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Recently a number of people have been contacting me about SC after having fallen off about six months after release curious about HotS and getting back into the game. In each case each one is sure to remind me that they were Diamond or Platinum prior to the introduction of Masters, or allude to now defunct builds that they loved. Obviously that is not a fair qualification of much today, but it has gotten me thinking about the current state of leagues and distribution of skill across each of them.
So looking back over the last few years, I am curious as to your thoughts on the current stratification across the leagues from bronze to GM in Wings of Liberty. Feel free to discuss these questions as well:
What do you feel is holding you back in your league/are you pleased with your current level?
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
What is your plan for improving?
It goes without saying that Bronze players have the farthest to go, in terms of development all round, the mid-leagues I feel each have a facet in which players collectively developing. In my opinion it is something to the effect of:
1. I have no idea about Bronze I'll be honest.
2. Composition and scouting in Silver (Counters)
3. Developing macro mechanics and some micro in Gold.
4.. Developing micro mechanics, multitasking in Platinum
5. Build orders, higher level micro and macro (still noticeable flaws) in Diamond
6. Refinement of timings, control and Metagame in Masters and above.
Obviously this is overly general, and these concepts are present at every level of play but I feel that is a reasonable appraisal of each league and what their composite players are working on as far as skill sets go. The last experience I had with Bronze, was when I bought a second account; I threw my placements intentionally to see what it was hit with 3 marines when I was pushing with a Blink timing. I have no idea, so I'll just front about that. I have heard whispers of portrait bots, not for a long time.
Myself, I just made it to Diamond a month or so ago after more than a year in Platinum, and know that my multitasking is still well short of where it needs to be. I am still dropping games to very aggressive players who get a good shove in early on, but seem to have comparable if not reasonably good macro. I have a much more developed sense of looking at my opponents units and knowing, not guessing that I can beat what he has, and now more than ever I have a much better sense of the game in terms of speed. It was not so long ago that the game moved at what seemed like a blindingly fast pace, but now it seems a great deal more metered. This is as much a function of knowing my opponents are spending their resources reasonably well as it is just general game experience. I am just going to keep grinding ladder games, and using some of the resources available to me with practice partners to develop better micro and mechanics.
What do you think though? Do make an effort to stay positive, and encouraging.
 
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Interesting thread!
My plan for improving: I have to get better at putting everything together on a consistent basis - thinking, execution, micro, macro. I also have to tighten up my mechanics, which are fairly bad; I've basically relied on having fast handspeed, but I realized now that it's a crutch that prevents me from advancing further. I'm currently working on incorporating camera hotkeys into my play, which I've never used before.
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What do you feel is holding you back in your league/are you pleased with your current level?
Just not enough playing. I play a couple of games a week and even that may be shortened during a crunch week at school. I'm pretty content - I play at low-mid diamond level with spurts of low masters players when I actually play more than a few games. I'm probably actually around mid to high master but I lost my love for the game a long time ago and mostly just play out of almost-forgotten loyalty to starcraft.
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
I lose to anyone that has a crisp BO or brutal timing attack/allin. My play is just off the handle whims or crazy strategies that I think of during the loading screen.
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
I just play better than most. I understand most of all of the fundamentals of macro, micro, and army engagements/multi-prong harassment pretty well so even if I get behind the first 5 min. I still stomp pretty hard by the end. But again, a crisp BO or timing attack can just kill me outright.
What is your plan for improving?
I don't really have one lol. I don't think I can ever play as much as I used to again as school is no longer becoming a task in the day but more of a lifestyle. Kind of sad... 
Also, I can't use camera hotkeys because I am retarded and don't know how to set up function hotkeys during gameplay on a macbook, so that hinders my multitask by quite a bit.
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What do you feel is holding you back in your league/are you pleased with your current level?
im low gm - holding back is probably my speed (apm) and the dedication to rly try to get better. i tend to cheese a bit too much as well, which doesnt improve my play.
