EPTThe thought of creating a blog has been lingering in my mind for weeks. I decided that I should give it a go and try to explain to people how I plan to consistently improve on my Starcraft skills. Over the spanning weeks I will be periodically updating my blog on my progress to become a better player.
My name is Kyle Hollett and I am a Canadian Starcraft 2 player. I am a happy member of Team It's GoSu, my alias being GoSuKyhol. I have been playing SC2 since it came out, but my activity varies. I would like to play more on a regular basis. It would be nice to play 2-3 hours a night so I can maintain my skill level and still have enough time to get everything else in my life done.
Here is a short back story of who I am and how long I have been playing RTS games.
My Starcraft 1 story is too long to incorporate without going into great detail, instead I will just give a short summery of my SC1 career. ( see in spoiler )
+ Show Spoiler +
I was never especially good at Brood War but I loved to play the game. I set my goals very high and achieved the goals I found most important. Without a natural skill for the game I had to work very hard to get everything that I desired. I worked my way up the ICCUP ladder with a grinders attitude. I would grind for hours upon hours, perfecting the few builds that I knew. Focusing mostly on cheesy builds or timing attacks, I slowly pushed my way to B rank over months and months of training. Somewhere a long the way, between the battles and BM, I found a team that I called home. The team was known as team LighT. (which was recently adapted to SC2 and I love Xeris for bringing them back.) Though I wasn't a very social member of the team I still practiced hard and poured my heart and soul into the game. I had a few conversations with a player named Gretorp[LighT] and he changed my focus from timings and cheesy play and pushed my mind toward proper macro games. With that knowledge I added it to my grinders attitude and pushed my rank on ICCUP over the following months from B rank to A-. Reaching A- was a gigantic goal of mine and I couldn't have reached it without my obsessive desire to grind better builds and macro while continuing to improve, and more importantly without the help of the few conversations I had with other players, like Gretorp and Ranged.
Thanks again to Duran(xeris) for having me as part of your team. I wasn't easy to manage, since I can be quite stubborn and emotional from time to time, but without the support of the team I wouldn't have continued to play RTS games.
There is much more to my story than this but I wanted to stop and get back to the point of the blog.
I am interested in becoming a very talented macro player. I want to use tools like SC2Gears and analyze my play to see how I can find my weaknesses and improve on them. It will take time to become efficient with SC2Gears. The more I learn about the program the better I should be able to help myself.
I will also be actively going over my replays and comparing them to other pro players. With the comparisons I hope to bring my build timings to a high level and from there I want to maintain strong play for the remainder of my SC career.
My time is limited so I want to make the most of the time I have.
Now to the meat of my blog post.
SC2GEARS
I am going to use the information starting at the first of this month. I have been back to competitive play for approx. 2 weeks, but I will just be using the games for the past 10 days.
Statistics for Tv* ( All races )
68-63 | 52% Win Rate
TvT | 21-20 51% Win Rate
I saw this coming. My Terran vs Terran is normally my best match up but since coming back I have not been able to effectively execute proper builds against Terran and because of this I plan to put more time into analyzing GSL VODs to see where the current meta game is. TvT is a game of openers. I need to find a very safe opening build.
TvP | 19-20 49% Win Rate
I find these results to be quite surprising. I thought that my TvP was currently my best match up. I have went over a lot of GSL games and found a style that I find to be quite strong. I need to pay close attention to how my win rate changes over the coming week.
TvZ | 28-23 55% Win Rate
According to these statistics since I have come back to Starcraft 2 my best match up has been Terran vs Zerg. These results are staggering because it seems to be the general consensus that Terran vs Zerg is imbalanced and in favor of the zerg. I have been toying with macro builds to combat zerg and have been having great success with them. In a later blog I may decide to go over my Terran vs Zerg style. It's adapted from Taeja's GSL code S gameplay.
These statistics are slightly outdated because the first 5-6 days of this month I was still coming into my old skill. Now I feel much more confident that enough time has passed and that makes me very curious to see how my win rates will improve.
Short term goals
Play 1+ hours a day everyday
Get #1 overall masters in NA (Currently top 50 )
Stream and commentate while I play
Post in this thread next week
Use SC2Gears more effectively
Play in tournaments
Keep updating my blog!
Long term goals
Get #1 Grandmasters (again.screenshot This time I would like to get it later in the season.)
Have over 100 concurrent viewers. ( that would be awesome )
Go to an MLG
Be prepared for the next big Canadian Tournament. ( It's hard to forgive myself for quitting the game and then returning 5 days prior to WCS, ultimately failing to qualify for WCS. I will be prepared next event. )
Get GM on KR ( I was so close before I quit. Now I have a long ways to go. )
Win a tournament
Continue this blog and communicate my progress
Become a dragonslayer(nsfw).
In my next blog my gameplay analysis will have more depth. This is more of an introduction.
http://www.sc2ranks.com/us/623930/GoSuKyhol
Kyhol's Stream thread
Kyhol's TLPD
GoSuKyhol's OWN3D.TV stream
It's Gosu website
