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In life we the vast majority of us have received grades for the things we are learning. Grading yourself in SC2 can be interesting in determining where you need to improve in order to move up in the game.
It seems that there are 4 major categories that determine how well you play the game as follows:
Macro
Strategy
Tactics
Micro
For self evaluation purposes, I offer the following guidelines/self-evaluation questions:
Macro - Are you always building workers?, Is your supply increasing at just the right time?, are you always producing units?, are you expanding / upgrading / teching only when you have a complete unit production cycle in place?, do you continue to macro during battle?
Strategy - Are you scouting to know what your opponent is doing?, Do you know what you see means?, Do you respond reasonably or over-react?, Do you scout the front?, Do you have synergy in your unit composition? Do you have some sense of timing?
Tactics - Do you normally have a superior position in battles?, Do you know where your army type has an advantage on each map?, Do you utilized flanking / multi pronged attacks?, Do you know when to retreat and re-enforce and when to press? When to trade armies for advantage?
Micro - Can you stutter step, pull back, box select for better concave during battles? Can you micro multiple pronged attacks? Do you often exploit the holes in the opponents defenses?
Now to put it in action, I am a bronze league player with quite a bit of TL reading and Day9 watching under my belt. Currently on a winning streak again after my last self-evaluation and practice. Watching my replays I noticed I scout consistently with initial supply probe, macro modestly well avoiding supply block and keeping minerals low but letting gas run up occasionally. I also found that I was terrible at watching the mini-map and had very little map vision. Mid/Late game scouting was also very bad. Often I was completely out of position for battles and had no concave.
So I gave myself the following report card:
Macro - C- for the high gas and occasional supply block, also macro would slip slightly during battles, but not stop completely
Strategy - C I scout early and can read initial information for most all-ins/cheese and respond accurately. My unit composition is standard M,M&M +ghost with tech/upgrades after expo
Tactics - F I was A-moving with no concave and always out of position due to no map vision
Micro - D- No unit spread, single pronged attack, all units in one ctrl group
So after my self evaluation I thought, perhaps my play is becoming stagnant because of my weakest link. I spent some time watching replays with this in mind. Found some Day9 and other SC2 youtube vids and practiced my tactics.
The result was I stopped only practicing macro and started to round out my game some, leading to progress in my overall gameplay and therefore more enjoyment.
Hope this helps others, try to be honest in your self evaluation and bring up your weakest link. See if this gets you out of your current rut.
Keep in mind that this is intended to be a self evaluation, if you are in high diamond and would grade everyone below mid/low diamond and below as "F" in ability, this gives very little overall resolution for lower levels for improvement.
On the contrary, if you are in bronze and give your self all B's and A's, you have not identified enough deficiencies and are not going to work hard enough to find areas to really improve.
Grading guidelines (think school grades not ICCup ranks):
B- to A+ => Diamond level
C+ to B- => Platinum level
C- to C+ => Gold level
D to C => Silver level
F to D+ => Bronze level
I will update each time I stagnate in progression. Hope some others find this interesting or useful for self-evaluation.
Regards,
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lololol. I'm in Diamond (And I deserve to be) but I still would give myself like C in basically every category except maybe B+ in macro :\
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So are you saying you saying you have the macro and strategy ability of a Gold player?
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Pretty cool way to gauge where you are at in the different aspects of the game so you know what to improve on. Grading yourself also forces you to closely analyze your game, which is great for improving. Plus, having a 'grade' for micro or macro or whatnot has the psychological effect of making you think "wow my grade sucks, gotta improve" - so it serves as an drive to get better.
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I'm saying that when compared to idra, my decision making, macro, micro, strategies, are all a bit lacking  I don't really follow any specific build order except for basically always doing 14 something. whether it's 14 pool or 14 hatch. After that I just wing it and manage to win more than I lose.
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Cool idea, but maybe work on the categories to make them more focused. For example I'd break the sections down...
Macro
Evaluation: How accurate are you at judging the strength of your economy to your opponent's. How accurate are you at judging your opponent's potential tech & army size compared to your opponents
Spending: How good are you at spending your resources. How often do your float one of the two resources and then have to dump it? How often are you scrambling to get more gas to make timings work?
Production Efficiency: How often do you keep buildings working? How often do you unintentionally let a building go idle or larva sit at your hatchery? How often are you queuing units?
