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http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/488756-the-first-week-my-practice-my-stream-my-road
Hey guys, sorry for the delay on this post but this is the third entry of my blog. If you would like to read the second one, click the link above (episode one is in the top link as well.)
I will not be doing a "Replay of the Week" this week as I haven't had the time to find and analyse a specific replay that I think would be of benefit. I have been playing A LOT of Starcraft any free time I get and I haven't had too much unfortunately throughout the week.
Main point of this blog is that I am enjoying the game more than ever at the moment. It's so fun to play and I find each match up really great to play, especially with the new interesting maps.
Let's get right into the good stuff.
My Practice: In general I feel that I definitely improved a lot throughout the week. This week has been the first week of the new season and of the new maps. After the first day of the new season I ended up around top 50 on the server.
The next day I went on a massive tilt and ended up going like top 500 on the server! It's very important that if you get into a tilt, just take a break. There's no point playing through a tilt as you are not playing at your A game and you will be concentrating on past mistakes at a time when you should be thinking about the current situation. Think about and analyse past games and mistakes between games, you will gain the most out of them then and it gives you time to get out of your tilt. Before I get matchup specific, I have vetoed Dash and Terminal as well as Moonlight Madness. They seem a bit too crazy for me tbh and I feel that ZvZ on both of the maps is just 1 base ling bane bust every game. Terran on Dash is quite strong too.
•ZvT: ZvT remains my best matchup in terms of statistics. I have been doing pretty much the same style, ling bane muta all super standard. I have been mixing in some ling bane aggression with no spire and just PUMPING out ling speed bane 1-1 at around 11ish mins to go for big timing aggressions and it has been working well. It's very similar to an old Life style that revolved around getting two macro hatches, I think Day9 did a daily on it.
Ladder Win Rate: 16 - 9 (64%)
•ZvP: Although it's my second best in terms of statistics, I think towards the end of my practice week it is becoming my worst matchup. I find the blinkstalker immortal templar archon style suuuuper powerful and I'm not too sure what army I can make in the late game to beat a protoss player on this composition while doing harras. I have been using Hydra's ZvP early burrow style to delay a P third base and it seems to be an interesting style. After that I usually transition into roach ling pressure with burrow into a muta switch and it's working well. My current aim in the match up is to win on lair tech before they get a critical mass of units.
Ladder Win Rate: 9 - 7 (56%)
•ZvZ: So if you look below, over half of my ladder games have been ZvZ. I have always sucked hard at ZvZ and at the beginning of the week I ran into some trouble where I just lost a lot of games due to me experimenting too hard. I have decided to just play one style now, ling bane pressure off three base two gas into roach play off of one evo. From the last two days, I have won every ZvZ with this build as long as I don't lose to one base play. I definitely need to work on defense vs early pools in ZvZ.
Ladder Win Rate: 20 - 25 (44%)
Overall Ladder Win Rate: 45 - 41 (52%)
As of this moment I am sitting at 215th in all of the region, GM has not opened yet but it opens tomorrow. I will be going for GM this week and I think that by my next blog post I will have that shiny boarder. My opponents have all been masters bar like one and they are generally high masters/GM from last season.
My Stream: I am not happy with my stream this week. I think that I only streamed one day which isn't very good at all. This is something I need to work on when I return from my holidays for sure.
My Goals:
This Week:
• Learn and be able to execute defences against Cannon Rush/Proxy 2 Gate/Various 2 Base play.
• Explore muta and mass ling styles in ZvZ
• Continue to play ZvT ling bane muta
• Play in at least one online tournament.
• Grandmaster. It's happening.
Short Term (3 Months):
• Grandmaster (SO CLOSE!)
• Play and get solid at LOTV after achieving Grandmaster
• Win a showmatch or an Irish online tournament
• Consistently 50 viewers on stream.
• Join a Semi Pro team.
Long Term:
• Top 100 GM
• GM EU
• Start to make a name for myself in the semi pro scene.
• Online tournament results
So I will comment on how my goals have gone for the last week in each section. Firstly, I feel that my goals from the last week went well other than the streaming issue. I will definitely work on that for the future. I did explore mass ling and muta styles in ZvZ. I do think that they are good for tournament play, but for just a solid, consistent style I think I will be sticking with gas roaches.
So, the tournaments and showmatch section. I participated in one showmatch and in one tournament.
I will talk about the showmatch first. I played vs Tenshi, now a caster but before a very solid player who is back practicing again afaik. His style is super annoying to play against, it revolves a lot on DT and Zealot harras as well as some early game aggression, but generally he likes the late game. To be honest, I thought that it would be a clean 4-0 sweep to me at first, but it ended up being very close and went to the full seven games. I ended up winning 4-3 but I definitely was not pleased with my performance. I played a lot of gimmicky styles, proxy hatch, ling bane allins, speedling all ins etc.
I also played in an Irish online tournament which rewarded 10 euro to the winner. This was my first real experience against other Irish players since my return to SC2. I got to the semi finals without dropping a map. It had a losers bracket with a BO5 semis and a BO7 finals. Again, I expected to win the semi finals 3-0 pretty easily, but I did end up going the whole 5 games again and took it 3-2. I used a lot of gimmicks again and I felt that my whole arsenal of builds was used up after both series.
For the final, Daddy (the same player from semis) came back to face me in the finals. I obviously thought that I would take it due to already beating him, but I ended up losing 4-1. I was pretty disappointed, I would have liked to win my first return tournament, but these things happen in a competitive environment. One thing that I learned is that I love the competitive feeling more than ever. Nothing beats it in my opinion.
It is the losses that we get today that will make the win we earn tomorrow so much better.
So that's all really for this week everyone. I won't have a blog post for 2-3 weeks as I am going away on holidays this Thursday. I hope that you are enjoying this series, please tell me any feedback you may have!
