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I thought I was pretty close to breaking into Diamond a couple weeks ago. My winrate way up, I was getting matched against Diamond players and beating quite a few of them, I was feeling good about my progress.
With a bit more focused practice I was able to sink myself into a deep and profound slump, in which I am now getting matched against gold players and LOSING to them.
Tried getting some ZvP practice with a Diamond player, and set to work on icJug Shakuras for some time.
Why am I even kidding myself? I am no where near this level. And at my current level of progression I probably never will be. The harder I try the faster I slip backwards. Gonna end up in Gold at this rate, if I try harder maybe I can get to Silver...
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-234136.jpg)
 
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Don't ever give up on yourself
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It's icJug Shakuras Plateau.
I don't really feel like giving up, but I'm at a loss as how to move forward. I'm just stagnating and moving backwards.
I'm not giving up, or stopping trying, I'm just saying, I don't know where I'm going anymore.
It's like if you're lost in the desert. You might not give up, but it really might not matter anyway.
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37120 Posts
Ummm..... I am not sure why you were being pitted up against Diamond players and then to Gold players but...... I would say yeah, don't give up, keep aiming for your goal
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People have bad days sometimes, it happens
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On September 25 2011 11:11 Tweleve wrote:
People have bad days sometimes, it happens
It's been like 2 weeks of utter fail.
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Replay took forever to load in SC2 lol.
Anyway, guy who said never give up is right. Don't give up on yourself. Here are some criticisms of your play so you can improve:
1. You need to learn and internalize some very basic things. Start with the 3/3 worker split. It's very easy, and you can have it down within 10-15 tries in a test map or just a custom vs AI. Youtube it if you have to; splitting workers in SC2 is not hard at all and you should do it every game. Also, you need to transfer drones to freshly made hatcheries. You lose a LOT of mining capability if you just oversaturate one base while another is completely empty. You should transfer 4-6 drones to your natural hatchery when it is roughly 90% complete (when the HP bar turns green basically) If you feel like using up APM you can shift deselect the workers and send them all to separate minerals before the hatchery completes, effectively manually splitting them.
You sent workers in game 2, but you made spine crawlers with drones that were carrying minerals (hit c for them to send these minerals back) and also you sent too many workers.
2. Do not chase the scouting worker with more than 1 drone. I noticed in the first game you chase it with 2 drones for a while. There is no point, sometimes, to even chasing it at all. By chasing it with 2 workers you lose a lot of mining time. Instead, use the drone you're going to use to put down the hatchery to dance around and chase it away. It's not a big issue if your hatchery gets delayed a bit, you're going to delay yourself even more with two workers running around.
Important!
YOUR HATCHERY WAS DELAYED GAME 2 BECAUSE YOU WERE CHASING HIS PROBE INSTEAD OF PLACING YOUR HATCHERY
3. Improve your decision making. You don't want to waste resources unnecessarily due to poor decision making or scouting. As soon as your pool finished in game 1, you should have AT LEAST made one pair of lings. If you have no intention of making any lings when your pool finishes you shouldn't have gone 14 pool. That's a bad decision. Instead, go 15 hatch. Your pool will be later but it wasn't like you were using it to begin with!
4.Whenever your pool finishes, either make a roach warren or 4-6 lings immediately. You need these lings to scout and to fend off small harassment/deny your opponent's scouting. If you don't make lings you should probably make a roach warren instead and use those larvae for drones. This way you'll be able to build up a small force of roaches to hold off early pressure.
In game 1, because you had no lings, and thus no map awareness, you were not able to do anything about that probe that passed up into your third. You had no military units at all. The attack from the P should have been easily held off if you actually had 4 lings around the map to take the watch towers and whatnot, and plus that probe would never have put a cannon up there. You could've also spotted it with better overlord placement.
Lings at the watchtowers will allow you to produce emergency rounds of roaches or whatever you need to hold off timing attacks. If you don't have any military units to begin with you won't be able to produce the amount of units you need in one round and you'll get crushed. Don't be greedy and do nothing but make drones.
