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Well... I have finally come down to that breaking point. I thought i could make it into masters league no problem. I have heard all the rumors "low masters is like D+ on iccup". Which to some extent is true because i am aware of players who were not that great at sc bw and are masters league level sc2 players.
Well I am the one guy who was left out T.T (mopping up my tears and sweeping up my broken keyboards). I feel sc2 is a different game than SC BW but none the less if you have some prior gaming experience it should definitely help, Whether that be Broodwar, warcraft3, etc. Well I was never a bw master but i was lucky enough to achieve a high of C on iccup on at least 2 accounts i can remember, and was always able to make C- with ease. I played sc and bw from 1999-around 2003 and then switched to war 3 for a little while but short lived whenever that came out. Then i came back to playing bw in in like 2008ish. I started playing the game at a feverish pace and eventually worked my way from D all the way up to a C high. and Towards then end of my bw carreer if i played well i could even take a game or two off even better players C+ B-.
Now enough wallowing in my sc bw hay day when i felt i was a decent player on the road to Blue ranks. I start playin Starcraft2 pretty much the day the game came out. ( I didn't play in the beta) I choose zerg having been a zerg player pretty much my whole life of bw it naturally fit me. With in no time i had been placed in platinum season one and then pretty quickly promoted to diamond. (Then Fast forwarding to get to my point so that you all don't get too bored and tired of reading my background info) So season 1 i didn't get to play as much but i said season 2 im really gunna game it up hard core especially with the release of the new master and grand master leagues i really really wanted to make it in and i figured it would not be much of a problem making masters considering my prior gaming skills.
Skip ahead to this part if you don't care to read all about my back ground and just wanna read about the coaching questions?
Well here i am a few weeks into season 3 and I completely struggled to work my way up to top diamond and have been at a point where i litterally can't seem to make it any further. My mmr is pretty much high diamond, so it places me against mostly all high diamond and ever once in a while a masters player. my record so far this season is like 26-29 and i have finally come to my breaking point. I got this idea in my head that i should be rolling my way into Masters with ease, and well things are not going that way. So i decided perhaps i would benefit from some coaching.
I Don't wanna sound like some know it all prick but in my head i feel i have a very strong understanding of what I have to do to win games and I always can identify what I have done wrong in the games that I lose, however Im starting to think that maybe I'm missing something, I feel like I was the player who was left behind. I feel like perhaps there is an aspect of starcraft2 that i am weak at and can't seem to put my finger on it. I don't think my macro is by any means perfect but I know that it is decent enough to win me games, in fact most of the games i win at my level are pretty much just because i have so much more "stuff" then my opponent. I feel that perhaps maybe i lack in the micro and unit control area a little, I will lose games from just completely mis-controlling my army and losing games that I really shouldn't' However that is not my only problem, I always record any loss i take and go over what I didn't wrong as long as it is not blatantly obvious and i record it in a spread sheet. The other problem I seem to notice is I just make bad decisions time to time and after the fact I know it was bad some little bird told me to do it any ways!!
But any who... Im thinking about getting some coaching. would like to try maybe ret or sheth however i don't think i can afford 100$ an hr. So i was thinking maybe spanishiwa, destiny, machine, lz or even vile.hawk (don't know much about him but he preformed well at mlg anaheim i believe) I wonder whether or not this will actually benefit me, i mean i can beat masters players but obviously i can't beat them enough or i would be in masters.
So leads me to this
Poll: Is it worth a high diamond player gettting coachingkeep working at it coaching wouldn't help much (16) 64% Get coaching it may not help as much but it will still be beneficial (5) 20% definatly get coaching i was around your level and look at me now! (4) 16% 25 total votes Your vote: Is it worth a high diamond player gettting coaching (Vote): keep working at it coaching wouldn't help much
(Vote): definatly get coaching i was around your level and look at me now!
(Vote): Get coaching it may not help as much but it will still be beneficial
Poll: Suggestions on who i should get to coach?Other(perhaps list who) (6) 50% Ret (3) 25% Destiny (2) 17% Sheth (1) 8% Machine (0) 0% Lz (0) 0% Spanishwa (0) 0% Hawk (0) 0% 12 total votes Your vote: Suggestions on who i should get to coach? (Vote): Ret
(Vote): Sheth
(Vote): Machine
(Vote): Lz
(Vote): Destiny
(Vote): Spanishwa
(Vote): Hawk
(Vote): Other(perhaps list who)
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read my blog, any feed back would be greatly appreciated, and for putting up with all my boring text here is a picture to cheer u up
* It is a picture of white-ra cat from the White ra is everywhere thread!. Every time i see it it makes me happy and besides i feel there is way to much text in this thread it needs a little color to spice it up* Thx so much
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5SBmc.jpg)
PS by the way my first blog! hope it goes well ^_^ or (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ desks are gunna fly J/K
  
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It seems you have some unidentified thing blocking your progress. A lot of times you just need someone else to point it out to you. First, maybe try putting together a few replays of your losses and posting a help thread in the Strat forum? Post your ideas of why you lost, and maybe people will be able to tell you-- oh well, you are clearly overlooking this important thing that is causing you to lose.
