EPTBefore I make my post, I'd like to provide some background information on myself. I'm 17 years old and soon to be a senior in high school. I do fairly well in my school, sitting third in my class ranks and hitting over 2000 on my SATs this past June. I play baseball and play saxophone in my school's marching band. I enjoy doing what I do, however, my passion has always been with RTS games. Starting at 9 years old I started playing Warcraft 3 and I had a blast playing it. I played for about 3 or 4 years and got relatively good at the game. When StarCraft II was announced, I figured it would be a great opportunity for me to apply the skills I learned in Warcraft 3 and carry them over to SC2. Prior to this, I had never seen a game of brood war and quite honestly I had only heard of StarCraft once or twice. However, I was introduced to tournaments like Dreamhack and MLG by my brother and quickly jumped to the conclusion that StarCraft II was my game. Playing on and off for a year, I went from being a gold protoss to a low masters protoss. This trend continues, with my playing on and off, 2 months in the game, 3 months off, taking me to mid-high masters.
This brings us to now. I came back to StarCraft II about two months ago after a two month break and I am still enjoying every second of it. I am currently sitting at about 1350 points in masters on both the NA and EU server and that number is rising slowly but surely every day as I feel myself get better. I have a very close friend whom I Skype with constantly over the course of the day who is on pretty much the same level as me. We analyze each other's replays, joke when the other messes up, and congratulate the hell out of the other when he does something awesome. I don't want this post to be about the two of us because I can only speak for myself, but we are pretty much in the same boat. I love StarCraft II. I watch every major tournament and it is a big part of my life. I have friends in real life (who don't play) that watch tournaments with me sometimes and its always a blast. I spend a lot of time, up to 10 hours a day some days on StarCraft just playing different games, but this is where my biggest problem comes.
The Problem: Frustration.
Frustration here can be taken many ways. I get frustrated when I design a build that seems so right, but then loses to something I completely overlooked. I don't necessarily get furious at the game, I get angry at myself. I never blame the other person, but I blame myself too harshly.This is just a huge problem for me because I really want to get better and I have been trying with my friend to achieve grandmasters. That has been my biggest StarCraft dream, to just see myself get promoted to GM. I don't mind if I never get signed by a semi-professional team, or get 500 consistent viewers on my stream, I just want that gold star. Unfortunately for me, it gets hard sometimes. I sit down on skype with my friend and we're like "Alright buddy, it's time to ladder for a few hours" and everything starts off well, with both of us playing 3 or 4 games straight without problem. But then that one game comes that gets me kind of frustrated and I start feeling iffy about myself and it carriers over into the next game where I just do not play very well. I tell myself constantly that losing games is just a part of the game and that everyone loses. When I play great macro games against top top masters and sometimes even GMs (even if I lose) I get a great feeling and such dedication to keep following what I do. But when I play people that appear to be (I know rank is not an overall measure of skill level) low or mid-masters and lose because I play bad, it just frustrates me way too much.
I'm just looking for some advice.Are there any ways to just ease the frustration a little bit? I feel really dedicated to it this time around and I feel so close to my goal, but this is the one thing that is holding me back. Any tips and advice would be appreciated. Thank you <3
