EPTOnce upon a time ...
...no, this is not one of those stories. But still, its a story.
A couple of months ago I was comfortably sitting in low masters, writing guides for the german community and casting videos as I saw it fit. I love this game and I love to talk about it, but somehow I hadn't the eager and the interest to get really good at it by myself.
I'm quite an average guy when it comes to hobbies - most of the time I'm comfortable picking something up but dropping it quickly afterwards, I'd say that there never was something that I had really mastered and everything was good and fine.
At least until something happened - I was taken to the hospital because of a heart failure. To make a long story short I'm now cursed to take pills every day for the rest of my life but apart from that theres not too much that bothers me about it - I have to tone down the sports and aren't allowed to drink, but thats absolutely okay with me. But during the two months that I was lying in the hospital (Two months because there were a lot of complications) I realized a lot of things.
First and foremost: I love Starcraft 2. Its something that I'm thinking about 24/7, something that I miss whenever I cant spend my time with it and its "the one hobby to rule them all".
Aside from that I realized something else: I want to get good at this game, really good. Everything startet innocent and cute with dreams about winning tournaments like the Dreamhack and whatnot and went from there - could I do that? Is it within my reach to get to that level?
And that thought was something that surprised me - regularly I'm somebody thats not interested in reaching something big, I'm happy with being above average and stay there but in this case ... something has gotten into my mind.
I've only played ~300 games troughout Season I and only ~100 in Season 2 up to that point but as soon as I got out of the hospital I was allowed to play again and hell, how I played. I slammed ~600 games over the last weeks on different accounts, fighting my way up from an empty account up to currently 1800 ladder points on the highest ranked one.
When I started out with that marathon I only had a vague idea of what I'd need to do - macro, micro, execute a clean opening, try to counter what my enemy is doing but somehow .. I felt stuck - with no idea how to improve. I had ~100 APM, one opening per MU and no idea about the bright scheme of things.
Until ...
... I saw something like this:
"Live user streams
[SC2] beastyqt (<3)
[SC2] Destiny (<3)
[SC2] KawaiiRice (<3)
[SC2] Liquid´HuK"
and well ... guess which name I clicked - Liquid´HuK. From there on I suddenly realized something that I wanted to do - I wanted to mimic him. Watching Naniwa is cool because hes very refined, seeing MC is awesome because hes a beast with his units but HuK has something unique that catched my eye - his playstyle is swift and clever without relying too much on slow heavy hitters like Immortals and Colossi (Yes, hes mixing in Immortals vs Roaches but mixing in is something else than building an army around it) and so I decided that hes delivering what I wanted.
I'm not good at inventing things, most of the time I'm relying on whats already there so I went from there. My plan was quite simple - I got my hands on a couple of his replays (I think they were from the Dreamhack-Pack, but I'm not sure right now) and did something that a lot of people might find stupid - I checked his average apm over the course of the tournament. I concluded that 225 seems to be his average value. From there on I started to try to get to those 225 APM in every game - at first that sounds like ridiculous spamming but its far more than that. One of my problems was that I was very passive with my army but when you have the task at hands to get up to 225 APM you're actually grateful for units that you can move around the map to get some extra APM in.
After I was able to do that more or less comfortably (I'm not doing it in every game anymore, right now I'm more at ~200 avg APM but still thats quite a huge jump) I took a closer look at the VODs of him, one Match-up at a time.
I outlined his basic builds against every race and started to practice those against the AI, trying to use my newfound APM to make the most out of the units I had at any given point.
And from there on ... well ... I started to develop on my own, because there was a lot that I couldn't learn off of the VODs because its hard to realize how quick a third has to be placed, what you have to look out for, etc, etc but one of the lead questions when it comes to playing SC2 for me still is "What would HuK do?" and whenever I think about that I get the confidence to carry on and win the game I'm currently in.
so - in a sense - HuK has made me a better player and he brought me to the point where I'm now - close to getting into the GML, having a positive record against the GML-Guys that I've already met and still trying hard to improve - so, thanks HuK.
Hopefully I'll make it and reach my goal of getting in the GML for the upcoming season but if not, then, well ... theres always a season beyond the current one and no icon in my profile can keep me from practicing and evolving, so stick to the ladder and practice!
Why have I wrote this? Honestly, I dont know: I had a slump today/yesterday and needed something to relax myself and realize what I'm playing for and in a sense this text has helped me, so ... I'm going to practice some more.
Goodbye.
