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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?37028 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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Diamond Zerg, hate ZvP, by far my worst matchup. Has been for months.
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On September 25 2011 19:23 Demonace34 wrote:Either way, good luck on getting into diamond. Remember that hard work, focus and a good attitude will help you reach your goals faster.
Yeah, it's the attitude that's getting the hardest these days. The longer I practice with negative results the harder it is to stay positive. It would be easy to stay positive if I practiced and at least got a LITTLE better, or won a couple matches, even if I never leagued up.
It wouldn't be TOO hard to stay positive if I hit a wall and could at least stabilize at 50/50, or just float in mid-plat or something.
It would be hard to stay positive, but probably doable, if I started slumping, but I had some good role-models to look up to. Zerg players that were tearing it up, winning a ton of matches with awesome styles that I could practice.
But as it stands, I'm practicing, losing, getting worse, slipping into Gold territory, and every Zerg I find to look at is in a similar slump. No Zerg players seem to be doing well right now. And that's really depressing.
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Easiest way is to just focus on mechanics, especially as Zerg. You can easily make high diamond / low masters with mechanics alone. Just keep working at it and most of all, have fun. Why would you bother playing a video game if you weren't having fun, right?
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On September 26 2011 00:11 TheSubtleArt wrote:
Easiest way is to just focus on mechanics, especially as Zerg. You can easily make high diamond / low masters with mechanics alone.
I've seen people prove this with protoss and I can definitely believe it with terran, but I really can't see this as being true for zerg. We don't have any good strong core units to just ubermacro your way to the top with.
I think you could hit high diamond/low masters with a well-polished enough rush or cheese strategy like anyone else, but anything past that is going to require good scouting to get proper drone timings, good scouting to react to tech swaps that can easily kill you if you're not prepared (DT, Banshee, Void/Phoenix, etc), and at certain points in the game, macro alone just isn't enough (Mass Colossus, mass immortal vs roaches, HT vs Muta, etc).
If anyone actually has any evidence that you can straight macro your way to Masters with Zerg, that would at least give me something to work on, but I've lost so many games where I had better macro that this just doesn't seem possible to me anymore. (Not saying these replays show that, just that is has happened).
On September 26 2011 00:11 TheSubtleArt wrote:
Just keep working at it and most of all, have fun. Why would you bother playing a video game if you weren't having fun, right?
Because I have injuries that prevent me from doing much else right now?
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Of course you have strong units.
In ZvP I win tons of games vs FFE with a pure roach two base timing.
You can do it even on 3 base as long as you just deny your opponent colossi.
If he gets colossi add corruptors and you're set
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On September 25 2011 22:40 Reithan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 19:23 Demonace34 wrote:Either way, good luck on getting into diamond. Remember that hard work, focus and a good attitude will help you reach your goals faster. Yeah, it's the attitude that's getting the hardest these days. The longer I practice with negative results the harder it is to stay positive. It would be easy to stay positive if I practiced and at least got a LITTLE better, or won a couple matches, even if I never leagued up. It wouldn't be TOO hard to stay positive if I hit a wall and could at least stabilize at 50/50, or just float in mid-plat or something. It would be hard to stay positive, but probably doable, if I started slumping, but I had some good role-models to look up to. Zerg players that were tearing it up, winning a ton of matches with awesome styles that I could practice. But as it stands, I'm practicing, losing, getting worse, slipping into Gold territory, and every Zerg I find to look at is in a similar slump. No Zerg players seem to be doing well right now. And that's really depressing.
Well the beauty about losing games is that you have a snapshot of the way you play in game to look back and reflect on and to find mistakes. Starcraft series in general isn't easy, and without having a good attitude and mindset when you lose, you will stagnate even more.
Just by reading your last paragraph I can tell you are going into games feeling down about playing as your race. There has to be some Zerg player that you look up to that either inspires you or that you admire their play style. You need to find that player and use that inspiration to motivate your practice.
For me, it is HuK or SaSe. Whenever their streams are on, I have a notebook out taking notes about how they react to certain builds. I write down notes about the general gameflow with the different ways they play.
