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Formally I was a low masters zerg player in season 1, then I had to stop playing for afew months to focus on school work and enjoying my summer back home.
Recently I started playing again, and to my utter dismay, I got placed in platinum.
"Alright," I told myself, "the skill level must have gotten wayyy higher since season 1. Now, just work on getting your mechanics back. Just macro. It worked before." And off I went, focusing only on macro, because that's how you get into masters.
Fast forward abit, I'm disappointed I'm still in plat. I reinstall sc2gears and take a look at my replays, hoping to find some sort of statistics that would help me identify my issues.
I found something more revealing that I expected:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3JXYv.png)
lol
Obviously I was losing to early timing pushes and cheese. My builds must be horribly unrefined! However, I noticed another interesting stat on statcraft.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JNBXQ.png)
Shouldn't I be losing more to diamond players than plat players?
Though it isn't significant by itself, as all the players I play against should be the same MMR (ie league doesn't matter), it prompted me to take a closer look at the games where I did lose before 10mins.
Of the games that ended in less than 10 mins, 60% of them were against platinum players. An even closer look revealed that I lose to random cheese and all-ins far more often than timing pushes.
Therefore my conclusion about my own gameplay, is that my early game scouting is lacking severely, as well as my "oh shit he hasn't expanded, I need to prepare for an all in".
It also opened my eyes to the fact that the "all you need is to macro" mindset that people usually advocate, isn't exactly true. You need to survive to macro. And at the platinum/low diamond level, cheese and random all-ins are common enough that you can't get promoted just by winning the macro games.
tldr : Lower level zerg players, scouting and reacting is the second most important skill to have. If you've been stuck at a certain level for awhile, and you've been religiously following "macro my way to the top", maybe you should put a little time in improving your scouting.
Disclaimer : Macro is still the most important skill toi have by far.
 
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
On November 04 2011 06:29 thesideshow wrote:
Therefore my conclusion about my own gameplay, is that my early game scouting is lacking severely, as well as my "oh shit he hasn't expanded, I need to prepare for an all in".
It also opened my eyes to the fact that the "all you need is to macro" mindset that people usually advocate, isn't exactly true. You need to survive to macro. And at the platinum/low diamond level, cheese and random all-ins are common enough that you can't get promoted just by winning the macro games.
The most important non-mechanical part of macro for zerg is knowing when to make drones and when to make units. If you make 60 drones then lose to a 1-base all-in because you only made drones, you lost because of bad macromanagement.
EDIT: Also, nobody really says "All you need is macro"... that's a straw man. Most people say "work on your macro" or "your macro is lacking" and for almost everyone I've met, that's been the case. There's a difference between "your macro is holding you back" and "all you need is macro", though. Ask anyone who's played a TvZ or ZvT, for example-- standard composition fighting is micro-intensive for both sides.'
EDIT EDIT PART 2, SON OF EDIT: That being said, being able to scout for this sort of thing is pretty hard as Zerg, and represents one of the most important elements of zerg game sense, play, etc. Good luck!
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Definitely true, especially as Zerg. I used to inject and make units like a boss, and had a late game that I never lost ever. The only problem was that I was stuck in Silver due to early attacks. More people need to know that scouting is a useful skill to have, not just macro.
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On November 04 2011 07:19 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Definitely true, especially as Zerg. I used to inject and make units like a boss, and had a late game that I never lost ever. The only problem was that I was stuck in Silver due to early attacks. More people need to know that scouting is a useful skill to have, not just macro.
Okay no, in silver good macro alone is enough to get you out.
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On November 04 2011 07:27 Emporio wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2011 07:19 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Definitely true, especially as Zerg. I used to inject and make units like a boss, and had a late game that I never lost ever. The only problem was that I was stuck in Silver due to early attacks. More people need to know that scouting is a useful skill to have, not just macro. Okay no, in silver good macro alone is enough to get you out.
due to my computer I couldn't micro till after I got into masters so.... Macro is def. enough to get through silver lol.
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Blazinghand
United States25563 Posts
EDIT: I'm an idiot, disregard this post. I misread horribly ._.
In any case, yeah macro is important, and for zerg, part of that is making things besides drones after a certain point.
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You are definitely correct, you can have decent macro, but a zerg needs to put in their debt of getting cheesed a hundred times to make masters 
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On November 04 2011 07:31 OmniEulogy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2011 07:27 Emporio wrote:On November 04 2011 07:19 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Definitely true, especially as Zerg. I used to inject and make units like a boss, and had a late game that I never lost ever. The only problem was that I was stuck in Silver due to early attacks. More people need to know that scouting is a useful skill to have, not just macro. Okay no, in silver good macro alone is enough to get you out. due to my computer I couldn't micro till after I got into masters so.... Macro is def. enough to get through silver lol.
Pretty sure thats only a protoss thing where you can 1a to masters.
Yeah op you probably just need to get your early game builds and timings more refined. Also, be more active scouting for cheese and play a bit more safely. Glad you have time to get back into the game though, good luck getting into masters.
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The diamond players you've been playing might have gone on recent losing streaks to get matched up with you (in plat). Just speculation ^^
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On November 04 2011 07:39 Rotodyne wrote:You are definitely correct, you can have decent macro, but a zerg needs to put in their debt of getting cheesed a hundred times to make masters
You are so right, and that is absolutely something people forget or don't ever learn. You play zerg, you owe a debt, simple as that. Don't pay your cheese debt, and you'll never make it. You just have to.
Also, that was a very fun read OP. I thought it was pretty cool.
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Masters league didn't exist in season 1.
Really good job in analyzing your own play, though. That's impressive.
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On November 04 2011 12:48 PH wrote:
Masters league didn't exist in season 1.
From a quick search, master league was announced in January, and Season 2 started in the very beginning of April.
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Excellent post that pretty much sums up my own experience aswell. I'm in gold rather than platinum however, but I play platinum/diamond players and have similar stats when it comes to W/L ratio early/late games. And well... scouting is my major problem too, I often drone up too much early on and get killed by random cheese/early aggression.
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Macro is definitely the most important part of being a good player. Having enough of any unit is more important than having not enough of the right units.
For Zergs it's even more complex, although I'd like to add that a lot of players in Silver, Gold, etc seem to use well-practiced 1-base builds that can really catch opponents off guard. That utterly horrible feeling of "I am such an idiot" when my reactored Hellions ran down my ramp to see 7 Roaches...
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On Nov 4 2011 03:48 PH wrote:
Masters league didn't exist in season 1.
Mini brag post!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HdUbk.png)
Anyway, I'm glad to see other players echo my sentiments. Definitely gives me a clearer understanding of what I need to focus on.
I thought it was a little weird that I could make it to masters in season 1 with "just macro", but now I'm struggling just to get out of plat with the same mentality!
Then I remembered that was when roaches just got a range buff.
I thought I was pretty alright at this game, but the truth is zerg was just OP 
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On November 04 2011 07:27 Emporio wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2011 07:19 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
Definitely true, especially as Zerg. I used to inject and make units like a boss, and had a late game that I never lost ever. The only problem was that I was stuck in Silver due to early attacks. More people need to know that scouting is a useful skill to have, not just macro. Okay no, in silver good macro alone is enough to get you out.
For me, absolutely not. Excluding timing attacks, I NEVER lost a game. I needed to learn scouting and strategy to beat those timings or be forever silver.
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EPT
