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I once entered a game, in Bronze League as usual. And the player kindly informed me that my defeat was imminent. In the sense, that he was just playing on his friends account and he was a Diamond League player. I was Terran, he was Zerg. I replied that I was complacent about my pending death, yet told him he won't take me without a fight. And so I gathered some Bio and tried to hold my ground... but eventually a swarm of roaches overcame me and consumed my army and base.
What impressed me was the replay. Watching the systematic manner that he moved with. As per usual he established his natural expansion, and there was I suppose a brief window period where within if I'd found him I could've done damage considering he was just droning up, assuming I would not attack. Yet this is immaterial. It is more so the mind-state he applied and precision he moved with. Such brutality and deliberation!! It is that assumption, that variable that's set to TRUE, or de facto, the Pro player begins to kill you from the first second you enter the game. They don't just enter the game and follow some passive routine, ignoring the movements of the enemy. Not too mention I was terrified by the amount of EPM & APM he scored. How does one get to that level of constantly controlling & clicking, doing something with purpose instead of frantic spam, or blind strategy which will eventuate into nothing? Is it a gift inherent within some, or does it take hours of uninterrupted pracise? I wish I could just for a second experience, what it's like to have that control and power
 
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It's practice and experience. If you keep working at it, one day you'll achieve that level of control and precision too
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Diamond league and professional :O?
On your last question. It just takes some deliberate practice, to reach masters. I firmly believe anyone can do it. Usually they are just lazy. Not lazy in the sense that they don't play enough, lazy in the sense that they don't actively try to improve.
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It's practice, until you get to top 50 grandmasters, then you need some talent.
By practice I don't mean just play more, I mean you have to actively analyse your replays, figure out how you can improve etc. You also have to do a lot of research on the side and see what techniques existing good players are using. It will take a lot of time, (aka don't expect to see noticeable results until you do this non-stop for several months, this really can turn into a full time job).
I wish I could just for a second experience, what it's like to have that control and power
I'm high masters and I can tell you this:
If you are playing against someone you know is worse than you, it feels boring. the only entertainment comes from the troll messaging.
If you are playing against someone around the same level, it feels like you are at the mercy of this "obviously imbal" game that you can do nothing about lol.
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lol. how does he do all that? just keep playing the game and u eventually do all that. well how i know? thats how everyone become when they play longer. it doesnt take that long. depend. but u just need to know what to do. and why waste 2-3 second doing some action when u can just do em in .5 sec? u still need to know what to do first b4 u can do it fast. the more u play. the more things u do in like 2 seconds. thats how he got so much epm/apm
and most of it is because we do it for too long. its just there in the back of our head. no need to think about what to do. we just do
its not gifted. u just get used to it
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On October 22 2012 08:21 Kalingingsong wrote:It's practice, until you get to top 50 grandmasters, then you need some talent. By practice I don't mean just play more, I mean you have to actively analyse your replays, figure out how you can improve etc. You also have to do a lot of research on the side and see what techniques existing good players are using. It will take a lot of time, (aka don't expect to see noticeable results until you do this non-stop for several months, this really can turn into a full time job). Show nested quote +I wish I could just for a second experience, what it's like to have that control and power
I'm high masters and I can tell you this: If you are playing against someone you know is worse than you, it feels boring. the only entertainment comes from the troll messaging. If you are playing against someone around the same level, it feels like you are at the mercy of this "obviously imbal" game that you can do nothing about lol.
soo much this. And when you get manhandled it feels even more imba
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You have an excellent writing style, I gave you five stars for that alone :D
Perhaps you are talking about what I call "flow". Flow is somewhat hard to define. It's knowing what to do next and rhythmically proceeding to do things in the order they're supposed to be done. I don't quite have this in SC2, as I only recently started playing it, but I have it in Brood War some of the time and it's an awesome feeling. Part of achieving that flow is having the mechanics to do what needs to be done, and part is knowing what you need to do.
As for controlling the game, when you reach a certain stage you can scout what your opponent is doing and from that, decide what you are going to do to win, instead of blindly executing strategies. And part of it is, indeed, a mindset.
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it's not that hard.
Personally I started from bronze, then worked my way up to diamond for zerg, high plat for terran and toss.
The truth is, when you are playing against some player who is much worse than you are, you just play with higher confidence and gain advantage via your better macro, game sense, timing, more greedy (for example, I can go 15 hatch or even triple hatch all day against a FFE toss and not afraid of cannon rush).
You spent less time thinking "what if" but more on "I will do this now and so even if he do X, I will have Y fast enough to defend it"
not to mention lower league players apply less pressure, you have much more time to just get the build order work, macro up, creep spreading, overlord spreading, checking for hidden expo.
All these actions would have been slowed down if he was playing an opponent of his level because he will have to deal with other things like denying drops while watching for possible multi prone drops etc.
So in short, more experience, making a better decision faster, more luxury to gain even more advantages.
But the thing is, when you are at higher league, your opponent would be equally skilled, so all these "advantages" become essential and don't appear to be so "pro" anymore
normally I would saying playing someone at lower league is boring. but not for zerg, there is something so satisfying with creep spreading and injects
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Of course.. And I still have yet to select my team to master, but I think one must master all 3 races in order to proceed.
One other small question if people have a moment to consider, does playing the AI in a custom game help? I sometimes take on a single 'very hard' opponent. I find the protoss to be more difficult than the rest.. and I hear Insane gets given additional resources
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On October 24 2012 18:14 jameswatts wrote:
Of course.. And I still have yet to select my team to master, but I think one must master all 3 races in order to proceed.
One other small question if people have a moment to consider, does playing the AI in a custom game help? I sometimes take on a single 'very hard' opponent. I find the protoss to be more difficult than the rest.. and I hear Insane gets given additional resources
Yes. Though you shouldn't really be looking at it as playing against the AI, but as practice for yourself. Focussing on making yourself better is the only way to improve. Your opponent is irrelevant really - it helps to play vs an easy AI because they don't actually do much and there's no pressure to win like on the ladder. You can also save and reload from custom games, which is invaluable for practising a build order, or practising micro / macro at a particular time.
For now I suggest looking at filter's guide (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=330787) for macro benchmarks etc., and just focus on hitting those benchmarks, and hitting timings.
Note that even at diamond, things are far from smooth. I felt the same way watching Gumiho's stream yesterday, as you did watching the diamond guy. It's kinda awe-inspiring.
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EPT
