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High Platinum trying to help out 2 bronze/silver buddies and get better myself.
I am looking for specific SC2 activities beyond playing matches that would help improve people's SC2 abilities. Analogous to baseball's batting practice or simply running to get faster in fielding / base running. Simply playing game after game of baseball is not the best method to get better.
I used the multitasking trainer, but they cannot even come close to finishing the very easy setting.
Since my friends need better mechanics and macro I created these two drills against a very easy AI:
- 7 minute drill. T/P: 1 base and constantly produce workers until 7 minutes in. Never get supploy blocked. Your main should be fully saturated. The idea is that its all about "probes & pylons" or "SCVs & depots". Harder exercises - add attacking units and/or have another Nexus/CC finish before the 7 minutes is done.
- 200 food. Build up to 200 food as quickly as possible, must have 60 workers and at least some Tier 2 units. Try this with 1 base only, 2 bases and 3 bases.
- Watch your replays and notice if you ever have a lag in making workers, attacking units or get supply blocked.
What practice drills do you use or any feedback on my drills?
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instead of general things like "200 food" and "7 minutes," I just do a build that I do a lot against ai or something and try to hit a certain food by a certain time. Like when I used to 1 gate FE I'd try to get over 65 food by the 8 minute mark with a 4:50 expo.
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Ladder and watching your replays is the best way to improve, period. Your bronze friends are gonna be mad when they are happily at their 7 minute checkpoint vs a real person only to find out their opponent has proxy'd 5 barracks that have never been discovered because they dont scout because computers are predictable.
You play how you practice. That's the problem with those kinds of drills. They aren't realistic at all, and the hardest part about learning to macro for new players is the fact that somebody is attacking them while they are trying to remember everything. Multitasking is the biggest hurdle to overcome for sc2 and you don't learn it when you remove risk from everything else you do.
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For someone who is not extremely self-driven (because I believe anyone who is can get out of Bronze/Silver with blind builds and macro/proper response to basic strategies) the "drills" are perhaps a neat way to challenge the individuals -- I like the idea of something basic that you build onto.
like > Stage 1: Build SCVs for 7 minutes, no stops in production or supply block
then > Stage 2: Build SCVs for 7 minutes, same as 1, but never exceed 250 minerals
and slowly add things on until you they've mastered a standard opening, and can build tech buildings within it and not faulter on the basics -- once someone can do this, they are capable of exploring "strategy" and no longer have to actively THINK about the game basics as they are now formed as habits.
Basically, I think pick 1 small thing, and work on that exclusively until it does not need to be thought about, then, and ONLY then move onto the next logical and only slightly more involved 'thing'
So like each game focus on:
- Constant worker prod.
- Proper waypoints
- Not getting supply blocked
- Keeping Minerals/Gas below a point
- Deciding on a hotkey for x unit/structure, and using it
- Strategic building placement
- etc...
Basically, don't frustrate with focusing on more than one concept at a time until it's second nature.
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I've been doing a 'drill' for fun and for practice for a while. This is a mechanical 'drill' but one thing I did that increased my accuracy and speed a lot on my keyboard hand is to do alternating series, so type this:
1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 4 1 3 1 3 1 2 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 4 1 3 . . . . .
All with your left hand, using the appropriate fingers (for me, ring for 1, middle for 2, index for 3-5). Then, once you're good, add 6:
1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 5 1 4 1 3 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 1 5 1 4 1 3 . . . .
The idea came from musical scales where you would play the notes in that order as a dexterity builder. You can do this in-game after you send your SCVs to mine, or whatever. I just tap it out and now I can run a series 1-6 back down to 1 in under a second, and it sounds awesome if you've got a clickity keyboard and is pretty fun.
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Best drill to use ever.
PLAY SLOW!!!
Have your buddies play as slow as possible without making a single mistake. Once they can perfect their build, then have them write down any times where it was extremely close for them making a mistake. If they are almost making mistakes playing slow, thats when they'll make mistakes playing fast.
Once thats done then get them to use all 10 hotkeys. Of course they don't have to use all of them in game, but getting used to such hotkeys like 67890 will help them later if they find that they cannot play "fast" enough because they don't use hotkeys. Tell them to use their hotkeys for their liking and whatever is comfortable for them.
