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Three days ago. Got ranked into Silver off of one win and four losses, and I've played maybe 20-30 matches, winning most of my ZvZ, losing most of my ZvP and ZvT so far, though I'm starting to get a handle on both of those. I'm playing nothing but pure macro games. All but a couple of my losses have been "I don't have enough stuff to handle this attack" - in ZvP, I kind of just forget to make spine crawlers versus mass gate play, and in ZvT, I keep forgetting to make banelings.
I'm starting to do a lot better, though, and a lot of my opponents seem to think I'm not utter trash - during my placement matches, the first guy (who bunker rushed me, and it killed me because I didn't notice the bunker) wouldn't believe it was my first SC2 game against real people, and the one guy I beat told me zerg was the easiest race (I used my scout drone to keep him from walling, lings from a 10 pool took out 4-5 SCVs, and then I out-macroed the bajeezus out of him). I figure if I'm getting trash talked I'm doing something right.
I'm macroing pretty well at this point - injects are usually spot on, money's always low (except when I forget to take gas - oops), and I usually have more bases than the other guy (and have vision of places he could be expanding to). I need to work on scouting the front better, but mainly I need to develop a better sense of what to do with the information I get. I also really need to work on spreading creep and teching - those two things I seem to consistently forget.
Overall, though, I feel like I'm doing pretty well for how long I've been playing. My goal is to make it into the top 8 of my division by next Friday (I'd say "move up to gold", but I'm not sure how moving between leagues works), without cheesing, and while working on scouting, proper responses, creep spread, and transitions. I have yet to effectively use infestors, broodlords, or ultras (I keep winning games with just massive roach or muta/bane/ling counts), so that would be nice, too.
By the way, can anyone give me tips on getting better at multitasking? Not "more effective", as in getting my priorities right - I think I have that down pretty well. I just want to be able to do more things! I think as my mechanics improve (and they are improving) that'll somewhat solve itself, but I'd love hints for how I can improve my mechanics faster.
Shoutouts: Day[9], Liquipedia (those 2 have taught me everything I know about SC2), and every zerg I've watched replays of - you guys inspired me to pick this race, especially a guy named ChSPR or something like that who I guess normally plays terran.
 
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Congratulations, it's definitely is awesome when you take that step from outside viewer to a player.
One thing I've found to help me move around and do stuff faster is to watch replays and just focus on my muta ball. I'm assuming you're going muta/ling/bling in some matchup, so when you load up your replay, just watch your muta ball. Be aware of how often you use it, and move it around, and look for how open your opponent is and how many opportunities you had to swoop in somewhere and get some really good damage off. When I watched myself, I got pissed at how many chances for game-ending damage I missed, so in games I would put a lot more apm into my army control because I knew what opportunities there were if I were more active with moving it around and poking in their base.
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Just started, and you are in Silver? Nice. Means you've been watching sc2 for a while, yea, to get the hang of it
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The way I got my multitask up was three things:
1) Have a total gameplan [doesnt even have to be really good tbh] from start to finish. Ideally your not going to be in a situation where you think, ok, now what. Instead its merely recognizing what your opponent is doing and getting the unit composition that allows you to safely transition into your next goal. Confidence in action just lets you go faster.
2) Spam a little in game at the start, it helps you just keep the pace for the rest of the game, builds a rhythm.
3) Personally I did 3 against computers but I suppose the notion works against anyone; same principle as 2, just go as fast as you can through the game, even if a lot of it is nonsensical button mashing, and then just constantly up your desired average. I use to be excausted after just averaging 100 apm, but now I can easily average 250 and it FEELS like im going at 80 or something. I'm often surprised when I check my apm to see its higher, its simply so engrained I dont even notice it. That kind of physical/mental conditioning aspect is obviously super important.
If you have the gameplan and you have the physical capacity to go faster, well, multitask is a byproduct of all that.
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In lower leagues cheese is very common. Try to have a general idea of what his strategy is.
Work on core things like injects and creepspread instead of little fine tune things such as overlord spreading or multi pronged attacks. They can wait for later
GLHF
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TLADT24920 Posts
Good advice from everyone, just keep working on your mechanics. Speed will come with experience and in due time and eventually you'll get promoted once the system determines you're winning >50% of your games against gold players 
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Thanks for all the help guys. I like the "motivate myself by being embarrassed at my muta failure" technique, and also having a start-to-finish gameplan. I guess I should make some matchup flowcharts or something for "what do I do if" so I don't have to spend as much time thinking and I can just focus on doing faster.
The thing I've been most surprised by, going from a high-level observer to a low-level player, is that people just don't expand. I've seen people stay on one base for 10+ minutes instead of taking their natural in situations where they could easily take it, or stay on 2 bases until they're nearly mined out before starting a third. Seems strange to me because expanding and watching for expansions is one of the few things I'm somewhat competent at. 
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TLADT24920 Posts
hehe, ya, I used to one base as Terran a lot but had no issues expanding as Zerg. I think in my case, if I felt I can't hold the exp, I wouldn't expand just yet but I've gotten over that. Now I 3 rax FE on most maps against Zerg and get a third later on
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The one-basing you're talking about is probably a result of all the different timing pushes that I myself has noticed there are alot of in Silver. 10 mins seems a bit excessive but I suppose most Silver league players don't know the exact timings of the pushes.
I'm usually almost shitting my pants because of nervousness until the 7 min-mark if I expand before that. As I don't quite know how to scout them. Usually, the first 7 mins are just a guessing game for me. :/
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EPT