If that fails, then I would certainly invest in one troubleshooting lesson. For that, I wouldn't bother getting the most expensive coach you can find. You're in diamond trying to identify what's holding you back from masters. Destiny or Spanishiwa can probably tell you the same thing that Idra or Sheth could tell you about this. Wait to buy the highest end coaching until you are at a higher level of play.
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It will 100% make you a better player (at least in terms of win more and have them figure out how to compensate for your weaknesses), as to whether it's worth it depends on your income. If you're that frustrated you can't get better and definitely want to get better, have the disposable income, then go for it.
People take this coaching shit waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously, parents spend thousands of dollars on their kids on sports they never pick up again after middle school. This isn't a marriage or going to graduate school, it's not gonna alter your life dramatically if you drop a couple hundred on coaching. As long as you know what you're paying for, a boost over a plateau for a game that could last as little as another 2-3 years or as long as a couple of decades, then go for it. It's called disposable for a reason.
Don't stress so much, just figure out if you want to win more.
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Calgary25980 Posts
The following is my personal super-biased opinion:
1. You can't learn much in an hour, while it's pretty expensive
2. Coaches often just tell their players what to do, rather than actually coaching them.
Imagine playing a sport and having the coach yelling things at you while you were playing. That isn't coaching. The best coaching I've seen was Incontrol streaming a replay analysis but it still left something to be desired.
If you are looking for an assortment of tips, coaching is worth it. If you are looking to learn a specific build order, coaching is worth it. If you are looking for general improvement, coaching isn't worth it.
tl;dr: If you tell the coach "I want to use this hour to learn this super specific thing", coaching is worth it. If you don't and want general improvement, coaching is not worth it.
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Don't need it, just keep trying.
The best coaches are legitimate coaches on established teams. Players can give advice but are not so much coaches as they lack the ability to communicate a point across.
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play more games, it will be better than coaching. If you got C in Broodwar then you will get masters in SC2 if you just play more games.
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Getting coaching is worth it only if you feel the coach is an actually good teacher. Most coaches neglect to answer why's, and only answer what's.
Also before the lesson be sure you have a clear idea of how you want the lesson to be spent. I have a short talk with my students before their first lesson, and I try to get them to have the correct idea on how to make best of their time with me. You should do the same for whoever you purchase from.
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If you're interested in improving as a player, get coaching. If you just want to get into a higher league, don't bother, and just play until you rank up.
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On August 12 2011 01:13 RedJustice wrote:
It seems you have some unidentified thing blocking your progress. A lot of times you just need someone else to point it out to you. First, maybe try putting together a few replays of your losses and posting a help thread in the Strat forum? Post your ideas of why you lost, and maybe people will be able to tell you-- oh well, you are clearly overlooking this important thing that is causing you to lose.
If that fails, then I would certainly invest in one troubleshooting lesson. For that, I wouldn't bother getting the most expensive coach you can find. You're in diamond trying to identify what's holding you back from masters. Destiny or Spanishiwa can probably tell you the same thing that Idra or Sheth could tell you about this. Wait to buy the highest end coaching until you are at a higher level of play.
Just got back from the grocery store  , very happy to already see some feed back, Once again thx to everybody and i mean everybody who has responded. No offense to the strategy forum but i have posted in there before when i just started here at team liquid and i read the strat forum here and there (and made the occasional post) but i dunno if the start forum is really gunna have what im looking for. I could post a bunch of games in there with replays and reasons i lost, but i really dont' want a bunch of guys who i really don't know where they are coming from as a gamer posting the following.
" ok at 3mins and 50 seconds u did this
and 5 mins and 20 seconds u did that"
I think im pretty solid at finding my mistakes and i know that sounds silly cause obviously if i was perfect i would be better and perhaps thats all i need to do is just play alot more games and practice more but i feel like the strat forum is not really what im looking for. I remember back in brood war back when i was a little nooblet just coming back from a 5 yr brood war hiatus i was struggling and i was lucky enough to have ret look at one of my replays and back then i was alot worse and he told me something as simple as " you need to play as if you were a computer you have to spend your resources perfectly and can't have any idle larva etc. and At the time he was basically saying your macro stinks but after that advice, i always knew macro was important but it kinda banged that information into my brain on how super important it really is and i knew it was important but it really hit home and helped me understand why i got behind in alot of games and it definatly helped me for what ever reason at the time.
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I think coaching might be worth it if only for a couple of hours. The major thing is getting a fresh set of eyes looking over your game/replays, and from that outside perspective it's always easier to identify problems that might not have occured to you.
On the other hand learning to analyse your own replays will be much more beneficial in the long run than having someone else do it and eventually having a bunch of different problems.
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It may be worth it to buy 2-3 hours of coaching to have someone really good look at your game and point out flaws you were unaware of, but as Chill mentioned a lot of coaches just tell the student what to do and dont actually coach at all. I would say instead of playing games and have the coach tell you what to do it would be better to have the coach analyse replays of games you have played, but then again bnet0.2 doesnt allow you to watch together so that may be difficult.
