EPT*off topic tangent* I remember being in the apartment of a producer for a subsidiary of Atlantic Records with the band I was in at the time. We were discussing details of a prospective record deal when the producer we were working with mentions that we should lie about our ages so Atlantic would not automatically turn down the deal without even listening to our music. I was 23 at the time and was shocked that this was considered "old" *end tangent*
So, as I was saying, in college I would probably play war2 a good 6 hours a day when averaging in time spent on the weekends playing in 8-12 hour sessions. I do not nearly have that availability these days, and probably will never be able to reach more than a game/day average over time...so while I expected my progress to be slow, I was shocked initially how slow it was.
I loaded up SC2 and played some single player missions to get back into the swing of the mechanics of RTS games. As I played protoss in SC1, I figured I would do the same in SC2. So before I jumped into my ladder placement matches, I played some 1v1 against the AI. My older brother was in platinum 1v1 and my brother 2 years younger than me was in gold league. I've always been close in skill to my older brother and with the exception of war3, better than my younger brother in RTS, so I expected to place at least gold league when I started.
I was disappointed when I placed silver...and even more disappointed when I was demoted to bronze in only two weeks of getting "cheesed" almost every game. I say cheese because it feels like that until you know what to look for and how to stop it. Almost every PvP was either getting proxy 2 gated, cannon rushed, or 4 gated - PvZ was 6-pool after 6-pool with the occasional muta rush - PvT was either bunker rushes or some very fast marine or marauder rush.
I quickly realized that there was a great fragility to the early game in SC2 that did not exist in previously played RTS's. I had to scour the forums and watch pro replays to help solidify my early game, but the part of me that hated being spoon-fed builds and preferred instead to figure it out on my own really delayed my progress. I probably spent a good month trying to find a viable air opening for protoss in each of the matchups, but until the pheonix patch came around, there really wasn't one unless you counted the one-base VR rush vs Terran. I was frustrated because you could do viable air openings in SC1 - scout openings were my favorite (hell, I probably contributed to the nerfing of scouts in beta because the scout openings were initially way too strong). I almost even switched to zerg figuring that muta openings were viable, but found when properly scouted, they were really just as fragile. So back to protoss I went.
Despite seeing the advice in multiple locations to find a build for each MU and master it before trying to get cute, I instead tried to find a build that was versatile enough to work in all MU's...which regrettably led to me learning the 4-gate. I found that because my execution was not perfect, most zergs could hold it off, and nearly every Terran I faced turtled up behind bunkers. I had most of my success with it in PvP, but many of those turned into base trade races. I eventually broke down and learned a separate PvZ, PvT, and PvP build. I spend some time in YABOT refining the build orders and hoping the refinement carried over into ladder matches. I did improve, and was consistently now beating high silver and even some gold/plat opponents with about a 70% winrate. Surely I would be promoted any day now.
NOPE - apparently I learned sometime later that there was a glitch in the promotion logic that was making it take longer than it should to promote people. Once blizzard patched that with season 2, I was promoted to silver about a week later. People say it is in your head when you get promoted and suddenly start losing again because essentially your MMR doesn't really change when you get promoted so you should still be facing the same types of opponents. And while I believe this to be true, I also find that with promotion, comes an expectation that strategy should improve as well - less cheeses, more expanding, drops, better micro, etc... - and as such I found myself playing against more aggressive builds with viable transitions to them. So while the rushes were hitting later, they were stronger, and my opponents were expanding behind them. The passive style I played in bronze of - hold off the rush and then crush them because they sacrificed so much econ to hit early - was no longer working against zerg or terran...mostly because my macro still needs some major work.
I hate playing passively, so I went back in search of some early aggression strategies that I could use in the PvT and PvZ matchups as PvP was still 4-gate every game. I was able to find a nice early stalker pressure build for PvT and my win rate went way up. I also learned that I could easily punish a 4-gater by doing a proxy 2 gate in close position maps, although I really do not find this a fun matchup at all. I look forward to the new patch making 3 gate openings or even 2gate/robo openings in PvP much more commonplace. I still have not settled on a PvZ build that works for me...although I am trying to use the 3gate FE transition into 5 gate push. My execution of it isn't very smooth yet so the jury is still out on it.
With the upcoming patch, I see my PvT getting stronger as the push will hit harder, and I will have to do quite a bit of work on finding a PvP and PvZ build that works for me. I anticipate getting promoted to gold very soon as I am continually being matched up against gold players again.
Next post will be my impressions of my first Bronze/Silver tournament I played in as well as journaling the experience of playing while you know your game is being casted live.
