It sounds a lot like you just need more experience to interpret scouting information so you can deal with all the weird builds you see on ladder. Holding off 1 base builds really isn't that hard as Z as long as you have a decent idea of what they're doing. Gas timings, add-ons, amount of chrono boost used on warpgate research, stalker or sentry first, all of those things should at least allow you to make a very educated guess of what they're doing. I can write some more on how I scout and try to interpret the different things I see if you want, but you also just need experience to get a feel of wth P/T are doing.

apalemorning

Canada509 Posts

March 17 2011 00:30 GMT

#22

my ZvP is easily my strongest as far as scouting info. two gas can be sentry expand, blink stalkers, stargate play (if he chronos out a zealot/stalker i'd be more inclined to think blink stalkers, or a later, zealot/sentry heavy 4gate).

one gas can be a 4gate, or a really weak sentry expand. (duno what else one gas can be)

my zvt im just lost. one gas can be hellion/marine push into expo. two gas can be literally anything. thor/scv all in, 3 rax all in, 2 port banshee. hellion/mara/marine all in with stim. feels hard to prepare for everything. especially on close positions, even if i prepare for everything, and he expands, im behind. if i dont prepare for any of the thousand things he can do, i lose. frustrating. just feels like a good terran can hide his tech from ramp/kill ovie with 3 marines (he could easy just use 3 marines to kill the ovie, while hiding his true marine count, cuz a few marines when saccing prolly means tech).

SniperVul5

Canada166 Posts

March 17 2011 02:01 GMT

#23

You might also be playing differently on ladder compared to your practice partners in subtle ways. Usually when you play against certain individuals for a long time you get used to their style and play accordingly. In ladder its just a toss up so the feeling might be different in itself.

Generally laddering practice might be best for now though.

apalemorning

Canada509 Posts

March 17 2011 04:38 GMT

#24

okay. i will ladder 4 hours a day. and post a new blog in a week!

apalemorning

Canada509 Posts

March 21 2011 11:31 GMT

#25

little update, haven't played very much due to not feeling well. tried playing tonight, went 3-9. one base toss cheese, scv-all-ins on close positions, 4gates on close positions, the only games i won were zvz (because it actually feels like the better player usually wins). i swear, diamond players are the masters of one base/two base all-ins. i don't think any of these players who beat me could macro more than two base. ._. fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. tilted as fuck.

Baltor

United States171 Posts

March 22 2011 09:29 GMT

#26

I've been having the same problems, except a league below. My macro is really dang solid for Platinum, but I always seem to get my ass kicked whenever my opponents 4 gate or do something else strong and difficult to spot. And, for some reason, those types of strats are indeed ubiquitous on the ladder. Recently, I've been getting better at handling things, and...

On March 21 2011 20:31 apalemorning wrote:
...tilted as fuck.

that seems to be one of the biggest problems. Sure, you can sit down and say to yourself that you're gonna dedicate a few hours to laddering, but when you take a few losses from stupid things in the first few matches, I've found it's better just to sit back, take a break, do something else for a little while. It sure sucks to leave on a loss, but I've been analyzing replays from when I was just grinding out massive game sessions trying to move up, and I found that my play and attitude noticeably deteriorated as the time went on and more and more cheesy stuff killed me.

So while it's great to sit down and actually dedicate yourself to laddering for a few hours, I think it's better to take a break after every few losses. If you ever start to feel even the slightest bit put off by how your opponent beat you, regardless of how much more skilled you know you are, letting those feelings wear off will significantly improve your play and help you on ladder.

blazingblue16

Canada41 Posts

March 22 2011 11:49 GMT

#27

You probably need to micro better, or make less drones, or make more defensive structures.
Defending cheese is really annoying because most of the time you need 2x more skill to beat.
Positioning of your buildings + spores + spines is really important to stop cheese. Also you need the right amount of units at the right time and they need to be micro'ed correctly.

onmach

United States1241 Posts

March 22 2011 14:44 GMT

#28

I understand this guy's problems. If every game were straight up, I'd win 80% of them and be in masters, no problem. But players at the high diamond level are just so random. They do these things that just make no sense at all and it works just because you've never seen it before. Sometimes you are able to scout it, but a lot of the time you can't.

Three port banshee with cloak from a random player. Roach baneling actually killed me when I had a bigger army of traditional roach hydra. Just yesterday I lost to mass void ray off of one base because I didn't realize he had so many that hydras would just melt to them in any numbers. I'm not even going to get started on the scv allins, although they've been a lot rarer lately, thankfully. And of course there is the venerable four gate which I've only recently gotten a good handle on.

apalemorning

Canada509 Posts

March 22 2011 23:51 GMT

#29

i was top 3 diamond last night, tanked my ladder rating down to 8. every game was a different one base cheese, or close positions expand into two base unstoppable pushes. i won every zvz though because its easy

Harsher

Canada19 Posts

March 23 2011 04:36 GMT

#30

Just watched that replay. As a high diamond zerg myself, casual play amount - You are playing at a mid diamond level, in my opinion. You speak of keeping resources below 300/300 on 5 base? You seriously get close to 1k/1k on two in that game. Look at the energy on your queens, you are super behind on larva injects. Frankly your macro was just bad..Just look at your hatcheries , all the unspent larva sitting around, the money consistently going over 500/400.

Your unit control seemed pretty solid, just your mechanics looked bad. Again, I'm not even good at the game myself, mostly just a spectator, just to me that seems to be the case.

Look at that game from an objective point of view, watching your macro the entire time and tell me otherwise

edit: Just looked at your opponent during the match, I can certainly say you played a million times better than him still. He was severely supply blocked on several occasions, even using supply drop, queuing up units in 6 buildings + two command centres, building several missile turrets at once and still sitting on 1k/1k banked at one point.
He was WAY over-saturated at both bases on minerals, with all four gas up, 3 scvs in one, 1 scv in another, then 1 on a third, with the other empty.

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