Building Timing: How much sooner could you be placing buildings down (ie at 200 instead of 230)?
Tech Timing: Are your important tech research coming too late? Faster than you need them? How good are you at lining up your techs to the time when you think you need them?
Supply: How often are you supply blocked? Do you repeatedly supply block (ie blocked at 26 then 36 right after)
Expansion timing: How often are you expanding? Do you have to panic expand because you mine out? Are you losing expansions because you over expand? Are you falling behind economically? Are you transferring drones at a good time?
Micro
Evaluation: How accurate are you at judging army sizes at the start of a battle? How accurate are you at judging who has the superior position.
Attention Usage: How much time are you focusing on battles? What parts of the battle are you needlessly focusing on? The more time you spend watching a battle without offering useful input (watching doesn't include macroing without moving your camera) the worse grade you should get.
Positioning: How good is your positioning before the battle starts. Could you be positioning your units better?
Unit retention: How good of a job do you do in keeping units alive either by pulling them back/blinking during a battle, controlling units well when trying to avoid battles, or using other abilities.
Ability usage: How good is your ability usage? Do you target spells well? Do you target them quickly? How good are you at getting the spell casters back out to safety?
Target firing: How good are you at target firing? Do you overkill units? Do you under-use target fire and miss out on bonus damage?
Movement: How is your movement skills in combat? Can you kite units well without sacrificing DPS? Can you spread units out properly when starting combat?
Map Presence
Map Vision: How good are you at controlling the Xel'Naga towers? How good are you at positioning overlords? How good are you at using units to scout and understand map presence? If you get surprised by drops often then you probably need a bad grade in this category
Creep Spread: Zerg only, how often are you keeping up with moving tumors forward, replacing tumors, or setting up creep highways
Opponent vision: How good are you at getting vision at key times on your opponent? Do you know right away when he moves out for a push? Do you scout at the right time to spot tech? Are you keeping a good eye on his expansion timings?
Unit positioning: Are your units hanging out at the right parts of the map to apply pressure, fend off pushes, stop drops, or deny expansions?
Tactical Decisions
Counter attacks: Are you evaluating when you can counter attack? Are you over-committing to counter-attacks?
Drop/harass evaluation: Are you properly determining the cost effectiveness of drops or harassment?
Mentality
Game evaluation Overall are you judging the state of the game properly? Do you know if you're ahead, behind, or what?
Crisis Management: How tripped up do you get when put into a crisis? Do you overreact? Do you abandon good compositions and transitions? Do you under react?
Multi-tasking: Do you get too engrossed in a particular task at the expense of other tasks?
I dunno maybe someone can expand on it, it's just a start, but this is more of how I'd personally break it down. I may start doing this though, the idea of grading yourself seems interesting
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I'm the same as aike. Once your in diamond you realise how much you still are bad and can do so much better (nobody can play this game perfect (yet?!)) so i'm not really happy with giving myself A's although I'm high diamond. Sometimes I'll watch replays and I've macroed bad, sometimes I've done it really well. Maybe strategy is my thing, but I often totally fail at that too. Sorry, didn't really give you the data you wanted :S
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On November 19 2010 05:50 JodoYodo wrote:
So are you saying you saying you have the macro and strategy ability of a Gold player?
Watching replays, yes my macro and strat seem in-kind. However, my weakest links have limited my progression some. I had hit a wall and needed to find a way to get better. Currently on a 4-game winning streak near the top of division so we will see when it stops and evaluate again.
@ others:
Consider top in the world would be all A and A+ at worst maybe an A- if they are strong in 3 of the 4. Low diamond may be all B- with even some C type grades.
It is easy to devalue a relative ranking system by saying I would grade myself as C and I am in diamond. However I make the following challenge.
