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My Journey from Diamond to Masters, 2

Blogs > CTangent
Post a Reply
CTangent
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States125 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-24 02:42:06
February 24 2012 02:40 GMT
#1
Hey again TeamLiquid. It's been a day since I resolved to get into masters, and I've laddered a fair amount today and lost most of my games, as usual.

The important thing is that I tried as best I could to figure out why I lost my games. Some of them were obvious; for one, I missed a hidden expansion on Cloud Kingdom and got outmacroed in a 30 minute long game. In another, I met a protoss in a 200/200 battle and lost 110 supply vs their 25.

Game 1: Pylon (P) vs CTangent (T)
+ Show Spoiler +
Replay

Map is Cloud Kingdom, I spawn at the top and Pylon spawns at the bottom.

Mistakes
I was under gentle pressure at the start of this game which revealed a lot of mistakes in my build.

1. My Orbital Command is idle for 15 seconds, 3:50-4:05. That could have been another SCV.
2. My barracks are slightly late.
3. Marine production stops for ~10 seconds around 4:50.
4. I cut it a little too close on my bunker. I should have started it earlier.
5. My tech lab and barracks are idle for 20 seconds, delaying my stim
6. I should have put down my factory at 7:05, when I had 100 gas.
7. I get horribly supply blocked for 40 seconds.
8. At this point I have no idea what my opponent is doing, although I saw a nexus.
9. I should have put down my engineering bay earlier.

At 10 minutes, my supply is at 72/86. When I do this same build correctly, I should be around 95 supply.

I managed to execute my build with no mistakes until 3:50.

Taking a cursory glance at the rest of the game (since I am trying to nail down the start of the game first),

1. I begin to poke around at 11 minutes. My goal is to never have my army just idly sitting in my base after this point.
2. I should have taken my third way earlier.
3. Against DTs, I need to make supply depot walls or have units sitting near my turrets so that DTs can’t get though.
4. My army is sitting at home, doing nothing. I need to fix this
5. I need to take my 5th and 6th gases as soon as I can to support ghost production. I also need to build more raxes, I am floating way too much money.
6. I won this game more due to my opponent making huge mistakes. My macro was messy and my engagement was not very good.
7. I need to consistently upgrade my units, especially in this matchup.
8. At the end of the game I should have been on my 5th base already. I was only just about to take my 4th.

I played pretty badly this game, and I have a lot to work on. Looking at this game in detail makes me realize how daunting of a task it will be to take my game to the next level, but I remain determined.


Looking at my build execution in comparison to my benchmark,

1. My CC was 10 seconds late.
2. My bunker was a minute late.
3. Stim was 20 seconds late.
4. My factory was a minute late.
5. My engineering bay was 2 minutes (!) late
6. +1 weapons also was 2 minutes late (!!)

In my benchmark, I am at 94/102 supply at 10 minutes. In this game, I am around 76/82 supply.


Game 2: Toga (P) vs CTangent (T)
+ Show Spoiler +
Replay

I was very frustrated by this game.

Mistakes

1. I get 4 gated this game and I miss my factory timing by a mile. I also miss my engineering bay timing. My macro faltered hugely under pressure.
2. At 10 minutes I am less than 50 supply. This is pathetic but it's also due to the fact that I was under pressure.
3. At 11, I should have gone and killed my opponent. If I had kept up on my macro, my medivacs would be out in time to punish the 4 gate.

I was able to execute my build without mistakes until about 6 minutes, when I got 4 gated. My build went to shit after that.

My mistakes were so huge that I might as well not continue. While under pressure, my macro failed, and it ended up costing me the game.

I don't know where I went wrong in the rest of the game. At times I was up 50 supply and yet I couldn't take the protoss army. I was 3/3 in the final engagement and got utterly rolled. I lost 110 supply to the Protoss's 25. I guess I should have gotten ghosts earlier, but I simply didn't have enough supply... T_T. Any feedback on this replay would be much appreciated!!


