I started by intending to write down a few thoughts about my experience in esports, improving at SC2, and my love of the game. I ended up with quite a bit more than I had planned! Please feel free to question, comment and point out things you feel should be included in this discussion as well - I'd love to hear your thoughts!

What's in the box?

• Intro
  
• A. The Overview
  
  • Mentality and Physiology
    
  • Knowledge and Strategy
    
  • Practice
    
  • Macro
    
  • Micro
    
  • What to expect
    
  
  
• B. Mentality and Physiology
  
  • Goals
    
  • The Wisdom to Know the Difference
    
  • Emotions
    
  • Focus
    
  • Cognitive Distortions
    
  • What’s happening when we’re learning?
    
  • Respect, Hate, and the Competitive Mindset
    
  • Please Don’t Feed the Trolls
    
  • Balance
    
  • Physiology
    
  • Analyzing at this level
    
  
  
• C. Knowledge and Strategy
  
  • Notes
    
  • Depth of strategy
    
  
  
• D. Practice
  
  • Practice Partners
    
  • Coaching
    
  • Teams / Clans
    
  • Practicing on your own
    
  • Watch the pros
    
  • Repetition and Routine
    
  
  
• E. Macro
  
• F. Micro
  
• G. Conclusion
  
• Thanks
  

Intro
Over the last few years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting and working with many SC2 pros, commentators, coaches and managers. I’ve often listened to their experience; how they practice, what it takes to improve as a player, and the value they get from SC2. I’ve been obsessed with how to generalize ways that I could improve myself and help those around me. Most of what I’ve accumulated comes from these experiences along with many of my ups and downs along the way. I hope to share some insights that many have shared with me in the hopes you’ll find them as useful as I have. I’m also hoping to make it possible for those who have never seen or heard of SC2 (or even gaming in general) to pick this up and learn about the depth and richness within the game. While some of the concepts will be game or strategy specific, I’ll try to keep many of them general to the point where you can apply them to other games and even outside gaming all together.

Recently, I began playing SC2 after quite a while away from the game. Work had taken me to a place where I didn’t have much time for gaming, and SC2 was placed on the back burner. When I came back, I picked up a few levels in skill below where I left off, but the passion was still there. I used everything from general game knowledge, to my mentality towards practice, to specific micro tips and tricks to regain what had decayed with time. I enjoyed not only getting better at SC2, but remembering how I learned it the first time, and seeing how different it was the second time around.

What I’d like to develop is loosely taken from Maslow's hierarchy of needs and applied to SC2 (and gaming or learning in general). Maslow’s hierarchy is a concept used to understand what motivates behavior and our shared human condition. I wanted to organize the areas that we can improve, based on their relative importance. Here is how that translates to SC2.



A. The Overview

Mentality and Physiology
Working our way up from the bottom we start with Mentality and Physiology. This forms the fundamental building block upon which everything is based. Why are we playing? What are we getting out of it? How do we approach the game? How do we improve? Everything here is why we love the game, and keep playing. Staying physically healthy and mentally sharp allows us to continue doing the things we love to do.

Knowledge and Strategy
Knowledge is everything around what we know about the game. This includes out-of-game things like resources available to learn from, places to watch pros play, sites that may be interesting as well as in-game things like builds, the current meta, and what works and why. Strategy is where we get into build-orders, matchups, maps, units, and decision making.

Practice
Practice is the part where we start diving into the grind. If you’re interested in getting better, a great deal of your time will be spent practicing. Understanding how to practice, what you hope to get out of it, and who you should practice with can be one of the most rewarding aspects of playing the game.

Macro
Macro is how we execute whatever strategy we’re going for. Learning how to execute and improve your macro is one of the most sure fire ways to up your game quickly. From the beginner starting out, to the seasoned pro, macro is one of the core fundamentals of gameplay. While macro itself can be broken out into many topics, suffice to say for now that improving your macro is one of the quickest ways to improve most dramatically.

Micro
Micro is in many ways the most exciting part of the game! It can also be the most frustrating. Learning to micro well will be key to winning those crucial fights and maintaining your cool throughout stressful engagements. Micro is also often the focus of some most intensely negative emotions that seem to surface over the course of an SC2 game. You’ll often hear “If I would have only...” or “Forcefield is so easy to use!” Gaining an understanding of the strength and role of micro is one of the key insights you can learn.

