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[G] How to Improve Efficiently at SC2 1v1 - Page 4

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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KamiDaHobo
Profile Joined December 2010
United States10 Posts
April 03 2011 22:55 GMT
#61
Thank you so much for this, Cecil! Oddly enough, I actually have to pleasure to play with Dhalphir, and he's been kind enough to coach me over the past month or so in custom matches and amateur showmatches.

I've gone from losing games and floating thousands of minerals, to taking out Diamond and Masters level players with the strength of a few finely tuned builds.

Many thanks for everything you're doing for the community!
So Say We All
Katagiri
Profile Joined April 2011
Lithuania3 Posts
April 03 2011 23:00 GMT
#62
This guide is awesome!
As a beginner I really don't even know how to practice my mechanics, I was wondering if you could add any specific exercises that people should use to improve? Are there some kind of exercises that would train multitasking and army group control? Or do PRO's don't do any specific exercises?
Common sense is not so common
lagbzz
Profile Joined September 2010
Poland171 Posts
April 03 2011 23:01 GMT
#63
Include mrbitter's vods link in your
[8] Additional resources and links
With terran and protoss stuff coming up, that will be the most helpful source out there.
Let us divine :D
Alvas
Profile Joined August 2010
United States309 Posts
April 03 2011 23:09 GMT
#64
absolutely great thread, though I hope you were joking when you talked about delaying college to play SC2... that scared me a tad...
Every bullet counts...
CecilSunkure
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States2829 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-03 23:23:50
April 03 2011 23:15 GMT
#65
On April 04 2011 08:00 Katagiri wrote:
This guide is awesome!
As a beginner I really don't even know how to practice my mechanics, I was wondering if you could add any specific exercises that people should use to improve? Are there some kind of exercises that would train multitasking and army group control? Or do PRO's don't do any specific exercises?

I suppose I took it for granted people would know, but I'll go ahead and add that into the control groups section. Thanks for the question! Will update OP soon.

Edit: Updated - Added an important note to the mechanics section, search for [6] to find it. Does that answer your question?


On April 04 2011 08:09 Alvas wrote:
absolutely great thread, though I hope you were joking when you talked about delaying college to play SC2... that scared me a tad...

Wasn't even kidding. If I get good enough I won't go to college yet.
underdawg
Profile Joined January 2011
United States399 Posts
April 04 2011 01:16 GMT
#66
yo, i box from bottom right to top left. is it worth it to suck complete ass for maybe weeks while i relearn it?
CecilSunkure
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States2829 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-04 01:20:11
April 04 2011 01:19 GMT
#67
On April 04 2011 10:16 underdawg wrote:
yo, i box from bottom right to top left. is it worth it to suck complete ass for maybe weeks while i relearn it?

Yup. As long as your macro is okay. Macroing better will be more beneficial than boxing correctly will. Also, if you're right handed boxing from bottom right to top left is the worst direction possible.
statikg
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada930 Posts
April 04 2011 01:26 GMT
#68
You could sell this to a starcraft magazine, they probably will just steal it from you now.
jarrydesque
Profile Joined November 2010
584 Posts
April 04 2011 01:35 GMT
#69
You're a gift to this community. Thank you.
#1 Kennigit fanboy/stalker
AbeToss
Profile Joined September 2010
United States60 Posts
April 04 2011 02:28 GMT
#70
On April 04 2011 10:26 statikg wrote:
You could sell this to a starcraft magazine, they probably will just steal it from you now.


If any existed .

Well maybe Pony Tales could feature it.
Jyyro
Profile Joined March 2011
United States12 Posts
April 04 2011 02:44 GMT
#71
FANTASTIC guide. Thank you very much.
"You can lose a lot of money chasing women, but you cant lose a lot of women chasing money"
CecilSunkure
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States2829 Posts
April 04 2011 02:44 GMT
#72
On April 03 2011 15:14 AbeToss wrote:
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:

Show nested quote +
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!


Thanks for the help and feedback! I've updated the OP with those spelling mistakes.
StrinterN
Profile Joined April 2010
Denmark531 Posts
April 04 2011 07:26 GMT
#73
On April 03 2011 13:17 oPPRoBe wrote:
O_o Looks like a boss thread.


