EPTUnfortunately, with the commitments I have along with trying to finish school this semester, my play time has been cut pretty drastically as you'll see from the ladder games I played this week. It's a shame because I really feel like I'm starting to break out of some my older and into my newer, better ones, these long points between playing though is rough.
Other then that life has been good, just really hoping I can finish all my work and finish this semester relatively unscathed. One of the things I've been deciding on is what I want to pick up for a hobby once school is over, and Starcraft seems to be a heavy favorite at this point. This is one of the best communities out there, and it really feels like anything you put into this game you can get some return from in one form or another which I really like.
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Another reason I've lost a lot of time is due to the NHL playoffs. I'm a huge hockey fan in general, so when playoff time comes around I get glued to my couch and watch as many games as I can. I'm from southern NJ so my team of choice is the Flyers who just bounced Buffalo last night in a rather one sided game 7, but I won't complain. Orange and Black all the way!
Enough about life though, let's get into the games!
Goal for End of Season: Platinum, world rank above 5,000
Goal for This Week: Refine a build order
Week 4
Starting Points: 376
Division Rank: 4
Overall Record: 39-34
Starting Points: 376
Division Rank: 4
Overall Record: 39-34
So I came into this week with a pretty simple goal: Refining a build order. Previously, I had very rarely, if ever, used a build order I had planned or worked in some fashion. In general, I was using the "I think I'll go.." approach, and hoping I could fill in along the way. In some ways, this is a style I really like, but being prepared definitely much greater success in terms of winning. The thing I enjoy about being unprepared is it makes the game more fun for me personally, but on the other hand winning more would also make the game more fun, especially considering the work I'd be doing applying a build order would help me improve much faster then just winging it.
As I mentioned last week, since Day[9] had done a daily on build order refinement, and since it was P, I figured I could copy this as a sort of benchmark, and also some free coaching since I figured I'd make some similar mistakes. My experience with the methodology was a pretty good one. I definitely felt myself piecing the build together in my head, why things were working, etc. and it felt really cool to see timings and such line up so nicely; perhaps an even cooler feeling was knowing I was executing it myself.
I decided that since I needed to watch the replays anyway for the games I did against the computer, I would just create a replay pack for anyone interested. In the zip file I have included:
- Original Replay
- Text File with groupings and timings
- Replays of myself vs. AI
- Attempted execution of build on ladder
I'll talk about my experience with the process more below when I get into replay stuff, but for those of you interested in the replay pack you can check it out here:
Replay Pack
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Please let me know what you think, as I'm thinking about doing some more stuff like this in the future with more build orders obviously.
Is this a good idea to release a replay pack like this?
Would you check out similar packs for other builds?
Could VODs with commentary be a better tool or used in conjunction with replay packs?
Note: commentary would done by me meaning it wouldn't necessarily be as analytical as it would be what I was thinking/feeling as I was playing through the builds. Although, if someone wanted to commentate something like that maybe we can talk
Week 4 Record: 4-1
Race MU: 0-1(P), 2-0(T), 2-0(Z)
Vs. Leagues: 4-1 (Plat)
Not sure why I didn't mention this earlier but, GOT PROMOTED TO PLAT !! I knew I've been close for awhile, and I finally got the promotion yesterday, felt pretty good. All it took was knowing one build order finally haha. My final game on ladder was with my new Plat rank, and I got proxy 2 gated, held it, lots to dts, yay.
Going into some analysis on the build order stuff first though, it was a really enlightening experience as far as game knowledge goes. Never doing something like that before, and especially the way it was laid out, made things come together much easier and I really felt like I was progressing as I got deeper into the refinement. By the time I was done with all the refinement, I felt pretty ready to test it on ladder. Overall, the process took me late into Tuesday morning, so I figured I'd try it on the ladder when I woke up.
Games on the ladder were...much different to say the least. I was trying to stick to the build as closely as possible, but I was also with playing the mindset of trying to stay alive as opposed to executing the build, so there were definitely some snags. A couple of the games actually came closer to the build then I thought. (Which I probably should have mentioned was a Naniwa's 2 gate expand build from MLG Dallas, 2 colossus with range push @ 12:00) One person I played even game me a "nice build" comment, which I found really fun considering I never really used builds like this before lol.
Probably also worth noting that although this build was meant against Terran, I actually had success with it against Zerg as well, which is promising I think. Making some tweaks in the timings could probably produce a decent build against Zerg, maybe I'll work on something like that this week, or something completely new.
Overall, not a bad week. If anyone has any suggestions for PvZ build orders, please suggest in replies, I think that's the next MU I'd like to work out a build order for.
+ Show Spoiler [Strange issue with my points] +
In my tools for sucess post I mentioned the spreadsheet I was using to track my games. I'm still using this to great success, however one thing that has me utterly perplexed is the substantial difference between the points I think should have, and the points displayed on my division page of SC2. I totaled all the points from all my wins this season, coinciding with my battle.net page and came up with 509. My points on sc2ranks and battle.net are 371. Is this due to points being changed when you move leagues? I was slightly confused until I remembered reading something like this but can anyone confirm for me?
Ending Points: 371
Division Rank: 36
Platinum Region Rank: 6,539
Platinum Global Rank: 18,576
Division Rank: 36
Platinum Region Rank: 6,539
Platinum Global Rank: 18,576
Next Week's Goal: Top 8 in my division with a new build order
Previous: Weeks 2 & 3 Next: Weeks 5, 6, & 7
