On June 03 2016 00:08 Cascade wrote: Thanks for shoutout. Great to see pros analyse their own games in depth like this. Impressive how good handle all three had on what was going wrong.
Maybe it is possible to isolate that single point even more, as they seem to know exactly what went wrong? In this game, it was the drop defense between 3.40 (or whatever it was) up to maybe 6-7 min where the first push came in. I took down supply at 6.30 in the three games and got:
original game: Z: 97 P: 106, toss push halfway across.
first re-game: Z: 102 P: 99, toss push halfway across.
second re-game: Z: 110 P: 100, toss army still at home.
Maybe you don't even need to play out the rest of the game after that? It is pretty clear that Elazar handled it better.
So when analysing where the problem was ans how to fix it, maybe also think about at what point the fix should have kicked in, and play only up to that point. If you set up clear objectives: "I want to be in that position at that time", you can quicker assess how the different methods compare. I think that could be good training, but maybe doesn't make a spectator friendly stream? If you want to see what happens afterwards you can always resume from one of the new replays just before you stop and play from there... Well, I don't know, does this make sense?
Hmm good point. I think me taking down the supplies at a key point to benchmark it as we go is a great way to point out the difference - but I still want it to feel like a showmatch and have the games conclude so it's an entertaining (not just educational) viewing experience.
Hi Notorious PIG, just wanted to say I'm loving the new content, struggle to make the live streams but am catching up on youtube. Where is the best place to donate in appreciation?
Safe tank liberator turtle TvP - for shutting down sneaky/aggressive protoss like puck Dusk Anti-disruptor PvT Shuts down the prism drops with turrets/vikings/libs/positioning Uses superior range to nullify the seige potential of the disruptors (tanks + fast range libs) Waits for the far superior army before starting to push Small counter drops to punish the full focus on the front The disruptor player wants to just stare at the battle and force the fights there. If they can do that their army is ridiculously powerful
Super safe vs early aggression Looks quite TY inspired - shows impressive defence against the range of Protoss possibilities Very defensive stance Always getting turrets Tanks to block most conventional attacks
Barracks gas Reaper CC Reactor + factory 2:40/24 2nd gas 2 helions + immediate starport Liberator → viking 4:00 3rd CC 2xbarracks → 2x tech lab Tank productionx2 → Then factory builds reactors Rax on reactor just building marines 4:40 ebay Single medivac production → swaps onto a factory reactor ~7:25 5:10 Turrets +1 weapons + stim Combat shields delayed cos short on gas 4th and 5th barracks ~7:00 when you have the money ~7:30 2nd port + fusion core
Notes: Dirty lib spot on back of inbase natural on Dusk Pretty good lib spot on the side of natural on Frozen
Frozen Temple:
Struggles to take the 3rd here Much more area for blink into the main Much more exposed 3rd base Very hard for the immobile tank-liberator to get out there to defend it Also the early widow mine drop didn’t achieve much yet slowed down the rest of the build Still probably could secure it in my opinion - when combat shields and stim finishes if he moved his tankivacs further up the cliff and moved all his units up as one he had a good shot - but let too many units be siphoned off at first and then lacked an army that could punish puck’s posturing
On June 04 2016 06:53 thefatshorts wrote: Hi Notorious PIG, just wanted to say I'm loving the new content, struggle to make the live streams but am catching up on youtube. Where is the best place to donate in appreciation?
Thanks for the support mate. I know a lot of people can't catch it live, so after I've done it for a month or so I think I'll start a Patreon page so those watching on Youtube have a way of supporting the content directly. Gotta ensure consistency and work on some basic improvements to the show first though!
Don’t need a build order We don’t need to have advanced knowledge of what counters what ^We can start to learn the basics of that stuff somewhat naturally.
When you start out you just want to be working on two tenents of Starcraft:
Constant worker production Trying not to get supply blocked
And have a general GAMEPLAN and direction we want to head in:
Gameplan Always start with a unit producing structure Gas
Pause - Queing workers back to production
Ling speed, cyber core or tech lab for stim Expand Add production
Pause - When your first start out you’ll struggle to remember to do what. Juggling Always keeping up their MACRO CYCLE back at home, and squeezing new actions AROUND those tasks
In this case
@natural saturation - gases Constantly build units out of all your new production
Pause - We start needing to amp up our supply buildings around now - our production is geater, our economy is greater. Early on we were ok with getting within a few supply of our cap - but as we produce faster we want a bigger and bigger SUPPLY GAP.
