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so, does anyone else get insanely pissed at the ladder? i have 3700 masters practice partners, i can convincingly beat them almost every game. i was a solid C zerg in broodwar, so thats nothing really special to most of you old school tl'ers. one of them is top 600 na (im not heavily into the sc2 scene as of yet, so i dont think thats too bad) i beat him all the time. we have long macro games. its fun.
but..but...but
the second i ladder, it all falls apart. im only 3.2k diamond. i cant seem to break masters. i go on long win streaks, beat a few masters, then lose to random, seemingly unscoutable terran cheese (any good terran is gonna hide his marine count, addons/tech. blah blah sacced ovie doesnt matter cuz it dies to 3 marines instantly). i'm not whining about imbalance. it's just frustrating because all my practice partners are high masters, and i can easily keep up with them. it feels like i should be better at the game than my ladder rating reflects.
sigh. any fellow master zergies have any tips onto breaking out of diamond? i have the mechanics, but cheese just kills me. maps arent that good either (why bother playing a ZvP/ZvT on close positions?)
/whine blog
but seriously. tips from fresh zerg masters. am i not playing enough? i only have around 500 games, and i've been playing since like feb. <3 thanks all.
p.s i know this probably was a tad painful to read, but i've been up all night with terrible gas/bowel problems. this sucks also.
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You probably just need more games under your belt. Ladder experience will go a long way.
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On March 16 2011 21:16 Zidane wrote:
You probably just need more games under your belt. Ladder experience will go a long way.
thats what i think it is. i have the least games played out of everyone in most diamond divisions i lurk. haha.
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if the Terran all-ins, my biggest piece of advice is to prepare your defenses in your MAIN by your ramp, pull all your drones in to your man, and then sac your expo if necessary. If he takes the time to kill your expo, you will have the time to get enough spines/lings to control your ramp. If he doesn't take the time to kill your expo, then you should still be bale to fend off at your ramp long enough for reinforcements to pop. Also, if you bring all your drones and queens and meet his all-in at the right spot, you can defend it. Ummmm, yup that's my input
Consider saccing your expo
&
Consider pulling your drones
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United Kingdom3685 Posts
500 games is far more than you need to get masters, especially with BW mechanics backing you up. I'm a C level protoss in BW and I got diamond in about 40 games back when masters wasn't implemented yet. I got bumped up to masters as soon as it was implemented, but I think that was at about 350 games played.
If you have such good practice partners, why don't you ask them to all-in you 50 games in a row until you figure out how to stop it?
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If you can keep up with your master friends and they are really good (I've played some horribad high master players on ladder), you should EASILY get into masters. There are some people with ~50 games in masters. People say they don't do well in ladder because of all the cheese, but that's just a part of the game I guess... From my personal experience, no one really cheeses at my level unless it's a cannon rush. Maybe 1/20 games I see someone cheesing me.
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this is why the best practice, is still going to be on ladder.
If you practice with a few people only, you're going to get used to their style/quirks and will unconsciously cut corners. That on top of the fact you 'know' that they're probably not going to cheese you to grab the win. Whereas players on ladder are more likely to be trying any number of random things to clinch victory.
Stop feeling that you deserve to be higher on ladder just because you can beat your practice partners and actually ladder.
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Ypou only have two options. One is to just scout more and play more games. Experience is key. Sooner or later. Even if the terran is doing a good cheese. Something will always be a bit off.
Another option is to explore aggressive zerg. Style similiar to those of julyzerg+kyrix. Put the terran in defensive mode abuse the fact that zerg can produce a lot of units at once. Take the tempo from terran. But you have to perfectly know when to drone and when to mass units and this style is a lot under timing wise than standard macro zerg.
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I got the same thing as you  I just dont know what to do . I guess we should just ladder more
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I kinda think that you are so used to your training buddies that you have all your build built around their style. Then whenever you play people that don't play the same way all the time you lose. Or then you are just nervous, anyways just more laddering should prolly fix it.
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you can convincingly beat 3700 masters and you cant make it into masters? something is awry!
