EPTAnother weekly update of my personal quest and my version of 'Diamond or Bust' is on its route. I'm trying to sum up my thoughts as I type these very first lines of my blog. Kinda following the flow of my own thoughts. Maybe I'm just rambling, because my sleeping habits were out of the window last week. So that sleep deprivation might be showing.
The previous 'episode' of DoB
Those who were following my blog so far know that I'm doing three ladder games per day. Why only three, that's also explained. It's due to my tension I face during these games and it's my way to fight that, along with the intention to improve. In my last entry, I kind of touched my very first impressions of games I had. Today, I'd like to try and expand these thoughts, after another week passing.
Summary
My W/L ratio & rank week ago
12 wins
13 losses
Rank 44th
Total ladder games played: 25
Games Summary
Monday, 13th Devember
Games played: 3
3 wins
Tuesday, 14th December
Games played: 3
1 win
2 losses
Wednesday, 15th December
Games played: 2
2 losses
Note: Explained why below.
Thursday, 16th December
Games played: 3
2 wins
1 loss
Match-up statistics
vs Protoss
5 games
3 wins
2 losses
vs Zerg
3 games
2 wins
1 loss
vs Terran
3 games
1 win
2 losses
Maps:
Jungle Basin - 1 games
Metalopolis - 1 games
Scrap Station - 2 games
Xel'Naga Caverns - 5 games
Note: Maps voted against for my ladder games:
Lost Temple
Shakuras Plateau
Delta Quadrant
My overall W/L after first 36 ladder matches
18 wins
18 losses
Rank 19
My W/L ratio from this week only:
6 wins
5 losses
Overally speaking, I've hit exactly 50/50 W/L ratio. Considering I was way below that two weeks ago, I'll try to take that somewhat as positive thing, although I did expect myself to be able to do more.
General Observations
It seems that I'm slowly getting used to laddering. I'm nowhere as nervous as I used to be, in terms of physical 'symptomes' - my heart is no longer pounding, my hands are not trembling anymore. They are tad stiff and cold when I begin my games. Mentally, I still feel some sort of tension, but I try my best to fight that with good music and initial spamming of my control groups, as explained in my previous blog.
It seems that my recent lack of decent sleep had me somewhat slipping in terms of general gameplay as well. I'm nowhere as focused on the game as I should be. Of course, I'm not blaming my losses on that, no way. Just trying to brainstorm with myself a bit. Some stuff in RL had me quite stressed and that too factored my lack of focus.
Game Observations
First things first - as you might've noticed, I played only two games on Wednesday instead dof three. The reason being rather simple and I'm almost ashamed of myself that I allowed that to stop me doing what I promised to myself. That day, I was highly stressed from RL stuff, add lack of decent sleep and little to no focus at the top of all. Funnily enough, the game decided to place me against Silver leaguers again. One of them was Terran, he went and flew his CC away in first few minutes of the game. It was on Scrap Station and he went to one of these islands, where I couldn't get to in very early stage of the game. Honestly, I don't get what I was actually doing during that game. The guy turtled himself hard on the island - I was macroing up (my macro was awful because I was kind of clueless that game...) and sent an observer to fing out what he's been up to. It got shot down few minutes later. Meanwhile, I was trying to scout the map for additional expansions. I had 200/200 pretty fast, but I managed to get the biggest scouting fail, among the fact I suicided my army in the most stupid way too, later on. I missed one additional expansion, so he was macroing up in peace, building up forces. After I suicided my army in the most stupid way possible, he just picked his MMM combo and killed off my two running expansions and already mined out main. I facepalmed so hard, but I decided to shrug it off and went onto second game.
![[image loading]](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs1335.snc4/162784_10150106426061419_722731418_7382402_949355_n.jpg)
(Scouting fail....)
