EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sYPlLLN.gif)
I seriously probably did this, looking and my profile page for a good twenty minutes
After the initial shock passed, the giddiness subsided, and I bored my girlfriend with details about how good I am for several minutes; I found myself faced with the question, "Now what?"
![[image loading]](http://cdn1337.ripten.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/cartman-wow-sunder.jpg)
What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game.
That quote from South Park is actually surprisingly accurate, at least in my appraisal thus far. For the first time, though once you get your MMR into low masters this is true in Diamond as well, you can have appropriate expectations of your opponent. This is to say, you expect your opponent to be able to spend his money well, and not be blindsided by his poor macro. This might sound relatively strange, and it happens in any league but most any player (especially in Zerg vs Zerg) can tell you how they threw a game when they were taken by surprise with a swell of units that shouldn't have been there.
In a sentence fragment it is best summed up as: less wonky shit. Of course ever player has his own styles they like to use that can be stylistically different, but I am talking about Planetary Fortresses at the natural, oddly timed harassment with otherwise well defined build orders, and most noticeable is the inability to hit timings. In this respect the transition has actually been relatively easy. My Zerg teammates could tell me, and Immortal Sentry all-in hits at 9:30 in, but adjusting for league that would mean it can hit anywhere from 9:00-11:00.
Conversely I hope this goes for me as well for my opponents. I won't lie, I got to masters on the back of some solid all ins. I didn't get a win rate as high as mine in ZvZ by playing Mutalisk vs Mutalisk I can tell you that (Apologies to any nerds I may have angered with my cheese, your points were appreciated)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nRwMQ5k.png)
Adjusting for points
I've also been struck, repeatedly over the head now, by the stratification of points in masters league. You'll hear it time and time again,
There is no high or low any league with the exception of Masters.
While to me, this can be a bit of self aggrandizement by people who have long since forgotten the lower leagues or were never there to begin with, I can appreciate the sentiment within Masters league like never before. In Diamond, I was moderately concerned with points. I knew I needed about x or so to be considered for Masters, the numbers are rather out dated but it was still a benchmark which I set for myself, but I was overall more concerned with getting top 8 and working from there, but the difference between 1500 points and my points is night and day.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Va3thBV.png)
At a mind mindbogglingly high 650 points I am the creme de la creme of North American Zergs, clearly
I can give them a bit of a run to be sure, maybe even take a game or two off of them depending on the match up, but a 1500 point master is a different level. To put this into context I am Rank 33 with my 658, while the top of my division is ≈1450, and I have found myself checking my opponents points to calibrate where I may fall on the general spectrum of high, low and mid masters. Those numbers were never real before I got promoted.
To more directly address the, "What now?" question, a few things really came to mind this last week while playing. First is that I want to stay in Masters (obviously) through the season change, I was actually dropped back down to Platinum at the beginning of the current season and while it only took me 4 games to get placed back into Diamond, I would rather not go through the grind to get a promotion only to have my points set back down to the lower levels of Masters again. Probably the biggest first world problem of Starcraft 2.
Long term I am looking forward to expanding on my play. I mentioned before I got to masters with a slew of cheesier styles. 15-15-15 all ins, Roach, ling, bane all ins (I hate TvZ), and ZvP I'd actually macro with a peppering of ling all-ins against gateway expands or when I would sniff out some odd weakness in the Protoss build. For the first time, looking at a build order I am not seeing constraints but opportunity; there is nothing like hitting a satisfying timing attack and having it work to its exact purpose.
The game is clicking in a way it didn't before and you start to see those openings, where your build will cripple your opponent. It feels good to be at a level where you can rely on your opponents play and not just your own. A+B+C=D in most, in game situations. There is no higher I can go for the time being. GM is pretty much out for now, I am not sure I would even want it, and I am likely at least a few seasons away from breaking into the 1100 point range of Masters. I spent long enough in Platinum, I can handle grinding mid masters players for a while. Last week I said that Masters is where the work really begins, and it was a cute turn of phrase, this week I learned first hand exactly how true that is.
