012 00:46. Posts 434 | Profile Blog # |
What ever amount of time you want to spend on sc2 should be in form of playing the game(ladder or custom). Second in line is dedicated thinking about the game, strategies, units, etc... Stop watching day9 and streams expecting to auto improve. Streams and day9(i dont like the show, it seems to me that creates noobs not helps them) is used to give you ideas or to learn something you didn't know or figured out yourself - it has almost nothing with improving in sc2. Only practice counts, and only by playing ladder will get you where you want. 5 games a week won't cut it. Get real. If you want get gold easily, you don't have to macro - i don't understand this advices about macro for lower leagus - if you could macro you wouldn't be there. Concentrate on pushes and strategies on the economy you can deal with, somehow i doubt you can macro with 78 probes.
If you really want the easy way up the ladder - learn one base play, then 2 base and then pure macro for 3 bases and further. What good is advice to concentrate on macro when you don't have the mechanics for high economy management.
GL & HF
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| | Reality hits you hard bro. |
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| Demx United States. June 18 2012 03:12. Posts 11 | Profile # |
You seem to have the same syndrome I had, I was simply always scared to do anything. Like you I watch alot of day9 which really helped with that fear of not only losing but that the opponent always had more stuff or always would just kill me. What worked for me is to simply find a build for each race, 3 Gate/Robo vP, 1 Gate Expo vT, FFE vZ. Then I went into customs and played the first 10 mins of the build over and over, sometimes extending it to 20 (Yabot is very good for this). I then marked benchmarks of my best games and tried to beet them. I don't have very much time to play but I find this to be low stress and a good environment to focus on mechanics and my understanding of the game. I was placed in gold and have worked up to diamond. When you play always compare the benchmarks, and use day9 to decide how you will react to different things based on the builds you have worked on. When you are in a game it should a response should pop in your head and you just do it.
I also like to every now and then to try and take the builds i have as a base to come up with an allin or pressure to work on unit control.
You have the apm to start doing interesting things and solve your problems. Simple things like one scout looking for something you've lost too. Feel free to change something if it isn't working, macro will get you higher but sometimes doing little things will go a long ways to winning. A good rule of thumb is if you are feeling uncomforable send a probe, something to just see whats up and see if your feeling is justified. |
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| PhobosSC Canada. June 18 2012 04:12. Posts 23 | Profile # |
doesn't seem like anyone (other than first poster) watched replay so you should propbably just skim over their advice since it's not very focused.
A few points I noticed while watching:
3:30 1st scouting probe dies
-Try and keep this guy alive, but obviously you're going to lose your scouting probe a lot in the lower leagues. At your level I'd focus your first scout mainly on finding opponents base and possibly checking gas timing and opening building(s). Return to base before marine pops.
8:00 2nd scouting probe dies
This should have never happened because the probe should never have been there in the first place. More on this later.
dropped 3 cannons at back of base after scouting marines and 3 medivacs (presumably for drop defense)
-Total over commit. The cannons aren't going to stop him from dropping, at most they'll stop him from dropping you in that specific location, but on this map your base is rather large so if he's determined to drop he's going to be able to elsewhere. At a later point (before drops occur) you're going to drop a twilight council for upgrades, perhaps consider grabbing blink and using stalkers to defend any incoming drops. More dynamic defense since they can move and in the case he doesn't drop they're not a total money sink and can be used for offense.
Upgraded weapons
This isn't a bad choice but in the future consider upgrading armour versus terrans. When you combine armour upgrades with guardian shield you can negate over half of the DPS of his marines which can be lethal. A very strond build (especially in lower leagues) is using sentries and zealots with +1 armour against terran. you forcefield so the terran can't run from your engaged zealots and you pop guardian shields so the zealots are taking almost no damage from the marines.
13 minute mark you have 3 observers doing nothing
You were probably using them to watch drop paths, which isn't a horrible idea in itself, but you already have those drop paths covered by the large amount of cannons...making these placements pointless. The other big problem is you have literally no idea what he's doing yet have 3 obs on the field, that is unacceptable.
For a more general point on your build I'd like to make a few points. I'm going to assume you've watched D'apollo's protoss tutorials and are using the 3 gate expand with sentries because of them. This is a very good build for where you are right now as a player, but you missed a few key points to the build. The whole point of taking early 2 gas and opening with 3 gates is to open up with a lot of early sentries; you built 3 sentries then warped in a bunch of stalkers. Building sentries first serves two main purposes, first you get to build up energy (can always warp in stalkers with 2nd/3rd round since you don't need them right away) and second, and most importantly, the linchpin to 3 gate expand is to grab hallucination immediately after warpgates and use sentry energy to scout heavily to choose your tech path.
3 gate expand allows you to field a reasonably strong army early on without having to commit to any particular tech path. Using hallucination scouting you are able to react to whatever build your opponent is and defend. You are going to almost always follow up your expand with a robo bay (and a few observers) but until that tech is up and running (often 7-8 minutes) you are going to be running completely blind which is why we use hallucination scouting.
Your macro wasn't great in this game but it also wasn't awful. You lost a lot of probes and a nexus to his first attack so economically you were behind a fair amount for most of the game, but if you didn't lose that base your economy would have been just fine for you to be able to win this game so in all honesty I'm not going to focus on that as the reason you lost this game. You mainly lost this game because you had absolutely no idea what your opponent was doing from the 3:30m mark until you lost around 18m. You had no idea what he was doing so you blindly built units that were far from optimal, you didn't know when/where he was attacking so your reactions were off and you built a bunch of cannons that were useless instead of more production facilities or units.
It's always advisable to work on your economy but if this game represents a common game for you I'd suggest you actively work on your scouting more than anything else. You will often hear people say just building anything in the lower leagues will win the game for you, which is typically true, but they fail to address a very common problem that lower league players have and that's the fear of the unknown. Scouting and knowing what your opponent is doing will not just allow you to build a smart combination of units it will also do wonders for your fear of not knowing what they're doing.
Keep up the gaming and enjoy the game. Not having a ton of time to play isn't ideal for getting better but it doesn't mean it's impossible. |
| | My mom has been sleeping around with the european ladder - InControL |
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