EPT“It’s either you’re noob or pro, that’s life”
True and great words coming from one of the gaming communities most recognized faces, Athene. His successful World of Warcraft video career, brought him from noob to pro status. There are two ways to become a “pro” in any gaming community, because the pro status has such wide ranges. You can be a Day[9] who gets by on his personality and popularity, you can be professional Starcraft 2 player such as Mill.Stephano whose personal skill at Starcraft have brought him into the light. Finally you can be a caster, you don’t have to be the best player you just have to have personality, the insight and the voice to cast.
What do all of us have in common with them?
They were noobs at one point and time, just like we are now.
Most of us are hoping to go down the “root” of getting by skill to become pro and just because you are a bronze league player does not mean you can never become pro, all it takes dedication.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once had a speech on the 6 secrets of success and his points can be translated to any situation.
Youtube it is quite amazing.
If you’re a low league, which believe it or not I would say it is Mid Masters and below, it will be very hard to make it to the big leagues, unless you’re naturally talented.
But have no fear! Heart of the Swarm is coming, meaning there is a certain reset of who is pro who is not.
Right now the current state of “pro” players have been set. Anybody that was going to make it has made it and who hasn’t most likely won’t, unless you are a Korean Code B player since that group has an untapped skill that has yet to be seen.
But if you are really set on becoming pro, right now is where you need to do your hard work.
Doesn’t matter if you are bronze or masters.
Unless you’re on the brink of breaking out(like Quantic.Illusion/Scarlett), you have about a 10%(being nice here) chance to make it in Wings of Liberty.
Does that mean you give up? Nope this means you work your butt off.
By the time HOTS comes out you want your mechanics to be as close to pro level as possible because the strategies will reset in HOTS meaning, if you’ve got the brain for strategies you got a good shot.
But what is the most effective way of becoming better?
Mass games? Mass replay watching? Or identifying your weaknesses.
If you’re answered identifying your weaknesses you are one step closer to achieving your startcraft 2 goals, whatever they may be.
I know some people will say, well Stephano and Naniwa play X amount of games a day to get better.
Unfortunately you can’t really follow on how a pro trains, until you become good yourself and understand why they are good and why they do what they do.
When you mass games, especially at low-levels, it can be stressful and counter productive.
There are somethings that mass games can fix, but a lot of starcraft boils down to the small things that snowball into an avalanche.
Now lets go all the way back to when I started in bronze league.
My problem: injections just like every low league
What would your solution be to get better at injects?
The easy answer would be, oh mass games, I’ll eventually get it.
While that may seems the easiest it is not the most time effective way to do it believe it or not.
What did I do you say?
I created myself a quick custom map in which I had 5 hatcheries, 5 queens.
Hotkeyed the hatcheries(that’s how I hotkey you can inject method however you like)
and I practiced everyday for 1 hour injects.
Then I made it harder I added small multitasking additions I could do in between injects whether it was just running around the map with lings, engaging some random units etc.
I was able to focus on 1 major aspect(and few smaller aspects) instead of mass gaming where you can’t do this every game.
I knew that in the future I would have to be able to maintain atleast 5 hatcheries so I had to learn it.
Mass gaming is good when you want to maintain your mechanics or test out a strategy mind game etc.
As a pro player you want to be already familiar to all the situations possible, so mass ladder games is a good way to approach that, more games, more experience right?
You need to be able to sit down and pin point what you’re not good at. How can you maintain your mechanics when you don’t even have the mechanics to maintain.
To slow? Try APM spamming.
Cant split marines? Play marine split micro challenge for X amount of hours a day.
I see a lot of threads on TL about people who will play Mass X games, in hopes to get better.
You will sure, but it will take you longer no doubt, I can assure that.
Some games you won’t need to marine split, some games you might only have to make 2 hatcheries.
But if you consistently practice, doesn’t have to be an hour(though recommend it at low levels) You’ll always be ready for the situation in which you do have to use those skills.
Training Wheels
I have a long career in competitive games so I know how to train for them.
And your hardest training is in the lower leagues.
Sure you can skip steps and get into high(er) leagues, but if you actually want to become good you have to pinpoint your mistakes.