What to expect
When going through each of these levels of SC2, I’ll go through example questions and answers at each level that will help you improve your game. When you finish a game, win or lose, look to each level to find ways to improve. Going step by step from the top down on the pyramid will help you improve the most. Don’t stop with a micro mistake! (Even where it is totally justified.) Ask yourself what you could have done on each level to improve. It’s important when doing so that you not only point out your weaknesses but also acknowledge your strengths as well. You can easily skim and revisit these at any time to guide your practice and improve your game. (I’ll condense these at the end in a cheat sheet as well to review easily.) For the purposes of this article, most of my attention will be focused on the mentality of SC2 and gaming in general.

B. Mentality and Physiology

Mentality is one of the most underrated aspects of SC2 that has the greatest potential to improve any player. From the just-installed-the-game novice to the Blizzcon champion, understanding and improving your mindset has the largest impact of improving your play. While many topics I address will apply to everyone, I think this is especially true for professional gamers. While many spend a great deal of time working on builds, refining their strategy, and practicing micro, many of them would benefit tremendously to focusing on understanding their mentality overall. One reason I especially love focusing on mentality within SC2 is that in many ways, it is an area where the boundaries of internal and external locus of control are very clearly defined at the start. In much of life (where improving your mindset is even more important) the lines over control can be blurry and improvement is abstract. SC2 gives us a very real playground to test how improving our mentality can have very real impacts on our stats or how we improve and enjoy the game. Experiencing how your mentality can improve your SC2 game can directly improve your ability to improve yourself outside the game as well.

Goals
Why do you play the game? What do you want from the game? What does the game mean for you? While this guide is generally for those who want to improve, anyone who gets value out of their experience playing SC2 will gain from having a deeper understanding of their connection to why they play the game. For me, this took the form of discovering the incredible community behind all of the SC2 scene. Having a connection and shared understanding of something that allowed me to pick up a conversation with someone halfway around the world was incredibly rewarding. I’ve found that making friends within the scene and having people to talk to greatly improved my ability to enjoy the game. Answering for yourself why you play will generally allow you to find meaning in practice and improving in whatever way works for you. It’s also worth mentioning here that SC2 and gaming in general should align with some of your larger goals in life. If you find gaming at odds with, or taking away from other important things in your life that are important to you, gaming can quickly turn from rewarding to dangerous.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference
Getting back to locus of control for a moment. In-game you have complete control over the race you pick, what style you want to play (mostly), your micro and macro. Out of game, you have control over your practice, your knowledge and your mentality. You can not control your opponent’s build, their style they want to play, their micro, or their emotions. Nevertheless, your opponents actions will have some affect on your game. Your personal locus of control will determine how you tend to view the internal and external influences that affect your game. To illustrate the point with the extremes for a moment, having a completely internal locus of control would imply that you and you alone influenced all of what happened in the game. A completely external locus of control will leave you helplessly ignoring all of your useless actions while events outside of your control completely take over your game. An objectively ‘rational’ account for this is somewhere in the shades of gray in between, where both what you and your opponent are doing shape the game. Outside of a game, if you tend to focus on things like balance, maps, races, units, etc - you’ve got a more external locus of control. If you tend to see yourself, your mistakes, your awesome plays, or your strategy as what affects the game the most - you’ll tend to have a more internal locus of control. While there isn’t a right or wrong view to have of this - somewhere in between these extremes is going to be a much more useful place to be when it comes to understanding how to improve your play. Play around with where you are in the spectrum. If you tend to be more on the internal side - maybe give your opponents and their strategies more credit and see if it helps you improve and adapt your strategy to them. If you have tended to be more externally focused, try looking for ways to notice how your play influences your opponents actions and the results of the game.

Let’s use an in-game example of someone cheesing and you tend to be externally focused. How many times have you been frustrated, angry, or disappointed after losing to a particularly cheesy play? By allowing yourself to shift the focus from what you have no control over (the “cheesy opponent”) to what you do (your own game) you will gain a far greater sense of control over games you play in the future.