In the end you are really the only person who can decide if the financial investment will be worth it.
edit: If you feel that you can tell what you did wrong, then maybe your problem is just that you need to mass games more so you have the experience to make the right decision when you are in the moment.
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I'd say just keep practicing and eventually you'll make it. Coaching isn't worth it in my opinion, unless it's a daily thing.
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I help you for free, come to channel sMi on b.net, look for me. And the reason why you were able to get C on iccup but not master on sc2 is because you rely on your mechanics to win in bw, and ignored your game strategy by just blindly copying gosu korean build of the week without putting the time into thinking why they did what at which timing would it work. Other than that I can't think of any other reason you aren't in high masters with a C on iccup.
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I was thinking of posting a couple replays but at the same time i don't think looking at 2 of my replays is really gunna help cause every game seems to be so different, for example, ill list some of the reasons i lost from my spread sheet.
* 2 base mech push should have waited till i had more units to engage, or gotten neural parasite sooner
* frogot a bunch of units for the main engagement, then didn't attack when i had the chance to win.
* mis microed important attack
*(zvz) fell behind early on misread opponent, should have made drones or pressured when i had more units
And these are just some silly examples, they really vary alot.
I feel like i just read the situation wrong alot and i make some bad desisions in the pressure of the game because afterwards im watching the replay and im like what the hell was i thinking.
And the truth of the matter is even a pro watches his replays and he is gunna have a mistake here and a mistake there that cause him to lose games. but i think he makes better over all desisions i guess along with all the other good stuff, good macro, unit control and scoutting etc.
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The real coaching is introspection, where you see the burning desire, using your imagination to create the insatiable hunger for success. If you manage to coach yourself like that.. the results are to come
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On August 12 2011 02:01 rei wrote:
I help you for free, come to channel sMi on b.net, look for me. And the reason why you were able to get C on iccup but not master on sc2 is because you rely on your mechanics to win in bw, and ignored your game strategy by just blindly copying gosu korean build of the week without putting the time into thinking why they did what at which timing would it work. Other than that I can't think of any other reason you aren't in high masters with a C on iccup.
I feel like u might be on to some thing because i think in brood war on iccup i did rely on just having more units alot of the time to win my games and now in sc2 there is a little less emphasis on that ability because now a weaker player can now produce as well. and mind u my macro is far from perfect but from watching other players on stream and in person etc, i know that it is decent enough and rarely am i finding games at my level that i don't really have enough units if i wasn't set back early on in the game for what ever reason.
At the same time i definitely don't think im clueless i feel i can read this game as well as say a mr bitter( and no offense to him i love his stream and casting and im sure he is great player, infact i heard him say on his stream that he was around c- at bw but im just using him as an example) what im trying to say is i think understand the game i just constantly make, mistake after mistake and they add up and in turn i get losses because of them.
I dunno it sounds contradictory but either way im screwing up some how some way and perhaps im on the verge of making masters and just crying like a little baby but hey that why im blogging so people can read my thoughts and try and see where im coming from
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I see, from what I heard so far, your game is lose(as in free style), and when you play zerg, this shit will butcher you if you don't have a solid feel of what your opponent is doing before its too late. I suggest you make it your mission to find out wtf is going on at all cost both by direct scouting and indirect scouting,(shits like, no sentry on toss ramp and see a zealot + a stalker, you deduce he's saving gas for DT)
If what you said were true about your game sense, you should have no problem coming up with the appropriate response for every situation. As for your mistakes in execution those are matter of concentration, everybody have a limited amount of concentration depend on how talented they are at multitasking. If you know your concentration is at the limit of 3 tasks at the same time, then you better prioritize your tasks and plan some of them ahead of time, so you can free up your focus when it matters. (for example, you know you are not good at injecting lava while you engage in the fight at multiple places, so you make extra hatcheries and queens before it comes to that point so you have extra lava.)
Basically you have to make the game work for you, and not the other way around. Oh an by the way, stop looking at your ladder rank and league as something that matters, it is merely a by-product of how skillful you are, for most people results don't reflect their skills. Why? because those leagues and ranks are comparative, you can get better in the same time getting worse in your rank due to others getting better faster than you. My suggestion is to focus on fixing mistakes and tasks, and don't worry about the overall sense of where you are placed in the E-penis measuring ladder.
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get a nice practice group of poeple around ur skill level, maybe a bit higher and practice as much as u can.
coaching isnt worth it imo, there are some high level streamers who are commentating their play, for free....
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Will Coaching help? Definitely
I don't think it's worth it in this case, I'm at the exact same position you are in Diamond. You reach top you win game by game thinking that surely you're on the verge of it then you lose a game and then it snowballs and you hit a losing streak and start again.
Diamond - Master is the hardest promotion to recieve imo. You just have to keep slugging away at it and checking your replays for what you could improve on.
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Dont, i doubt these players calling them selves pros charging 80$ is worth it.
What can you expect from them to improve your game play?I find starcraft coaching is really a retarded buisness conducted by players who cant win tournaments and just want to earn easy money.
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EPT