I just played Game 2 an hour or so ago, and it represents so much about what frustrates me about my understanding of TvP. I feel like I approaching it in completely the wrong way! I felt like I had an advantage going into the midgame, but my opponent seemed to catch up instantly! I feel like I should have gone and killed him earlier, when I had 15 marines.


***
The_Templar
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
your Country52798 Posts
February 24 2012 02:52 GMT
#2
Im no mod, but shouldn't you have all this in 1 blog?
ModeratorI am still alive, somehow
TL+ Member
CTangent
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States125 Posts
February 24 2012 02:58 GMT
#3
On February 24 2012 11:52 TehTemplar wrote:
Im no mod, but shouldn't you have all this in 1 blog?


I've never done blogs before, but why would there be a new blog post button if we weren't supposed to do this?

I can copy it into the original one if that's what I'm supposed to do.
DystopiaX
Profile Joined October 2010
United States16236 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-02-24 03:00:20
February 24 2012 02:59 GMT
#4
Well usually they're spaced out more, not one right after another like posts in a thread.
Don't know if it's explicitly against the rules though.

edit- nvm that's a day, not an hour after. People do daily blogs all the time, don't see why not.
phiinix
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1169 Posts
February 24 2012 03:15 GMT
#5
I watched the second game because it seems like you thought you should have won that. Your fundamentals are still not up to par imo. On that note, I find missing macro because "he pressured me" is a legitimate way of saying you didn't play well hence you probably should have lost that game. You had 900 gas at 12:00, and decided to get your 3rd gas. you floated 1200 minerals at 15min. All of these plus the the late factory though, you should have roflstomped that game.

I believe that they key to playing in masters and higher relies much more on strategical play rather than mechanics. At this point you should either intuitively know you lost a game because of macro, or you should be looking at the strategy element.

I'm not going to tell you why you lost. But I'll say that even with your macro mishaps in the early game, you could have won. It wasn't about your build going to shit. You should have won before 20:00

Think strategically: You open with early econ, making yourself a little weak to army based builds. Your opponent opens an army based build, and throws econ out the window. You hold off the army attack, so now you are both even in army, and you're ahead in econ. What should you do?



CTangent
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States125 Posts
February 24 2012 03:50 GMT
#6
On February 24 2012 12:15 phiinix wrote:
Your fundamentals are still not up to par imo


Totally agree with you there. I have a long way to go and I want to get these fundamentals down as best I can. I'm not quite sure how to do that but I'm hoping to approach it by drilling and focusing on specific fundamentals, getting one down cold, and moving on to another one while striving to keep the first one correct.

I started floating gas because my factory and engineering bay were so incredibly late. It just slipped my mind while trying to hold my natural.

I'm not going to tell you why you lost. But I'll say that even with your macro mishaps in the early game, you could have won. It wasn't about your build going to shit. You should have won before 20:00

Think strategically: You open with early econ, making yourself a little weak to army based builds. Your opponent opens an army based build, and throws econ out the window. You hold off the army attack, so now you are both even in army, and you're ahead in econ. What should you do?


Thinking strategically, my initial guess (and what I attempted to do this game) was to macro for a little while longer (cash in on my econ lead) and try to kill my opponent within the next 4-5 minutes.

When I envision econ and army leads, it's like each of us have a bucket of water. The water that is currently in the bucket represents our armies. Each player's economy can be thought of as a hose refilling the bucket of water. If we are equal in army and I have an econ advantage, my bucket will begin to fill up faster than my opponent. The logical thing to do from there is to attempt to force even trades with my opponent; my bucket will fill up at a faster rate, giving me more and more water until I simply overwhelm my opponent with my superior numbers.

The trick that I worry about, though, is trading evenly. I attempted to do a marine/medivac +1 timing attack, but it got completely and utterly shut down. I did little to no damage and obliterated my army. In my experience, my timing attack kinda sucks and maybe isn't something that I should strive to do off of my 1 rax FE... since mass marine just doesn't scale as well as I'd hope it to vs protoss.