Emotions
Mentality goes hand in hand with the emotions you feel as you play SC2. While understanding all of your emotions is useful, anger is a particularly interesting emotion when it comes to improving. I’ve heard it put that anger is often a ‘secondary emotion’ that is often a proxy for other feelings. I’ve found that as pros and other players get angry, it can actually be a positive force. Feeling disappointed after a loss, or frustrated by a lack of progress, it’s can be perfectly reasonable to be angry. The question becomes whether this anger can be channeled into something useful and meaningful like better practice or additional knowledge. When combined with the sense of control above, it helps to illuminate times where anger is justified (i.e “I lost despite practicing this strategy and I’m disappointed in my play.”) vs when it’s not (“my opponent is a terrible person for going Stargate”). When anger becomes uncontrollable and useless, rage takes over. If the value of anger is to improve, rage taking over becomes antithetical to your goals. If you find yourself raging often about SC2, it may be worth asking “are you getting what you want to get out of playing?” “What is this rage helping you do?”

While emotions can be irrational, emotions are always a rich guide when it comes to looking at ways to improve. Tapping into these emotions can be a gold mine for self-improvement. If you’ve ever been coached at SC2 there will often be times where you feel differently from how you are. You may feel particularly week at a time when a coach will tell you you’re in a great spot. You may feel like you have a lead where you actually may need to be a bit more aware of danger. Other times you may feel uneasy and scared about what your opponent is doing. These emotions are the perfect place to start when you’re trying to improve. In these cases - more game knowledge, better theory, better scouting will always make you more and more comfortable and aware of your game. I’ll get into details later in the following sections. Using these emotions as a guide to learning that’s the important part. Allowing yourself to have these emotions, recognizing them, and harnessing them are going to help take your play to the next level.

Focus
The more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn. That’s the nature of improving. Everyone has a constraint on the amount of time they can play. So where should you spend your time? What is important to focus on? On an ingame level, I’ve always loved Day[9]’s advice of improving one thing at a time. If you find yourself always getting supply blocked, for the next 10 matches only focus on not getting supply blocked. Forget winning or losing. Forget tech, micro, upgrades - everything except getting supply blocked. On the higher level, shifting your focus can apply to things outside of the game as well. What pros play a style that I like? Where can I find builds that I can practice? Who should I spend time practicing with? Your time and energy is valuable, and what you choose to focus on will allow you to get more value out of your efforts. Just like on the in-game level, out of the game, focusing on improving one level at a time will not only allow you to improve more quickly, but also appreciate the process of improving as you change individual aspects of your play.

Cognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions center around psychological tendencies to distort reality around us. It was originally introduced as a concept by psychiatrist Aaron Beck and his student David Burns as a better alternative to dealing with depression and anxiety. I’ve found that many of these cognitive distortions directly relate to how people experience SC2 and go about improving their game. The concept essentially lays out a framework that goes like this: underneath our emotion and experience lies our own thoughts and cognition. Before you can have any sort of response to a any situation, those experiences will pass through and are susceptible to be distorted by our self-talk. I don’t want to get into too much detail about this here, but if you’re with me on that, feel free to jump ahead. If you doubt it, there’s a great deal of research that can more clearly and scientifically expand upon it. So how does this apply to SC2?

Let’s start with how you deal (or not deal) with cheesy play. Say you die to a DT rush. How do you respond? “I always die to DTs, I’m so stupid, I should never in a millions years die to something so easy to defend” might fly through your head. Let’s break this down into a few pieces. 1) You may have died this time, and many others but there are almost certainly plenty of cases where you defended against it well, and held easily. 2) So you died to a DT rush? Why does that make you stupid? Perhaps simply trying a different build would be enough. What do you get by punishing yourself with the hurtful label? 3) You’re human, you’re going to make mistakes. Who says what you should and shouldn’t die to? In fact, based on mistakes you’ve made in the past, it might be entirely reasonable that you should die to something - maybe you don’t have enough practice or experience against it. Maybe your build doesn’t accommodate for it because you don’t see it very often?
If you doubt that you do this at all, I’d encourage you to start by applying this concept to any streamer you’d like. I find these are much more difficult to notice in ourselves than they are in other people. Asking your friends or practice partners ways you may be doing this can also help you improve (so long as you’re willing and able to listen and take their advice).

In this case, it’s important to realize that losing to cheese is not an insult to you as a person, or something worth any harsh anger or disappointment. A loss to cheese exposes a weakness in your own play. By skipping the punishing self-talk and allowing yourself to ask the high-level mentality questions you will drive your learning at all the other levels to better handle the same situation again. How can you adjust next time to account for it? Was it a one time fluke? Do you need to load it up with a friend and replay it again?