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word, well. i was C in iccup season 8, which was years ago, so maybe i'm just rusty? i watch replays of masters players who can't keep minerals/gas below 1k, but on 5 base i can stay below 300/300 just because of easy i find the mechanics compared to broodwar. maybe i'm just rusty. because i stopped playing any types of competitive video games two years ago. you'd think 500 games would be enough practice.
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I don't always ladder, but when I do, I play zerg.
That's to say that I win some games convincingly but most are long fought or a quick lose. I've been thinking of switching to protoss, since I'm actually just so tired of this race right now.
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I would guess that your friends aren't really trying that hard. It seems like the best explanation because even if your C- at BW, getting to masters in 500 games is not too difficult.
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On March 17 2011 08:32 etheovermind wrote:
I would guess that your friends aren't really trying that hard. It seems like the best explanation because even if your C- at BW, getting to masters in 500 games is not too difficult.
i guess im just garbage then : [
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http://replayfu.com/r/Qh2nG replay between a 3500 masters friend. hes a pretty all-iny player, but 3500 ladder speaks for itself. i played this game vs him at a lan this weekend. he was quite upset when he loss. is my play really diamond level?
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On March 17 2011 08:39 apalemorning wrote:http://replayfu.com/r/Qh2nG replay between a 3500 masters friend. hes a pretty all-iny player, but 3500 ladder speaks for itself. i played this game vs him at a lan this weekend. he was quite upset when he loss. is my play really diamond level?
No. Yeah its probably your nerves then. Have you tried listening to music? Wow this must be annoying for you.
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On March 17 2011 08:42 etheovermind wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 08:39 apalemorning wrote:http://replayfu.com/r/Qh2nG replay between a 3500 masters friend. hes a pretty all-iny player, but 3500 ladder speaks for itself. i played this game vs him at a lan this weekend. he was quite upset when he loss. is my play really diamond level? No. Yeah its probably your nerves then. Have you tried listening to music? Wow this must be annoying for you.
no to my play being diamond level? i always listen to music when i play. i just get fuckin' cheesed so god damn much, sometimes i dont laddre for a day or two because its just frustrating to play. : [
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On March 17 2011 08:46 apalemorning wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 08:42 etheovermind wrote:On March 17 2011 08:39 apalemorning wrote:http://replayfu.com/r/Qh2nG replay between a 3500 masters friend. hes a pretty all-iny player, but 3500 ladder speaks for itself. i played this game vs him at a lan this weekend. he was quite upset when he loss. is my play really diamond level? No. Yeah its probably your nerves then. Have you tried listening to music? Wow this must be annoying for you. no to my play being diamond level? i always listen to music when i play. i just get fuckin' cheesed so god damn much, sometimes i dont laddre for a day or two because its just frustrating to play. : [
Yeah your better than Diamond from the quick glance I took at the replay. Just trying taking every game very seriously then if its cheese. You'll become more careful. Imagine your playing for money or something. It helps me when I am trying to play my best on ICCUP.
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On March 17 2011 08:48 etheovermind wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2011 08:46 apalemorning wrote:On March 17 2011 08:42 etheovermind wrote:On March 17 2011 08:39 apalemorning wrote:http://replayfu.com/r/Qh2nG replay between a 3500 masters friend. hes a pretty all-iny player, but 3500 ladder speaks for itself. i played this game vs him at a lan this weekend. he was quite upset when he loss. is my play really diamond level? No. Yeah its probably your nerves then. Have you tried listening to music? Wow this must be annoying for you. no to my play being diamond level? i always listen to music when i play. i just get fuckin' cheesed so god damn much, sometimes i dont laddre for a day or two because its just frustrating to play. : [ Yeah your better than Diamond from the quick glance I took at the replay. Just trying taking every game very seriously then if its cheese. You'll become more careful. Imagine your playing for money or something. It helps me when I am trying to play my best on ICCUP.
it's just weird, i rarely get out macroed because diamond kids are bad. it seems my only losses are weird one base cheese that's really hard to scout. i have solid builds, i know most timings. duno wtf im missing. thanks for the advice. im a very emotional player though. if i took every game that serious, after a loss i get really mad, and upset. then tilt hard.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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okay. i will ladder 4 hours a day. and post a new blog in a week!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 
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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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EPT