In game 2 the probe passes your drone at your third but you have no lings to kill it! You need AT LEAST 2 lings to deny scouting probes like that. If you position your overlords correctly you can actually kill those scouts before they get any information at all. Also, that single zealot got way too many kills because you weren't watching your lings. It just basically fought one ling at once and killed four (it's not supposed to be able to do that)
5. Time your injects better. You often have idle queens.
6. Don't use queens to fend off proxy pylons. This is why you have speedlings. (and if you don't have speedlings, you have roaches) You let him build a pylon in that same spot above your third in games 1 and 2. That's unacceptable. Plus, you let the probe live! You need to get an overlord or something up there so you can see it.
In game 2, you were floating 2k minerals very early into the game (as you were going hive) Macro better. Get more hatcheries.
7. SCOUT SCOUT SCOUT
Use those overlords and spread them, send a few lings to find out his army composition, do SOME scouting.
Anyway, that's what I see from watching games 1 and 2. Note I don't really care about your micro or your combat yet, that's not what is holding you back. Primarily it is macro, poor decision making, and map awareness/scouting that's really killing you. (example of a bad decision: going 14 pool then not making any lings, instead double expanding when you see a FE. On a large map like Shakuras you should just go 15 hatch and respond as necessary.)
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I appreciate the feedback. There's definitely some good points here, but there's a few that I'm not getting my head around.
Mainly #s 1, 3(& 7.5?), 4(.5?)
In #1, you talked about the split. I can do the 3/3 split really easy, I've been trying to practice the 2/2/2 split IdrA does. I dunno if it's much better, but it seems better, and it's not MUCH harder...but it is harder. A lot of time I end up with 3/2/1 or 4/1/1 instead of 2/2/2.
In #3 and your ending, you mentioned either making a few lings or skipping the pool. I WOULD skip the pool, but I can't for 2 main reasons. 1: queens, 2: cannon rush. A FFE can easily turn into a cannon rush if they realize you have no pool.
Late into #4 you mentioned using OL placement better. I actually need some actual tips on this. My games generally go 1 of 2 ways:
-Put OLs everywhere, get a bunch killed, waste minerals by the 100s and end up supply blocked constantly
-Guard OLs and send very few out, never know anything that's going on.
I need to figure out how to get more OLs out and lose less of them, but I keep dicking it up.
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On the split: For most players the difference between the 3/3 and 2/2/2 split IMO is pretty minimal. if you can do the 2/2/2 split go for it, but the reason I mentioned this is because in the first two games your split was nonexistent. In game 1 you just sent all your workers to the right.
On my third point. What about queens? People 15 hatch all the time and they don't have a problem with respect to queens. Not really understanding what the question is here. On cannons, Zergs aren't really susceptible to a cannon rush. You can prevent it by putting the second overlord above your morphing hatchery. He can't cannon your main cause of the creep. If he tries putting a pylon down you'll see it; then you just send 4-5 drones to kill the probe/pylon. You'll lose some mining time but not nearly as much as he will in minerals.
On the overlords, you should always have at least one near his natural, generally the first overlord you start with. Basically position it so you can see his gas but he can't see your overlord. This overlord will allow you to scout his base if you absolutely need to see his composition or tech and can't otherwise. Also, it's a good overlord to morph into an overseer and just fly over his base when you go lair. You should also place overlords at your fourth (above that third ledge especially) and at his two possible thirds and his fourth. Then place one or two overlords in the middle of the map but toward the sides. It's okay if you lose one or two overlords; the reason they're there is so that you buy some time to produce an emergency round of units (hopefully before the overlord dies and you get capped)
Also you should always have at least 1-2 overlords worth of supply free at all times so you can produce an emergency batch of units really quickly. If you spread your overlords everywhere you should also invest in overlord speed so you don't lose too many (and so they're more effective)
Primarily your problem is macro though, you just float way too many minerals and your injects are poorly timed, so you never have enough units. You can crush a Protoss army with pure roach and some corruptors if you let him get colossi, but generally IMO Z is favored in the ZvP pure macro matchup.
I say this as a random player; I see T>Z>P=T usually.
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On September 25 2011 11:11 Reithan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 11:11 Tweleve wrote:
People have bad days sometimes, it happens It's been like 2 weeks of utter fail.
There are worse. Like me. Actually it's been starting since 2 months ago. Around Mid july, i was master and got demoted TWICE to diamond, and ended the season 2 with diamond (top1 though because my ZvZ and ZvT were like over 60% ratio).