Once they can use their hotkeys get them to play slow again and to perfect their build with using all 10 hotkeys or at least 7.
Once they can do their build using at least 7 hotkeys tell them to play the build as fast as possible without:
Stopping their mouse
Scrolling
Making any mistakes in their build.
Make sure they:
Prioritizing their eyes on their minimap, money, food, production (bottom of the screen), and main screen respectfully.
Maintain a solid APM, doesn't have to be fast, but they should go for A apm and try to stick with it. Obviously going faster isn't a bad thing, but if you shoot for 60 and you are constantly hitting 20-30 then you need to step it up. Likewise if you shoot for 200 and you only hit 100 you need to realize that 200 is pointless speed. A good 60-80 apm will suffice.
If the player fails any of these points start over again, depending on the failure. If he fails to maintain a solid APM, start over with playing the build as slow as possible, but do it like 20 times. The more repetative it is, the more likely he will be able to just "wait" on the next thing to happen. The more you "wait" the more you realize you can use that time to stare at your minimap.
If he fails to do his build perfectly start at doing it slowly again.
If he stops his mouse, just restart the last drill again, if it happens way to often. Tell him to do the first step again but to only use his mouse. No hotkeys period. Then do the 7+ hotkey drill with only your mouse. Then do the third drill with only your mouse. It is extremely difficult to play like that so make sure you do all 3 over again normally so that no bad habits are learned.
If you spectate in his first person view and you notice the screen moving slightly with scrolling start the third exercise over again. If he accidently scrolls at the start of the game when nothings happening thats fine. But if he scrolls to set rally points or to select units start over. This by far will be the one thing you will restart most on. Remember SCII has a stupid smart pan camera so it might look like he is scrolling, don't pay attention to a "scroll" if it is cross map, there is a good chance he clicked the mini map.
This one is hardest to achieve because are brains say no.
Constantly look at the minimap, money, food, production, main screen respectively. I would say one good way to do this, is to have him play against a zerg who send in fast air units into his base. If he is watching his minimap he will be able to see it right away. If he is looking at his main screen he won't. Ask the zerg player to not engage his base, but to just fly on the outskirts of the FOW, just enough for him to see buildings. SPectate your buddy to see if he notices. An instantaneous reaction means he is watching the minimap, a slight delay (a few milliseconds) might mean he was focusing on money or food or building something. Use your good judgement for what he is doing. If there is even 1 second delay that means he was watching the main screen and his peripheral vision saw the units.
Also make sure that whenever he notices the dots to send all his AA units, ask him to hotkey those separately. Just send them towards the dots and if they go away to return back to their spots. If there was more than a few mutalisk, or overseers leave a good chunk near the edge and close to your ramp.
If you can successfully complete the 3 drills and maintain the added difficulties, the only thing left is to make 3 different builds for the 3 races and 1 generic build that can transition into all 3 if you are against random.
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I'd suggest just practicing late game management, 3-4 bases with full production capabilities. This is where you will learn the most, in my opinion.
Just by playing normally, you will quickly get the first several minutes down easily. However, you won't get nearly as much playtime in the end game, where your actual gameplay is likely the weakest.
Things like practicing APM, practicing a build meticulously, will not help you improve. You will make mistakes, plain and simple. This is especially true in Platinum/Bronze/Silver, etc. But you want to be as consistent as possible.
As previously mentioned, if you feel a particular area of your game is weak, try to find a custom map for it. IE: MnM micro.
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On February 18 2011 03:32 Eknoid4 wrote:
Ladder and watching your replays is the best way to improve, period. Your bronze friends are gonna be mad when they are happily at their 7 minute checkpoint vs a real person only to find out their opponent has proxy'd 5 barracks that have never been discovered because they dont scout because computers are predictable.
You play how you practice. That's the problem with those kinds of drills. They aren't realistic at all, and the hardest part about learning to macro for new players is the fact that somebody is attacking them while they are trying to remember everything. Multitasking is the biggest hurdle to overcome for sc2 and you don't learn it when you remove risk from everything else you do.