This is a tool that applies not only to SC2 but many areas of life in general. There are at least 10 ways we distort all kinds of thoughts in everyday life and many of them show up over the course of playing SC2. It’s an incredibly deep and rich area of cognitive psychology. If you’d like to learn more, take a look at David Burns’ reading material.

What’s happening when we’re learning?
A lot of times we think about learning as an abstract process. However, just for a moment let’s dive into the physical process. Below is a picture of a dendritic branch off of a neuron before and 24 hours after learning (and sleep). [] The new little white dots where the arrows are pointed are new synapses formed. This is the learning process in action! While there’s far more to understand about how this works and what’s going on - it’s safe to say that this process isn’t only magical and abstract - but very real.



I like to think of this as why learning can feel very uncomfortable. Think back to a time when you were actually in the process of learning something. It could have been anything from being coached at SC2 or learning math in school for the first time in school. Remember that feeling of mental discomfort or general uneasiness or frustration when learning? I like to see that as the mental equivalent as being sore after working out, or doing something strenuous. Your brain is physically making new pathways and connections that weren’t there before! It may feel uncomfortable, but when you think about it - learning should be uncomfortable! It’s understanding and doing things differently than you have. If it felt ‘right’ to you, it wouldn’t be helping! If you find yourself completely comfortable and at ease when while learning and practicing something new, you’re probably not learning enough. (Also, if you enjoy learning about how we learn, I’d highly recommend Learning How to Learn on Coursera.)

Respect, Hate, and the Competitive Mindset
I recently tuned into ESL where Stephano was casting. He was asked by his co-casters (I think it was Apollo and Kaelaris) about how he approaches his game and he mentioned something like “You must hate your opponent to beat them.” I found this really surprising to hear, but I think it may be at the crux of the issue when it comes to foreigners vs Korean mindsets - and one of the reasons why Koreans tend to do better. (Also, while Stephano was the last person I’ve heard say this, he’s certainly not the only one. Sorry Ilyes for picking on you as an example here!) Many pre and post game interviews with Koreans talk about how they respect their opponent, their play, and their experience. I feel this is not only for selfless purposes, but can serve as a powerful tool for self improvement as well. Consider both attitudes: first - the ‘hate my opponent’ mindset. Say you lose to someone you’ve decided to hate. How are you likely going to take that loss? Are you more or less likely to be angry? Are you more or less likely to attribute the loss to things you can improve and work on? Now consider losing to someone you’ve decided to respect. What lessons are you going to take away from that game? How are you going to feel after losing to that person? Are you more likely to see it as a ‘good game’ that you can take something away from? Whether you’re playing on ladder, or at the biggest and most important tournaments in the world - respecting your opponent is a great place to start when it comes to a competitive mindset. Pumping yourself up rather than tearing your opponent down allows you to win and lose in a much more productive way. Playing someone you’ve decided not to have any respect for will likely end up 1 of 2 ways: you’ve diminished your own win by virtue of the fact you ‘should’ win against someone who isn’t ‘worthy’ of your respect, or 2: you lose to someone who you have no respect for - and now you feel even worse! Either way, your ego in both of these cases will drive you farther from a productive and healthy mindset towards winning and improving over the long run. When Day[9] talked about ‘getting your ego out of the game’ from a daily long ago, this is precisely why. Showing respect for your opponent is also showing respect for yourself.

Please Don’t Feed the Trolls
I use the word ‘decided’ above very deliberately. While you may feel like people earn or lose your respect through external influences, I’m talking about a different form of respect. Respect isn’t a binary all-or-nothing kind of virtue. You may detest a person personally for their insulting personality or disrespectful attitude, but even then, if challenged you can probably find something you can respect about that person or their play. (If you still think you couldn’t find anything to respect - what if someone offered you $10,000 cash if you could legitimately find even one aspect about their play to respect.) Say someone is only out for attention and plays a style deliberately frustrating, annoying, and difficult to play against. They hurl insults at you all game long. Let’s say you (and maybe even the community) have had particularly obnoxious experiences with that person in the past. Even if you want nothing to do with that person personally, respecting their play, style, and experience at that particular style will only help you in the long run when it comes to winning against them. It will also have the side benefit to reduce the attention they get in the long run. When you’re less frustrated, angry, and irritated - you will be able to resist giving that person exactly the kind of attention they’re seeking.

