Get On Up!

I started playing SC2 around August 15th - the first time I got paid after getting my new, finally-able-to-run-SC2 laptop. I'd spent the previous few days playing around in single-player on the starter edition - TvT vs the easy AI, the first campaign mission - just to get used to the interface. I'd been playing DotA for the past 2-3 years, so the blizzard RTS interface was familiar, but I hadn't played BW seriously in about five years, so my macro and so on needed serious work.

I decided to play Zerg over the other races, mainly because I like the macro mechanic better. I like being on more bases than my opponent, I like soft contains based on mobility and map control, I like having a choice that I can make between economy and army size instead of having to work on both at once constantly. I'm still very happy with my choice - and I still have only cheesed twice, in two seven pools when I felt like playing some starcraft but didn't have enough time for a macro game. I do my best to play standard whenever I can, because it seems like the best way to improve - I get plenty of micro practice applying pressure and getting all-ined.

Thanks to invaluable help from Liquipedia, I managed to win one of my placement matches and get placed into Silver rather than Gold. Thanks to more help from Liquipedia and quite a bit from TL, I was in gold about four days later, and then plat about a week after that. I was playing about 7-8 games a day and loving it - I got completely stoked every time I won, I would even jump out of my chair and pump my fists after about half of them. The losses more or less rolled off my back. I was new to the game, I knew I was doing well to even be at the level I was, and I wasn't expected to win, so I had fun with it.

Once I was in plat I started feeling a bit more pressure. My winrate dropped below 60% for the first time and leaks in my play started becoming a lot more obvious and serious. I even posted a blog here about a "slump", which was ridiculous. I was just up against opponents good enough that I had to actually have decent mechanics. I watched Day[9], I read various improvement guides, I played game after game. I had a bit of a comeback at first, then lost a lot of games to the point where I was playing high golds instead of low plats. But then the practice started paying off.