EPTI dream small I guess.
Good luck on your road to the giant blue and white star.
Bronze to Master! in my dreams? - Page 8
| Blogs > seefernando |
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
I dream small I guess. Good luck on your road to the giant blue and white star. | ||
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Najda
United States3765 Posts
On July 19 2011 17:02 seefernando wrote: Ok, So my stats. I started playing RTS games mid Season 1. I've literally never played PC games, I only ever had a PSx and all I played as Metal Gear Solid. I was in bronze since Mid Season 1, I played Zerg and went 7 roach till I got to Gold. At Gold I started losing consistently to Platinum players. I switched to protoss, as I was told it would be easier to learn a macro style of play with Toss. I was placed back into Bronze by the end of season 1. Started season 2 in Bronze, I actually wasn't able to play as my laptop go stolen at school. I only started play a few weeks before the league lock. Recently I've been playing many high Bronze/sliver players. Is there anything I need to include? I use Grid keys for hotkeys. I can't think of anything else I should include. I'm looking for practice ideas, realistic goals and general ideas of improving play. Thanks! <3 I don't know how much time you have but you can do something like this: Watch a few replays from day before and pinpoint one weak area to improve. Play 10 games working solely on that weak area you picked out. Repeat the next day. If you continuously make all your weaknesses into your greatest strengths then it won't take you long to get into masters. Everyone learns at different rates though so I can't say you'll get there in one week or even a month, but with hard work and dedication I don't see it as unrealistic for it to only take a couple weeks. | ||
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wgcs
United States59 Posts
Most importantly have fun while still learning and getting better. glhf!!! xploit.347 | ||
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koolaid1990
831 Posts
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Jacob666
United States285 Posts
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CurLy[]
United States759 Posts
It took me a year... but yeah | ||
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Belha
Italy2850 Posts
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Slims20
United States45 Posts
Begin at episode 100, and never look back. Good luck. | ||
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Wr3k
Canada2533 Posts
On July 19 2011 17:09 seefernando wrote: Is there any way people play? To all the Bronze to Master players, Was there ever that " OH man! thats what I'm missing" moment? When did you start noticing major changes in your play? What did you start doing really different? I played SC 3-4 months before SC2 beta was released, then I played all of the beta (was top 150 for pretty much entire beta) then when the game was released I was diamond and then master when masters league was released. So I guess I was never really bronze, but I was the bronze equivalent of SCBW. So yes, its possible for someone with hardly any RTS experience to get to masters level. It just takes some practice, a calm mind & some direction. The moment for me was when Kwark (a member here on TL who I met on ICCup gave me a quick lesson on ZvP. It was the first time I really got some insight into the way I should be thinking about my strategy & the information I see. I would recommend creating a plan for yourself with general goals and milestones focusing on one thing at a time. I would recommend something like the following: 1) Determine a hotkey setup that is both comfortable and functional. (Using ring, middle & index fingers of your keyboard hand for the proper keys, deciding what control groups you will put your macro structures on, which will be for units, abilities etc. This will change over time as I'm sure you will want to change stuff as you get better, but you can save yourself alot of hassle by learning things properly the first time. DO NOT CLICK. EVER. ONLY USE HOTKEYS. Don't worry about losing. Once you are starting to feel comfortable with the hotkeys, move on to step 2. Day9daily on this topic: http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-252-secrets-of-hotkeys-apm-and-mouse-movement-4730506 2) Work on your basic mechanics. Watch this day9 daily: http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-132-back-to-the-basics-the-mental-checklist-3751430 Day 9's mental checklist outlines the very basic things you need to be doing to manage an economy in SC2. Focus on only the basics. Your mechanics are the fundamental starting point for the rest of your play. Don't even worry about what sort of units you are making or what your strategy is. Don't worry if you win or lose, just focus on crisp, clean macro. Once you feel like macro is becoming 2nd nature you will start to notice that you just have so much more stuff than your bronze opponents that it becomes easier and easier to 1a and win. If you feel like you need to memorize a build order to help go for it. Just don't be afraid to wing it, it will challenge your mechanics. I would probably work solely on step 2 for at least a couple weeks if not more before even worrying about strategy. Just go into a game and decide, I'm going to build X & Y and attack at Z time and focus on executing that cleanly so that you have the largest possible force when Z arrives. 3) Familiarize yourself with every unit/structure/tech path in the game. Get to know the hp, damage, firing rates, movement speeds, food costs, build times etc. of everything in the game. You want to have the knowledge that will allow you to truly understand the strengths and weaknesses of each unit & tech path. Its useful to know that A counters B, but significantly more useful to understand exactly why that is the case. Liquipedia is quite useful for this. 4) Learning from your losses. Once you are comfortable with basic hotkeys & macro you can start thinking about the actual strategy&tactics part of the game. There is another good (though outdated) day9 daily but I would still recommend watching it as it talks about important concepts when analyzing a loss: http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-116-learning-from-a-loss-3653313 There is also another one (#110 about dealing with losing). Always be sure of several things you could have done better during the game, and look for trends, take note of them, and think of them moving into the next game. Create a cycle of practice > analysis > improvement & repeat it indefinitely. Use the plethora of resources on TL.net in your analysis. That being said, I would focus on day9 dailies/podcasts. You can likely learn more from him than any other single resource. Watch pro-replays/GSL/MLG/etc., but remember that you need to understand why they do what they do, replicating their play-styles is a useful exercise but will only take you so far. 5) Try to win convincingly. Avoid doing all-in builds where if your attack fails to kill your opponent you can no longer win the game. There is something to be said about refining a build, but you will learn more from dieing to various 1 base all-ins than you will from executing them. As tasteless and Artosis would say: when