EPTLike I said in the above paragraph, I've met a lot of people on Battle.net who are looking to improve. The problem is that many are afraid to ladder, out of the fear of losing and having a "bad" record. I've always found this to be kind of silly, but the more time I spend getting to know different people, the more I see it coming up. I'm writing this with the hope that it will change the mentality that a lot of people have in regards to laddering.
The reason I find the "Ladder Fear Mentality" to be silly is that when everything is said and done, this is just a game. Don't get me wrong; I take this game and the scene very seriously, and many others do too, but in the grand scheme of things, losing on ladder doesn't mean anything. If anything, it should motivate you to play better and "fix" your rank/winrate, but we'll get to that later. There are several reasons I feel that ladder is very beneficial on the whole:
1) Ladder is a very efficient way to practice if you don't have a specific practice partner who can challenge you. Once you are comfortable with a matchup, the randomness of builds you see on ladder is very beneficial to becoming a more well-rounded player. While it's good to have a practice partner or two for each matchup who you can practice specific things against, it's important to keep in mind that each player has his own unique style and if you only practice against a few people, you won't be ready when it comes to adapting to different styles.
2) Your winrate doesn't mean anything. As cool as it is to have a 2:1 win:loss ratio in Master League, the important thing is that the matchmaking system is constantly finding people who are around your skill level for you to play. You're SUPPOSED to have a 50:50 win:loss ratio in most cases, and being roughly even in that regard is more than respectable. I'm sure a lot of people see Idra's record and say, "Well I lose more than he does and it looks bad, so I should practice in customs!" The problem with that is by joining a custom game randomly, you leave yourself open to getting smashed by someone much better than you (or crushing someone who you are much better than). This leads me to my next point...
3) Having an idea of your skill level in regards to the ladder system allows you to find practice partners around your skill level much more easily. When I wasn't playing a lot and went into channels like Reddit or TeamLiquid, I'd get people saying, "You have no games played this season, you're not Master level." That may have been true, but it's more likely that I didn't lose all my skill and turn atrociously bad after not playing for a few months to the point where I couldn't compete with a mid-range Masters player. Telling someone that I was top 750 Masters in Season 2 didn't mean anything to them, because the game is always changing and who knows if I kept up with the metagame? It's a valid thing to say, but on the other hand, if I had played at least a handful of games on the ladder, it would've been easier to say, "High Masters LF 1v1" and find an opponent relatively quickly.
4) Ladder is a really good way to meet new people who will force you to improve. Some of the best players I know are guys I have met on the ladder, and once you prove your worth to them in a game, most are happy to play you continuously in order for you both to improve. While someone may dodge a custom game in a chat channel, nobody can dodge once a ladder game has started without losing points (which nobody wants to do). Not everyone is fortunate enough to have the "hookups" to immediately start practicing with high-level players (and not all high-level players will dedicate time to helping lower-level ones), but if you work your way up the ladder, you're almost guaranteed to be introduced to new people and have exciting games.
5) None of the games you're playing on ladder can hurt you as long as you keep everything in perspective. Simply put, you're one of the 99.9% of people who isn't playing the GSL or another major tournament. You're not playing for a lot of money; you're playing because you enjoy the game and want to improve. Realistically, losing games on the ladder can only hurt you mentally, but if you remember that losing is actually the best way to learn and improve, there are literally no downsides to laddering.
I'm going to leave it at those five points, but I could ramble about this forever. There's a lot to be said about learning a build or a timing against someone you know will play you over and over, but it's a bad habit to get into if you log off once you can't get a game with that person. As I've said, the randomness of the ladder is a beautiful way to develop yourself as a well-rounded player, and there's no better way to improve than to play a lot of games and put yourself in different situations.
Hopefully if you're one of the unfortunate souls who has "Ladder Fear," my ramblings have helped to change your mind a little bit.
For anyone who's interested, here is the aforementioned stream/Youtube.
www.twitch.tv/furrychobo
www.youtube.com/furrysc2
FuRRyChoBo.283