Even hackers or cheaters can help you improve in a way that might surprise you. Playing against a maphacker who consistently has vision of you may give you the opportunity to beat a player who you had to outplay even more than you would before. I remember watching a game of Grubby on stream vs a protoss maphacker on Tal’Darim Altar where his opponent proxy gated him. Despite the fact the hacker’s strategy caught him off guard, after an intense 16 minute game Grubby’s superior skill ended up winning him a game many others would have undoubtedly lost. The victory over someone who had a distinct advantage was probably one of the more rewarding of the ladder session, and one of the most memorable games ever for me as a viewer. Conversely, there was really no downside in losing to a hacker! (Note: Just in case it wasn’t obvious, I’m not encouraging people to hack nor claiming that it helps the game at all. I’m speaking more to the ways of dealing with negative people and situations you may encounter on ladder.)

Balance
Balance as a general topic seems to be a third rail of conversation for most strategy talk. I will say that in order to improve at most any level, it’s not helpful in the slightest to think about balance, as generally you have no control over it. The most successful pros aren’t going into a game thinking “I’m going to lose, because this map / unit / race is imbalanced.” If and when they do think about it, it’s usually in service of a way to change strategy, map vetoes, or ways to work around the imbalance in practice, etc. Bottom line - don’t get hung up here, because it’s not going to help your play, or help you get value out of the game to think about it.

Physiology
While there are obviously more physically demanding things to do in the world, your gameplay still benefits dramatically from being healthy and sharp. To consider extreme examples, many pros have lost the ability to play the game they love for all sorts of physical reasons - some permanently. If it matters to you to play the game, it will help to do everything from stretching to regular workouts, cardio, and meditation. It might sound crazy, but enough pros have started taking care of their hands, eyes, and and bodies in general as part of not only being competitive, but enjoying the game as well. Warming up before a ladder session or practice by doing something like sit ups, jumping jacks, or push ups will get blood pumping and oxygen to your brain to give you a boost before getting ingame. It’s also pretty common for a good night’s rest, shower, or meal to break a rough losing streak and get yourself out of a funk.

Analyzing at this level
While reviewing your play or improving generally at SC2 at this level, this will be where you make the biggest and most important and dramatic changes to improve your game. Most importantly, this level is the time and place to ask yourself, “which of the other levels are going to help me improve the most based on where I am?” While you may feel like a recent loss was a result of some bad macro, it may point to a larger problem of “this matchup is particularly week since I don’t have any good practice partners for it”. Maybe you need more knowledge about the meta to where you need to review some pro replays and caster analysis. Coming back to this level every few days or weeks to check in with your progress will allow you to focus and shift your attention to areas that will benefit the most from your practice efforts.

Here are some specific questions you can ask yourself while reviewing the replay, or remembering or looking back on a ladder session:
Emotionally, what did I experience throughout that game? When?
Which other levels along the pyramid will help me improve most effectively?
More knowledge, more practice, better macro?

C. Knowledge and Strategy
Knowledge is strategy include anything and everything there is to know about SC2. This ranges everything from Brood War history to the latest ingame meta. From personalities, to awesome 2v2 strategies to show your friends. It also includes community resources available to help you improve like community websites, clans, and personal coaching. It forms the fundamental bedrock which all of your practice and ingame performance stands.

Understanding what knowledge you have and what areas are ripe for improvement will form the basis for everything you experience in SC2. The richness and depth of knowledge available to you to learn is one of the most enjoyable parts of learning and improving at the game. For me, realizing that knowledge is not about making it to the finish line, but enjoying the marathon is what helps keep the process of learning enjoyable and rewarding. As I said before “The more you learn, the more you realize there is to learn.” There was an incredibly frustrating period in SC2 for me when I hit Gold. It was near the end of 2010, and I had just been promoted after a few weeks of solid play. The first game after my promotion I remember doing all the same things I was used to, and feeling pretty good - until 3 cloaked Banshees showed up and decimated all of my workers. I felt that not only did I lose the game, but that there was no possible way I’d ever have the knowledge to win against all the things that could kill me. My confidence in laddering was gone, and it wasn’t until days later that I picked the game back up. Once I realized that there was so much more to learn, and that was OK, that I slowly started to play more and more consistently. It was at that point that I started paying more attention to how I was learning, what was working, and what wasn’t. This was also around the time I started at NASL. The casters Gretorp (Andre) and Incontrol (Geoff) refused to have conversations with me about strategy or anything until I was at least Diamond. I’ll get to their more practical macro and strategy tips for improving (among many others) in later sections.