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
i guess my opponents are just pretty good - and im simply too slow sometimes. some dumb mistake obviously happen, too, but thats normal
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
Micro and brain. i have pretty good micro even compared to others on my level (i cant remember losing the last even count blinkstalker fight since feast happened.); this doesnt relate to 200/200 fights often times though - and well, i have pretty high strategic knowledge / im good at abusing the metagame as well.
What is your plan for improving?
I dont rly have a plan on improving. I will just keep playing for fun and try to maintain GM. This will be very, very hard with HotS release and all on 1 server though (if that will be the case) - then i have to arrange with being master forever, and probably lose the drive to play even more^^
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What do you feel is holding you back in your league/are you pleased with your current level?
Im mid masters my holdback is dedication and then ability to focus enough to actually fully understand the game, dealing with a depression and other shit, its hard for me to step over that line where you actually learn alot more, I tend to get stuck on the line because its too hard for me to push myself. I am not pleased with my current level I want to gain a full understanding of the game.
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
I dont scout correctly, and even if I do Im not sure how to react to it since Im just starting to get into strategy (been relying on mechanics and macro before) I dont react correctly to what I scout. my computer is lagging so much during lategame battles so controlling infestor BL is a bitch for me.
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
My macro and mechanics are quite good, I did reach masters top 8 solely because of mechanics and macro,
What is your plan for improving?
I dont have a plan, having fun, trying to get to the point where I can motivate myself which is hard when I can basically feel my mental capacity falling apart.
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I started playing after about a year-year and a half break and got a new account/gave up the old one. I got this account up to diamond and I seem stuck there (original account was low masters around the time MMA won MLG Columbus).
For me I have problems with meta game understanding and decision making. The game I played is so different to the game that is Starcraft 2 today. My mechanics are consistently better than my opponents (low masters high diamond), but I'm just doing the wrong strategies/unit compositions or making the wrong decisions in certain circumstances that come from long hours of playing while a strategy is becoming popular or watching pro games.
I feel I'm the exception rather than the rule at diamond level, however. I wouldn't agree to your assessment that diamond players struggle with incorrect build orders on the whole, or high level micro or anything of that sort. I think the problem for 99% of diamond/low masters players is that they don't have the mechanics to back up their knowledge. People just don't have the units they need to pull off the builds they are doing (the only reason I really ever win atm; I have the correct amount of units/speed but an inferior composition/timings, etc) or aren't fast enough to deal with everything in their build/scouting plus what their opponent is doing. They can't deal with a drop plus build out of all their structures, scout, and keep building what they need to. Something somewhere falls apart.
For me I"m just waiting for HotS so I'm more or less current with the metagame continuing on so I'll evolve with the game rather than finding out how to apply a year and a half's worth of knowledge I don't have.
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I'll help you out!
Are you pleased with your current level?
I am not. I've been stuck into top-plat for 8 seasons now.
What do you feel is holding you back in your league?
It's a complicated story, but let me try to explain. First off, I've got ADHD. For those wondering what it exactly means for me, and how I experience it I would advise you to read this webpage. (http://www.sdc.org/~pwolf/addpost.html). For me, the problems with ADD/ADHD result into knowing exactly what my limits are, knowing exactly how high I can fly, but also knowing that due to the lack of dopamine and such, that I will not be able to call upon that state of concentration required for me to play extremely well. This makes me arrogant and cocky because I know if this problem wasn't there, that I would mentally be able to handle high masters as league. See it like this. In order for me to play absolutely flawless, I need to be in this flow that most people would get in a highly dangerous real life situation. A rush of adrenaline, a rush of energy and focus. This is why I do well in real life crisis situations, due to the insane amount of impulses that push me to greater heights. For most people, this is different. The average person decides to concentrate, or do a routine and will do well. If I play a race, say Terran, and keep doing the same opening to practice, I end up being bored after three games because even though I don't got the timings right, I've got the 'routine' and then it loses it novelty. These flows can last for two minutes, or like I've had before for three straight days.
