EPTHello friend of Starcraft. We all know that Starcraft is easy to learn but incredibly hard to master. There are some good guides out there that aim at answering that burning question of “how the heck do I get better at this game?” This is blog is not really a structured guide to self-improving; instead it is a thought process primarily for myself with stuff that helped me to improve and to reflect on the things that I still horribly suck at. In a way, it is a piece of starcraft therapy for myself. Because after all these years, there is still so little I can do mentally, physically or sometimes even emotionally at this game. And that mix is precisely why Starcraft creates such a fascination - apart from all its recurring feeling of frustration.
A bit of history
I always played Starcraft, starting playing a bit on ICCUP (never made it higher than C-) and then of course got into SC2 as soon as it came out. In fact, I blocked the first day SC2 came out, locked myself into a room with a freshly ordered pizza and stayed up all night to play the campaign. Yes, that might be immature, but at the age of 24 you are old enough to play video games all night, right? Besides, we all know that you probably did the same.
Interestingly, I never thought about improving until last year. I just played some sc2 ladder, first as Zerg during Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm - my heart was literally beating for that devilish yet awesome character of Kerrigan. Time passed, I lost passion playing 1v1 and at some point the Archon mode came into play. I became obsessed with playing Archon mode with a good friend of mine and decided it’s easier for me to switch to Protoss than him learning Zerg. That was maybe 2-3 years ago. Eventually, we made it into Archon GM (which is nowhere near as competitive and not really as much of an achievement) and I felt awesome! I suddenly knew how awesome it must feel if you get that fancy GM promotion for the first time. My 1v1 rating at that time was far from that fanciness: Diamond 1. Literally 4 promotions away from GM.
Worse that that: I had no clue on how to get there, no clue on how bad I actually am/was at that game. The thing is, I was never that person that just clicked “ranked” and played a bunch. It would literally be a feeling of disgust to ladder. Because I knew I was bad, I would be mad at how bad I played and honesty, also blame the other two races for supposedly being much easier. Yes, we all think that sometimes, but it has no merit.
About a year ago, a lot changed. I started streaming my games and for the first time, I got in touch with like minded people willing to support, give tipps, make practice games and share the love and passion for sc2. I never had good players in friendslist, because I only played the occasional ladder games, Archon games and my friends from school and university, who - sorry to say are mid silver and platinum at best. The people I met are kind, friendly souls who actually take the time to tune in and give tips. I found amazing practice partners who I wish I could see in real life to buy them a beer as appreciation, but that won’t happen. Well, events like Home Story Cup provide a chance, but it’s a nightmare to get from Munich to Krefeld. Anyway, back to the topic.
About a year ago was also the first time that I really started watching pro-streams. I did follow major events but rather for the entertainment value than for improving and learning. It was also the first time that I asked “nooby” questions to streamers like “hey, do you always go charge after the two forge upgrades in PvT?” and the streamer would happily answer and provide his reasoning behind it. It was awesome and for the first time I felt like I was learning. I was not just clicking buttons in a game mindlessly and hope for the best. I realized that good people actually did things on purpose - imagine that!
Starting around August last year (2018), I decided I wanted to improve at SC2 while also streaming my games to not feel so alone during the progress and during the ladder. I feel like I got obsessed with improving and wanted to find the best ways to really get better.
Since it is almost 1 year, I thought it is a good time to check what I learned, what has helped me get better at sc2 and what I think I should be doing next.
Not having a build order is bad, hmkay?
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It has actually taken me one year to really understand the value and the benefit of following a build order precisely. I used to follow a broad idea like “get 3 bases, colossus and roll over the terran” and it worked in lower leagues really well. Only after some really great coaching session (more on that further below) a few month back, I got obsessed with nailing the builds perfectly and practicing it 40min as warm up each day. There are plenty of places to find build orders, at TL, reddit (protoss build of the week by awesome Gemini), or just on spawning tool. Youtube is full of guides from BeastyQT, Harstem has videos and some nice content by Zuka, a french protoss with some weird but fun builds. However, don’t make the mistakes I did. Don’t look at it and freestyle them on the ladder. You will forget units, you will delay expansions and upgrades etc.