Notes
I’ve often seen pros have some sort of physical way to manage what they know about the game. It can be anything from simple notepad files, to post-its, to complex stuff like note-taking apps, or spreadsheets. This is an entire topic on its own, but for now, suffice to say it will certainly improve your game if you somehow record, organize, update, and revisit what you know as you learn.

Depth of strategy
One of the most incredible aspects to this game is its richness and depth when it comes to the various strategies that allow playstyles, skill, creativity, and brilliance to shine. For the purposes of keeping this article anywhere near a reasonable length (too late?), I’m going to skip over specific race / matchup / strategy advice. But it’s worth mentioning here that between TeamLiquid, Day9, and plenty of other strategy resources out there, this is not only another article, but entire sites and careers are built upon going into depth on this level.

Analyzing at this level
What worked strategically for me this game? What didn’t?
What did my opponent do that worked? What didn’t?
Was I able to execute my plan? If not, why not?
What else could I learn about matchups or builds that would help me improve?

D. Practice
One of the most interesting aspects I’ve enjoyed watching and learning about is how pros and average players alike approach practice. Understanding where you need the most practice, and how to focus your practice efforts is what will make the difference between a couple of frustrating and vaguely useful hours of laddering and solid, reliable practice that makes you feel comfortable laddering and playing at a higher level than you currently are.

Practice Partners
Let’s start with one of the simplest and easiest options you have out there to improve - finding one (or more) practice partners. It’s important that your practice partner is higher in skill than you are. (This is not to say you can’t get value playing someone at your own skill level, rather you’ll improve more reliably when you play with someone better.) With the exception of a very few elite players, there are generally going to be players at all levels willing to help. When you’re looking for a practice partner, consider the matchups or races you need the most help with first. Ask around community websites, forums, or ingame to find a practice partner that will suit you well. What you’re looking for is someone who is willing to play consistently over a period of time - not just 1 or 2 games here and there. Play against them and see what they mention your strengths and weaknesses are. It’s important that you let yourself become used to losing in this process! By definition, playing with someone who is better than you will end up in you losing more than on ladder, where Blizzard likes to keep you winning and losing about evenly. In fact, you should use this time not only to practice your ingame mechanics, or strategy, but also practice losing! Ask yourself and your practice partner what’s working. Even if the practice partner doesn’t play your race at the level you might, they’ll at least be able to point you in the right direction in ways they’ve seen a scenario play out at their level. It’s important to spend yours and their practice time wisely. Here are a few tips:
Spend most of your time practicing solid overall builds, and macro oriented strategies. There may be times when it’s fun or helpful in a specific case to want to hold a particular all-in, it’s generally more helpful to start with the basics, and work your way to smaller details.
Don’t try to be a comeback hero. If you took a large amount of damage, just tap out and retry after discussing better ways of handling the situation with your practice partner. (This tip comes from Gretorp's recent video from his L2P.tv series.)
Resume from replay! I’m a huge fan of resume from replay. (A huge shoutout to Turtles from the S.A.L.T. for providing this functionality before Blizzard implemented resume from replay). It’s crucially important to see how playing out the same situation with different control, information, strategy, etc can challenge your understanding (or lack thereof) and change your mentality as you face a similar situation again. If you do find yourself changing your mind about a situation, don’t just practice it once either! Reinforce your learning by doing it well over and over. This is one of the most underutilized and simple ways to improve!

Coaching
Another great option when it comes to improving is coaching. Many players are willing to coach newer and improving players just because it’s fun to share knowledge of something you love with others. If you can’t seem to find any of those players, there are even paid coaching services from all sorts of players from Gold players all the way to seasoned pros. I tend to think that the most effective coaches are the ones who are a few skill levels above you and have a good idea of where you’re at. Finding a good coach may take time, and you may not always get a coach you mesh well with the first time around. I will also say that just because someone is a ‘pro’ doesn’t mean that their teaching style will work for you. That’s alright! Keep looking until you find someone that fits your style and you enjoy spending time with. I’ve seen many Platinum and Diamond players who charge nothing with more patience and understanding than a pro at $20 or $30/hour. I wouldn’t suggest breaking the bank for pro coaching until you’re really up there in skill and can take advantage of their time and expertise. That being said, if you can afford it, learning from a pro that does fit your style can easily jump start you a couple skill notches above where you are.

