EPTAfter I posted my last blog I thought about abandoning this account and getting a new one. Apparently, honesty is a culpable crime on the internet. The people who actually wanted to help me though told me, in essence, to not try to win a game, but to try to become better at the game, which, believe it or, helped me at least a little bit. I did not stop rage quitting completely admittedly. I now try to at least not insult my opponent, but to use the Naniwa approach and ask them, why the fuck they play a fucking imbalanced fucking a-move race. Maybe, as time goes by I will get over that phase and will be able to fully concentrate on getting better.
What I’m here to talk about today is the following. I’m a Protoss player on a mid platinum level. I have played over 3000 games by now and about 1300 of them on my current skill level. Is that actual prove that I reached my own personal skill cap? I, by now, slowly start to believe that that might be the case.
In PvP I usually go for a one base 3 immortal push where I stop probe production at 22 probes. When my second immortal pops out I queue up the third one and move out. If my opponent goes for an expansion I straight up kill him. If he goes for a one base collo build I straight up die. If he plays defensive I forcefield his ramp, restart probe production, put down an expansion and build a robotics bay, because he will most likely do the same. Through my contain I gain the macro advantage and retreat at the time when his colossus comes out. After that I defend his all-in and win. All in all this sums up to a ~60% win rate because I’ve gotten pretty good at defending 2 gate proxys, 4gates and DT builds.
In PvZ I just started to play macro games approximately 2 weeks ago. Before that I always used the 2 base 3 immortal all-in. That puts my skill in the matchup to maybe low gold level. In terms of knowing what is going to happen and how to defend however, I have figured the matchup out at least at the level I play it. I hated the matchup while I was 2 base all-inning and start to like it more and more, the better I get at bringing the games to lategame. My current build is centered around getting out 2 immortals, some zealots and some senturies to move out of my natural and take my third and still be able to stop roach pressure. If I see him going full on roach I make more immortals, get blink and make a lot of stalkers to thwart his attack with good forcefields and micro. After that I either go kill him, if he loses everything or I transition into lategame by building colossi (3 of them), archon, mothership and a 4th base. As standard as is possible in a PvZ, at least to my understanding.
In PvT I either go for a 2 gate robo into expansion into a 2 immortal attack or I 1 gate expand. Both builds are followed up with a robotics bay, 2 colossi into hightemplar. Completely standard and played by me for over 300 times minimum. Sometimes I lose because my micro is god awful, sometimes because my multitasking is not up to par with my opponents’ and sometimes because he 111s.
The one thing in the game that makes me lose all my hope in getting better is my inability to follow buildorders when under pressure. There are a lot of people who have problems with that but I’m an extreme case. When under pressure I don’t just forget to build certain buildings for 10 to 20 seconds, I sometimes forget to build them for over 2 minutes. That way I have lost about 100 PvT’s because I completely forget to build my twilight council or templar archive to crush the inevitable attack from T with storms. After over 3000 games played I should have gotten used to those situations, but it’s just not happening. I slowly but surely lose motivation to go on playing, because I don’t see any improvement at all anymore.
There will be people who tell me that I just have to grind more games to get used to pressure, but as I said I played about 3000 games in total and 1300 in the platinum league, but my crumbling under pressure just won’t go the fuck away.