When I was in bronze I looked at the higher league players and looks at what fundamentals I would have to have
a) good multi-tasking
b) high apm
c)good economy=many hatcheries
d)good units control/many hotkeys for army control
e) good scouting/map awareness
f) always being on time
One by one I worked on them. Don’t be in bronze and think you have to play like a GM.
It’s an entirely different metagame out their.
Best way to learn the game, and people like ROOTDestiny have said before, first learn to 1 base
before you move onto 2 base.
It doesn’t make logical sense to play hatch first in ZvT when you are bronze when you can’t even understand or even control 2 bases at an acceptable level, it will actually be more detrimental to you then you think its helpful.
You can expand obviously, just don’t do it till you think you can.
Honestly I 8 roach rushed into gold league from bronze. Because bronze to silver is a load of crap. In gold league personally you can start to use more real builds since you’ve had enough experience to understand how and why it works and where you can go from their.
Though what did the 8 RR teach me.
a) inject while attacking
b) the importance of BEING ON TIME. I knew if my roaches did not come out at 5:30 and I accidentally delayed it by 5-10 seconds, that’s 5-10 seconds I’m giving to my opponent to prepare for this. I do not want that
c)use of hotkeys
Now look back to what fundamentals pros have, we have a) d) e) f) and to some extent b).
Wow 1 super easy build and we are working on 4 pro fundamentals already.
Every league has different metagames and you can’t import a metagame from a high level and hope that it will 100% be accepted into another level.
If you don’t have the fundamentals why you trying to play like a pro?
Why are you even bothering.
Example: 15h vs 14/14 baneling all in (ZvZ)
what you need: focus firing control with Queen/Spines and good ling control
If you can’t do that you’re going to losing 100% of those games, so why are trying something you can’t.
I know everyones like you have to play macro, cheese is bad it doesn’t teach you anything.
Oh but at low leagues it does. My 8 Roach rush all in? Looks how many fundamentals we covered.
Sure your macro build covers all of them, but if you can’t handle it, you will just stress yourself and lose a lot, a lot of games and learn a lot less than my 1 base build.
You cant expect a 3 year old to get on a bike and ride off.
He needs the training wheels.
If you don’t put training wheels, sure he’ll get it eventually, but not before he hurts himself a 100 times.
What is a child learning when he’s on a bike with training wheels.
a)pedal
b)stabilize himself
c) get the “feel”
No different than learning to play starcraft. I don’t know how to explain it, but you have to get that “feel” that flow. But you cannot get that feel without learning the fundamentals. The
As much as you want to get onto that big boy bike, you’re going to need some training wheels first, or its going to be a longer harder road ahead for you.
That being said, lets go back to how you the low-league player can train yourself.
1) Find your problems
2)Pinpoint which problem you want to work on, don’t try to fix many issues with your gameplay at the same time focus one by one. If you’re control is bad spend a week really focusing on that one problem and move onto the next one.
3)Make yourself a personal training map if need be. These can be the most effective way to train one specific problem without wasting your time massing games. When you play a game you have to focus on the 90% of the other game, leaving you to train your problem with 10%. Go for a 100% and make your own map
Win percentage and you
The next thing I want to look over is your win%.
To many times I see players in all leagues with 50% and below win%.
If you have this something is wrong. Especially if you have 400-400 win record with only a mid level division rank.
At this point you need to stop playing and seriously look over your game play. No matter how good your ladder score is even if youre #1, it still a big indication that you’re actually not a good player.
Lets look at players who perform well at tournaments: Mill.Stephano, MKP, EG.IdrA.
All of these players have high win % on ladder. If you can’t beat the randoms, what chance do you have against pro players? I remember back in the day ROOTCatZ had a ~55% on ladder, and he wasn’t really performing in showmatches, tournaments etc, but now his ladder record is a lot better and he’s beating a lot more noteable players and doing better in tournaments.
Same with ROOTDestiny, he used to have sub 60% win rate, but now his win% is higher and he’s beating players like EG.Incontrol, Mill. Dragon in showmatches.