If you want to keep up to date with what I am doing, catch me at any of the following!
Twitter - https://twitter.com/LucodaSC2
Stream - http://www.twitch.tv/lucoda/
Email - lucodasc2@gmail.com
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Peter-Lucoda-Healy/303284209796416
<3
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Have you tried any of the WCS EU qualifiers? I'm kinda interested to see where you'd go with those stats
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I think it is in general good practice to set goals that are entirely in your control to achieve/fail. Such as "actively scout for timing attack X vs opening Q" or "use micro trick Y against rush of the kind Z", as opposed to "learn to beat build A" or "reach league B". You can do everything in your power, play the best of your life, but if your opponents are even better, you will not be able to get to league B or beat build A.
It is also a matter of spotting where you went wrong. If you set the goal of reaching GM and fail, then what? Play better? Not easy to understand what went wrong. But if you have a goal that is entirely up to you, it is usually much easier to spot what went wrong. You can look at the replays through your vision when you should have been scouting for build X but didn't, and you can usually figure out why you didn't, and how you can fix it.
It is probably a lot harder to define goals in that way, but I think it pays off in the long run. Anyway, just a suggestion, and GL with your hard training!!
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Have you tried any of the WCS EU qualifiers? I'm kinda interested to see where you'd go with those stats
I've missed the first few but I definitely plan on playing in the future ones. They are a really good oppurtunity to practice against the best.
I think it is in general good practice to set goals that are entirely in your control to achieve/fail. Such as "actively scout for timing attack X vs opening Q" or "use micro trick Y against rush of the kind Z", as opposed to "learn to beat build A" or "reach league B". You can do everything in your power, play the best of your life, but if your opponents are even better, you will not be able to get to league B or beat build A.
Great point, I completely agree with you. I do this type of goal setting on a daily basis in practice where I will say at the beginning of the day "I want to execute this roach timing 100% correctly ever game vs Terran" for example. These goals depend on just you pretty much as long as you get into the type of game where you can use said build. You are the only variable that matter in achieving this goal.
You're 100% correct about setting GM as a goal, that depends on my opponents as well as me. However, if I string a lot of these daily goals together, they end up becoming one goal which is one of these goals that depend on my opponent. I could list out each daily goal, but then I'd be doing a daily blog and I don't have the content for that yet!
These goals are just set out for me to see and for others to see. They're not necessarily what I am working towards. I am striving towards perfection each game by executing certain aspects of my play to a certain standard. Those are the real goals that really matter in becoming a better player or just going along your path of mastery.
I hope that clears it up a bit, but yea great point and I am glad someone brought it up.
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Northern Ireland25990 Posts
After your brief period out of love with the game, it's great to have you back Lucoda. Your approach is fundamentally solid to improving, with both short, medium and long-term goals all included in there.
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On July 06 2015 19:01 Lucoda wrote:Show nested quote +Have you tried any of the WCS EU qualifiers? I'm kinda interested to see where you'd go with those stats I've missed the first few but I definitely plan on playing in the future ones. They are a really good oppurtunity to practice against the best. Show nested quote +I think it is in general good practice to set goals that are entirely in your control to achieve/fail. Such as "actively scout for timing attack X vs opening Q" or "use micro trick Y against rush of the kind Z", as opposed to "learn to beat build A" or "reach league B". You can do everything in your power, play the best of your life, but if your opponents are even better, you will not be able to get to league B or beat build A. Great point, I completely agree with you. I do this type of goal setting on a daily basis in practice where I will say at the beginning of the day "I want to execute this roach timing 100% correctly ever game vs Terran" for example. These goals depend on just you pretty much as long as you get into the type of game where you can use said build. You are the only variable that matter in achieving this goal. You're 100% correct about setting GM as a goal, that depends on my opponents as well as me. However, if I string a lot of these daily goals together, they end up becoming one goal which is one of these goals that depend on my opponent. I could list out each daily goal, but then I'd be doing a daily blog and I don't have the content for that yet! These goals are just set out for me to see and for others to see. They're not necessarily what I am working towards. I am striving towards perfection each game by executing certain aspects of my play to a certain standard. Those are the real goals that really matter in becoming a better player or just going along your path of mastery. I hope that clears it up a bit, but yea great point and I am glad someone brought it up.
Ok, seems like we are on the same page. 
I guess that is an advantage of having practice partners, or being on a team? If you want to train to perfectly execute a roach timing, you can get a Terran practice partner and do it over and over, and you even do specific maps and against specific build, or even load from replay and re-execute the micro-part over and over without having to redo the easy (for you) parts of the build.
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On July 06 2015 10:54 Lucoda wrote:
...I have vetoed Dash and Terminal as well as Moonlight Madness. They seem a bit too crazy for me tbh and I feel that ZvZ on both of the maps is just 1 base ling bane bust every game. Terran on Dash is quite strong too.
Do you think this is because of the "newness" of the maps i.e. zergs defaulting to 1 base play? Will macro styles will become the norm as people get more comfortable defending?
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On July 07 2015 17:49 TojoSCO wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2015 10:54 Lucoda wrote:
...I have vetoed Dash and Terminal as well as Moonlight Madness. They seem a bit too crazy for me tbh and I feel that ZvZ on both of the maps is just 1 base ling bane bust every game. Terran on Dash is quite strong too.
Do you think this is because of the "newness" of the maps i.e. zergs defaulting to 1 base play? Will macro styles will become the norm as people get more comfortable defending?
Could be for sure, however on Moonlight, I don't see gasless play or any play involving skipping banelings a strong choice. With the all of the backrocks at your base it makes taking a third base really vulnerable to counterattacks from lings!
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EPT