For micro:
How do I click the mouse = F
Cool Stimpack = D
Wow Concave is pretty easy with box select = C
Awesome I don't have to stutter step my whole army/ multiple ctrl groups really help in battle = B
Look at me I have 6 hands = A
Foxer marine micro = A+ (or pick your opinion of the best)
For macro:
What is a build order = F
I can cheese poorly and build Supply when the game tells me to = D
Yep 1-1-1 every time = C
Oh you can macro well still during mid game and in battle = B
The mineral/gas counter goes over 250? = A
Idra = A+
For tactics:
I like towers and siege tanks, lots of them, A-move and pray = F
Oh look there are things that help with map vision = D
My base is not a good place to keep my huge army = C
Look these units are useful for harass separate from my main army = B
Using this choke in the map against my already concave units is gonna win me this battle even though I have less units = A
hahahaha- I can attack you, flank you, harass you and read your mind all at the same time = A+
For strategy:
All banelings all the time cause they are OP = F
Void rays and cannons rule = D
I should have units that hit ground and air = C
1-2 special units for tanking/ abilities really rounds out my army/detection is useful = B
That was sneaky of you to hide/switch your tech, no problem I can counter and survive = A
kekekeke - I can counter your tech and counter your counter = A+
If there is only one scale for judging it ultimately loses some resolution but can better help you understand why you are stuck. Evaluating both what you do well and poorly has its advantages.
I can pull a slew of diamond replays where players get supply blocked more often than I do. However, that is their only macro flaw, where I have identified several for myself. On the other hand the other aspects of their games are wow that was cool I should try that.
Regards,
-E
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On November 19 2010 06:27 Logo wrote:
Cool idea, but maybe work on the categories to make them more focused. For example I'd break the sections down...
Macro
Evaluation: How accurate are you at judging the strength of your economy to your opponent's. How accurate are you at judging your opponent's potential tech & army size compared to your opponents
Spending: How good are you at spending your resources. How often do your float one of the two resources and then have to dump it? How often are you scrambling to get more gas to make timings work?
Production Efficiency: How often do you keep buildings working? How often do you unintentionally let a building go idle or larva sit at your hatchery? How often are you queuing units?
Building Timing: How much sooner could you be placing buildings down (ie at 200 instead of 230)?
Tech Timing: Are your important tech research coming too late? Faster than you need them? How good are you at lining up your techs to the time when you think you need them?
Supply: How often are you supply blocked? Do you repeatedly supply block (ie blocked at 26 then 36 right after)
Expansion timing: How often are you expanding? Do you have to panic expand because you mine out? Are you losing expansions because you over expand? Are you falling behind economically? Are you transferring drones at a good time?
Micro
Evaluation: How accurate are you at judging army sizes at the start of a battle? How accurate are you at judging who has the superior position.
Attention Usage: How much time are you focusing on battles? What parts of the battle are you needlessly focusing on? The more time you spend watching a battle without offering useful input (watching doesn't include macroing without moving your camera) the worse grade you should get.
Positioning: How good is your positioning before the battle starts. Could you be positioning your units better?
Unit retention: How good of a job do you do in keeping units alive either by pulling them back/blinking during a battle, controlling units well when trying to avoid battles, or using other abilities.
Ability usage: How good is your ability usage? Do you target spells well? Do you target them quickly? How good are you at getting the spell casters back out to safety?
Target firing: How good are you at target firing? Do you overkill units? Do you under-use target fire and miss out on bonus damage?
Movement: How is your movement skills in combat? Can you kite units well without sacrificing DPS? Can you spread units out properly when starting combat?
Map Presence
Map Vision: How good are you at controlling the Xel'Naga towers? How good are you at positioning overlords? How good are you at using units to scout and understand map presence? If you get surprised by drops often then you probably need a bad grade in this category
Creep Spread: Zerg only, how often are you keeping up with moving tumors forward, replacing tumors, or setting up creep highways
Opponent vision: How good are you at getting vision at key times on your opponent? Do you know right away when he moves out for a push? Do you scout at the right time to spot tech? Are you keeping a good eye on his expansion timings?
Unit positioning: Are your units hanging out at the right parts of the map to apply pressure, fend off pushes, stop drops, or deny expansions?
Tactical Decisions
Counter attacks: Are you evaluating when you can counter attack? Are you over-committing to counter-attacks?
Drop/harass evaluation: Are you properly determining the cost effectiveness of drops or harassment?
Mentality
Game evaluation Overall are you judging the state of the game properly? Do you know if you're ahead, behind, or what?
Crisis Management: How tripped up do you get when put into a crisis? Do you overreact? Do you abandon good compositions and transitions? Do you under react?
Multi-tasking: Do you get too engrossed in a particular task at the expense of other tasks?
I dunno maybe someone can expand on it, it's just a start, but this is more of how I'd personally break it down. I may start doing this though, the idea of grading yourself seems interesting
This is a great idea. I need to read through more completely and I will incorporate it into the main post. This gives that higher resolution that I was self-criticizing about.