A prime example of this is back in the day when I was highly competitive in the Pokemon Trading card game. Just like in SC2, Nintendo created a ladder and ranking points for players. Everyone would start with 1500 ELO at the begging of the season and would increase as the more wins you got. Now the more tournaments you go to, the more points you can get right, same as the more games you play the more points you, should, have.
Okay story time guys.
If you don’t know I was pretty damn good a PTCG.
One season I decided to only go to 2 tournaments out of like 20, just to prove my point to this kid who kept bragging how much ELO points he had and how good he thought he was.
I was going to let him build up his ELO really high(this kid was a super try hard, he went to every tournament, even would travel cross country just to get more ELO points so he could make it seem like hes good) I obviously kept practicing but I had other things to do like school and my previous season was a success placing Top32(21st) at the World Championships so I decided to take it easy.
So the kid(really 20 years old) built up to something like 2k ELO. I was still at like 1540 or something since I only went to a regional tournament. Quick note, the way it works in pokemon each tournament has a different weight, so a City Championship weighs less than a National championship. If you were to lose 15 points in a City, that same loss at a national championship would cost you 75.
Anyway I go to Nationals, and I got X-0 in the swiss round beating this kid once at which point he lost like atleast an easy 100+ points off his ELO. Because 1500 should never beat a 2k ELO right? On second thought I should’ve gone to tournaments and tanked my ranking so I could’ve stolen more ELO points. Oh well. Then I run into him again in top cut and a roll him again, stealing more points, eventually I tanked his ELO points enough that he would not get a world championship invite(If you were like top40 ranked in ELO, you would be awarded a spot at the World Championships)
Now back to my point, just because you have a lot of ladder points, doesn’t mean how you play is correct nor does it mean you’re good. You can only weigh that fact if you are playing/beating well known players consistently and if you win% is high.
There are a lot of platinum/diamonds players with 450 wins and their MMR is still at platinum. If you are one of those players just stop what you are doing and really look at what you are doing wrong. If someone can get to your point ranking with 70 wins, you should take that as a signal.
But what can I tell you, 90% of the people I’ve coached it’s basic fundamentals, and their idea of mass gaming has hardly worked out.
Getting “the thing”
Getting on a team, that’s the goal right? For some people it is at least, being sponsored, getting that tag infront of your name is what drives some people. The second most important factor of being a player other than being good is the ability to communicate with the community. Have you ever seen a pro player and been like “how the hell did he get on the team? There are so many better players than him.” You can’t just sit there be an unknown and hope EG picks you up, it just won’t happen. You need to be pro-active, especially if you don’t know anyone in the industry.
It’s exactly how it is to find a job, you have to go look you can’t sit around hoping someone will find you, you have to find them. Unless you have connections then you won’t get in.
When I played WoW hardcore, I started in a low-end guild nothing special. I knew I was good, but the top guild on the server wouldn’t try me out cause I was a nobody. So you stick around get better, people know people they start talking and they were like hey we have a pretty sick healer, then another higher end guild picked me up until eventually I was in the top guild.
Two ways to get the thing either(ie scarlett)
a) perform well a big name tournaments
b) work your way through the chain and meet people/pros
Training on ladder/with other unknowns will help but it will never get you where you need to. Training with better players is what does, you cant message EG.Machine and be like hey lets practice, he doesn’t know anything about you. But if you meet some people through a lower level team and they talk about you and refer you to other people, soon enough you’ll get to practice with a pro.
Don’t be afraid to “team-hop” at the lower levels, it really doesn’t matter because well after all there are hundreds of unknown teams, if your goal is to make it to the top, why should you be stuck in one, and to be honest most fall apart pretty fast. Just don’t do what MajOr or Desrow does. Once you get to high level and your known that stuff obviously is looked down upon.
I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say, I hope this article will help you approach Starcraft2 in a different manner. I once was bronze like you to, took me 6 months to get masters and so can you.
If you’re wondering who is this guy, Hi I’m EggY, I coach for the team Gamed! (www.team.gamed.de)
I will be running a new show called Call in to Win, which is a Free Hotline show where you call in for Free Coaching/Replay Analyses. Check your local Teamliquid or Reddit for more information when this show will be starting. (when I get a new laptop for streaming). Please feel free to follow my stream www.twitch.tv/eggysc2
~Cheers