It sure was! :D
Gave me alot to think about.
Twitter: @Strintern Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/strintern
eatenbyagrue
Profile Joined November 2010
25 Posts
April 04 2011 07:45 GMT
#74
On April 04 2011 08:15 CecilSunkure wrote:
Wasn't even kidding. If I get good enough I won't go to college yet.


This is a serious mistake. Even if against huge odds you actually manage to eake out a living playing SC2 tournaments, that's what it will be, eaking out a living. And if you just get somewhere near the top, but just not good enough to get into the money, this isn't even anything that will help you on your resume. Try explaining delaying college to play video games to prospective employers.
inTheMood
Profile Joined April 2010
Norway128 Posts
April 04 2011 08:04 GMT
#75
This is so much win! Thanks alot.
Going to study this and hopefully improve ^_^

<3
DIMAGA | Ret | mOOnGLaDe | Hero | White-Ra | DRG | Dragon | Snute
CatNzHat
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
United States1599 Posts
April 04 2011 10:18 GMT
#76
I personally think that one should focus on getting all of their mechanics down at once, because if you can force yourself to learn multiple things at once, you'll be on track to improve very quickly at starcraft as well as many other things. I personally find it quite easy to learn mechanics/macro/micro techniques, and my failings are almost solely because of my bad decision making/reads on my opponents (I'm low level masters if anyone cares).

I just started playing starcraft 2 in January, and it's my first RTS game, so i was in bronze league for a few weeks... I spent those weeks learning the interface of the game, I have some proffessional FPS gaming experience and I type quite fast, so my hand speed was never the issues, and once I learned the hotkeys/macro techniques I was fine macro wise.
I've hit a wall on the strategy front though, I win about 90% of my TvTs (43 out of my last 50 TvTs), and around 65% of my TvZs, and about 25% of my TvPs.

Once you maxed out the efficiency of your builds (don't miss depots, less than 400 minz, never queueing up units, never missing scvs, being able to just barely produce out of my production structures while still being able to afford the upgrades I need and expand at safe timings, etc..)

I think that people shouldn't try to "learn" the mechanics, they should just play normally, and it will come to them quickly, if they don't know what good mechanics look like, then they can watch the day[9] vidz.

To learn how to learn, you need to stop focusing on the specifics, and just absorb and process information as fast as possible.
hassook
Profile Joined November 2010
United Arab Emirates16 Posts
April 04 2011 10:51 GMT
#77
Thats seems an indepth guide with lots of efforts put into it, i will try and read it soon and i ll have my comments posted here.

thankx for the guide i was searching for something like this and here i find it!
aLuLz
Profile Joined January 2011
Germany175 Posts
April 04 2011 13:48 GMT
#78
This is awesome. Combined with SlayerSBaekho this is so huge for a non pro player. Thanks so much =)
jtRok
Profile Joined April 2011
United States25 Posts
April 04 2011 15:22 GMT
#79
Jesus, this is awesome! What a contribution. Definitely want to download this for reading though...

Thanks!
ahmagahd.
CecilSunkure
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
United States2829 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-04-04 16:58:58
April 04 2011 16:58 GMT
#80
On April 04 2011 16:45 eatenbyagrue wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 04 2011 08:15 CecilSunkure wrote:
Wasn't even kidding. If I get good enough I won't go to college yet.


This is a serious mistake. Even if against huge odds you actually manage to eake out a living playing SC2 tournaments, that's what it will be, eaking out a living. And if you just get somewhere near the top, but just not good enough to get into the money, this isn't even anything that will help you on your resume. Try explaining delaying college to play video games to prospective employers.

Really? I've already delayed college for a year and am playing video games. You know, I play video games for a profession as well. I work for Microsoft as a balance tester for the new Age of Empires game coming out, called Age of Empires Online. As I type this, I'm getting ready to go to work and play 1v1 with a player that went to WCG for Age 3 a year or two ago

Anyone who wants to get into SC2 professionally shouldn't be doing it for the money anyways. Debby downer.
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