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[G] How to Improve Efficiently at SC2 1v1 - Page 2

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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AbeToss
Profile Joined September 2010
United States60 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-03 17:27:54
April 03 2011 06:14 GMT
#21
Typos
+ Show Spoiler +
2.02:

The thing about growing is that it often times hurts. In order for you to become something new, you have to press outside of your current boundaries until you become used to your uncomfortable state,


2.04:

Other people just have some sort of vague natural appreciation for the pros.


4.02:

At the time this is written, Liquid Tyler is absolutely the best foreigner Protoss (perhaps this is simply my opinion, oh well).


4.03

Common macro-oriented mistakes that players make are: not having solid worker production; forgetting to queue in unit for amounts of time; making too many workers; not constructing a building at the correct time.

A great exercise to undergo is to load up a replay of a professional performing the build you have chosen. Make sure you have never seen this replay before ever. After the game starts to pick up (scouting information is starting to be gained around the 2-4 minute mark), pause every very frequently, every 20-30 seconds or so.

If you can do this then you will save yourself a lot of unnecessary practice and toil, thus improving your game quickly and efficiently by learning what other far more skilled than you players have already figured out.


6.01.1

If you have a mouse reading at a low sensitivity (i.e. a cheap mouse) and turn up a slider setting, then all the slider is doing is multiplying what your mouse reads by a constant (or a formula if acceleration is on), thus resulting in information loss and inaccurate precision!


6.01.2

The palm grip usually is a result of a player using their shoulder as their pivot. This is (I'd assume) good for FPS playing. I know though that the palm grip is terrible for RTS play. RTS play benefits from being have to having precise movements, and if your pivot is all the way in your shoulder you will have a pretty hard time making precise movements.

The advantages of this positioning allows you have the most precise cursor movements, as the only mouse movement you will be doing is moving the mouse with your fingertips.


6.03

The rule of thumb is that if you can use a hotkey to do an action, and you use your mouse then you are being inefficient.


This is a great write up! The section about 1:1 mouse movement blew my mind. I implemented those changes and immediately started noticing that is was much more difficult to highlight any words in my browser. It'll take me some time to get used to making precise mouse movements but I think I'll benefit from in it the long run.

Having started off in platinum league and working my way into masters, I'd have to say this is the most important piece of advice you have to offer:

Often times you'll hear people claim that the only thing you should focus on is your "macro", or perhaps they call it "mechanics". The thing is, is that you can't just practice pure macro, pure strategy, or pure mechanics. You should be aiming to start your improvement with a single known strategy at a time, so you can rest assured that the strategy you are practicing is a solid one. This allows you to isolate just your mechanics or macro, meaning that I have actually told you throughout this document to practice both your macro and strategy both at the same time in an equal dose. Failing to properly pace yourself, or failure to start your practice with this simple balance will result in a slow growth, and slow growth is not what we aim for. We aim for efficient growth!


I 100% agree with you. We all suck. The pros such much less so in comparison they are highly skilled and we should do everything we can to emulate them!. Everyone will always suck in the sense that they can always improve. Whoever can improve the fastest and dedicate the most time to their game will become the best (suck the least).

Thanks for putting so much time and effort into this so that we may all benefit from your hard work!

StreetHeat
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States225 Posts
April 03 2011 06:24 GMT
#22
Gonna study the hell out of this to try and improve!
Thank you for all the time and effort involved in making this!
“If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you” -Bruce Lee
AbeToss
Profile Joined September 2010
United States60 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-03 06:47:29
April 03 2011 06:44 GMT
#23
Edit: Woops, meant to update my previous post.
GenesisX
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Canada4267 Posts
April 03 2011 07:10 GMT
#24
Thanks Cecil Awesome guide as usual!
133 221 333 123 111
CecilSunkure
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States2829 Posts
April 03 2011 07:12 GMT
#25
On April 03 2011 16:10 GenesisX wrote:
Thanks Cecil Awesome guide as usual!

<3
Authweight
Profile Joined May 2010
United States304 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-03 07:55:49
April 03 2011 07:46 GMT
#26
Wait, I pivot at my wrist and touch the mouse with the tips of all five fingers as well as sometimes the fleshy part of my hand right below my knuckles. I never move my shoulder. What sort of grip is this exactly? It sounds like the fingertip grip, but I've never practiced it, its just how I hold the mouse. Razer's guide makes it sound like it should be uncomfortable and unintuitive, I don't get it.

EDIT: Awesome guide, btw
awwnuts07
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States621 Posts
April 03 2011 08:19 GMT
#27
Great guide. The first part could be applied to learning any skill.
I'm a noob
Xylarthen
Profile Joined October 2010
United States137 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-03 10:12:56
April 03 2011 10:08 GMT
#28
Great, except for the fact that you aspire to potentially play Starcraft II instead of going to college (your words, not mine). Go to college and play Starcraft II. Upon all things you may or may not find holy, do that. This is the detail a guide on TL should be based off of.