When I was a bronze player, I had one of these flows for three days, played over 150 games with 14 hour per day of Starcraft and became a relatively solid Platinum player. I've not had such flow in a long time, but it tends to approach it once I partake in tournaments. Add to this a reduction in fine motor control (for micro etc) since birth, and you'll get to a point where I know I can play much better, I did play better under rare circumstances but I can't 'call' that ability at any time I wish to. This is very demotivating, very frustrating and that eventually led to me spending the reduced time I had to play, into other games which didn't require such a high concentration. (For example: If I play shooters I am much better at the game when I am really tired (2AM) than when I wake up)
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
Inconsistency through the above explanation.
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
Once I play a steady amount of games per week, I tend to have strong macro, good spending and decent strategies. Most of my play is intuïtion, rather than actual scouting.
What is your plan for improving?
See an actual psychiatrist sometime along the road to deal with the concentration issue's as they fuck up real life too.
Aside of that, I will move to Korea for studying and work for 8 months in September (provided all goes well) so I'll probaly play a lot there aswell. After a short return home, I plan to migrate to Korea. From a game perspective, I need to spend more time in stable hours to get the whole practice going.
My blogpost regarding this:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=357906
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Current league: Plat Random
What do you feel is holding you back in your league/are you pleased with your current level?
Definitly not pleased, I had been messing around way too much as rabdom in Hots and can't get back into the more hardcore killing mode on type of game play in WoL, even with my main race. I got into plat after losing 2 games against diamonds, using some weird strategies like nydus, or roach hydra against terran which kinda worked until I realised I need more bases and didn't pressure the terran hard enough
I need to sit down and hammer down my multi tasking and go back to my normal solid style.
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
not prepared for any type of 2 base all in from Protoss. Sometimes I feel that the game is more or less won/lost depending more on my opponent landed those forcefields or not and making it hard for me to know how much I need to prepare against the all in coming.
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
Macro and multi tasking I think. Even back when I was diamond, I was able to fight up against some high diamonds. Even when ZvT is kinda unbalanced as they say and that's by my pure bio play which stress a lot of splitting, upgrading and non stop marco-ing
What is your plan for improving?
I will hardcore grind games once HotS is released and I might very well just go back into one race and get to diamond until I get my mechanics back and then I will go random on my unrank
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Current level?
Mid-high Platinum. Playing Terran.
Are you pleased with your current level?
No. I started playing semi-actively from December 2010 and did between 3 and 12 games a day depending on if I was in the mood. I rarely if ever checked replays.
I slithered from Bronze to Platinum in about a year. I have been stuck in Platinum League to this day. Despite around 4000 games played, around 98% of which are 1v1s, I still am nowhere higher and feel I have skill capped.
What do you feel is holding you back in your league?
Looking at it with a currently calm and reflective mind, it's clearly my level of play. I do want to say "Terran is underpowered" or "Terran is extremely hard to play compared to Protoss or Zerg" but in the end it will draw down to my play.
In particular I find it quite hard to read my opponent nor react perfectly to what he is doing. I will find things such as tech transitions (i.e. 14 minute Hive or a 2 base ling bane all in) really difficult to scout and stop especially with a macro oriented playstyle where I cut corners.
Another thing that could be holding me back is my tendency to get bored with a race and switch feeling a desire to emulate another race's playstyle. I've switched from Protoss to Zerg to Terran to Zerg to Protoss to Zerg and then to Terran after a long ride.
What would you say is the primary reason you drop games?
Rage. Just ending up in a losing situation would piss me off and stop me from focusing. After a game I will either vent in a chat channel or queue again, which fucks up my mindset even more.
What do you do well at your level (stay positive!)?
APM. My APM is very good and I often fill that with useful actions rather than mindless straight-up spam. My unit micro is also passable although still imperfect. It feels brilliant to get hit by a huge ling bane ultra infestor timing, randomly poke and micro and snipe key units to whittle down the infestor or ultra count with small expendable hit squads.
What is your plan for improving?
I have given up on the game at this point and still don't see why I haven't uninstalled SC2 and still play it on-and-off. It must be a form of sadomasochism.
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EPT