Quick story time: The first real PvZ build order I “learned” was the oracle opening, archon drop, 3 base type of build. Guess what, when I still played Archon mode, my oracle was a minute late, my archon drop was a minute late and at the 7 min mark, I was missing 10 probes. Oh, and I also regularly lost vs all baneling busts, never scouted with my first adept and would always - ALWAYS lose either both archons or the warp prism. Yet, I though I am doing the build right. Either you practice the build until you can do it in your sleep and don’t even think about “what’s next” ONCE, you are nowhere ready with the build.
Look at replays
Losing is so much fun isn’t it? Losing to 3 proxy raxx reapers makes you giggle? 6 lings from an unscouted 12 pool brings you joy, as your only pylon blows up and unpowers your zealot which is now trapped in some empty void between 2 worlds? Do you really look at those games? Do you want to re-live those great feelings again? Probably not. Humans rationalize losses and blame others for their losses. Which almost always is counter productive to self-improving. You rationalize and say things like “if I had scouted it, no problem. I would hold that”. Well, you didn’t. You blame the other guy or girl for the loss “he can only play cheese, what a dumbass”. Well, scout it, learn how to react and get your free win is the right attitude. It is hard to look at the mistakes you made and sometimes you are really clueless why you lost. But at least look at all the replays and see what you can do better, instead of just cueing the next game. In Starcraft it feels like there are 100 openings that an opponent can do and you just feel lost in the many possibilities in which you might react. But the more you analyze the games, the more you realize that it is really only 3-4 variations that are necessary for your build order depending on the early game. But those required variations come through experience and through analyzing losses and testing alternative reactions to the build you encountered.
-> in EVERY game you play, you make at least 10 mistakes. Which ones cost you the game?
-> in EVERY game you play, your opponent makes at least 10 mistakes. How could you have come back to the game?
You don’t want to be that guy just laddering mindlessly:
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Document everything
If you are obsessed with getting better and you are a fairly structured person, document EVERYTHING. I created a personal “SC2-Master” Document for each of the three matchups.
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I know, it is partly English/German, but you get the idea: Each game is documented and I check 7 categories each game: Scouting, unit control, harassment, decision making, late game switch and some others. You can make your own categories depending on your common mistakes. What ended up happening, is you see trends and you document good responses that work in a certain situation. I also identify that I always throw away my arme vs zerg ALOT. And I never scout the hive timing. Great, now I can integrate those new information into my improvement plan. From now on, I always want to send a hallucination around 10 min into the Zerg base to see if he goes up to Hive. Problem solved. I also mentioned the strict adherence to the build order, which is why I copied the timings from Harstem’s archon drop into my document. That way, I will always check for 2 timings in all my game: Is the archon drop finished around 5:30 and do I have more than 60 probes, 3 immortals, 2 archons, charge and +1 and 6 sentries done at around 7:30. If not, I take notes and practice more.
--> What are the three common issues you keep seing in your games?
Some improvements on mechanics
Over the one year I tried to move away from the one control group syndrome, where I just have all units in one control group. It took deliberate practice vs the AI to always have 3 control groups (main army, templars, warp prism) consistently in all matchups. But it really helped. I recently started to use location hotkeys a bit more, but still very inconsequential. There are even some early uses of the steal hotkey, which I never thought I could really use and apply, but there you go! You don’t start changing 4 things at a time. I started with 3 control groups fist, vs the AI, then after that worked well, started using the location keys. And only recently experimented with the steal command.
All these things actually got me into Master 2, which I know is not much, but I am really proud, considering that one year ago I was Diamond 1 and completely clueless. My next target is Master 1 with the help of some of my favorite streamers
Just as a treat for my 1 year “anniversary of learning and improving,'' I decided to treat myself with some sessions with Gemini and DisK, who I both really love watching and from who I learned A LOT. (In the future I also want to get some input from Harstem and Neuro, because I love those guys as well).
Thoughts on coaching
“All coaching is, is taking a player where he can't take himself.”
