EPT+ Show Spoiler +
So the other night I stay up with my friend until about 7-8am (the price I pay for hanging out with people that work night shifts). As the night went on I ran low on streams/vods to put on in the background and I started up SC2 to mess around with some off-races against AI, mainly Protoss. So after a few beers and guessing at builds I slip up and end up playing against an actual person...
I'm a top 25-50 gold Zerg player (currently figuring out Protoss), this guy was a top 25 plat Zerg (playing random, but it ended up being Zerg). Friendly chat at the start... he had a few drinks in him, I was awake for about 20 hours, on paper being a league up he should crush me but we'll see what happens... nothing I'd consider even close to BM. I prep for what I'd do in the match up, 11 min roach push (shoutout to Tang!)... so I went for a FFE, get WAY too many gates (for some reason the old quote/reference from.. think it was TLO came to mind.. as Terran you can win games you probably shouldn't by having way too many barracks... so I made 12 gates), two robos, and made sure I would have 1/1 by the time he showed up. Around the 12 minute mark he knocks on my front door with a hand full of lings, about 20 roaches, and a hydra, ling speed being the only upgrade... I had about 14 blink stalkers, 2 immortals at 1/1 with all the gates ready to go and 2 more immortals being chrono'd... I won the fight, started for colossus and after no follow up attacks for a little bit I moved out, double expanded, and held the middle. That lead to me building up a stalker/immortal/colossi force, crushing another small push, then moving out and taking out his third and moving towards his second until he called GG.
After I stomped out the second push there were some Protoss is OP talk, and after the game he hit me up with a small rant of Protoss being imbalanced and that on the stats/graphs he felt he should have won or done better (for those that skipped the intro, nothing was BM or directed at me, more frustration at ZvP)... which I'm on the fence for agreeing.. he had more workers, income, and lower unspent resources and a higher APM, but I had higher upgrades and army value. After a bit I went to watch the replay... and spent about an hour or so breaking it down for my friend... I made my share of mistakes, but he made some rather large ones (mainly his drone count and saturation, and sticking with just roach/hydra for 90% of the game).
My real question/concern here would be about lower league (bronze-plat) players taking more from that stat screen and using that as a measurement of progress instead of actually watching their replays finding seeing their mistakes that don't show up on that summary page. Personally I think it's more important to me to get a strong grasp of things like using control groups, keeping an eye on the minimap, saturation habits (overall worker count, not necessarily 2 on each mineral patch... unless I have a spare second or two and notice it), builds and timings (not just how to do them, but the whys behind it), scouting (the act of doing it and what the look for)... then move on to things like when to expand and let expansions fall, specifics on unit composition and best use of individual unit, and starting on micro..... and after all THAT then worry about things like raising my APM. That's all things that I can't really check from that splash screen... really the most I use it for is to check my average unspent resources.
So what is everyone's thoughts on what people take from the score screen? Especially the lower league players!
Also.. forgot to grab the replay from my friend's computer, so once I get it I'll upload it if anyone wants take a look at it. And if Tang reads this.. I'm sorry for playing Toss >.>