I completely disagree. You have to realize what type of people you are working with here -- people with little or no experience with starcraft, or even RTS in general. Of course the drills are not realistic, but that doesn't mean they can't help you improve. Learning the basics is much harder when you have to worry about some noob canon rushing you. First, learn how to constantly produce probes and pylons, then try it against a real opponent.
I can't count the number of pros I've heard say, "Practice your BOs against an easy comp." That's not realistic, so according to your logic it is worthless?.....
The idea is that you focus on something simple at first and then, once you got that down, take it to the next level.
OP, do you mind linking the particular multitasker you are using?
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For bronze/silver a good drill is to play against two medium computer opponents while fast expanding. This might not be something they can do right away (start with one AI if need be) but something to work towards. This will get them "rushed" at about 7:00 minutes by a force of ~10 units. It's not that far off from many of the standard ladder pushes that happen and if you can afford an expansion and forces to defend you have a good idea how to handle early pressure and economy which is the biggest issue for newer players. Though the one caveat is you can't "cheat" and do things like turtle or cannon rush.
Once they survive the first push it should be easy to macro up and crush the AI which also helps work on macro.
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I've wondered if playing without mouse scroll enabled will force you to use hotkeys more (primarily the F-keys...)? I havn't tested it but it's something I've wondered.
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interesting idea to play without using mouse scroll. is this a legit way to practice?
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once you get beyond basic build orders i'd highly recommend checking out "Micro Management Test" on NA and "Unit Test Map 1v1" on EU... excellent for micro practice against a friend/teammate because it allows you to be in any situation at any time, and work on micro (marine vs bane is popular, blink stalk vs blink stalk, roach v roach, etc)
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If you haven't already, PLEASE show them Day9 daily #252. Possibly the most helpful and educational daily ever to be made.
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On February 18 2011 03:31 Alejandrisha wrote:
instead of general things like "200 food" and "7 minutes," I just do a build that I do a lot against ai or something and try to hit a certain food by a certain time. Like when I used to 1 gate FE I'd try to get over 65 food by the 8 minute mark with a 4:50 expo.
If you're not at a level where your macro is muscle-memory, then you should be playing on single player with no opponents just perfecting your build order and making sure that you don't need to think about building workers or units or supply - that it just happens smoothly and subconsciously. It's much easier to see how extreme certain problems are if you isolate them. In a normal game, you can make excuses for yourself (such as "I was busy defending against a drop" or "I was too busy scouting him" or "I had to micro my army.") But on single player, when you're just focusing on your build order, there are no excuses for subpar macro, and it really helps you get a sense of what you need to be doing and when (the frequency that you need to be building workers and supply, how many production facilities you can support off of X bases, how to effectively use your hotkeys, etc.)
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I'm in a similar situation as you, OP, Diamond with gold friends. I highly suggest you watch their replays and find one or two big mistakes they are making.
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Watch Day9 daily #252 it's all about simple mechanical things that can help you. He also has some follow-ups with it on the next two newbie tuesdays after.
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I like the 200 food test. As zerg, this means focusing on getting my larvae injections and overlord timing correct, while spending money on units/tech as I usually do in a real game.
One thing I can point out to make it even better: run the game in the practice vs AI mode. This way, you can save the game at certain checkpoints, play out the next minute or two, then reload to repeat the same thing (but with improvement). So let's say that I want to improve my macro while attacking, you could set up a game against the AI, save the game just before you engage, then fight the battle while attempting to make units. After the battle, take a look at your food, then reload the save. Do it again, see if you do better. If necessary, so you can also slow down the speed in this mode so you can figure out what are all the necessary actions are, which you can then speed up in later
The idea here is to repeat these key situations where your macro fails, so you can really focus on them and really learn to do them properly. Of course, the AI is not an ideal opponent, so this type of practice ends up being more useful for working on macro, but most players need work on that anyways. If saving was possible with multiplayer games, I think the practice possibilities would be amazing.
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Daily #208 is another good one. It is his live coaching session with DJWheat.
http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4321552/
I really like Day9's constant focus on "what's next?" New players may not be able to multitask and observe nearly as well, but if they can get in the habit of checking money, checking supply, checking the minimap and responding, they'll be on the right track.
