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Wanted to know how long people were in the lower leagues of starcraft for. For example how long were people stuck in silver?
I'm not sure how long I've been in silver now, but it feels like forever, I just seem to be incapable of moving up the ladder and its starting to really bug me. For one it just feels like everyone cheeses at this level and I can find it difficult to defend off lets say a 4 gate and when I do manage to it feels like I'm to far behind to actually win the game. I also feel I practice new strats with friends and yet when I put them to the ladder they just turn to complete shit and don't work.
I guess I just feel I am at a point at the moment, where no matter what I do and no matter what I fix it changes nothing and I am not progressing in the game! I watch so many starcraft streams and competitions I feel like I should be bloody learning something from that, yet I'm not!
Maybe I am doomed to be shit at the game forever! I don't know! rant over I suppose and back to the drawing board for a new strat that will get me off my losing streak!
 
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Hey hey, I felt almost exactly like you did not even a month ago. Except I was in gold, not silver. Still, it applies. You have to get ONE strategy, okay, just ONE strategy that you want to work on until you perfect the mechanics of it. For me that was the three rax. Then move on to MU specific strategies; for me that was: TvZ: 1 rax expo into bio/mech (reactionary), TvP: 2-1-1 all in, and TvT: 1 rax expo into mech. Just do these again and again.
I seriously felt like I hit a wall in gold. When I was playing and chatting in IRC, like every few minutes you would see me pop in and be like, "FUCK THIS FUCKING GAME WHAT THE FUCK I HATE YOU AND EVERYONE TOO SO FUCK THIS SHIT."
I've just recently gotten over that shit. Just push through it. You'll figure it out.
Oh and by the way, don't watch all these tourneys and stuff. It's a waste of time if you are trying to get better. Seriously. If you are watching them for fun, that's fine, but if you are watching them in the stead of practicing I promise you it isn't helping.
Just push through it. And add me if you'd like:
EU: CyDe.800
NA: CyDe.543
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Get one hour of coaching from someone decent and you'll be diamond within a month.
True story.
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There was a Day9 Daily I watched a while back which changed everything from me. I went from Silver to Platinum in a few weeks. The focus of the daily was on "small adjustments" and how to teach yourself how to be good at Starcraft.
Firstly, what race do you play?
I play Protoss. I found in Silver and Gold I was getting cheesed a lot too (I was there for 2 or so seasons) so I had to adapt to manage that. I stopped myself early expanding and always got up a nice wall and three sentries as a pre-requisite for every game I came across, then I could focus on how I wanted to counter my opponent.
I fully agree with CyDe. Pick ONE strategy and perfect it. I worked at 3gate/robo and easily held off 4gates with nice force field placement + an immortal in the mix can do wonders. I did nothing but 3gate/robo for every match up and it worked a lot of the time simply because I was getting really familiar with the timings and my macro was usually ahead of my opponent. I focused on the smallest of things - getting my warp tech out faster, saving my chrono boosts for important times, placing my wall correctly etc.
Watch your replays but focus on the FIRST thing you do wrong - it's hard but try to ignore what happened at the end of the game. The start is especially important. Are you missing your timing and placing your first pylon 10 seconds too late because you forget to move a probe in preparation? That sort of thing - find the first thing you did wrong and work on that and forget everything else that happened later in the game - it is irrelevant until you sort out the problem at the start. The worst thing you can do is say "Oh... I lost against a 4gate, I need to change my strategy entierly and get immortals as fast as possible". What happens next game when someone does fast mutalisks? You're going to end up changing to Phoenix or Stalkers and then you're back to square one. It's all about small adjustments, and only one adjustment at a time. Before every game tell yourself what it is you're working on. Forget about winning or losing, and just focus on that thing. "This game I am going to never let my Nexus energy get above 100, by chrono boosting out workers constantly".
But yeah no-one has ever said this to me but I found in Silver in particular you're going to get cheesed so often that it's worth walling up your main and expanding when you have a small defensive force. Otherwise it's too risky. I found I actually had more freedom in the early game to expand once I got to Platinum.
Some things to look at when you're watching your replays:
- Timing! The best way to improve your game. In Silver league if you get crisp timing and keep on top of your macro you will easily dominate every opponent.
- Always build workers. Never stop.
- Keep on top of MULES / Chrono / Injects
- Scouting; are you map aware during games?
- Positioning; sometimes a lone building on the edge of your base is all you need to warn you of an incoming drop attack.
- Composition; this is barely an issue in Silver League. You can win every game with nothing but stalkers, for example, if you have good macro.
- Sometimes think about micro... (but really this comes last) for me I just focused on force fields. I started using hotkeys, and positioned my sentries at the top of my ramp ready to block off an attack. Since then I've applied the same approach to using high templar and I'm storming like it's nobody's business.
The beauty of Silver league is that if you fend off the early all-in you don't even need to harrass your opponent, your macro will dominate them if you focus on it and get it working smoothly. You'll have 200 population and a tech advantage before they know it.
Hope this is of some help. If you play Protoss and play on NA I'd be happy to play some games with you or go over some replays (PM me).
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thanks so much for the advice guys! i do play protoss but on the EU server I am afraid! Definitely going to stick to one strat and work on fixing one thing at a time. I think I will probably stick with three gate robo, its the one strat that wins me the most games, so its definitely going to be about looking back over my games and fixing the small issues!
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EPT
