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Either I'm not playing enough, not playing well enough, or both.
I haven't been watching many of my replays, partially because I just want to keep playing to get myself out of Bronze, and partially because after every loss I can pretty much identify what I did wrong. I didn't expand fast enough, or I didn't change strategies quickly enough, or I got caught out of position or I wasn't aggressive enough. That sort of thing.
I've struggled to take advice, both my own and those of more experienced players here - not so much from the official SC2 forums as they're brimming over with QQ. Focus on macro, keep minerals down, try not to panic, etc. But every win seems to be followed with a loss, and 1:1 win:loss is not good enough to go anywhere.
It's demoralizing, especially when I fight Zerg after Zerg and they always seem to be beating me no matter how they vary their tactics. The tactic of spamming Marines and tossing bio-balls at them until I get into a position for repeated MMM seems to be drying up. I don't want to have to start worrying about memorizing specific build orders until I'm out of Bronze, but if I can't get out of Bronze because I play so terribly it's a moot point, isn't it?
 
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Why shouldn't you get some build orders down now? Practice one for each match up and worry about macroing. At Bronze, if you just macro up you should be fine. Submit a replay or find a friend to play with. Just play a bunch of games with someone better than you and have them tell you what you need to work on. If you need a hand I can help. I'm nothing special but I am a platinum zerg and can help you get out of bronze, especially if Zerg is your tough matchup
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I think you know how to improve but refuse to put out the effort to do it "right". Mechanic, builds, tactics, etc. Learn to use the keyboard and learn build. Yes it sucks because the learning curve is huge and it may no longer be "fun" but that's the nature of the beast.
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It's hard to put myself in your place because RTS comes naturally and I went right into platinum during the beta but I'll try! How long have you been playing RTS? SC2? You're right that you should be able to play your way out of bronze, and indeed all the way into diamond and maybe masters, without looking at any replays if you can realize what you're doing wrong. I guess the most important thing is to not give up. If you want to get better and actively play while trying to improve in skill then you will improve without a doubt. "Focus on macro, keep minerals down, try to be efficient/streamline your play" etc. is enough to get pretty good. In addition to working on your general mechanics, what might help is to identify your worst matchup and continue from there. Watch a few pro replays and try to pay attention to their overall strategies.. like if you're watching MVP, why do his marines get the job done when yours fail in similar situations? Why does bomber win 78% of TvZs? It doesn't really matter who in particular - I just named them because they're at the top right now. Hope that helps...
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the Dagon Knight4002 Posts
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was to use post it notes. Line them up along the right hand side of your monitor.
Watch your replays and note the mistakes you make, then write the solution to that on a post it.
If you find yourself thinking, "What do I do from here?" at ANY point in any game, just look down the list of post its, they should read something along the lines of,
"Expand"
"Tech Switch"
"MACRO MACRO MACRO" etc.
Depending on what you do wrong, they'll be different, but I used always to need,
"BUILD MORE GATEWAYS?"
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You should find yourself a single not-so-hard-to-micro (ie no fancy reaper or quick push) bio build that lets you get up to 2 bases that you can use against all 3 races and just practice that game after game.
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Roffles
Pitcairn19291 Posts
All about mechanics down in bronze. You shouldn't be worried about builds or micro or whatnot. Just need to work on mechanics, making units. Keep on practicing. You'll get there some day.
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yea its all about the basics as everyone put here. bnet tries to put it where you have a 1:1 w/l ratio so if your not going up its probably because your not ready to be promoted yet.
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Honestly, I tried the whole 'memorizing build orders' shenanigans, and it never worked. It doesn't work. It forces out a rigid style that can get you screwed over by unexpected strategies. Go with the flow, react to whatever your opponent is doing.
Since you're in bronze, just focus purely on mechanics. MMM vZ is extremely micro intensive, and MMM in general takes quite a bit of micro. This might screw your macro over and you won't have a large enough army ready to fight. And you could probably win in your level by simply having more stuff.
Go mech. Simply because it's awesome, and it will lessen the amount of micro.
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The matchmaking system forces a 50% win / loss ratio.
Have you been checking the leagues of the people you've been playing?
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you can literally get to masters if you just watch pro gamer replays and copy them EXACTLY in their build orders and unit comps vs each matchup as well as their timings.
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Hmm, maybe post a replay and we can help you out. It seems that you're already pretty aware of the fact you need to improve mechanics and such.
Also, I'll go against the tide a bit and say I WOULD go and memorize a build. All you need is 1 opener for each race...or if you really don't want to, 3rax (2 techs and reactor) is still a very viable build in bronze. I don't think if you're in bronze, it's very wise to simply go with the flow of the game - having a build down generally allows you to build your mechanics around that since you aren't thinking to yourself what do I do now?
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On May 23 2011 08:46 PartyBiscuit wrote:
Hmm, maybe post a replay and we can help you out. It seems that you're already pretty aware of the fact you need to improve mechanics and such.
Also, I'll go against the tide a bit and say I WOULD go and memorize a build. All you need is 1 opener for each race...or if you really don't want to, 3rax (2 techs and reactor) is still a very viable build in bronze. I don't think if you're in bronze, it's very wise to simply go with the flow of the game - having a build down generally allows you to build your mechanics around that since you aren't thinking to yourself what do I do now?
Also learning a few build will help you understand more what works and what not and the timing from that particular build. When you memorized the builds and watch replays once in a while your 'feeling' for the game will probably increase and then you can build from there:p
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Step 1: Never stop building workers
Step 2: Never stop spending your money
Thats how you move out of bronze.
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You should at least memorize early game build orders - such as the standard Orbital Command opening (10 depot, 12 rax, 13 gas, 15 OC). Afterwards: expand, build more production facilities, tech, upgrade, and keep up unit/scv production. Basically keep making workers and finding ways to keep your money low through spending it.