I am however, very impressed by how much empirical evidence you provide for your points, and from sources outside of TL.

EDIT: Upon reviewing again, I am very impressed by how much empirical evidence you provide for your points.
He who becomes a beast forgets the pain of being a man.
Valckrie
Profile Joined August 2010
United Kingdom533 Posts
April 03 2011 10:20 GMT
#29
Very nice guide, will definitely help out alot of low level players. Great to see so many how to improve guides around!
Fear is a 4 letter word. Why be afraid?
Neverplay
Profile Joined May 2010
Austria532 Posts
April 03 2011 10:58 GMT
#30
excellent work! thanks alot!
Better light a candle than curse the darkness
Piski
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Finland3461 Posts
April 03 2011 11:10 GMT
#31
This is awesome. Going to print out from work and read ^^
Always liked your threads.
The.Doctor
Profile Joined February 2010
Canada333 Posts
April 03 2011 11:17 GMT
#32
Wow, sick guide bro. Thanks.
The Boss.
Phadt
Profile Joined December 2010
Sweden92 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-03 12:25:57
April 03 2011 11:25 GMT
#33
Thanks for this!

Being a diamond player who's taken a break from the game a bit and who wants to get back into it I feel there are some great stuff here that will not only help me get back to my own level, but also keep getting better and better.

p.s. "Dragging your cursor from the top left to the bottom right is the absolute best way to create a box for everyone but the professionals." I naturally box top right to bottom left. This is still moving towards my pivot but I feel I can push more with my stabilizing ring finger rather than drag with ring finger + thumb. Don't know if it's something I should change or if it doesnt matter.

p.p.s. I've gone into the registry and changed so my caps key is disabled and can now instead be used as a ctrl key. I hold my left hand around wasd with pinky on shift as standard, and I feel the caps key is a lot easier to reach than the ctrl key if I want to bind 1-7 or 8 with ctrl grps.
Teoita
Profile Blog Joined January 2011
Italy12248 Posts
April 03 2011 11:45 GMT
#34
Cecil, your guides are always awesome, and as a player that's climbing up the leagues they have really helped a lot. Thank you so much!
ModeratorProtoss all-ins are like a wok. You can throw whatever you want in there and it will turn out alright.
shawty
Profile Joined June 2010
United Kingdom294 Posts
April 03 2011 11:53 GMT
#35
wow, this is incredible. Your writeups for strats are amazing too
h41fgod
Profile Joined February 2011
Sweden377 Posts
April 03 2011 12:17 GMT
#36
Nice guide, touches on all the points everyone seem to agree are the most important for a player to improve.

However, it feels about twice as long as it should be.
Legendre2k
Profile Joined December 2010
8 Posts
April 03 2011 15:10 GMT
#37
Really well written and thorough post. Good work, I'll be sure to refer people new to SC2 to this.

As a person having worked a bit with statistics, I have to take issue with what you say about skill levels though:

Think of it this way: the people in the top 10% of the SC2 ladder on the North American server are ten times better than the people in the top 50%. The people in the top 1% are 10 times better than the people in the top 10%. The people in the top .01% are 1000 times better than the people in the top 1%. This might sound strange if it's the first time you've heard it, but in reality it rings truer than you'd think.

I think you are here mistakenly inferring skill from rarity. Like so many other phenomenons with humans, I believe we can think of skill as something normally distributed. To take IQ as an example, 50% of the population have an IQ of 100 or more, while only 1% has an IQ over 150 (these numbers are not 100% correct, see this image). If you have an IQ of 150 while I have one of 100, does that mean you are 50 times "smarter" than me (since it is 50 times rarer)? No, IQ wise you are only 50% (1.5 times) smarter. However, getting an IQ score that extreme is very rare, and it is that rarity with respect to SC2 placements you are calling skill.

In reality, the differences are not that extreme, although any pro would probably consistently kick my platinum ass

infinity21 *
Profile Blog Joined October 2006
Canada6683 Posts
April 03 2011 16:19 GMT
#38
Cecil, I have to disagree with your refining builds section since you're more or less equating it to having good mechanics. Refining builds is more than just being able to match a pro's supply at a given time. I'd suggest you read my guide on it (in sig/profile) for some ideas.
Official Entusman #21
me_viet
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Australia1350 Posts
April 03 2011 16:46 GMT
#39
sick guide. I think this can benefit everybody even those in Masters. Up to maybe even mid-level. There are always things to improve.
Octothorpe
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States52 Posts
April 03 2011 17:21 GMT
#40
Excellent guide Cecil, you've certainly changed the way I look at my practice time. I'm pretty excited to start incorporating some of your advice into my practice. I think this guide should be stickied, I'm sure it could help a lot of people.
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