EPTBefore I start, I'm going to be giving myself a season ending goal of where I want to be, and I'll also be doing short term goals as well, maybe every week or so depending on my playtime.
Goal for End of Season: Platinum, world rank above 5,000
Goal for This Week: First in my gold division
Day 1
NOTE: I play Protoss
Starting Points: 0
Division Rank: N/A
Overall Record: N/A
NOTE: I play Protoss
Starting Points: 0
Division Rank: N/A
Overall Record: N/A
Had a pretty nice setup going. Table to my side with laptop, where I was inputting all of my data for my sc2 tracker, main monitor with sc2 and secondary with whatever else. Felt pretty comfortable, thought it would be a good day to start.
I want this to be as comprehensive as possible, I'd like to detail thoughts on games, how I'm feeling in general during that day/week, stress levels, all of it is progress in some form. With that said, it's also going to be a blog, so there will probably be some rambling (hell, the first two entries of what looks to be a series were originally planned to be in this post). I know other people may read this at some point too, so I hope you enjoy. Side notes will be in spoilers.
I played 15 matches on Day 1, feels important to say, so I wanted to bold it haha. I felt pretty good throughout my games, didn't get too anxious, but had a ridiculous adrenaline rush when in my second game someone tried cannon rushing me. I definitely feel like I had some good games, but also some places where I was really lacking. I didn't watch any replays after I got done playing because it was late. I watched them today and they'll be included in this post.
+ Show Spoiler +
Looking at my spreadsheet, the numbers came out rather good for day 1.
I'd like to go through these numbers as well to compare them later, I'm curious as to how the season progresses my style will change. I think the percentages you'll see here would help identify these style changes as well as some insight to my progression.
Daily Record: 9-6 [Not bad for first day of ladder, and playing in awhile]
Race MU: 6-2(P), 3-2(T), 0-2(Z)
Vs. Leagues: 1-0 (Silver), 7-1 (Gold), 1-5 (Plat)
Maps: 0-3 on Typhon Peaks, others 50/100%
I'm hoping to use this data, as well as the replay analysis of day 1 as a launching point for me. I don't want to be overly critical of myself, but I do want to try and dig to find the underlying issues in my play that need fixing. Right away I notice that my MU vs. Zerg looks bad. When I checked the data, turns out both those Zergs were platinum, so that doesn't bother me too much. What I like is that I only have 1 loss against opponents <= my league, which is promising. I felt like I was hovering close to platinum for awhile last season, hopefully I can break through earlier than expected. One thing I did notice was that 2/3 of my Typhon Peak were Terran opponents, and also my only 2 Terran losses. One of those was my single gold loss, the other plat. I think this points more toward my unfamiliarity of the map, so I think trying to improve my plan map specifically would benefit me at this point.
+ Show Spoiler +
At this point I'd also like to note that I haven't decided about customs for practice yet. I think it's a great idea, and maybe at some point I'll decide looking for practice partners to improve specific things will work. For now, I think I'm going to stick to strictly ladder, maybe tournaments, but I am trying to wing it just a little bit.
Going back and looking at my replays was really interesting. I only watched them, as I haven't played with sc2gears just yet aside from setting it all up. There were a couple main things I was trying to pay attention to for day 1, namely probe production, saturation, and APM.
- My probe production overall seemed pretty good, and where it was lacking seemed to make sense. Ironically enough, I tended to stop producing probes right around 30 where saturation would occur anyway.
- On the topic of saturation, at times was perfect, other times was piss poor. I saw right away I'm going to have to judge amount of probes to expo a lot better then I was. I know a good rule of thumb is half the probes, but I think you can run into problems if you wait too long to expand. It's something I definitely want to be conscious of until I can get it right.
- APM isn't something I'm not terribly concerned with, but it was something I really hadn't looked at before so I wanted to venture down the path a bit. My APM seems horribly low. In most cases I'm hovering under 30, but in more micro intensive situations I'm around 80-120. I seemed to peak at 150 during 1 game, but that was only for a tiny slice of time. Part of the reason I think my APM is so bad is my poor usage of hotkeys. Outside of having my army on 1 and 2, scout/obs on 3, and nexxi on 4, I don't really use other group hotkeys. I use most of the building hotkeys pretty well, but I'd be lying if I said I never clicked. I'd like to examine my hotkey setup at some point this week and see if I can tweak it to my liking, or just make the effort to use them and stop being lazy and slow.
I also took a look at the army sizes before and after major engagements. This was actually fairly useful in seeing how big a part upgrades can play, as well as where I could have been more or less aggressive. My army size was always pretty close with my opponents, except for a couple runaway losses I had to some plat players. I think my decision making as far as battles go is fairly good, and my control isn't awful, but could certainly improve (and hopefully it will).
Finally, I tried to notice some specific things that lost me games or were just good points to take away from the games I had. These were the things I noted:
- Keep chrono low
- Tower control
- Forward pylons
I think being mindful of these things will also help short term improvement, since they're fairly obvious ones.
Ending Points: 69
Division Rank: 12
Gold Region Rank: N/A (used wrong numbers)
Gold Global Rank: N/A (used wrong numbers)
Division Rank: 12
Gold Region Rank: N/A (used wrong numbers)
Gold Global Rank: N/A (used wrong numbers)
Previous: Tools Next: Day 2
