EPTI was a little more prepared for the NASSL, practicing a bit more, but got destroyed 0-2. Then I fully got the competitive urge to improve. So when BSL7 was announced, I was elated.
My main strategy is to be more deliberate about practice.
In the past, despite playing a lot, I never got past my plateau, being good at ZvT but scraping by at ZvP and sucking hard at ZvZ.
So I reached out and found Jaeyun. I've only had a few coaching sessions and it's already dramatically improved my ZvP.
I started taking ZvZ seriously.
I started watching ZerO's FPVOD lessons. Being Korean certainly gives me an advantage in being able to understand his videos. I actually learned a lot by watching him.
Initially, I struggled to get out of the 1800's on ladder. I would fall for gimmicky strategies left and right and the opponent skill levels were way higher than I expected for a given rank, as I complained about in my previous blog post.
I recently broke 2000. While I do think I've improved, I think I also benefitted from ladder luck swinging the other way, where I faced high ranked opponents that I found easy to beat.
I now have the dubious honor of having played the most ladder matches on any BSL7 account (at least according to the website). However, despite the mass gaming, I've never been this deliberate for each game before.
Some things I have learned:
- I have much better macro than before. I thought I had good macro before, but now that I'm actually playing ZvP correctly, I am macroing from 9 hatcheries and droning up much more appropriately.
- I still have shitty macro. Now that I actually play ZvP correctly, sometimes I float 2k minerals and gas on 9 hatcheries while being maxed out at 200/200, being unsure what to do with my army.
- I step back often to try to make the best decision instead of making a fast one. This process kills me sometimes because I'm impatient and I'd rather do something, but I realized that good decision making trumps micro. Watching ZerO purposely play with 100 APM and still hit S tier really convinced me of this.
- Sometimes I get "in the zone", where I feel like I'm actually playing as the opponent against myself. In this zone, I think more about what he's building and what his next steps are than my own, and naturally, I build things in response to what he's doing. It almost feels surreal as I step out of this zone and the future plays out exactly as I predict.
- Asking for help from others is crucial. I believe that the reason anyone hits a plateau is that they don't know what they don't know. Someone else's observations may question your assumptions that you didn't even know you were making. For example, Jaeyun told me once that I was building too many hydras in ZvP and I should be droning instead. It seems obvious now, but in game, I just built hydras out of habit without realizing I was making too many. The 9 drones or so that I gave up would be crucial in setting up for late game.
- My prioritization in game is much different from before. I used to be single-mindedly focused on my own build and micro. Now, I try to look for signs that give hints to the picture the opponent is trying to paint, and try to respond to it.
- Worker spread across bases is very important; you never want to oversaturate a base while another base is undersaturated.
- Simcity against Protoss is very important. [Evo chamber, hydra den] to the [right, bottom] of a [evo chamber, hydra den, hatchery] is Zealot tight, even diagonally.
- I've learned a lot of small details about the game that I didn't realize before. Some are not that impactful to the game:
- When a unit is moving, pressing stop and then burrow makes units start the burrow faster than just pressing burrow. Useful mainly for Lurkers, for which it saves maybe 0.25 seconds. As a result, I'm changing my burrow hotkey to "d" so I can just do "sd". Learned by watching ZerO's videos.
- You can stack lurkers easily by using patrol clicking on a burrowed Lurker. Learned by watching firebathero's videos.
- Manually attack clicking a unit grants you longer range than A-moving the ground. This is most noticeable when chasing a probe. When you're right behind the probe, attack clicking it directly will make the zergling hit it, but A-moving will just make it pause and have the probe move out of range. Downside is that it needs micro and there's also a possibility that the zergling gets "stuck". You have to press stop on the unit in order to unstuck the unit. Learned by watching ZerO's videos.
- The energy upgrade grants units higher starting energy (62.5 instead of 50). Zerg units get the higher starting energy as long as the energy upgrade finishes before the unit hatches. For other races, the energy upgrade must have finished before the unit production is even started. Zerg OP. Learned by reading an AttackZerg post here on TL.
- When Lair or Hive upgrade finishes, a new larva pops out immediately regardless of previous larvae. Learned by reading a LaStScan post here on TL.
- When a unit is moving, pressing stop and then burrow makes units start the burrow faster than just pressing burrow. Useful mainly for Lurkers, for which it saves maybe 0.25 seconds. As a result, I'm changing my burrow hotkey to "d" so I can just do "sd". Learned by watching ZerO's videos.
maybe ill see u in proleague