If I were to put this into Zerg context and you were looking up to someone who does ling bane muta in ZvT, you'd probably write notes about how they go 2 bases and as they get their lair they add on more gas and plant a spire down around 8-10 minutes in the game...soon after taking a 3rd base. You would also write down that this style takes more multitasking and harassment based play until you get up to your hive tech.
Anyway, I think I could write for ages on each match-up from either Z or P standpoint. I'd also like to note that I have horrible ladder anxiety and issues with my mindset when it comes to losing streaks and being down. Just remember that Starcraft is a game and you should be having fun with it first and foremost. Some people have fun messing around with build orders and refining. Other people like to do innovative strategies and use previously unused units or tactics. I think most people from Gold on up though are wanting to put in some type of time and effort into getting better and fixing their mistakes.
Always remember that the game is external to you and you shouldn't have your ego in the game (this is the main reason people rage and have tilting issues).
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What if they go zealot/immortal/archon? Is it just the timing that beats that?
What about a DT rush?
In any case, relying on a strong timing attack isn't just pure "macro", it's as I said, a specific well-polished rush.
I'm talking about just pure unthinking macro, like the guy who did the "Build nothing but stalkers" blog.
EDIT: This isn't a gripe, per se. I LIKE the fact that Zerg as a race requires more thinking. But I do believe that's true, at least at lower levels. I'm sure in Masters/GM, all races require awesome scouting, crisp timings, etc, but in lower levels it feels like Zerg relies on this more than the others. And I like that.
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@Demonace34
Ret. If I had to pick 1 Zerg pro that I think is just awesome, and I'd love to play like them, it'd be Ret. I know he hasn't had quite as much success as some others, and maybe others are better than him, but I like how he handles the race.
IdrA's damn good, but I don't like his super-passive style.
July is a old legend, but I think his hyper aggressive style is really risky and it doesn't seem to be paying off for him.
Spanishiwa has some great creativity, but he's gotten like zero results with it.
Destiny is a lot of fun to watch stream, but I dunno if his playstyle is gonna pan out long-term (infestor infestor infestor infestor and more infestor).
Sheth is pretty cool, but I haven't watched him enough to tell if I like him.
And I do have a notebook that I use for exactly what you say. I also have a few Master-league zerg buddies that let me obs sometimes, or play games with me. They're really helpful sometimes, but one's swapped to Terran and the other hasn't been available for a bit. 
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On September 26 2011 01:10 Reithan wrote:
What if they go zealot/immortal/archon? Is it just the timing that beats that?
What about a DT rush?
In any case, relying on a strong timing attack isn't just pure "macro", it's as I said, a specific well-polished rush.
I'm talking about just pure unthinking macro, like the guy who did the "Build nothing but stalkers" blog.
EDIT: This isn't a gripe, per se. I LIKE the fact that Zerg as a race requires more thinking. But I do believe that's true, at least at lower levels. I'm sure in Masters/GM, all races require awesome scouting, crisp timings, etc, but in lower levels it feels like Zerg relies on this more than the others. And I like that.
DT rush just means that you have to have detection built into your build right before it hits. Some people like going faster lair and using overseers (they are cheaper now anyway) or you can plan out an evo chamber to come up incase of emergency spore crawlers (also able to help against stargate play).
I don't think it requires more thinking, it requires DIFFERENT thinking. How can I squeeze out more drones and still hold off this timing attack. The larva mechanic is why Zerg is forgiving yet fragile. If you forget to spend money on units, atleast you still have your larva there if you are injecting at a decent rate. I don't think there is anything that is pure unthinking macro, roach hydra with a ton of creep spread while you take a lot of bases and get upgrades? Pure stalker and pure marine work because they shoot both ground and air. Zerg on the other hand needs to get a decent 2 base economy before getting out a ton of attacking units (unless you want to go all-in).