I'm still lost as to how i should approach this ZvP matchup, but i'm sooooooo fucking glad that even Stephano has more troubles against P than vs T. Even blizz stats reveals that P is favored against Z in Europe master / gm league.
Yeah they may sound like a pathetic excuse, but there are time where it actually helps because i've been hearing everywhere that ZvP is "EZ" while it's not.
I especially noticed that nowadays most ZvP wins are from runbies. It's not game-ending but they sure help a LOT that otherwise they'd have most probably lost. And that was something i wasn't expecting at all (compared to the constant bash of said Z players winning with only roach/infestors and so on).
Hope it helps.
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dont play when your frusterated
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On September 25 2011 12:52 Plutonik wrote:
dont play when your frusterated
Then I'd never play, LOL
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On September 25 2011 10:34 Reithan wrote:I thought I was pretty close to breaking into Diamond a couple weeks ago. My winrate way up, I was getting matched against Diamond players and beating quite a few of them, I was feeling good about my progress. With a bit more focused practice I was able to sink myself into a deep and profound slump, in which I am now getting matched against gold players and LOSING to them. Tried getting some ZvP practice with a Diamond player, and set to work on icJug Shakuras for some time. Why am I even kidding myself? I am no where near this level. And at my current level of progression I probably never will be. The harder I try the faster I slip backwards. Gonna end up in Gold at this rate, if I try harder maybe I can get to Silver...
I find that a huge part of improving is thinking logically about things... Which most people seem to not do. Try that out 
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On September 25 2011 13:02 Vlare wrote:I find that a huge part of improving is thinking logically about things... Which most people seem to not do. Try that out
The only thing logical I thought of doing was looking for streams of better zergs playing.
1. Tune into Destiny's stream (he's always on)
2. Watch Destiny get raped over a barrel repeatedly
3. FML
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On September 25 2011 13:10 Reithan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 13:02 Vlare wrote:I find that a huge part of improving is thinking logically about things... Which most people seem to not do. Try that out The only thing logical I thought of doing was looking for streams of better zergs playing. 1. Tune into Destiny's stream (he's always on) 2. Watch Destiny get raped over a barrel repeatedly 3. FML
look for and analyze some replays. It's much easier to see what's going on and you can rewind unlike a stream.
look for things you do differently than the pro and change them if you think they are bad habits, change these things one at a time.
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On September 25 2011 13:10 Reithan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 13:02 Vlare wrote:I find that a huge part of improving is thinking logically about things... Which most people seem to not do. Try that out The only thing logical I thought of doing was looking for streams of better zergs playing. 1. Tune into Destiny's stream (he's always on) 2. Watch Destiny get raped over a barrel repeatedly 3. FML
I meant while playing... Streams will only give you idea's. And often times when watching higher tier players, lower league players see things and don't understand them. This is done without you even realizing it.
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Honestly i can't beat protoss either as zerg.Unless he makes a giant blunder.
I'm on the verge of giving up x.x
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On September 25 2011 13:54 mrafaeldie12 wrote:
Honestly i can't beat protoss either as zerg.Unless he makes a giant blunder.
I'm on the verge of giving up x.x
Replay?
I cant beat zerg/terran or Protoss unless they make a giant blunder either. herp derp.
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I'd be willing to help you out, I actually switched from Z to P so I feel I have a different perspective by having to play both sides of the match-up.
When I recently switched I was having to get down some of the basics, and learning how to deal with drop harass from T without being as mobile as zerg. This guy in diamond that said he switched to Terran and it was his first game destroyed me with pushing at the front and dropping in the back of my main. On top of that I was making micro and macro blunders that I don't usually make...and of course that guy had to say, "are you in gold league?"
If you are having a bad day, just practice some builds out and doing the menial things that Z needs to do. Larva inject on the dot for an hour. Spread creep for x amount of time. Just get into that groove and work on one thing at a time.
Also, something else to remember. There are 7 Tiers of diamond, so you could be facing someone almost tipping masters or doing really well that day playing against you. If you go into the game thinking about problems and down or self hating, you will get into a deeper slump. You need to be confident and prepared.
Feel free to PM if you want some practice. I'm diamond and I have a friend that also plays P who just recently got into platinum. Either way, good luck on getting into diamond. Remember that hard work, focus and a good attitude will help you reach your goals faster.
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EPT