I can envision two main alternatives to my followup to a 4 gate: attack now (which doesn't make any sense because we are still even on army) or play defensive and take a third base (which allows my opponent to play extremely greedy and catch up in the econ game). I feel like both of those aren't good strategic responses in that position.

I can hazard a guess as to what I should have done to end the game, and what you are hinting at; throughout the game I needed to keep the pressure on at all times; I should have traded as best as I could, as EVENLY as I could, until my economic advantage simply overpowered my opponent. Towards the end of this particular game, I was afraid to commit to any attack because I wasn't sure if I would be able to trade evenly if I were to engage. At the final engagement, it's obvious that I was past the point of trading evenly, and I believe it's accurate to say the game was over and I lost way before the last engagement finally happened.

Is that what you had in mind?


ArcticFox
Profile Joined February 2011
United States1092 Posts
February 24 2012 04:24 GMT
#7
High masters Terran here, and I'll just kinda stream-of-consciousness while watching this game (watching your game vs. Toga)

Losing your scouting SCV is bad news bears, especially for no good reason, but while you were there you saw something very important -- max chrono boost saved up. When you see someone not chronoing out probes, you're about to be attacked. It was lucky you were prepared for it, but be careful with that scout and be sure before it happens. At the very least, you need to be sending in your SCV around the 5:30-6:00 mark to see if he's expanded, and if not you need to be throwing down extra bunkers.

*Small note here -- getting all your add-ons that quickly is super dangerous. It worked out, but it's ok to have 2 naked rax and a tech lab rax for the research (personally I've been playing with a 4rax opener, and it's been working out really well vs. all these aggressive toss openings), then you'll have more units out when the timing hits.

Macroing while being attacked is hard. It's actually THE hardest thing I've found in my experience. Everything in SC2 comes down to your multi-tasking vs his. Can you keep building SCVs? Can you keep building units? Can you keep from getting supply blocked? Nothing more than experience will make you start checking these things *constantly* while in battle.

When you go in for your first attack, you're up 20 supply. Then you get FF'd and killed. Don't rely on your opponent making mistakes (missing FFs) to win you a game -- people will make that mistake less and less as you go up. You overextended and got punished. That's one problem, and the other one is this -- you attack, you lose everything, *then* combat shields finishes. I know you felt like you had to attack before colossi came out (note -- you didn't. Taking a 3rd and starting double ups and a 2nd Starport with your huge econ lead is the smarter play), but if you're going to do an attack, at least wait for your critical upgrades to finish before going in. It makes a world of difference.

Fundamental TvP -- when you see a protoss commit to going colossi, get a 2nd starport. You need to be able to keep Medivac production up while also getting vikings to handle the colossi. You want roughly 3 vikings per colossus he has. 14 is also a magic number to keep in mind -- at 14 vikings with equal upgrades, you can 1-shot a colossus. I can see you want to push in on his 3rd, but you can't b/c of the colossi, because you don't have enough vikings, because you can't produce out of your starport fast enough (or at the time I'm looking at, not at all) -- something to keep in mind.

Also, even if he's going colossus, just throw down a Ghost Academy anyway around the 13-15 minute mark. It will save you a headache if you need to tech switch instantly as well, plus a handful of EMPs are still useful even if he doesn't go Templar tech.

Yea I won't pick on your macro problems -- you know you have them, and they only get better with repetition. Over and over and over, getting used to doing multiple things at a time. But the final fight at the end was just straight up a composition loss -- you have a LOT of core units (marines/marauders), but only 3 medivacs, and more importanly, 8 vikings (you own 12, but 4 are not at the fight) to try to handle 6 colossi. That's 16 supply of vikings to handle 36 supply of bio-melting lasers. It's not going to end well.