Teams / Clans
Teams and clans are also a great way to get involved and improve your game. Generally, joining a team will require more of a commitment and consistency. If you’re ready and able to take this on, it can be a very rewarding experience. Usually teams will have their own way of organizing practice partners, games, and group chats and calls that will expedite the process of getting you in-game and improving quickly. There are even entire leagues and clans dedicated to competition at lower levels of play. I like to think of it as your company softball league - it might not be the most competitive or the most fun to watch - but it can be so much fun to participate in and root for your team to do well! (Shoutout to TeamUR!)

Practicing on your own
There are also plenty of techniques to improve on your own. Here are a few I’ve picked up over the years.
Build order practice. Starting with some solid build orders (suggestions welcome!) load up a single player custom game and simply try to execute the build order cleanly. Don’t worry about mistakes! Just keep going. Many build orders will have some sort of benchmark that you can compare yourself to. Work on executing a build order a few times until you can do it without referring to it at all.
Why and how a build order helps is also a source of a lot of discussion and confusion. While most everyone knows that knowing ‘a build’ will not work every game, many seem to misunderstand the value of what knowing a build does for you. When you learn a build, you start to develop a game sense around the timings and strategies around what you’re doing. By definition a ‘safe and standard’ build will take into account many of the major strategies your opponents can be doing. By understanding what a ‘safe’ build is, you can begin to not only develop your skill and responses to it, but evolve and try your own styles and responses from there. Once you do so, you then have a benchmark to compare how effective what your style is, and when, how, and why to deviate to and from it. Certainly all pros develop and have their own style, but you can sure it’s on top of a pretty solid understanding of what a ‘standard’ build is, and how and why they’re deviating from it to accomplish what they’re trying to do.

Max Out. For this exercise you work on 1 goal, and 1 goal only. Getting to 200/200. This one is courtesy of Gretorp as well. Focus on nothing else - no strategy, no unit composition, no scouting - only maxing. Once you hit 200 record the time you got there. Do this over and over again. You should start noticing patterns in areas you can improve - whether it’s constant worker production, adding on infrastructure, or supply blocks - keep practicing till you get down to the 12 - 14 minute mark to max. This practice will help you understand the value of how important your macro and timings are over micro. It will be an especially helpful strategy to go from Bronze - Diamond where macro alone can carry you very far.

Multitasking Trainer / Custom Arcade Games. One of the most interesting maps is the multitasking custom arcade game. In this game, you’re tasked with performing a number of actions over the course of a game simultaneously. This stresses your multi tasking and attention in order to get used to the mechanics required to improve at SC2. Over the course of teaching many people, this tool has almost always helped students jump at least 1 level from Bronze - Plat.

Watch the pros
Utilizing the professional scene as a resource to improve can boost your game tremendously. Look for streams on Twitch who have a style that interests you and pay attention to their in-game decision making. For the sake of improving, it’s important that you notice not only all of the things they do well, but how their decision making differs from your own. Some pros are more inclined to explain their thought process on stream than others. If you’re looking to improve then that’s a highly preferable option - even compared to pros who may be objectively more successful.

Repetition and Routine
Whatever your choice of practice, developing a routine and practice schedule will help you stay consistent and retain what you’ve learned over longer periods of time. Keeping the methods of learning consistent and having a routine will also allow you to start to see patterns in what works, what doesn’t, and how much you’re improving along the way.
Also, don’t ladder if you’re really looking to improve your play! While I’m not going to argue that laddering and gaining experience over time is useless, it’s probably the least helpful form of practice available to you. If you want to feel more confident with any aspect of play, from a better understanding of a particular matchup, or holding an all-in attack that you’ve lost to a few times, look to any of the other methods to improve before laddering. With ladder, the variance of different situations and information is far too great to be meaningfully used to improve. It’s like trying to earn a college degree by browsing Wikipedia.

Analyzing at this level
What do I need to practice most?
Which matchup / strategy / aspect of play needs the most work?
What type of practice will help improve what I need to work on?

E. Macro
One of the most important lessons to take away at the macro level is not how to macro, but the value of it. Macro is one of the oft overlooked source of many losses. If there’s one habit you take away from this entire article that will help you get better, it’s to look to your macro after a game to understand why you won or lost. Macro is how well you’re able to implement what you’re trying to strategically accomplish.