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Thanks for all of the feedback.
We have watched their replays together and they can point out the areas to improve: "I was supply blocked here", "I always stop making workers too early", "I didn't scout or take the x-towers after the initial scout", but where's the specific drill to fix an issue? Its like saying "you dropped the fly ball" in baseball so throw 100 balls straight up in the air and catch them.
The idea of practicing "musical scales" for "the tap" as day9 calls it is definately something they could use.
I like the idea of "eye training" to look at mini-map, food and production buildings. I wish I could black-out the main part of the screen every few seconds so they have to look somwhere else.
Also, I wish there was an audible "ding" every 10 - 15 seconds to remind them to build a supply structure. My hands actually get twitchy watching them play... my muscle memory knows it has been too long since a supply depot has gone down.
The multitasking trainer is here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=124983
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@ falcoiii and Saracen
Thanks for the advice and inspiration. I've always felt it's been hard to perfect my macro tactics while playing live.
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when you start playing your games, instead of spamming useless, use your extra actions to practice clicking on the mini map, itll warm you up, plus it helps your mouse accuracy, it gets you used to macroing while not looking at your base. My tip would be to click on the xel nagas, the opponents main/natural, and any key chokes points you may use later in the game.
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On February 18 2011 03:32 Eknoid4 wrote:
Ladder and watching your replays is the best way to improve, period. Your bronze friends are gonna be mad when they are happily at their 7 minute checkpoint vs a real person only to find out their opponent has proxy'd 5 barracks that have never been discovered because they dont scout because computers are predictable.
You play how you practice. That's the problem with those kinds of drills. They aren't realistic at all, and the hardest part about learning to macro for new players is the fact that somebody is attacking them while they are trying to remember everything. Multitasking is the biggest hurdle to overcome for sc2 and you don't learn it when you remove risk from everything else you do.
On February 18 2011 03:56 Masq wrote:
I'd suggest just practicing late game management, 3-4 bases with full production capabilities. This is where you will learn the most, in my opinion.
Just by playing normally, you will quickly get the first several minutes down easily. However, you won't get nearly as much playtime in the end game, where your actual gameplay is likely the weakest.
Things like practicing APM, practicing a build meticulously, will not help you improve. You will make mistakes, plain and simple. This is especially true in Platinum/Bronze/Silver, etc. But you want to be as consistent as possible.
As previously mentioned, if you feel a particular area of your game is weak, try to find a custom map for it. IE: MnM micro.
I disagree. When I first started playing BW seriously a year or so ago I was awful, like couldn't beat the computer awful. What did I do? I went and practiced macro. I had 3 priorities. Always make workers, follow a correct build/correct expansion timings, spend my money. I wouldn't move to priority 2 unless I was fulfilling priority one. I played about 150 games against the CPU this way and when I returned to ICCup I had no problems maintaining a D rank.
The claim is made that you play how you practice, and while I understand where that is coming from I don't entirely agree. What happens when you "drill" like this is you make something a habit. It becomes automatic to you to go back and macro, to make pylons, to make probes. You develop a rhythm and a muscle memory for macro.
At the most basic levels, people do not have trouble macroing because they are being attacked, they have trouble macroing because they have no sense of how often things happen or when they need new pylons etc. They don't watch supply numbers or have any internal feel for how often they need new pylons nor do they have an innate sense of when they need their next round of units or probe and don't tab through structures to see when another is needed.
Yes, being attacked and harassed adds a new element to macro, and yes almost invariably if all you have done against is macro 200/200 vs easy CPU you'll probably skyrocket some minerals the first time you face harass. That however, is easily fixed by essentially doing another drill and forcing yourself in game to make macro the top priority, you don't deal with harass until your sure macro is solid. Yea, you'll get raped by harass a few times, but it won't be long before your totally used to macroing away, and have completely rid yourself of the urge to have to watch all the harass.