What is coaching
Most of us have a general understanding of what coaching is, but still, a nice definition never hurt anyone: According to Wikipedia “Coaching is a form of development in which a person called a coach supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance.” According to this, you could say that coaching consists of three elements
- Supports the development of someone
- To reach a goal
- Through guidance and training
Coaching is supporting the development. It’s not like you have one coaching session - be it at your workplace with a leadership coach, or presentation skill coach, or any other coach - and you suddenly improve greatly. A coach supports you along the long way and gives little pieces of information to think about, information YOU have to think about. The coach won’t play the ladder for you. After all, developing your skills is a journey and there are always 100 things that you could improve in Starcraft. A coach helps identifying weaknesses and personal traits you might be having. Some are simple like “why don’t you use two control groups for your army?”, some are more challenging “you need to react faster to widow mine drops and work on your mini map awareness”.
Usually, for most coaching sessions you send a few replays along with your thoughts and some information of why you want the coaching (e.g. what do you want to work on -> setting your goal). During the coaching session you talk to your coach via Discord and you go through the replay to see your weaknesses and misjudgements you made in that game. If you want, you can also get example replays of how your build order should look like if a top GM does your build
Depending on your coach, you might get a summary after the training with potential improvements and general feedback on your gameplay. What did I learn
Most of the times people think it’s just about smoothing the build, but it is actually much more and the value you gain covers several topics.
Know your blind spots and subconscious mistakes
Learn your blind spots: You don’t know what you don’t know. You are blind to your mistakes, until someone forces you to look at it. In my case, In PvT I constantly would build nexus and core at 21. That meant that a reaper will always get 3-4 kills, disrupt my build and just make me hate the matchup. I never ever looked at that and would have never tackled it. Now with a 20 core and 20 nexus, my life is awesome, relaxed and reapers don’t bug me - DONE. Moral of the story: You develop routines and subconsciously build the stuff you always do, follow the same patterns you always have and no amount of games will make you change your view. Until some really tears apart your play. There are even more blindspots that were identified, such as not having a warp prism when I push out, or missing out sentries to use guardian shield, the double forges being 1minute late. It didn’t feel nice to see all those things pointed out, but once you are aware of it, you can fix it and honesty, the next PvTs never felt that easy in my life.
It forces you to think at least a little bit about WHY you want coaching, what your Sc2 goal is
For me, it made me think “why do I actually want to get someone? What is my goal, do I even have a goal in sc2?” The very first goals I had when I started the coaching series was to “get better at this specific matchup”. I did have some dreams of raising the MMR to 5k, but it was not a priority. I just didn’t want to be so clueless in each of the matchups. And for that specific purpose, coaching does make a lot of sense. If my goal was just about the MMR, I could learn Harstem’s Margery or learn other All-Ins. And for that, there are enough resources, videos and guides out there. But if you want to learn WHY a build makes sense, where you need to adept and how to react to different scenarios, you need to play A LOT of games, be genius or get a Coach. If you want your macro and multitasking skills to the level of the likes of Rotti, Neeb and ShoWTime, you better have a damn good coach and practice the right things at the right time.
Do you REALLY have clear goals in general and for each of the three matchups? Do you?
Saves a lot of time
Let’s face it, most of us have a job and cannot dedicate 8+ hrs to Starcraft. If you can shorten time and focus on the “right” response instead of playing 100 games to figure it out by yourself makes sense to me. I see it as a smart shortcut to identify the right response vs a specific build. Almost like a neural nydus into the mind of the coach to see what the “best” response to any given scenario is. This was quite useful for builds I really had trouble responding to, such as 2 base, 3 rax. Even if those weird builds just pop up 10% of your games, why not learn to win against those 10%?
There is literally no one better on the planet to support your development
Most people you practice with, e.g. your practice buddies who are a bit above your MMR DO help you; but their understanding of the game and the build orders are obviously nowhere near a 6k protoss playing professionally or semi-professionally. Improving without a good coach is like being blessed by Twitch chat GMs that try to sell you their ideas of what could have been better - whereas a top GM protoss really knows whats up. It feels a bit like you could ask someone to teach you how to cook compared to having a 1:1 with Gordon Ramsey.