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On May 23 2011 08:32 Essentia wrote:
you can literally get to masters if you just watch pro gamer replays and copy them EXACTLY in their build orders and unit comps vs each matchup as well as their timings.
That would be kinda stupid.Copying a build order without any form of understanding is not ideal to getting into Masters. Making a build order BASED on what the pros are doing could be ideal because it's easier to do on the player's part with enough refinement.
Sigh, I love Day 9 so much with his Stealing Build Order vids.
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On May 23 2011 10:34 Zlasher wrote:
Step 1: Never stop building workers
Step 2: Never stop spending your money
Thats how you move out of bronze.
If you do this and also never get supply blocked, you'll be in gold within 30 games. If you do all that and check for cheese in every game, you'll hit platinum.
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On May 23 2011 05:29 BlueInkAlchemist wrote:
partially because after every loss I can pretty much identify what I did wrong. I didn't expand fast enough, or I didn't change strategies quickly enough, or I got caught out of position or I wasn't aggressive enough. That sort of thing.
it is probably none of those things
instead it is these things
-missing opportunities to make probes. your nexus should never be idle (obviously once you reach 80 or so probes in the lategame you stop, but i'd be surprised if you're getting to that point ever)
-missing pylons and getting supply blocked
-missing warp gate cycles. everytime they're up and ready to go you should be using them. If you don't have enough money to use them all, you either have too many gates or not enough probes.
-floating money despite using all your warp gate cycles constantly : means you need more production buildings
Find a replay of a good player (doesn't have to be a pro, a decent Masters or Diamond player will do to start with). Look at the build they do. Is it a standard build? (you can determine this by how soon they expand. Standard builds usually incorporate an early expansion, regardless of race. Alternatively, find a replay specifically labelled as a standard game). Look at that replay, then play a game against the AI (or against a real person, but AI is better as a learning exercise.
Use the same build as they do.
Play until 10 minutes into the game.
Skip through at 8x speed to the following points in the two replays. 6 minutes, 8 minutes, and 10 minutes. Compare the food count, probe count, and tech level of both replays. Assuming you did the same build, tech should be pretty even, but chances are that on your first run through of the build, your supply count and worker count will be way down. That's okay! Its a starting point.
Now, re-watch your replay at x2 speed. Pay careful attention to the following.
-Was your Nexus idle at any point? If it was, could it have been making workers at that point? If it could have (ie, minerals and supply to spare), fix that! thats a mistake. While there is a theoretical point at which you want to stop making workers (about 80), you're not likely to reach it that often while learning.
-Were you supply blocked at any point? If so, for how long? Why? Did you have minerals to construct a pylon and just didn't? Or did you put a building down earlier than you should have and not have the money for one? Thats a mistake! As an example for Protoss, you should be making pylons at 9/10, 16/18, 22/26, 30/34, 36/42, 44/50, 48/58. From that point, make them two at a time whenever you have spare minerals from constructing units.
-Were your production buildings idle at any point in the game? If so, why? Was there a specific reason? If you had minerals ready to use and your production buildings were ready to make units, you should have been making them. Doesn't even matter what unit. Any unit is better than not using that time ,especially with warpgates. Lost cooldown cycles are gone forever.
-Were you floating minerals above 500 or so at any point in that 10 minute game? If so, why? Were you distracted? By what? Was it more important than spending money? (answer: nearly always no) If you can't micro and macro at the same time, just a-move and macro instead. You'll win more games. If you weren't distracted and were using your production buildings as often as possible, it could be that you didn't have enough production facilities. Try adding some more warp gates the next time you find yourself with an abundance of minerals. A good rule of thumb is four warpgates per base, with a robo or stargate counting as approximately 2 warpgates (assuming you're constantly building out of it).
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Thank you for the advice, everyone. I was clearly too stuck in my bio-balling ways. Keeping the principles of building SCVs, spending cash, always producing and not getting supply-blocked, I ended up in three more vZ matches. I transitioned very quickly into mech play, and I believe two of those three games saw Mutalisks coming at me. Within minutes, I was fielding Thors along with my Marines, tanks & Medivacs. I won all three matches.
Now, I know winning is not quite as important as playing well - I know for a fact some of my play aspects still need a lot of work - but it felt very good to win, and I made it because of your advice.
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I am only a silver player here so I hope some of this advice can help. I used to think about the game a ton like what build order I was going to do and all these cool unit combos I was going to get out to counter him and I found myself losing all the time because the best counter to a cute unit composition, as Day9 says, is usually making stuff and then going to kill him. More on topic I play protoss so I can't exactly translate this to terran but I worked with a top 200 player for a bit and the one thing he helped me the most on is being faster. Now this might sound dumb or impossible but it's amazing how much it helps. I'm still far from a great player but when I really challenged myself to think:
Am I constantly producing workers?
Am I constantly producing units?
Do I have enough buildings to support my income?
Am I using my racial abilities constantly (chronoboost, mules, larvae injects etc...)
Am I going to be supply blocked? (Still suck at this)
then when I started really putting more effort into each game it started working. If you can just push yourself a little harder you'll start to outproduce your opponent in everything (workers, units, ability to reinforce your army) and then you'll see that the composition or build order won't matter so much. All this is not to say don't go into a game with a plan but just go in like ok I'm going to 2 rax expand and then get a bio ball, rather than plan out every single unit and all that and you'll see you're going to hit 200/200 supply faster or have more income and all that so you will be free to do more things.
Td;dr challenge yourself to push your limits a little more and try to be a bit faster and soon you'll find yourself rolling opponents who used to be your skill with just pure might rather than lucky build order wins and such.
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EPT