30/40 earlygame is fine - 10 gap 60/80 is fine - 20 gap 120/160 is fine - 40 gap 140/200
3rd base whenever you have excess money
Advanced tech Just choose a core of basic units + 1 or at most 2 advanced units and aim to work with this composition when you first start out. Choose units you like, don’t worry about what’s good vs each race.
3rd base saturated -
Plenty of economy - you still need to keep expanding quite quickly becase your bases run out of mining - but we can now remove the “build probes” from our macro list. Now it’s just build units and pylons At this stage of the game we can start focusing on the map and our army a little more
8:00 - PAUSE
8:00 your main will half run out - so pull out workers leaving just 8 behind. 11:00 is the time to do this in your natural also. The aim is for your 4th base onwards not really to have probes built for them, just to transfer workers from your first 3 bases as they run out.
Ask Questions @x5_PiG - and remember to hang around for ABATHUR GIVEAWAY
Max out and a-move
Move command + A-move to get through chokes Full focus on your army to make sure you aren’t attacking into some horrible position Making sure you A-move on the ground, don’t accidentally click on an enemy unit or all your units will ignore everything else trying to get to that one unit
Summary:
Constantly build workers Constantly build pylons/ovies/depots Constantly build out of our production buildings Follow the general order we went through - go back and watch it again - write it down Check out the written down build order as posted on the TL thread:
Benchmark:
How well am I doing? Check the time you max out! As you get better at remembering everything you need to do you’ll see you max out much earlier In this scenario I max out at about 9:00. See if you can do it before 12 minutes on your first go (against an easy AI)!
Questions!
Abathur Giveaway
Btw I'll be giving away 3 more Abathur codes, one at the end of each of the next 3 episodes!
You can micro well without these - but it’s generally considered harder. That being said always use your own judgement. No mouse acceleration - neutral windows sensitivity Preferably use DPI between 400-1000 - and plz don’t use over 2500! Find what works for you! Mouse accuracy does take some dexterity - but with practice anyone can get pretty decent micro
Talk about click brain connection
Main Techniques:
boxing micro - pretty much everything! It can be a line Accurate boxing takes a bit of time to get used to. A lot of players practice dragging boxes accurately over their workers at the start of the game In LoTV there’s not as much downtime, but in WoL and HoTS I actually improved my accuracy a lot but sitting their practicing these boxes at the start of the game Drag from every angle! Most players can only do a box from one corner.
Concaves:
Worth every penny! ANY RANGED units benefit from this! Even vs melee units you often pull back your units in a rough concave You don’t have time for a perfect “banana-moon” concave of death Most of the time we settle for the Pleb-concave. 2-box micro! Doesn’t look pretty, but gets the job done!
Spreading bio vs Banelings Many box micro! Still try to spread into a rough concave You can’t always do this reactively - just pre-split!
Bio On TOP of widow mines to stop them being activated
Spellcasters -
HOLD DOWN SPELL MECHANIC!!! Most forgotten thing in Starcraft Heaps of people forget you can use this You can still micro without it by individually tapping, but this can help you a lot
separate hotkeys
Getting used to moving multiple hotkeys around rather than just one - just takes a bit of practice If you have more than 2 or you want to make things a little easier - just follow your spellcasters on a unit in your main group so they automatically tag along The downside of this is you won’t be as practiced at quickly grabbing that hotkey and giving them orders
While all your content is very useful regarding the level of play, I was wondering if once in a while you could throw in an episode that specifically targets more advanced players.
As an exemple, as a top dia player having issues breaking into masters, I would have loved having some details of what are the important aspects of the game that matter the most at this specific level in order to break my ceiling. While I feel I reached such a ceiling in terms of execution speed or so it seems, I wonder if I can improve focussing only on decision making or not, and what are the most effective "low apm" strats. This is just an exemple, but you get the idea.
In any case, thanks for the good job and please keep going!
well, most of the episodes till now are rly great for such players as you, DjayEl. #1-5, 7-9, 11-13 and also the "what if" wednesdays are just what youre looking for.
focus on gas timings, understanding your build, have a gameplan for every matchup etc. for more in depth, watch these episodes, where pig talks about certain players and their playstile.
overall, most of the dailys are for midlevel players (plat-low master) and even from episodes like "fundamental mechanics", you can learn alot! steal hotkeys f.e. i had no clue about! now im using them.