It was PvP... lately I just cringe whenever I see PvP incoming. Like I said, most Protoss players down in Bronze love to rush or cheese. Guess what, that guy cannon rushed me, for me to find out he was Silver leaguer. I was so upset with myself and with the fact that people like that go up, while I lose to this. I nearly wrote something to that guy, but then I realized I would just lower myself to really bad level if I started to BM. It wasn't his fault that I allowed him to beat me. Only mine. I was highly frustrated with myself, so I just shut down the game, being in low spirits and all that. There was no point in playing anymore that day, with so wrecked mindset it'd do only harm than any good.
![[image loading]](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs696.snc4/63612_10150106426136419_722731418_7382404_2772408_n.jpg)
(Argh...cheese)
![[image loading]](http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs300.ash2/58047_10150106426186419_722731418_7382405_4497062_n.jpg)
(Yes, I didn't notice those...facepalm)
Well, so far so good - back to more general observations.
It seems that the game starts to matching me up against Silver guys more often. Sadly, they seem to enjoy cheese and rushes even more than people in Bronze. I might hit the roadblock here, if that is the case. I am vulnerable to those, and what is even worse, I am very bad at identifying if the cheese or rush is coming even despite of my attempts of doing so. Usually, I find out way too late, so I could as well just surrender.
As I said, I expected myself to do better this week. I'm not going to lie, I'm disappointed with myself this week. Although, putting that aside, I need to focus on the task at hand...
Things in need of improvement
Scouting
That's recurring thing, which is still very bad for me. I do send a scout, but I'm not able to tell what might be coming. Especially in early game. So it feels kind of useless for me to scout after 9Pylon, as it doesn't really deliver me the informations I need. now, I'm not obviously going to stop with scouting, that'd be outright back, it's just, I can't really use the informations well. Even when I send an observer later on, I end up forgetting my scout, so I still don't get any use from the Observer being there. Example of scouting fail would be me seeing that Zerg player who beat me to mass Mutas... I could've stop it, if only I actually attacked, instead of just sitting on my butt and waiting for him to come. He did come... with so many Mutas I could just go and GG. And all it would take for me to win would be to actually use the scout flying over that guy's base.
Playing under pressure/dealing with early aggression/harrass
I've hit some sort of huge struggle here. Whenever someone does something I didn't expect, I immediatelly slip on everything. It doesn't matter if they are merely harrassing or even doing an early attack. When that happens, I'm unable to react properly AND keep macroing. My resources sky-rocket up, I mess up my control groups by adding stuff I didn't want to and the whole game goes downhill. I'm quite unsure how to go on about fixing that. Maybe better scouting, to be warned beforehand? But then again, this returns me to point one - scouting is my big weakness as well.
Multitasking/remembering stuff
It's not that I can't do it. But, whenever I for example move my army/attack, I slip on my probe production. Not even talking about chronoboosting. That's first thing I kinda drop away, especially if the game hits later stage. I just forget about stuff, as soon as I'm doing more than one thing at once. While I do try hard to keep the probe production up, it does slip. I maintain unit production, especially if I'm going to put pressure up. Forgetting to put up Proxy Pylons as well, so my units end up scattered across map so hard as well and guess what, nothing is easier than to simply catch these bits and kill them, right?
Macro
That's obvious, but there are certain observations I made. I seem to have lack of estimation as to how many Pylons to get as the game advances and I have handful of production structures. That problem usually hits, when I hit around 100+ supply. Getting supply-blocked a lot afterwards. And as such, it results on units not being made, my money not being spend and all that. That's outright bad. At the top of all, I seem to be totally out of shape, especially in last three games I played, despite of me winning two of them, my macro slipping more than usually. Makes me wonder why.
Shout-out for
Big props to Jason 'Loophole' for stepping in and being my helpful hand and also to Geoff 'íNcontroL' Robinson. Both are amazingly good coaches. I can only hope and try hard to be able to act and learn from the knowledge they pass onto me.
I'll keep fighting on. There might be some inconsistence in terms of laddering next week, due to Christmas and all that. It's not good to play this game drunk, eh...?
