EPTI quit playing SC2 a while back, and apparently if you don't play any games at all during a season your MMR gets reset. Coincidentally, I had recently been itchin' to play some SC2, but I wanted to play a new race and I feared my old rank 1 master Terran MMR wouldn't let me enjoy the learning experience.
So I was quite happy to find 5 placement matches staring back at me as I entered battle.net. Zerg was chosen, because apparently during my absence a complete unknown had made some upsets at IPL 4 with Zerg and it really inspired me. Also because playing Protoss makes me want to stab myself repeatedly in the face. Anyway, games were played and platinum was achieved. I hadn't played Zerg since beta, and I didn't think my old 1base muta or 1base hydra builds would do me much good in today's SC2, so I just improvised every game and in that one day ended up rank 1 diamond. "Pretty good," I thought.
However, master league would probably require build orders and timings, I thought, so I looked into some top Zerg replays and streams and picked up some modern styles to base my play off of. My goal at the beginning was to abuse mutalisks and spine crawlers as much as possible. I can't really explain why, but I just wanted to. Sadly, I found out that mutalisks aren't used much these days, but I still use them every now and then in ZvT and the occasional base-race ZvP. I use them every ZvZ, though (at least the ones that reach mid-game), even though I rarely see anyone else do it. I think it's really strong and solid, but maybe I'll be proven wrong in the future.
I was massing games like crazy, day after day, but still I found myself struggling at certain points, and I found a tremendous help here on TL, specifically the Zerg "Help Me" thread. I also found out how much more taxing it was for my computer when I played Zerg. My computer is awful and lags/spikes like crazy beyond the very early stages of the game, so I had always played mech Terran to not only avoid lag (by having fewer units) but to also reduce the need for late-game micro. All those lings and all that creep really slowed down the game for me, and I can't tell you how many games I've lost simply because my computer can't handle it. I can't wait to get a new one and start playing properly... Let me tell you, dealing with Terran drops or Protoss storms or even baneling wars in ZvZ is so incredibly frustrating on this computer.
Anyway! I kept massing games, eventually meeting only masters, even being favoured against masters, but I never got promoted. Days went by and I started losing faith. Would Blizzard never give me back that shiny masters emblem? In the end I was kind of frustrated, and decided to just play Terran to more quickly get promoted (and to see how my Terran compared to my Zerg MMR).
A small Terran win-streak later and there it was: Promotion! I'm currently rank 4 master, and started off 2 weeks ago rank ~80 platinum.
Obviously this isn't all too impressive since I was top master previously, only with a different race, but I'm still kind of happy about it. Now the only question is what race I should stick to. Those few Terran games at the end really reminded me how much I miss my old mech units, and TvT is leaps and bounds ahead of ZvZ in my opinion. But Zerg is a lot of fun, too. Maybe I'll just switch between the two, at least for now.
Long, pointless rant over.
Oh, and I feel surprisingly cold and empty inside after getting promoted. I guess it's not the destination that matters, but rather the journey itself... Well, let's keep the journey going then; next stop: GM!