Initially I was looking for something quick and simple. Adding this sort of additional information to your self report card would really help as you progress. Then averaging each sub-grade could give the overall category grade. Map presence, tactical decisions and mentality I will probably split up among tactics and strategy as appropriate.
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Cool, glad you found it interesting. Really I think how much you'd want to divide stuff up depends a lot on your skill level and where you are at as a player. If I were a bronze/silver/gold player I'd probably just use a simple Macro/Micro/etc. score sheet just because my mistakes are going to be obvious and glaring. As your skill progresses I'd want to divide it up more because I need to be more critical to actually expose and focus on my flaws.
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A few weeks ago I would say:
Macro: B-
Strategy: D+
Tactics: B
Micro: B-
I was really focused on my mechanics and improving at the game. After a week of not really playing...
Macro: D-- ( Terrible. But I do it sometimes D: )
Strategy: D- ( Scouting wut??? + Timing failures )
Tactics: C+ ( It's in my head but I fail to execute )
Micro: D+
I get frustrated at myself for playing poorly whether I'm winning or losing >_>
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grading on a curve, im a+ in my mind
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On November 19 2010 06:33 Eeryck wrote:Show nested quote +On November 19 2010 05:50 JodoYodo wrote:
So are you saying you saying you have the macro and strategy ability of a Gold player? Watching replays, yes my macro and strat seem in-kind. However, my weakest links have limited my progression some. I had hit a wall and needed to find a way to get better. Currently on a 4-game winning streak near the top of division so we will see when it stops and evaluate again. @ others: Consider top in the world would be all A and A+ at worst maybe an A- if they are strong in 3 of the 4. Low diamond may be all B- with even some C type grades. It is easy to devalue a relative ranking system by saying I would grade myself as C and I am in diamond. However I make the following challenge. For micro: How do I click the mouse = F Cool Stimpack = D Wow Concave is pretty easy with box select = C Awesome I don't have to stutter step my whole army/ multiple ctrl groups really help in battle = B Look at me I have 6 hands = A Foxer marine micro = A+ (or pick your opinion of the best) For macro: What is a build order = F I can cheese poorly and build Supply when the game tells me to = D Yep 1-1-1 every time = C Oh you can macro well still during mid game and in battle = B The mineral/gas counter goes over 250? = A Idra = A+ For tactics: I like towers and siege tanks, lots of them, A-move and pray = F Oh look there are things that help with map vision = D My base is not a good place to keep my huge army = C Look these units are useful for harass separate from my main army = B Using this choke in the map against my already concave units is gonna win me this battle even though I have less units = A hahahaha- I can attack you, flank you, harass you and read your mind all at the same time = A+ For strategy: All banelings all the time cause they are OP = F Void rays and cannons rule = D I should have units that hit ground and air = C 1-2 special units for tanking/ abilities really rounds out my army/detection is useful = B That was sneaky of you to hide/switch your tech, no problem I can counter and survive = A kekekeke - I can counter your tech and counter your counter = A+ If there is only one scale for judging it ultimately loses some resolution but can better help you understand why you are stuck. Evaluating both what you do well and poorly has its advantages. I can pull a slew of diamond replays where players get supply blocked more often than I do. However, that is their only macro flaw, where I have identified several for myself. On the other hand the other aspects of their games are wow that was cool I should try that. Regards, -E
hahahaha this is actually a nice read 
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How are you in bronze with this level of evaluation? Post a replay :D
See you in diamond within a month imo. gl
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I'm probably A-/A+ across the board, but I sitll pretty much suck compared to REALLY good people.
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This thread makes me wanna watch some more day9, haven't watched for a while (i know, blasphemy right). I'm kind of at a point where i'm just having equal losses to wins. Anyone know a particularly helpful one for a fellow brotoss?
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@slayer91 - I think time in and practice is what is slowing me down. Knowing what to do and doing it are two different things, sometimes I have trouble getting those paths to converge.
I will get some replays posted later this evening. I need to set up an upload account somewhere and will be busy with wife and kids coming home soon.
@N3rv[Green] - The whole point of self evaluation is to identify best where you can improve. Saying you are A- to A+ across the board is fine. I would assume you are then in the top 3-4% ranking wise. If not then perhaps be more honest with yourself. Think about where you are most deficient and make a plan to improve that portion.