Once you start getting solid fundamentals playing games is an excellent way to get better. However, at the most basic levels I don't think playing games is the greatest way to get better. For the beginning player there is too much to worry about, if he tries to get it all right, its invariably too much; and he end up doing everything very mediocre at best, and improves slowly. That is basically the entire reason drills exist: to make an aspect of your skill that is flawed and quickly improve it. Especially for beginners who have a hard time doing just one thing right, let alone 3 drills are a much quicker road to improvement because they can quickly and systematically develop solid fundamentals. Once those are solid, playing games because much better because fundamentals are second nature and your now worried about playing the game (i.e. strategy, unit compositions, positionings, timing, etc). Drills lose some of their potency because many of these are less tangible aspects that are more difficult to isolate and are better understood in the context of the game as a whole.
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Do a proper BO, and do it perfectly. I always teach newbies to do 3 rax into 5-2-1 and just ladder with it. Improves game sense and macro/micro. Pick one build, and do it over and over until it's perfected.
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On February 18 2011 03:58 jarhead271 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2011 03:32 Eknoid4 wrote:
Ladder and watching your replays is the best way to improve, period. Your bronze friends are gonna be mad when they are happily at their 7 minute checkpoint vs a real person only to find out their opponent has proxy'd 5 barracks that have never been discovered because they dont scout because computers are predictable.
You play how you practice. That's the problem with those kinds of drills. They aren't realistic at all, and the hardest part about learning to macro for new players is the fact that somebody is attacking them while they are trying to remember everything. Multitasking is the biggest hurdle to overcome for sc2 and you don't learn it when you remove risk from everything else you do. I completely disagree. You have to realize what type of people you are working with here -- people with little or no experience with starcraft, or even RTS in general. Of course the drills are not realistic, but that doesn't mean they can't help you improve. Learning the basics is much harder when you have to worry about some noob canon rushing you. First, learn how to constantly produce probes and pylons, then try it against a real opponent. I can't count the number of pros I've heard say, "Practice your BOs against an easy comp." That's not realistic, so according to your logic it is worthless?..... The idea is that you focus on something simple at first and then, once you got that down, take it to the next level. OP, do you mind linking the particular multitasker you are using?
focus on something simple in a real game and you will learn even more.
When you practice your build order, you are practicing something that is never going to change and is going to have EXACT and DIRECT application into real matches. When you play a real game, you will do exactly what you did during those practice games vs easy computers. Anyone, and i mean anyone of average capability or greater, can learn to have perfect macro without an opponent. There is no stress, and it never changes.
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A good drill is building workers/supply while constantly microing a scout worker in the opponents base.
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Do the multi tasking trainer on easy again. You will feel great when you beat it.
How to beat it.
First, get used to giving the probe the max two move commands using the mini-map (hot key the probe). So you just press 1 then click-click in the mini-map -- click as far horizontally as you can, and as far vertically from that (or vice versa). Ok that gives you about 10 seconds to do stuff in your base, and you can keep the camera on the base the whole time.
To start with, just keep doing the 1-click-click thing while doing nothing but admiring your base. Eventually you get relaxed doing that. Then start building scvs, constructing buildings and hot-keying your building construction -- in each 10 second interval. Soon enough your brain starts to nag you about returning to the probe even when you struggle with something in your base. Somewhere in your head a timer is going off.
Of course to win there are a few more things to phase in: making the medivac, moving it (again using the mini map) then quickly picking up the guy and move and shift-unload at the right spot. Each thing you do needs to be easily done in 50% of that safe probe move interval (some extra time spare for mistakes).
You also need to mule regularly, and stop mining gas (or just stop mining) if your resources unbalance dramatically.
Anyway what I am saying is don't give up on the multitasking trainer, it helps with many things. I'm not ready to do it on normal where you have to round off the movement of the probe, and have a short timer, but I found getting the easy level won was a big help to my ladder game.
by far the biggest benefit this trainer has is to force your eyes down to the mini map every 10 seconds. You'll notice that straight away in your game, and wow is it helpful!
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On March 02 2011 07:35 nyc863 wrote:
Do the multi tasking trainer on easy again. You will feel great when you beat it.
How to beat it.
First, get used to giving the probe the max two move commands using the mini-map (hot key the probe). So you just press 1 then click-click in the mini-map -- click as far horizontally as you can, and as far vertically from that (or vice versa). Ok that gives you about 10 seconds to do stuff in your base, and you can keep the camera on the base the whole time.
