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Season 3 of SC2 is already upon us, and to be honest I'm not exactly at a great start. I've been playing Starcraft 2 for some time now, not as much as I should, but enough to where I can say I'm fairly skilled at it. For the past season, I've been playing a lot and been stuck in the lower leagues. I've been practicing my skills at some 1v1 obs lately, and I haven't been doing so well in there either. I know that's probably a bad idea since Masters and Diamond level players seem to be the majority in those games, and I have no chance against that skill level as of now.
Now that I finished my placement match in the new season, I've been placed in the Silver League at around rank 60. I'm fairly happy with this as I've been in Bronze for as long as I can remember. The only thing I'm really disappointed with is how I played to get into Silver. During the first match, I played standard all the way up when I saw my opponent (Terran) build his first refinery at the 12-13 supply count. Then, I immediately dropped 2 more gateways and just rushed. I won the game, but I did so in such a way that seems slightly 'noobish'. I'm not complaining that I lost, it's just that I don't want to play a game where all I can do is rely on gateway pressure. I won a lot of games this way, but when I try something like 3 gate robo expand, or 4 gate void rush, I tend to utterly slip on my macro and lose.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I can only play micro games, and macro greatly within one base. Whenever I try to expand and macro, it slips a whole lot, and my micro suffers from this as well. I've tried to play customs with my friends, and play team games, to improve on that but it very seldom work and I can't my macro up to par. I know I'm winning games, it's just really hard to say I'm a good player when I can't even macro well on 2-3 base. The only way I can pretty much win games is through my sheer micro on one base, and small macro. It doesn't really matter who I play (Terran, Zerg, Protoss), I just tend to slip. I know how to counter units and read my opponent's playstyle fairly quickly though.
I really want to play through Silver and get up to the higher leagues such as Platinum or Diamond, it's going to take a while but I'm going to put an effort to make it up there. I just need some ideas on how to improve my macro. My weakness tends to be PvT so usually I expect the worst when I see Terrans on the other side.
Thanks,
Bargil.
P.S This is my very first blog, so it might be too long lol
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Have you ever heard of the Yet Another Build Order Tester? I sometimes like to just do a build or two to practice my macro and see how fast I can get 200/200.
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Bargil: The best way to improve your macro is to practice, and I mean explicitly practice, looking somewhere other than your base while you keep your production going. If you want a safe place to do this, do it vs. the AI on easy mode and just work on that skill.
What you need to be practicing is routinely and quickly selecting your production buildings by hitting the hotkey once, and keeping exactly one unit going (or in the case of warpgates using them whenever the cooldown is up and you have the resources.)
Doing this is going to feel weird at first but once you are used to, say, following a scouting probe with your camera while you keep your production going, it'll get a LOT easier to do it while you're fighting or moving units around the map, and that's what you have to be able to do for good macro.
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The majority of people I know have agreed this season seems harder overall since the main influx of casual SC2 players died off and the real competition begins. I seem to be pretty well the same MMR/rank as I was in seasons I & II personally though.
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Thanks for the support and help, I'll try to use it to my advantage.
Grobyc: I do agree, the person I played to get my Silver promotion was actually pretty tough to beat. Including these new maps, I was confused and not used to them. It's just something I have to overcome naturally.
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On August 02 2011 14:59 Grobyc wrote:
The majority of people I know have agreed this season seems harder overall since the main influx of casual SC2 players died off and the real competition begins.
I somehow doubt this.
I got 3 bronze guys in my placements, a silver, and a plat. I placed in plat after I 5-0ed them. I then proceeded to be promoted to diamond after winning 6 more games, and losing about 5.
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On August 02 2011 16:45 Ardhimas wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2011 14:59 Grobyc wrote:
The majority of people I know have agreed this season seems harder overall since the main influx of casual SC2 players died off and the real competition begins. I somehow doubt this. I got 3 bronze guys in my placements, a silver, and a plat. I placed in plat after I 5-0ed them. I then proceeded to be promoted to diamond after winning 6 more games, and losing about 5.
