EPTthis many truly dedicated fans willing to dedicate hours of their lives to play, promote, and support
such an incredible game.
Second I would like to get across that before July 27th, 2010 I have never played Starcraft
online, that includes the beta. I have, thanks to my cousin Seth, played the story from the
original starcraft and brood wars games (which is amazing btw). The day the game released I took
the game to my newly acquired alienware m17x laptop and I quickly decided that I was going to
attempt to climb the ladder to the top. I jumped into multiplayer right away and my eagerness earned me a quick ride to bronze.
First starting out it took me roughly twenty games to realize that I was going to need help. Strategy guides and helpful websites like teamliquid.net can give you all kinds of tips ranging from general basic tips to advanced strategies. There is a vast community of Starcraft experts willing to release their secrets in the attempt to create a growing organization of skilled players. Bronze players first need to learn the basic concepts of build orders, simple micro tips like "A" move and kiting, Macro tips like hot keys for production ( I use 4 orbital command, 5 for racks, 6 for factories, and 7 for starports), never stop making scvs, avoid getting supply blocked, and never over queue units or production buildings, you can always use those resource somewhere else.
It takes many games to get used to all this but eventually you get the hang of it. In silver league I learned that going for specific unit composition or certain tech routes were better then trying to do too much. After learning the basics, getting used to hot keys is the next step. Anytime a hot key can be used rather then a click of the mouse you should force yourself to use the keyboard. As anytime you plan to learn sometheing new, your gonna get worse before it gets better. In the long run it is well worth it and will increase your apm (actions per minute) exponentially.
Then there was gold. My first infuriating experience with Starcraft. I learned that if you don't recognize the quickest way possible to your strategy then you will get beat 9 out of 10 games. For example, a popular terran vs terran strategy is cloaked banshees. This can be an effective strategies, one of my favorites in fact, but if you waste resources on a second barracks or put out a seige tank and siege tech first it will give your opponent adequate amount of time to scout and defend against the banshees rendering all those resources essentially useless.
Around the time I was promoted to gold I had discovered the wonderful world of game casts. The first cast I ever viewed was by a caster by the name of HD Gamer. He does a fantastic job, although now I would have to personally suggest husky for his very enthusiastic style or day9 for the learning side of the game.
Watching casts are a wonderful way of seeing strategies used effectively and bring certain holes in your game to light. Viewing games played by top ranked players like select taught me that even the most basic opens can be the most effective.
One negative to watching pros can be to try and mirror their play. People, like myself, fail to realize that we are not as good or fast as they are and just don't play at that level. Still I found myself man crushing foxers play and I couldn't help but spend most of my game time pumping marines and pulling scvs. It's fun for a while but eventually that inevitable end, at the risk of sounding cliche, hits you like a ton of bricks.
I "cheesed" my way up to platinum where I ran into enough players intelligent enough to scout and recognize what I was doing and beat it. I realized I needed to adapt but I didn't spend enough time practicing macro and fell behind until I was demoted back to gold. I spent a lot of time working on different things while in gold. I learned that dealing with many losing streaks was a skill set of its own.
As a terran player I spent a lot of time mad at bannelings. I like ground units, it is my weakness, I will admit but watching those banelings rip open my marines and then watching zerglings and mutas pick away everything else I just want to destroy anything that reminds me of the zerg ( :'( skippy will be missed). My first response is to whine about balancing. I eventually realized that there is a way to counter bannelings or any other unit in the game. You have to be versatile, it is easy to get set in your ways but thats not what Starcraft is about. Good players, besides unbelievable micro, intelligent macro, and ungodly speed xD, scout and quickly counter their opponent.
I now currently sit at platinum, top 5 in my league. I am still very new and learn more everyday. I am currently working on effective early expanding with terrans to build toward a more macro style game. I am also trying to increase my ability to produce harass or push, expand and research simultaniously and more effectively.
This blog is not intended to teach new players how to play, simply to show that it is possible to climb the ranks to this game and how I personally dit it. It just takes practice and a little research. The game can be very overwhelming at first but you just have to break it into pieces, don't try to learn it all at once.
I am going to continue to update my experience as I try to climb to masters and any advice would be more than welcome. Thank you guys for reading, til next time......
HoOdLuM
(No dogs were hurt during the making of this blog)
got 2 eu accs so u can borrow one + i got na acc too! If u want then hit me up! But keep it up gj.