To start with, just keep doing the 1-click-click thing while doing nothing but admiring your base. Eventually you get relaxed doing that. Then start building scvs, constructing buildings and hot-keying your building construction -- in each 10 second interval. Soon enough your brain starts to nag you about returning to the probe even when you struggle with something in your base. Somewhere in your head a timer is going off.
Of course to win there are a few more things to phase in: making the medivac, moving it (again using the mini map) then quickly picking up the guy and move and shift-unload at the right spot. Each thing you do needs to be easily done in 50% of that safe probe move interval (some extra time spare for mistakes).
You also need to mule regularly, and stop mining gas (or just stop mining) if your resources unbalance dramatically.
Anyway what I am saying is don't give up on the multitasking trainer, it helps with many things. I'm not ready to do it on normal where you have to round off the movement of the probe, and have a short timer, but I found getting the easy level won was a big help to my ladder game.
by far the biggest benefit this trainer has is to force your eyes down to the mini map every 10 seconds. You'll notice that straight away in your game, and wow is it helpful!
The purpose of the multitasking trainer is to... train your multitasking, not to win. If your goal is to "beat it on easy" you're doing it wrong. Actually your eyes should be on the probe for the most of the time, going back to base only when you have to. It doesn't matter if you win or lose as long as your multitasking improves.
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well, what can I say, it worked out ok for me. "beating it" was the only metric I had to judge whether I was getting better at managing two different tasks, I imagine that is why the trainer was designed for "win or lose". And a loss is inflicted if you let minerals build up, or the probe dies too many times, or the timer runs out. So "beating it" means you handled all that stuff ok, and that is all multi-tasking.
I don't think the idea is to have your eyes on the probe all the time, that isn't how I see high level POV scouting done anyway. What they do is send the probe and flick to it now and again, then when it is in the base they look for a longer interval, but then often queue up a bunch of moves and go back to their base to continue, rarely coming back to the probe unless it is to setup a new harass. They also give probe moves via the mini map. And that during the easiest part of the game, the start, with low APM needed.
So it is overly harsh to insist the only way to get any value out of the multi tasking trainer map is to have your camera on the probe most of the time.
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I have 2 monitors, and I have 1 drill that I enjoy to do. I open pros's POV vods (theStC is my fav) on 1 monitor, and begin to play on another (vs comp for example). I adjust so that the pro's game start at the same time as mine (on the same map too if you want). I then will try to micmic how the pros do (how he scouts, how he builds, how....)
Do it over and over, you'll see the difference between you and the pro (it amazes me how 2 people start the game at the same time, but have so much difference after 10,15 minutes). If you keep trying it, you will begin to feel the "rhythm", you'll feel much more comfortable executing something blah blah you know the rest.
Of course that it's best if you just focus on mimicking 1 particular favorite pro, because as you all know, pros have their own styles, and you can't feel the rhythm if you keep switching your tempo.
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I think the main reason baseball players practice using drills is because there is a lot of down time in a game of baseball. A player who wants to practice catching fly balls might only encounter one or two throughout an entire three hour game of baseball.
StarCraft has very little downtime though. If you want to practice macro, you can do that throughout an entire StarCraft match (while simultaneously training other RTS skills like scouting and micro).
You might want to run drills on specific micro plays though. You can learn how to stutter step on a training map rather than building up to that point in a real game. No matter how fond you are of the skill, you're not going to be stutter stepping for more than 5 percent of a real game (and other micro skills are generally far rarer than that).
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Wow, this thread was a lot more helpful than I thought it would be. I liked Saracen's advice about playing by yourself so you can focus on macro without any excuses and improve your muscle memory. It also taught me an "ideal" economy so I know how bad my economy gets when I actually play matches. I haven't tried the multitasking trainer though, but it looks intense  Of course, one way to get good is to just diligently ladder, but these drills suit my style of learning.