A macro cycle is probably one of the most fundamental skills to learn when it comes to honing your skills. A macro cycle consists of a mental (or even physical) checklist that you loop through over and over while you’re in-game that reminds you of all of the tasks you need to do to keep yourself going.

Scouting / Info
If I’m not sure of what’s going on in game, this is where I’ll figure out how to gather the information I need to start making other strategic decisions
Supply
If you get supply capped, everything else stops. All strategy, all decision making, is useless until you regain supply overhead. Keep this near the top of your priority list.
Econ
How’s my economy doing? Should I be taking more bases? How’s my saturation across all of my bases? How’s my gas income? Am I able to afford everything else I want to do?
Tech
Am I adequately teching? How does my tech accommodate my opponent’s strategy? Do my future tech plans still make sense?
Army
How’s my army looking at this point in the game? Do I need to invest more in it? Am I safe enough to where I can invest in other areas instead?
Upgrades
Am I on track with upgrades? Am I ahead or behind my opponent? Does this create any timings for me? For them?
Minimap
Is there anything going on down there I need to be paying attention to? Do I have a drop almost ready to unload? Are there enemy units or movement that I should be paying attention to?
Spending
With all of the analysis above - what should I prioritize spending on? What can wait a little while?

That’s my macro cycle. There are probably plenty of others out there that work just as well if not better, but this works for me. Essentially, you should run through all of these in a loop as quickly as possible while you’re ingame. I start with scouting / info in general because it informs what my priorities are going to be for each loop. While resources are limited, being able to start with ‘what are my priorities’ at any given moment in the game allows you to be flexible with how you spend your money. Just remember that while being flexible is valuable, you should have a good strategic reason to deviate from your current build and strategy.


Analyzing at this level
How well did I macro?
What stages of the game was I macroing well? Poorly?
Did my opponent throw off my macro? How could I have responded better?
Did I get supply blocked a lot often? At critical times?
How well did I scout? How much information about what my opponent was doing?
Was I able to predict or read what my opponent was doing? Why or why not?


F. Micro
Micro is the fun part! It’s where everything else you’ve done pays off in the moment to moment intense fights that often are the final factors in whether you win or lose. More often than not, we tend to focus too much attention here and neglect many of the other areas of play. But when we do need micro, nothing else will substitute for it. Specific micro tips and comments are all over. Again, for the sake of this article I’m not going to go into detail here other than a few questions that are important to ask yourself at the end of a game.

Analyzing at this level
How well did I micro? Was the micro in that case worth it?
Are there micro battles that I need practice with?
What did my opponent micro well?

G. Conclusion
In conclusion, I hope that this has provided you with an understanding of the depth that SC2 has to offer. I hope with this you’re able to enjoy the game more richly, and improve as an all around player. While I wrote this as an SC2 player, I hope it’s obvious that you can approach many other games with this approach to understanding - specifically when it comes to your mentality as you improve. I’d love to hear your stories about how you applied this. Let me know what works for you and what doesn’t. I’d also love to hear your thoughts, criticisms, and comments about any and all of it. If there are major topics that you feel I should add, I love discussing this and would love to hear your thoughts on it as well.

Thanks
I want to take this opportunity to thank a number of people who have helped me live out some of the most fulfilling years within the SC2 and esports scene. First, a huge thanks to my girlfriend Kiley who has been there for me and encouraged me to continue playing, learning, and working in gaming. Thanks to my mom and the rest of my family for being so incredibly supportive of many crazy life choices that involved me giving up far more normal and rational paths to happiness and success. Thanks to the crew at NASL for giving a shot to a newcomer to the scene. Thanks also to NASL for being one of the most entertaining and creative teams I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of. Specifically thanks to the former casters Andre, Ben, Rotti, Dan for all of your game knowledge, practice time, life advice, and creative input that made all of the time I spent there and work we did awesome. Thanks to Morgan, Day9, Megumixbear, Soe, Axeltoss, Artosis, and many others in the scene that made it an incredibly rich and rewarding place to work and enjoy. Thanks to all of the staff and hard workers at Team Liquid who have created and maintained such a valuable and knowledgeable community. Lastly, and certainly not least, thank you to Blizzard for making a game so rich and engaging to play and work with!