Of course, any one of these things being different could have led to winning the game, but if I had to choose something for you to focus on, it would be your macro while engaging -- keep building supply, keep building units, make sure you're still teching, etc. Also for TvP specifically, be more aggressive with your scouting -- make sure you know if he's expanding. When your initial SCV gets there, look at his chrono. Is it mostly used? Is he chronoing the nexus or saving it for something? Get that scouting SCV out of his base at 4:00 and hide it somewhere to re-check for his expansion around 5:30-6:00. If he's not expanded by 6:00, start entrenching yourself. Once it gets to the midgame, figure out if he's going colo tech, or templar tech, or hitting a gateway timing (usually with double forge). Poke, poke, poke, so that you're not surprised by anything. If he's trying to take a stupidly fast 3rd, or trying to get too tech greedy (like....getting double forge + colo + twilight upgrades all at once), you can punish him with a timing attack, but if he's playing safe just take a 3rd yourself and start getting double ups and scout which tech path he's going so you know how to punish it.

TvP only feels coin-flippy or impossible with improper scouting. As your multi-tasking improves, your macro *and* your scouting will get better. Just keep plugging away and you'll get it figured out. TvP is also my hardest matchup right now, but it's not impossible. Just damn difficult because all the onus is on the Terran to have the perfect composition to counter what the Protoss is building. When done well, Terran looks invincible. When done poorly, it looks like we have no chance to kill a Protoss no matter what. And I've been on both sides of that. Today alone. XD

Anyway, I rambled a lot, but I hope I gave you some things to think about. Good luck and keep plugging away!
CTangent
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States125 Posts
February 24 2012 04:56 GMT
#8
On February 24 2012 13:24 ArcticFox wrote:
lots of awesome stuff


Thank you so much for this post! You gave a lot of great advice that I didn't know and I'll be sure to try to incorporate it into my play. Especially the bit about the double starport; I've heard different people say various things about whether or not I should go double starport, but you're the first person to give a really good reason to do it. I'll definitely be doing that in my future games!

You're right, though, a lot of things that I need to get better at just come with practice. I think that, once I get some free time (away from schoolwork, haha) I am just going to ladder solidly and drill my fundamentals.

Thank you!
phiinix
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1169 Posts
February 24 2012 05:27 GMT
#9
Yea, you basically gave up your lead. In you also think about that marine/medivac timing, imo it looks extremely weak to a player who micros well with sentry ff and stalkers... Were you suppose to actually kill him with that? What is it suppose to accomplish?
worked13
Profile Joined September 2010
Australia93 Posts
February 24 2012 05:35 GMT
#10
On February 24 2012 12:15 phiinix wrote:
I believe that they key to playing in masters and higher relies much more on strategical play rather than mechanics. At this point you should either intuitively know you lost a game because of macro, or you should be looking at the strategy element.


This is true, if and only if your mechanics are relatively solid. The only time strategical play can be pulled off with poor mechanics is either with cannon rushes, proxies or if you're in Bronze league. Personally, as a GM Protoss, I feel that in-game decision making such as 'do I engage here?' or 'do I take an aggressive stance or throw up an expo here?' play a stronger part than strategical choices such as 'should I open with build order A or B?'. I view decision making and strategical choices as different aspects of a game, however I understand that they can be interpreted similarly.
CTangent
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States125 Posts
February 24 2012 05:53 GMT
#11
On February 24 2012 14:27 phiinix wrote:
Yea, you basically gave up your lead. In you also think about that marine/medivac timing, imo it looks extremely weak to a player who micros well with sentry ff and stalkers... Were you suppose to actually kill him with that? What is it suppose to accomplish?


This is basically the build I am doing: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=314806. The idea is to drop in the main while poking the front; it isn't designed to kill, although I was going for the kill because I thought I had an advantage due to my opponent 4 gating, even though I was wrong.



ggofthejungle
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
Romania392 Posts
March 01 2012 22:18 GMT
#12
when's the next post? :D
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