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On March 02 2011 12:38 nyc863 wrote:
I don't think the idea is to have your eyes on the probe all the time, that isn't how I see high level POV scouting done anyway. What they do is send the probe and flick to it now and again, then when it is in the base they look for a longer interval, but then often queue up a bunch of moves and go back to their base to continue, rarely coming back to the probe unless it is to setup a new harass. They also give probe moves via the mini map. And that during the easiest part of the game, the start, with low APM needed.
The probe represents everything you have to do during a game that is not in your base. It's your dropship or mutas, your main army, etc. etc. Do you see the pros micro their mutas using the minimap? Do they queue up a bunch of waypoints for their MMM ball?
Treating it as though it's just a scouting probe is the wrong attitude. You should be using as few waypoints as possible and practising both flicking to it every now and again and focusing on it while keeping up your macro as needed, you need to be able to do both with your units in an actual game. Being able to beat it the way you are is a good start I guess but you should understand that you have much further to go.
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I have some advice for practicing.
In SC2 there are TONS of ways to cut off time in your builds.
e.g. Stim Timing push, you have your army out side the enemy base as soon as stim finishes.
Moving workers to a expansion as soon as its completed, moving workers to build things as soon as you have the money.
You can always work on different timings.
Other things I do, I record the timings of the other races.
e.g. finding out how fast Protoss players can get a DT or VR out. What is the fastest a player can get higher tier units out? When will you get attacked by a Protoss who is performing a 4 gate all in? How about a 7 pool? bane bust? stim timing push? scv marine all in? etc.
Theres lots of things you can do.
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The thing that initially accelerated my learning of Starcraft back in BW was watching pro games and realizing what you could do if you played right.
Once you realize the potential you have, it's a matter of unlocking that potential.
Most of what it takes to win SC2 is just mechanics. If you can minimize the use of your mouse by maximizing the use of your hotkeys, it buys you a lot of time to power through those mechanics. After you've improved your mechanics, you have much more time to work on the actual strategy.
It sounds like they know what they are doing wrong (e.g. supply blocked). Play against a computer over and over until you win consistently without being supply blocked. Restart the game if you fail, up the difficulty if it's too easy. Once you master it, select something else and try to do both at the same time, without making a mistake, repeat. Personally I suffer from not using my hotkeys and have no time to do anything but hunt for stuff I need to click on. If you can do it with just the keyboard ONLY DO IT WITH THE KEYBOARD.
As for the strategy/thinking part of the game, watch pro games or check out Day9 dailies. These are the fastest way to learn SC2 without actually playing, and they're generally entertaining at the same time.
This is of course if you're serious about the game. If you want to be a moderate player just keep playing over and over and you'll learn empirically. But be warned it's easier to learn it right the first time then to break yourself of the old habits that won you some games, and go back to being terrible while you try to unlearn all the bad things you do, to reform your play to where you can improve even further.
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On March 05 2011 02:47 InZil wrote:
The thing that initially accelerated my learning of Starcraft back in BW was watching pro games and realizing what you could do if you played right.
Once you realize the potential you have, it's a matter of unlocking that potential.
Most of what it takes to win SC2 is just mechanics. If you can minimize the use of your mouse by maximizing the use of your hotkeys, it buys you a lot of time to power through those mechanics. After you've improved your mechanics, you have much more time to work on the actual strategy.
It sounds like they know what they are doing wrong (e.g. supply blocked). Play against a computer over and over until you win consistently without being supply blocked. Restart the game if you fail, up the difficulty if it's too easy. Once you master it, select something else and try to do both at the same time, without making a mistake, repeat. Personally I suffer from not using my hotkeys and have no time to do anything but hunt for stuff I need to click on. If you can do it with just the keyboard ONLY DO IT WITH THE KEYBOARD.
As for the strategy/thinking part of the game, watch pro games or check out Day9 dailies. These are the fastest way to learn SC2 without actually playing, and they're generally entertaining at the same time.
This is of course if you're serious about the game. If you want to be a moderate player just keep playing over and over and you'll learn empirically. But be warned it's easier to learn it right the first time then to break yourself of the old habits that won you some games, and go back to being terrible while you try to unlearn all the bad things you do, to reform your play to where you can improve even further.
yeah i improved soooo much when i started watching how friggen much good players had. it made me realize how much more important keeping my money low was than leet dronescout micro
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EPT
