EPTWell, Terrans, I feel your pain over the warpgate mechanic. I stimmed into a ball of zealots, stalkers, and colossi, then kited some of the colossi into my siege tanks and sniped them with Vikings. Then he got his units moving back and I chased him. That was stupid. 20 chargelots mauled the front lines while sentries kept my bio away from my tanks. Overall, I sucked. Of course, I just realized that I could have dropped him, but that didn’t cross my mind.
Also, making the transition is difficult because I’m too used to the protoss food counts. 4 marines do not 4 zealots make, and 20 marines run like the dickens from 20 zealots. But, you knew that. Hell, I tried to stim into a zerg a few days ago and caught myself mashing F and wondering where my goddamn force fields were.
Derp. And that’s all I have to say about that.
However, despite my early troubles with macro (which must still suck because I’m still in silver), I started winning battles and wars after a half-dozen losses. I’m inclined to say that there is more strategy that happens in silver than happens in bronze (that wouldn’t be hard to do), but looking at my games and comparing them to, say, KawaiiRice or ForGG, my macro is abysmal, and I think that I could literally just mass marines, get some ups, and 1A into the other guy’s base . . . if I hit him before his first colossus comes out.
On a side note, I have to say that Dustin Browder can be a real moron at times. A unit’s role is to kill shit. That’s it. When you try to shoehorn them into a specific role (Phoenix kill mutas), you end up with a shitty unit.
The problem for me is getting good at dat macro. Which isn’t really a problem, per se, because I know what I have to do: play a ton of games and focus on always making marines, making SCVs, always dropping expos, and always building supply depots and rax. However, my average APM has skyrocketed compared to what I was doing playing Protoss. As a Tosser (see what I did there? Blame my CTL teammates for that one) my APM ranged from 30 to 40 average and spikes up to around 100. After playing Terran my average jumped to 60 with spikes up to 200.
But I’m not done yet! I read an article called Bronze to Masters and started watching the YouTube videos that FilterSC so thoughtfully made for us, and more wonders occurred. 4 straight wins, average APM of 90 and spikes up to 378.
I am flabbergasted. If you are a newbie (like me), then you MUST watch these videos and try implementing them. Hopefully he’ll have something out for the Tossers at some point, last I checked he was working on Zerg tutorials.
I’m also finding Terran to be very enjoyable. Between 1Aing into the opponent’s base at 10 minutes with 50+ marines, and the absurd amount of money I have, I’ve been rolling over people hardcore. I did run into one Terran who had more bases, more units, and more tech than me in one game, but I wasn’t doing well at my macro for whatever reason, having only 41 SCVs and 37 Marines at 10 minutes. That one did not end well, as he already had siege mode and several tanks at 10 minutes, so my lines evaporated going up his ramp. Also, Tossers tend to get really mad when you kick in their front door with 50+ marines and no amount of force fields, cannons, zealots, and stalkers can stop it. Zergs just leave the game. Actually, most people that lose to this just leave the game. What’s that I see in the Twitch chat all the time? Oh, yeah, no GG, no skill.
So what’s the point of this? Not much, really. I’m just chronicling how I see things as my SC2 path goes on. Make of it what you will, I’m just another derp trying to improve.
If you’re a newbie, and you’re having trouble improving, well, this has been said before but it bears repeating: stop thinking everything is imba. You aren’t good enough to say that. If I, a newly promoted silver player, can build a bunch of un-upgraded Marines and 1A into the enemy base and win more often than not, then you can too. This has even worked on the odd Gold player, for the record. But you have to honestly and accurately assess how you play and find your flaws. Until you do, all you’ll be doing is whining.
And wouldn’t you rather be winning?
GLHF,
Loki