Well diamond and masters have gotten tougher... the standards are definitely higher than a couple seasons ago. Although I smurfed a couple weeks back and was surprised that bronze players actually kind of knew build orders and how to macro off 2 base 
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I started out in Bronze in season 2 nd am now in Diamond. I'd stagnated at Gold and lost matches for various reasons, but 90% of the time was it was because of macro or stupid mistakes.
If there is one thing I would recommend if you want to improve at the silver/gold level, completely strip back your game to th most basic level once you have learnt your 1 build per matchup.
Watch the 3 day9 dailies on mechanics (252 257 261 IIRC) and strip down your gaming and incorporate those tips. I guarantee you after the initial discomfort and adjustment, you will ge so much better.
And practice, practice, practice.
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On August 02 2011 17:03 MrBarryObama wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2011 16:45 Ardhimas wrote:On August 02 2011 14:59 Grobyc wrote:
The majority of people I know have agreed this season seems harder overall since the main influx of casual SC2 players died off and the real competition begins. I somehow doubt this. I got 3 bronze guys in my placements, a silver, and a plat. I placed in plat after I 5-0ed them. I then proceeded to be promoted to diamond after winning 6 more games, and losing about 5. Well diamond and masters have gotten tougher... the standards are definitely higher than a couple seasons ago. Although I smurfed a couple weeks back and was surprised that bronze players actually kind of knew build orders and how to macro off 2 base
Yeah it could just be masters/diamond that have gotten tougher; none of the friends I discussed this with were any lower than diamond.
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Soon after beta I 7 roach rushed my way to diamond. A while after that people started to find out how to beat it, and I started losing. All the way to... silver.
I rage quit for a few months until I became aware that my skill has never been diamond. I was just a one trick pony.
So I started playing again. I'm still silver, have been rank1 in my league a few times now and then start losing. Some anxiety overwhelming me when I feel promotion is near. Hopefully I'll overcome that eventually.
And it's true, the lower leagues became a lot tougher than half a year ago.
A while ago I played on a friends platinum account and I won more than on my silver account. These days it seems the bottom leagues are quite hard, people got a lot better. Really bad players quit.
I'm pretty sure a new player starting in bronze these days will have a 100% lose ratio for quite a lot of games, this is very discouraging. Maybe it won't be a bad idea to bring copper league back?
It used to be that silver players didn't scout, didn't expand, didn't react, had flawed builds, but that's not really the case anymore.
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I started off similarly, pretty much trying to win every game off of one base. I had no idea of expand timings (and very little of timings in general) and got placed in silver. From there I actually went down to bronze and made my way back to masters recently.
Enough about me, let's talk about you. I would suggest focusing on a few elements:
-> Constant production. Make sure you're always making probes, always making pylons. Make sure your buildings are always making units.
-> Buildings and bases, try to count the number of buildings you use per base. Don't exceed 3 gates off of one base (I allow you to 4-gate in PvP  ) OR 2 gates and either a robo or a stargate. All of these are pretty expand-oriented. No blink rushes off of one base, no DTs, just focus on constant production.
-> Get a second base in the first 10 minutes. Unless you get 6 pooled and lose 10 probes, go for that expand. If you can get it up at 6 minutes with enough sentries to feel safe, awesome. If it's at 8 minutes, fine. Try to always get it before 10.
-> Wait until you have 2 bases to really start playing the game, meaning this is when you tech to colossus/blink/templar/DTs whatever. This is when you throw down a forge and get upgrades.
-> Get a third base up before 15 minutes.
You're gonna lose a ton in the beginning. Sorry. You're gonna lose to all-ins, and then realize you need more sentries, better scouting, more buildings at your choke, whatever. But you need to put yourself in a macro position and then try to defend until you can get a good ball.
Once you can get your ball up faster and faster, then you can start adapting, adding harass, early aggression, etc. But it's less important than learning how to get a solid macro.
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EPT
