EPTI remember when TL still had iccup blogs. Normally a milestone would be "finally made it out of D!!" or "Made it to C-!!" There would also occasionally be a couple of blogs that had a player's first 100 losses as their milestone. It represents a commitment towards a super tough laddering experience, where 100 losses probably meant you had about 50 wins if you were in the D/D+ range, and about 100ish wins if you were C-/C. 150 games of iccup can be incredibly frustrating; attempting to force myself to play to climb towards that elusive yellow rank was not easy for me.
But this is star2, not broodwar. So for me, my milestone is that I have finally reached 100 (and 1) losses. I'd been thinking about making this blog several times as my losses creeped towards that nice, round one-double-zero.
I've been having some pretty severe problems regarding motivation towards star2, the biggest of which is that it is not as satisfying as broodwar to play. No lurkers, no defilers, no rapidfire "BOOM BOOM BOOM" of cracklings raping a full control of goons. No more mutas picking off turrets and marines, and then finally wiping out their entire base as they crumble before your gosu micro. Instead I get a neutered race. Uninspired roaches replace the brilliant design of lurkers (seriously, do we need another boring ranged unit with no flavor?), a turret and thor buff which completely wiped out the micro wars between marine/turret and muta, and a load of lame terran timing attacks designed to kill your natural before zergling speed is even done. Attempting to play zerg through star2 beta almost killed any desire I had to play retail.
So what's a desperate zerg to do? Switch to terran, of course. Which is exactly what I did upon retail. Hooray! I cried. No more dying the moment my natural goes up! I can actually fight colossi with my midgame army! Everything is good, right?
No. What semblance of broodwar macro is completely lost in the new terran. 5ddaaaaa-tab-ss-tab-vdvd. Controlling mnm is a matter of 1t, then rapidly right-clicking away and hitting h. No more marine splitting, frantic 1t2t3t4t5t6t1a2a3a4a5a6a as lurker ling rolls over your undersized mnm groups. There's no more visceral feel to the game, no more goons sinking into their own blue goop as they fall under siege tank fire with that distinctive sound.
I have a lot more complaints about star2 compared to broodwar, but this isn't supposed to be a blog that compares star2 to broodwar. This is a celebratory blog to tell myself, I have finally gotten one hundred (and one) losses. I've finally pushed myself to play enough games to reach this milestone. I ended up with a record of 136-101, or a 57.38% winrate, at 1571 points (plus a bonus pool of 205). Apparently this means that my "true" ladder points are around 1776, which sc2ranks tells me is good enough for about 759th place on the NA server. I guess that's okay, but it fails to show any true improvement; before my rating tanked in late August after going 4-16 in a weekend, I was ranked around 800 on NA, and have been ranked around 800 in NA ever since diamond was introduced in beta (I think. I didn't really play that much since diamond was introduced in beta, but I'm pretty sure I was ranked around that).
I would have posted this on a round 100, but I had finally gotten myself into a nice groove; I told myself I was going to play from 8:30 to 10:00, and I didn't want to ruin my momentary energy by cutting it short. So I'm posting this on 101.
I'm 19-7 on ladder for October. 7-3 for TvP, 7-3 for TvT, and 5-1 for TvZ. Quick overall statistics: 32-33 TvP, 28-27 TvT, 31-8 TvZ.
I'm pretty happy about my improvement in TvP. It hit an all-time low of around 35% winrate before I started doing 1rax FE and 1/1/2 hellion drop (thanks iechoic!) I'm not really sure I understand the matchup at all, however; I try to drag the game out to long games, but haven't gotten a clue how and when to take my third while keeping up production.
TvT is pretty meh. I used to tank/viking, around 45% winrate, then started rushing banshees expo into marauders. It worked well enough, but it was kind of allin if I couldn't consistently snipe tanks and prevent him from getting a critical mass. Then I tried 1 rax FE into fast 4 gas into double factory, but I had issues with its viability against fast tank/marine rush. Now I've come full circle back to 1 basing, opening up with a fast reaper to scout.
TvZ is also pretty meh. I abused 3rax reaper (going 4-3) until about mid August, and then started doing a build which is pretty okay if your opponent has never seen it before. Gas before rax FE (I wrote a guide on this but no one seems to care much about it D: ) into mass marine raven. I theorized that if I can force zerg to stay on 2 base by being aggressive with my marines, every baneling he makes puts him more behind than losing marines to banelings puts me behind, as long as I'm not losing 10+ marines to 2 banelings. I have no doubt that if I climb much higher than 1800 points (past top 500 on NA server) I'll have to actually find and practice a standard build as good zergs won't really lose to my terribad strategy.
I congratulate anyone who's made it through this long ass, longwinded blog that's pretty much me talking about a whole lot of nothing. I hope that before the incoming ladder reset, I'll be able to play enough games that I can make another blog at 200 losses. Here's to losing big, and to blogging about losing big. :3