On September 26 2011 01:16 Reithan wrote:@Demonace34 Ret. If I had to pick 1 Zerg pro that I think is just awesome, and I'd love to play like them, it'd be Ret. I know he hasn't had quite as much success as some others, and maybe others are better than him, but I like how he handles the race. IdrA's damn good, but I don't like his super-passive style. July is a old legend, but I think his hyper aggressive style is really risky and it doesn't seem to be paying off for him. Spanishiwa has some great creativity, but he's gotten like zero results with it. Destiny is a lot of fun to watch stream, but I dunno if his playstyle is gonna pan out long-term (infestor infestor infestor infestor and more infestor). Sheth is pretty cool, but I haven't watched him enough to tell if I like him. And I do have a notebook that I use for exactly what you say. I also have a few Master-league zerg buddies that let me obs sometimes, or play games with me. They're really helpful sometimes, but one's swapped to Terran and the other hasn't been available for a bit.
Well, Ret did do well at the Blizzard EU Invitational, he was wiping the floor with people, and you are in luck on the replays. TL just released a replay pack of pure Ret.
TL Ret Replay Pack
Also if you are looking for certain match-ups to watch pros/top master/GM play. I'd go to SC2 Rep and search the match-up you are looking for.
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Dude, I've been there, but you need to realize this: you don't suck in general, but you suck now in comparison to the player you usually are. You're actually not playing as well as you did before, and you're not noticing it, so you feel like you're just having a bad time.
You need to sit back and think, OK, what's wrong with me?
For example, I didn't like TvT, so at the start of the season I rushed with a repaired tank. Yup.
It took some time and 10 TvTs in a row - on the ladder, I kid you not, BNet seemed broken - to realize that if I didn't just play in a shitty way in this matchup my overall performance would improve.
I also stopped pushing the Z and tried to play macro against Z. Without even having a build order.
Then one day I sat back, looked at my BOs, and thought: "Hey, no wonder I was loosing, this is fucked up."
In your case, there are a few VERY simple things you don't do - and if you won VS Diamonds, I'm sure you used to do them - just because you're in that very special mindset, the "meh" mindset.
- NO SCOUT AT ALL
- No lings. As previously said, just make lings. Idra is so pro he only makes 2. But if you make 4 or 6, so will deny scouting and control the watchtowers. Maybe place one at his third to know when he's expanding.
- No lings at his ramp. You don't know when he's moving out.
- No army. Drone drone drone.
- Terrible, terrible engagements. Like A-clicking all the army into a Protoss ball, your army being a thin line of units waiting to be killed by Colossus and Stalkers.
- A-click harass. Speedlings are replaceable and fast. That's why they should be sent to deny thirds, but they should be sent alone.
- Creep spread. You need more.
- OV spread. Unless the P is going Stargate, you won't lose those precious Ovies. And if the Toss gets one Stargate in the lategame, you usually have enough minerals to get some more before getting supply blocked.
All of those little things need to be corrected ASAP, especially because those are mistakes you probably didn't make at some point.
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On September 26 2011 01:10 Reithan wrote:
What if they go zealot/immortal/archon? Is it just the timing that beats that?
What about a DT rush?
In any case, relying on a strong timing attack isn't just pure "macro", it's as I said, a specific well-polished rush.
I'm talking about just pure unthinking macro, like the guy who did the "Build nothing but stalkers" blog.
EDIT: This isn't a gripe, per se. I LIKE the fact that Zerg as a race requires more thinking. But I do believe that's true, at least at lower levels. I'm sure in Masters/GM, all races require awesome scouting, crisp timings, etc, but in lower levels it feels like Zerg relies on this more than the others. And I like that.
Of course you're not going to literally close your eyes and make w/e units you feel like making, but having strong mechanics and hitting your injects consistently will boost your game tremendously and leave you plenty of room for mistakes in other aspects of your play. You can have poor control and unit composition and creep spread yet still consistently beat mid diamonds with good enough larva inject because everyone in diamond has shitty macro and will lose to you by virtue of having less stuff.
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mOOnGLaDe and Sen are another 2 I don't really know enough about. Hmmm...they're playing in NASL2 right now, I'm watching, but 2-3 games isn't enough to really gauge much.
