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Hello teamliquid!
Been a while since I made my last post about my return to SC2. I have been experimenting over the last few weeks with all of the races, trying to get a better understanding of the game and simply work on mechanics.
This process taught me a few things. First, it taught me that oracles are overpowered. And now they are faster. Ok. Moving on. Second thing. I am far lower skill than I expected. I have been playing primarily high plats (gold on Korea), and holy crap these guys are good. The late game army control of a plat terran going into 2014 is equal to what I would consider a top masters when I was playing previously. Guess you should figure the longer the game is out the better people get.
This translates into a heavily increased amount of effort required. The idea of having far increased competition is a good thought, it can be quite demoralizing getting stomped by that rank 15 platinum protoss who simultaneously dropped your natural and 4th while cloaking ghosts into your main army to emp your templar while you retreat. Wonder how many bases a masters terran will drop on...
On to the point. After the last few weeks of experimentation I am ready to get into a more structured routine. The official practice has begun. Similar to Daniel-san in his quest for martial arts prowess, the first step I must take is to train my body to be able to begin learning. Translated into Starcraft language, that means two things. Speed and precision.
Ever had a game where your multitasking was strained even slightly during your build order and you end up completely blowing it? This is because you lack the multitasking ability to play the game that you are mentally capable of playing.
To attempt to learn how to play the game without possessing the ability to play it properly is a faulty method. While speed and accuracy will develop over time to match your brains need for multitasking, this is a slow process and will hinder your growth at many stages. The less speed and accuracy you have the more brain power will be needed to perform each action, thus lowering the amount of free mental capacity to perform other actions, such as strategizing or, more importantly, learning.
So for now I am playing simply with the goal of speed and accuracy in mind. Not worrying too much about builds or counters, just playing a very free flowing game and trying to push my opponent to the limits of his multitasking through harass etc.
Currently holding around 130 apm when playing zerg normally, looking to push my daily average to above 180 within a week.
As my practice methods change I will be updating and logging what I thought was the effectiveness of each method.
Last thing for this post and something that I will record every day:
Nov 27th -
Rank 70 gold (KR) -
Avg daily apm: 145 -
Accuracy feel: 5 -
Record: 12-9(All games as Zerg)
PS - Sorry I stopped my streaming, just wasn't high enough stream quality for me to want to continue putting out a bad product (due to poor upload speed). I did have a lot of fun interacting with the people who did watch, so I might go back to streaming some Zerg with commentary again soon!
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United States4883 Posts
It takes a while to build up speed; it's very difficult to go from 130 APM to 180 APM in a week. It's not bad to focus on precision and speed, but I highly suggest you make sure you have a plan that you can tweak OUTSIDE of the game so that you don't have to focus on strategic thinking DURING the game. This allows you to not only have an actual goal while playing but also makes your actions quicker and more precise.
Also, I strongly recommend warming up with stuff like Osu! or Minesweeper or a SC2 trainer. Stuff like that will help a lot with your mouse accuracy and speed without having to think much and will contribute to your SC2 practice a lot.
All in all, though, I approve!  Fundamentals are super important and something I've always lacked :/
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you should aim for 260apm. that's not even completely unreasonable imo
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Dude. SPeed and precision are such small factors. On top of that, speed in particular is learned by muscle memory, which in turn is gained by memorizing and practicing builds. You think Osu! players with sick apm makes them good at sc2? Or even have a considerable advantage? I dont think so.
With that being said. 130 apm is low for masters. But if used effectively im sure you could still manage
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On November 28 2013 18:51 ruiyang wrote:
Dude. SPeed and precision are such small factors. On top of that, speed in particular is learned by muscle memory, which in turn is gained by memorizing and practicing builds. You think Osu! players with sick apm makes them good at sc2? Or even have a considerable advantage? I dont think so.
With that being said. 130 apm is low for masters. But if used effectively im sure you could still manage
Could, but why would I want to struggle through that 
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On November 28 2013 08:49 SC2John wrote:It takes a while to build up speed; it's very difficult to go from 130 APM to 180 APM in a week. It's not bad to focus on precision and speed, but I highly suggest you make sure you have a plan that you can tweak OUTSIDE of the game so that you don't have to focus on strategic thinking DURING the game. This allows you to not only have an actual goal while playing but also makes your actions quicker and more precise. Also, I strongly recommend warming up with stuff like Osu! or Minesweeper or a SC2 trainer. Stuff like that will help a lot with your mouse accuracy and speed without having to think much and will contribute to your SC2 practice a lot. All in all, though, I approve! Fundamentals are super important and something I've always lacked :/
I agree with your overall methodology and idea here, but when working on a mechanic (IE creep spread, or in this case, speed), you need to abandon the strategic mindset and adopt a mindset that is entirely focused on improving that mechanic.
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To be honest, apm feels like a silly number to me in sc2. It was much more meaningful in wc3, because you had to be constantly microing your units while making sure not to forget building stuff, and keeping your fingers warm for intense micro battles. Micro was REALLY intense in wc3, but sc2 on the other hand is more about having a good concave, good force fields, and less micro intensive moves.
In sc2, you mostly follow a strategy mentally. You have to macro heavily and hit benchmarks while looking at the minimap and not getting supply blocked or stockpiling a lot of resources. For instance, getting supply blocked often times happens when you don't know a build well enough. Looking at the minimap is a skill that takes quite a bit of practice, so a nice thing to practice. Looking at your income/timer is also important to help you build everything on time.
As far as speed goes, I'm not sure raw speed is something too important in sc2. But one of the things that I did almost exclusively when I was starting out was work on a really solid hotkey setup and get used to it. Camera keys are also something I've always considered super important from the very beginning. You can easily work on all these things vs the ai to start off, but if you have a couple of builds that you're trying to follow, it's much easier to start doing certain mechanical things more systematically - such as scouting specific locations and stuff. Many specific things can be improve a lot, such as chrono boosting double forge to hit a benchmark, but it seems to me these things require a lot more drilling and wouldn't benefit much from raw speed.
I'm not sure if this rant is any helpful, but maybe some of these ideas will help you improve your practice.
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EPT
