EPTWithin the past two weeks my apm rose another 10 or so to 105 as Protoss (my main race). So I decided to dive into Iccup partly due to TSL and see how I fared.
I went 1-7 the first 8 games. I did win my second game, but it was pretty atrocious. Two things became clear: players are quite a bit smarter than on bnet, and my PvP is atrocious.
First game- a loss in a game I should have won. The guy was zerg and straight teched to hive. I killed his third expo but he sent a ton of lings and ultras to my natural and mauled me because I made too many goons. He pressured me a lot with lings early so I couldn't really scout, and I figured he was going hydra. He only had 68 apm.
Eventually I started winning and I'm currently 14-19, with most of the wins coming in my past 10 games or so. I still suck atrociously at PvP (I've probably played all of five PvP's against my friend since we random, and we've gotten maybe 5 mirrors in 200 games). I either die to zealot rushes rather quickly (after losing to the guy with 68 apm, I lost to a Protoss with 62 apm... how does someone with few actions beat me with a zealot rush? >.< ) or I'm too conservative and I get rolled by dragoons. In the event I survive that far the guy has probably suicided all his troops to kill my cannons so his dts can rape me. My observers never, ever pop in time to deal with dts (hence why I started going cannons). I honestly cannot figure this matchup out, and I thought I had a decent grasp of it (although I know in practice it has always been my weak point).
My PvT is quite a bit better, but I still struggle to scrap together a win. Terrans seems to be much more aggressive and though I can usually secure a third expansion, its later than I'm used to, and I never seem to be able to have the resources to devote to arbiters. What used to be 200 apm Terrans without a clue on bnet are now Terrans quite capable of rolling me if I'm not constantly on my guard. I can smash FD's and pressure pretty well now, but occasionally I botch my timing a bit (usually on the attack).
PvZ I'm quite a bit better at than most mediocre Protoss. I feel like I have to fast expand though, and I never did that on bnet. On the plus side, I never ever seemed to win fast expanding on bnet and I've gotten more than a few wins out of it now. One of my recent losses in the matchup was to a bunch of lings slipping past my cannon/partial wall-in on Katrina thus screwing my expansion. The other was to pure muta that I tried to scout but couldn't, and by the time I did it was too late. There were some suspicious moves by the guy, but it didn't register at the time.
My solution to PvP has been to play ZvP instead. ZvP is probably by far my best matchup, so it doesn't make much sense not to play it when my PvP is so terrible. My apm is on average 20 higher playing as zerg (and I hit a high of 141 for an entire game tonight), and my hydra micro is such that I can beat most D level players easily by just going pure hydra. My only loss in this matchup was to someone who zealot rushed me and sealed my choke off before I had any lings to harass his zealots.
The one thing that's struck me as quite different is everyone has a much better sense of timing and tends to exert much more pressure than any bnet players I've ever encountered. I'm always super jittery for matchs, but I think it's helped me keep my apm up. Occasionally it has interfered enough to hinder my macro, but hopefully with time that will go away. At any rate, I'm well on my way to D+.
And here's my profile if anyone wants to look.
http://www.iccup.com/iccscprofile/294473/