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On September 26 2011 07:03 Vlare wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2011 22:40 Reithan wrote:On September 25 2011 19:23 Demonace34 wrote:Either way, good luck on getting into diamond. Remember that hard work, focus and a good attitude will help you reach your goals faster. Yeah, it's the attitude that's getting the hardest these days. The longer I practice with negative results the harder it is to stay positive. It would be easy to stay positive if I practiced and at least got a LITTLE better, or won a couple matches, even if I never leagued up. It wouldn't be TOO hard to stay positive if I hit a wall and could at least stabilize at 50/50, or just float in mid-plat or something. It would be hard to stay positive, but probably doable, if I started slumping, but I had some good role-models to look up to. Zerg players that were tearing it up, winning a ton of matches with awesome styles that I could practice. But as it stands, I'm practicing, losing, getting worse, slipping into Gold territory, and every Zerg I find to look at is in a similar slump. No Zerg players seem to be doing well right now. And that's really depressing. How about Stephano? 62-2 on GM ladder in EU..
On September 26 2011 00:23 Reithan wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2011 00:11 TheSubtleArt wrote:
Easiest way is to just focus on mechanics, especially as Zerg. You can easily make high diamond / low masters with mechanics alone. I've seen people prove this with protoss and I can definitely believe it with terran, but I really can't see this as being true for zerg. We don't have any good strong core units to just ubermacro your way to the top with. I think you could hit high diamond/low masters with a well-polished enough rush or cheese strategy like anyone else, but anything past that is going to require good scouting to get proper drone timings, good scouting to react to tech swaps that can easily kill you if you're not prepared (DT, Banshee, Void/Phoenix, etc), and at certain points in the game, macro alone just isn't enough (Mass Colossus, mass immortal vs roaches, HT vs Muta, etc). If anyone actually has any evidence that you can straight macro your way to Masters with Zerg, that would at least give me something to work on, but I've lost so many games where I had better macro that this just doesn't seem possible to me anymore. (Not saying these replays show that, just that is has happened). Show nested quote +On September 26 2011 00:11 TheSubtleArt wrote:
Just keep working at it and most of all, have fun. Why would you bother playing a video game if you weren't having fun, right? Because I have injuries that prevent me from doing much else right now?
Unless you're hitting 80%+ of your injects, then your mechanics have a lot of work before you can say they're "fine".
Zerg is probably the most mechanic dependent race.
Edit : Been helping/coaching a lot of people lately. And I just keep seeing the same mistakes over and over again with low league players.
You guys DONT SCOUT FOR SHIT.
You guys play super blind, and then lose and go. SEE. WTF AM I SUPPOSSED TO DO.
Or you guys have sloppy mechanics and bad game sense, aka not knowing when to expand, when to make or cut workers, what times to scout, what times to build units at etc.
These are all important things that you most likely suffer in as well.
And the whole, "zerg cant scout" thing is crap. I get scouted by zergs all the time.
Everyone can scout. And while at certain times in the game it is easier to scout than in others, its always possible.
Another thing I often notice is bad responses. If you see something, and respond wrong, or poorly, you will likely lose.
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On September 26 2011 07:03 Vlare wrote:Unless you're hitting 80%+ of your injects, then your mechanics have a lot of work before you can say they're "fine".
Zerg is probably the most mechanic dependent race.
Edit : Been helping/coaching a lot of people lately. And I just keep seeing the same mistakes over and over again with low league players.
You guys DONT SCOUT FOR SHIT.
You guys play super blind, and then lose and go. SEE. WTF AM I SUPPOSSED TO DO.
Or you guys have sloppy mechanics and bad game sense, aka not knowing when to expand, when to make or cut workers, what times to scout, what times to build units at etc.
These are all important things that you most likely suffer in as well.
And the whole, "zerg cant scout" thing is crap. I get scouted by zergs all the time.
Everyone can scout. And while at certain times in the game it is easier to scout than in others, its always possible.
Another thing I often notice is bad responses. If you see something, and respond wrong, or poorly, you will likely lose.
I bolded the parts I definitely know I have trouble with. As for saying my mechanics are 'fine', I don't remember saying that, I know I have mechanics issue. If I did say something like that, I probably meant 'fine for plat'. Meaning, I likely don't need IdrA-level macro just to get to Diamond, but I know I have flawed macro (just likey everyone else.  )
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EPT