you are ahead, get more ahead. This podcast is related: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/zatic/Day90004HOP1WinWithAdvantage.mp3 (The rest of Day9's podcasts can be found here: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Day(9)_Podcasts, but you may just want to stick to the dailies, as they are more relevant to SC2.) One last note. Remember to stay calm. As soon as you lose your focus, or do not feel calm & positive, you will not only play worse, but likely enter an even worse emotional state. Over time you will find it much easier to manage the anger of losing, but also the jittery adrenaline during heated matches. Don't be afraid to take a break and watch a day9 daily or read Sun Tzu art of war (some call it overrated, but its pure gold when applied to someone learning the basics of starcraft, here's a link: http://www.artofwarsuntzu.com/Art of War PDF.pdf). It will likely take you roughly a thousand games to make it to masters if you are really understanding the theory as well as constantly improving mechanics. That works out to about 4 months if you are practicing a 2 hours a day. If you are someone who has a knack for strategic games & thinking, I'm sure you can do it in less. It took me roughly ~300 games to make it to C at SCBW, (C would likely line up with diamond league in SC2). I honestly have found that aside from working on mechanics and execution, the majority of improvement comes from learning outside of the game. Hence why I advise you to pound out games and focus on mechanics first before worrying too much about winning. You can only put the knowledge to use if you have good execution. Yes, you can get really good at practicing some kind of all-in build and replicating it repeatedly to get to masters, but you will be a much better player if you take a path which gives you true understanding of the game. This is good advice: On July 20 2011 14:50 Slims20 wrote: One word: Day[9]. Begin at episode 100, and never look back. Good luck. | ||
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Aterons_toss
Romania1275 Posts
In all honesty its the best way for someone w/o any kind of talent like myself to get to master since it just give you a "felling" of whats going on ( i.e i never need to tap i just know when to build probes and i know when my wg cd is almost ready since i played so much ) I know the overall theme of improving is: macro build, watch rep, don't miss the daily, read tl but that just seems way harder then what i did and im not even sure if its better or not :p Also up until plat you should just focus on building workers and building units constantly, you dont even need a "game plan" or "strategy" up until mid diamond as far as i see ( smurfing with zerg up to master :> ) | ||
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tripledoubles
Australia213 Posts
I'm now platinum since that fateful day in late May, including a race switch from Protoss to now Terran, as well as a server switch from SEA to NA. Practice makes perfect. | ||
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Fishriot
United States621 Posts
 Good luck!! | ||
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Treva
United States535 Posts
Finally, remember that you need patients and that you may at time want to quit or feel like you are not improving but just remember that if you put in the honest effort to improve then you will improve. Best of luck to you friend! ^_^ | ||
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epikAnglory
United States1120 Posts
2) Watch at least all the games you lost (the more the better though) 3) Profit If Bronze to Master was really impossible, then no one could be in Masters who has no experience of RTS, but I doubt 90%+ of Master league has played BW (or even other RTS games). | ||
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Blicky
United States56 Posts
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-Archangel-
Croatia7457 Posts
Then practice another goal. Be sure to practice macro always, even when it is not needed (like when your opponent is clearly beaten). Remember, win or lose you are playing to learn and become better, not just to win or have fun. | ||
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TheOvermindSEA
Australia1 Post
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GiggleFairy
Australia331 Posts
So yes i feel it is very possible as long as you have the commitment. By commitment i do not mean just mass gaming, i mean watching streams, watching Day[9], watching tourneys, watching replays, CONSTANTLY lurking TL, reading, learning, adapting. Best of luck to you friend! | ||
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Painfck
Netherlands28 Posts
First of i want to say that you are allready on a good mindset and that is trully half the work. I want to advise you to watch Allot and when i say allot i mean allot of day[9] he explains everything so well. secondly, if you have any friends that are "better" than you in this game try playing allot of costumes with them and then rewatch the replays with them. they might give you a second oppinion on whats wrong with your game. A quick way from going towards gold is simply learning actuall build orders. you can find these on liquidpedia. just having a actuall build order with good timings vs a build order that some one made up on the spot will allready be a huge advantage. furthermore, make sure your macro is always good. aka don't miss any warpins/injects. make sure all your buildings are producing make sure you always make probe's etc. Do not spend to much time on micro for now. it will come as you go. also dont worry about apm. this will also come as you go. if you know you need to do allot of stuff you will do it and that will automaticly increase the apm.' Desisionmaking comes for me mostly from watching my replays. if you can often see in the replay that you could have countered one of his bases because he was out of positions. but you never did because you were to scared to leave. also if you have a 7 units vs 7 units and you lose the fight without either side microing you should realise that you were in a bad position. last try reading up on TL as much as you can. there is also a thread here called 1000 tips. it is very usefull especially for new players. goodluck with your qeust for greatness. and if you need help never fear to ask EDIT: the most important thing btw is to play as much as you possibly can. nothing beats experiance. | ||
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Gigaschatten
Germany79 Posts
Now these kind of things are all mentioned in this this great TL thread. However theres another aspect to this: This is a war game. You will simply win in most cases by massing units. If you can mass more than your oponent, then in most cases you will win (most cases since aoe spells, positioning, flanking, etc. can still win you the game even if you have less units). But in order to accomplish that, to build a huge army and continuously building units, u will have to have a great economy. Focus on economy, army and the game mechanics and you will get better. In order to reach Master level (2% of all players) you will have to work hard on yourself. Not impossible but also not that easy as everyone tells you! Good luck! | ||
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