Boosts your confidence and Ego
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It helps mentally in your weakest matchup. Right now PvT is a bit below 50% win rate, but I feel like it is my strongest. Mainly because I dedicated a bunch of time practicing and getting the build order right. So in my mind, I know that I trained with a coach, that my build has improved and my overall understanding of the matchup increased. The winrate may not indicate it, but my brain is telling me “you mastered this matchup, beat the crap out of this terran”. And that mindset can actually help a lot laddering; starcraft after all is much about a good mindset and believing in your improvements.
It really boosts your piece of mind if someone like Disk says: “quite good game actually”; Yes okay, there is a motivational element in there, and you probably don’t like a coach that says “you suck, your build is bad”, but still, a few nice words from a Top GM can go a long way in some low level Master Protoss
Also, if someone tells you that the build order is not the problem you are losing, it helps. Because you are not questioning the very basics you are doing. Instead you can focus on improving the execution and the army movement. Let’s be honest, how many of us have tried the archon drop opening, lost to roaches and just moved on to the next build order that works better instead of tryharding to execute the build brilliantly?
So what’s the next step?
Well, I need to work on my ladder issues. My plan was to ladder today, guess what: I wrote a 7 page blog post instead; my brain wants to learn and ladder but my heart just hates losing and laddering. It is a never ending story. I know I improved, I know ladder points don’t mean shit, but still, I don’t ladder. I tried the two account method to always have a highest MMR account, and ladder with the other one - didn’t work. The maximum I achieved ladder games wise is around 350 a season. That was the peak, not the average. More realistically speaking, I average around 200 games a season, that’s only about 66 games per matchup per season, so not really what I need to increase my ranking.
I accept that I will never have the time to ladder 4hrs a day and that I will never mass ladder games either. It is okay. But why can’t I just squeeze in a few more extra ladder games?
Is it about the ladder games though? Is the value from those few extra games really making a difference? Thinking about it, probably not. I am fairly sure it is more important to focus on the execution of the builds more. As I said in the beginning, there are so many instances where I still fail to hit the timing, do dumb unit control and lose the game.
To come back to the very beginning of the blog: Isn’t that why we love Starcraft? Because there is no simple “fix” to get better at SC2? Because it needs you to improve in all aspects, mechanics, mentally, emotionally and so on. There are shortcuts like coaching, but that’s just like a bottle of water someone gives you while running a half marathon.
For me, I think the way forward is to continue the following training regiment:
- Each session starts with 30min of build order practice PvZ (for the archon drop until 7:30 that’s 4 games practicing vs the AI)
- Each session continues with 20min of build order practice PvP (for the proxy robo thats until the 5 min mark, that’s 4 games practicing vs. the AI)
- Play 3-4 practice games vs a Master 1 or GM Zerg or Protoss
- Pause, relax, grab some tee <- Give your brain a rest and come down
- Ladder 1 hour (around 4-5 games)
- That should be a total of about 3hrs practice time
- Check replays of all games, another 20 min
Q&A: Why don’t you just ladder and save the money by getting free coaches?
Well, I hate laddering, I want to improve in the most efficient time and learn the maximum amount possible; laddering is a cheese festival and does not really yield the highest learnings for me. As for the money, it is always better to pay guys like Harstem, Gemini or Disk than getting that fancy iPhone - just my personal view. Guess it’s about prioritization
You could probably get some free coaching from some TL posts. If you are not in Diamond or Masters, I don’t think you need a Top GM as a coach to improve. I never tried free coaching, the only thing I do is play with Masters/GM players to practice, but they don’t really go into as much detail as a coach would do. There are so many other things you might want to work on, a lot of basic stuff where any coach in a much higher league can help. Also, don’t forget that a coach is not necessarily “just” someone good in sc2. Someone who helps you define your Sc2 goals, get you in a good mindset and sometimes just keeps you motivated can be of value as well. Hell, it might even be a Zerg
Think about Neuro and his analytical stream and attitude towards improving. He might not coach you, but you can learn a lot by watching his content and incorporate the thinking for your development. Coaching is just one way to improve. If you are passionate about improving, there is more than “just” coaching as far as inspiration and mental input goes.*** I love Starcraft, I love improving, but man it is a looong way***