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Getting better at something typically requires you to improve all the parts. It was frustrating to read that macro wins games. Then just A-move and collect your win. However, I took the advice and it worked for quite some time. I probably could have brute forced it more and the other things would start to come up on their own.
However, I thought what if I attack the weakest link in a reasonable fashion, would this lead to better and faster progress. Turns out for me it did. Sure I can probably change my build to iEchoics build, get it finely tuned and constantly progress up the ladder on someone elses back learning very little along the way and getting wtfpwned and have to learn against much better players hitting a very demoralizing wall.
Or I can learn to have balanced play and bring up all my skills together, progressing up the ladder slower and constantly fine tune to attempt to avoid that wall.
Chances are when I hit my next plateau, I will find that while some things improved that other aspects have slipped. Learning is always give and take. So then change the focus and again bring up the weakest link.
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On November 19 2010 08:22 Eeryck wrote:
@N3rv[Green] - The whole point of self evaluation is to identify best where you can improve. Saying you are A- to A+ across the board is fine. I would assume you are then in the top 3-4% ranking wise. If not then perhaps be more honest with yourself. Think about where you are most deficient and make a plan to improve that portion.
lol top 3% hardly. More like top 0.01%.
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Macro - B
I suck at building workers really really badly, although partly it's because after I get 2 bases somewhat running I like to play aggressive & all my money goes into military.
Overall my macro is pretty good though, I almost never have queued production if I'm playing my top game because it's horrible and ugly even if you progamer.
Strategy - B+
No real build orders, I just wing it based on general gameplan and how I feel. Ninja expos don't work against me. I'm usually well aware on what my opponent is doing.
Tactics - B+
I tend to be careful with army positioning. Sometimes build sensor towers, depots, turrets in clutch places helping me win games. I'm not afraid to use scans either to know what's going on. When attacking I try to catch my opponent in bad position. Harass when I know it's profitable and so on.
Micro - B
Sucks, partly because I'm slow and partly because my setting outside the game is not good for accurate and fast stuff. I know how to position tanks and how to split marines, I just screw up too much. I can win games with single units like banshees or thor drops.
I put them in B because I'm in diamond but the distance to A+ is...well it's okay if we don't think the rating is linear.
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On November 19 2010 09:23 HwangjaeTerran wrote:
Macro - B
I suck at building workers really really badly, although partly it's because after I get 2 bases somewhat running I like to play aggressive & all my money goes into military.
Overall my macro is pretty good though, I almost never have queued production if I'm playing my top game because it's horrible and ugly even if you progamer.
Strategy - B+
No real build orders, I just wing it based on general gameplan and how I feel. Ninja expos don't work against me. I'm usually well aware on what my opponent is doing.
Tactics - B+
I tend to be careful with army positioning. Sometimes build sensor towers, depots, turrets in clutch places helping me win games. I'm not afraid to use scans either to know what's going on. When attacking I try to catch my opponent in bad position. Harass when I know it's profitable and so on.
Micro - B
Sucks, partly because I'm slow and partly because my setting outside the game is not good for accurate and fast stuff. I know how to position tanks and how to split marines, I just screw up too much. I can win games with single units like banshees or thor drops.
I put them in B because I'm in diamond but the distance to A+ is...well it's okay if we don't think the rating is linear.
I never intended grading system to indicate what rank you were in. Watching some diamond level replays, I am sure you have seen gold level macro. So if you are honestly evaluating yourself and your macro is seriously subpar, then grade at the level you think it is.
For example if you read the forums a lot of people say you can 4-gate and A-move to get to diamond. So here is that report card.
Macro - B- (again weighted for a single build order, it's gotta be tight for the first 6-8 min) after 6-8 min C or D?
Strategy - C+ (4-gate is A grade early on, it got you to diamond, what else is in your toolbox? when the 4-gate is held off?)
Tactics - B- (this is weighted for the one playstyle that you know, timing is probably really good since it is all you have done) get outside of this and your grade plummets
Micro - D (you A-move with a timing attack, perhaps some unit pull back getting you to D-level)
So you see you can get to Diamond on a single well executed strat but when you start to wonder why you are stuck at 1000 points that is when you have to self eval. I may have been a bit overly harsh in this example. So now you plan to work on your weak parts and become a more well rounded player.
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EPT
