EPT+ Show Spoiler +
I'm sure some people may wonder why a guy such as myself would be attempting to turn this into a blog series. As I think I've mentioned before, I'm hoping I can chronicle my journey in order to give something back to the community. If this can be helpful or interesting for one person to read, that's enough for me.
Goal for End of Season: Platinum, world rank above 5,000
Goal for This Week: First in my gold division
Day 5
Starting Points: 235
Division Rank: 2
Overall Record: 24-15
Starting Points: 235
Division Rank: 2
Overall Record: 24-15
So, I've been messing around with that Spiral Knights game, as well as laddering on diablo here and there, just to mess around with some different games. I'm definitely a person who likes to play multiple time consuming games at the same, so I haven't gotten in as many games as I could or should have over the past couple of days.
In preparation for playing, I watched Day 9 dailies 252, 257, and 261and decided to take some notes on some of things that were pointed out. I broke down my observations into pre, during, and post game, and I think got some really useful info I can start applying to my games.
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It would be interesting to hear some opinions on when people think the best time to ladder is on US. I've been having some great success in the morning, and whenever I played in the early afternoon last season I got stomped, followed by a fairly balanced mix later in the evenings.
I'd like to incorporate a set time to ladder, as I think it would be helpful just to get some sort of routine down, but for now it seems easier to just play when I can
Speaking of games though..
Daily Record: 0-5
Race MU: 0-0[P], 0-1[T], 0-4[Z]
Vs. Leagues: 0-2 (Gold), 0-2 (Plat), 0-1 (Dia)
So without really needing to say this, today's games didn't go so well lol. I got smashed pretty hard in all my games. I actually felt like I played best against the diamond player, go figure. I'm not going to conclude that the losses had to do with Zerg, despite my trouble with the race and going 0-4 for the day. This is because I finally started using hotkeys! My hope in watching those dailies was to get a good sense for what I needed to be doing, cause as was pointed out, these methods aren't necessarily so easy to find about as a newer player.
Most of the difficulty I had during my games was "tapping", as I was forcing myself to control group every building and trying to tap through as much as I could using the hotkeys; all the while still trying to play. It's definitely going to take a LOT of practice, at this point I could see myself dropping to silver because of it. With all that said, do any fellow Protoss users have a control group setup they'd like to share?
+ Show Spoiler [My Control Group Setup] +
1- All Nexi
2- Main army
3- Secondary unit (stalkers mostly since they're faster)
4- Air Units/Other
5- Robo
6- Stargate
7- Upgrades
8- Primary Nexus (Least minerals available)
9- Secondary Nexus
0- Observer
As far as the replays go, I didn't see much more then I knew while I was playing, that my ability to cycle through control groups is not great lol. For now, I'm just focusing on being able to use my control group effectively, once I'm there I'll move on to keeping my eyes on the minimap and all the other fun stuff that comes along.
Now would probably be a good time to discuss my weekly goal as well. Going into today, I was rank 2 in my division, and had I played how I normally would have, good chance I would have met my goal as 1 in my division. As you'll see, I'm far from 1, but I think it's good to make the distinction that even though I could met my arbitrary goal, I instead chose to make use of my playing time by trying to improve. From here on out, I think I'm going to try and make my weekly goal a mechanical issue, as I'm sure I'll have enough holes to keep the goals coming for weeks to come!
If you've taken the time to read this, could you please read the spoiler at the end of this post and provide some feedback in the comments? It's slightly related to ladder, but this post is long enough as is.
Ending Points: 182
Division Rank: 10
Gold Region Rank: 2,719
Gold Global Rank: 9,470
Division Rank: 10
Gold Region Rank: 2,719
Gold Global Rank: 9,470
Next Week's Goal: Become comfortable with control groups and "tapping"
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Right now I'm debating on whether or not I want to start streaming my games. I've got a stream setup on Justin.tv, tested everything out and everything seems to be working pretty well. I'm a bit uncertain however if I want to start streaming at all, some things I'm considering:
1. Is it worth the effort? Streaming just adds another layer of thing for me to do while laddering, and I feel like I could complicate my efforts by trying to stream.
2. Would I provide anything valuable? As much as I'd love to say "yes!", I'm being pretty realistic about the whole situation. I'm a gold level player, and don't know that anybody would be able to get anything out of the games unless they've been following my blogs.
3. What about listing my stream on TL? I look through many of the streams on TL each day and see them with very few users. Obviously these people don't mind, but what I wouldn't want to do is clutter up the stream list knowing I'm not going to get any viewers. Although I suppose listing on TL in the first place would attract someone here and there.
4. If I stream, should I talk? Obviously this would require people to be tuning in, but I think talking while trying to play would most likely affect my play.
Here's my stream link, check out the video that's there if you wanna see what the quality looks likehttp://www.justin.tv/tahkira/b/283143595
So, if you think it'd be interesting to watch a gold level player attempt to build a foundation to get better on, let me know what you think about these considerations, and if you have any of your own please feel free to add
Previous: Day 4 Next: Weeks 2 & 3