Hey Pig! Not sure if you already have this but I think you should have a rule against the opponent watching the stream. Information is such a big part of the game, it's just silly if Puck knows the adaptations of TLO.
Absolutely awesome show, great work PiG, please keep it up! Also love the idea of "What if?" superinformative! Finally a show that fills the void after day9 daily
Shift away from mass muta More ling focused now Big changes in how zerg has to build their economy Big focus on securing a fast 4th base and a heavy mineral income Aiming to have the numbers to contest the Terran on the map and spread creep like crazy Not playing from way behind!! Still need to go Hive
Hatch-pool-hatch-gas 3rd base is easy to defend here so this is actually a pretty solid opening Gets larva pumping out very early on What’s the weakness? Initial droning is a little slower and ling speed is later Any sort of pressure that can force units out quite early can interrupt a build like this a little bit. Force zerg to build fighting units rather than drones super early on and they won’t be able to get out the early drones to keep up with larva production - making such a fast hatch pointless
Rushes to mutas quite fast - not many queens, bane nest, RW or spine Exposed to hellbat timing But very effective vs everything else Mutas popping at 6:30 makes this very safe vs range liberators - perhaps why guru chose to do it here
Otherwise quite safe - Extra lings to both pressure, scout and shut helions off the map These sorts of builds do require very good responses to liberator pressure normally as you defend with just queens and spores - you need to be on top of constantly adjusting their positioning so the liberators can’t destroy your mining.
4:45 - only grabs extra gas after he hits saturation on 3-base (Rule of 1-gas!) 5:30 - evo chamber Focusing on drones + expanding super hard as well as fast mutas - so upgrades aren’t too fast
6:30 - realises he can’t hold the 5th and instantly puts down a macro hatch instead - you NEED 5-hatches with this style Once he shuts down the push - drones the 4th hard 7:30 - infestation pit Not like hots where you stay on MLB for ages Just some mutas for harassment, shutting down drops and map control - but don’t mass them because weakness to libs as well as in front on engagements
10:00
Zerg should be counter-attacking Not taking direct massed engagements Just buying time for Ultras!
Overcommittment to mutas - Should only go high on mutas if you’re able to consistently kill off medivacs or do harassment damage and have tempo going. If they aren’t doing damage immediately they usually never pay for themselves. ends up working in this case But a very scary moment where if another 12-13 2-2 marines survive - it’s going to be looking bad
On June 09 2016 21:33 TokO wrote: Hey Pig! Not sure if you already have this but I think you should have a rule against the opponent watching the stream. Information is such a big part of the game, it's just silly if Puck knows the adaptations of TLO.
Yeah I agree, next time I'll make it clear with the players before-hand to avoid watching the stream and also to stick to the same style they started with. They can stay flexible but we'd like to see this more as "pro-gamer practice" rather than a showmatch where the players constantly shift strategies in an attempt to win.
Any chance of explaining fundamentals or tips for someone willing to learn TheCore hotkeys? I remember some time ago you said on stream that you were trying to master it, doing some practice before WCS (or WCS qualifier, don't quite remember), and at daily #10 I've noticed that J is your drone hotkey, then I thought "hmmm, I think it worked well for him"...
EDIT: OOPS hit post before the videos are finished processing, my bad
PiG Daily #20 - Scouting vs Zerg - Understanding the Swarm
Part 1:
Part 2:
On June 13 2016 10:53 ricardoy wrote: Hi PiG, great show so far!!!
Any chance of explaining fundamentals or tips for someone willing to learn TheCore hotkeys? I remember some time ago you said on stream that you were trying to master it, doing some practice before WCS (or WCS qualifier, don't quite remember), and at daily #10 I've noticed that J is your drone hotkey, then I thought "hmmm, I think it worked well for him"...
Hmm it's such a complex transition over to the Core I think each player needs to customise and make sense of the hotkeys themselves. It's also been so long since I got used to them I'd probably forget how some of it works. I'm not sure it's the most accessible topic. Whilst the Core is awesome - I wouldn't recommend it to most players. I feel you need to be pretty hardcore to swap over to it - and be willing to really invest into loss.
However doing a session on how to learn and practice new mechanics is definitely something I might be able to do. It's something I talk about in coaching ALL the time - the only issue would be turning it into a fully fleshed-out episode - but I think I might be able to find a way - added to list of ideas!
EPT
Great to see pros analyse their own games in depth like this. Impressive how good handle all three had on what was going wrong.
Well, I don't know, does this make sense?
