EPTSo in Season 1, I went 3-2 in my placements got placed into Silver, and was immediately apprehensive about playing more, felt like I needed practice before I clicked the scary "find match" button. I ended up practicing with my IRL friends a lot, and disregarding the 1v1 tab, working on the very basics, for quite some time. Near the end of Season 1, I played about 10 more games, mostly just so I could get the Marine portrait (I'm an achievement whore). I ended Season 1, with a 11-5 record. As I won my 4th and 5th game, I noticed the players started to get better and better, with my last win coming against a diamond Zerg. I kept thinking, "OMG the next match, I'm going to get absolutely raped!"
The patch rolls around, and losses are removed. Suddenly, from a purely self-conscious perspective, the idea that people can no longer see how bad I am at starcraft, made laddering seem like much less of a daunting task. So I decided to give it another shot.
I ended up getting paired vs a Terran on Delta Quad (oh yeah, I switched my main race to Zerg). I got absolutely shat on. I scouted banshees, so I threw down my Evo, made two spores and started getting my lair. But what I didn't scout was that he was doing 2-port Banshee. So my 3 queens weren't enough and I ended up losing my base to Banshee only. I gg'd out, and was placed in Platinum for this season.
Now normally, after a loss it would take me a good amount of time to get the confidence to play again. I think the part that is kinda scary is someone looking at my profile and going, "wow, you play so much and you still suck". But, that's a thing of the past! Which I understand why some people don't like removing not displaying losses, but personally for myself, it lets my practice with more privacy.
Game 1 in Platinum: Spawned close air positions on Shakuras Plateau. Scouting 1 Rax opening from the Terran, and poking in and seeing a CC, I decided to open with 5 quick Roaches, I was able to do a good amount of damage and stall the expansion from going down for quite some time. I was also able to scout Factory/Tech Lab. From then, I went mutas after seeing his tank and marines near his ramp. Got a bit of harassment in and stalled mining. Took my third, did some drop harassment with roaches and eventually he tapped out. GG, my first win in Plat :D.
I'm now first place in my plat division with 34 pts haha (the guy I beat was favoured, checked his stats to see he was just placed into diamond. But anyways, free to hide to practicing from the rest of the world. 1v1's not so scary anymore (god, I'm so vain).
