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I think most of the people in this thread understood the meaning of the OP just fine. Sure there are some errors, but idt we need to get supernerd about it.
The overall message i think is that there are a wide range of builds that just plain kill zerg if unprepared. It would be good to notice a rage of timings for certain tells of these builds so you can tweak your overall plan for that game. I think if we follow day9 advice, we all have a general "plan" on which we base our build. What the OP is saying that there are specific timings we should be aware of and they are of "X-Y" range, specifically at "ABC" time if the T or P build was optimal. No way do i just assume that the timings are for all maps all matchups. I appreciate the effort of the OP and this will definitely help my play rather than hurt it.
The idea is not new, but certain tells i've not seen anyone talk about openly even on TL and that is somewhat of an achievement. I think if we all keep thinking together like this the community can sustain some healthy growth.
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On July 08 2011 12:46 Xapti wrote:
And that's just the quality of the English sentence syntax, let alone the lack of structuring, and even formatting. Sure, some basic paragraphs are there, a bit of bullets, and titles, which is useful but it doesn't make it great, nor does it fix the problems.
Are you really judging a guide by the use of the English language instead of its content? (And are you really using a poorly constructed sentence to do so?  )
The topic also seemed to cover the game in way too much of an analytical and narrow-visioned method. The problem is that different maps have different timings, different game actions change timings, and different players have their own differences in build style.
Not only that, but oftentimes players will not opt for the most efficient way of running a certain build since it's too much of a dead giveaway of their actions.
How can you become too analytical when discussing a strategy game?
By the way this isn't analytical at all, it's just a list of timings we can use to do analysis on the possible range of builds our opponents are doing. Apparently you don't understand the concept of ranges because by thinking this way it doesn't actually matter that there are variations in what our opponent is doing (because of a million factors including maps and play styles).
Isn't it great that we can deduct that there is a high probability of a proxy rax by looking at a clock and counting SCV's? Sure sometimes there won't be a proxy rax because our opponent missed his timings, is playing mindgames or is just plain bad but this doesn't really matter. We can account for such things by adjusting our ranges and probabilities.
After that we might still conclude that it's a good idea to prepare for the proxy rax even though it's not actually there in some cases. If the probability of a proxy is high enough and we die often enough if we don't prepare we will still see an increased winrate by preparing for it regardless.
What arbitrageur has done here is giving us a framework to construct these ranges based on what we do see.
Overall I'd say this goes over too many people's heads, and is definitely not worth the time practicing and training the brain to deal with some of the stuff mentioned.
Please speak for yourself.
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These timings are WAY too specific. I am a 1600+ masters protoss player and I consistently have different timings for my 1 gate and 3 gate expands. It really depends on what I was making and how many chronos I have which in turn depend on what I scouted from the zerg player.
Sometimes I go zeal, stalker, stalker, sentry. Sometimes I go zeal, sentry, sentry, sentry. I change this based on the gas timing I scout. The earlier of those two examples makes my 1 gate expo about the same time as a 3 gate expo but with pressure.
Getting locked into these timings is only going to confuse you as a player. Unfortunately there is no quick answer to scouting. You have to be able to read into their build using finer details than the game clock.
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fascinating. I have to wonder if these numbers will be correct if the opposing player is of a lower caliber. Other than that, this is an incredible collection and a great read. Thank you so much for accruing this data.
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... personally I just want to give thanks to the original poster.
This is possibly one of the most useful posts here, especially the ZvT section. I've had real problems distinguishing builds from each other and preparing properly for the various 1 base all ins a terran can do (marines, marine tank, cloaked banshee, 2 port banshee, blue flames marine tank followup, marine scv, etc etc etc).
Once the game goes longer and you can scout the composition, I find it much easier. But a 1 base terran really feels too much like a coinflip for me, in that I have a hard time preparing properly for all the various timings / compositions, assuming a proper marine patrol on the edges to prevent scouting slow overlords.
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Well done. I am Protoss, so please delete this whole thread It will be hard to go DTs when Zerg knows about the timings
Nice collection of timings, friend
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This has to be one of the most genius and helpful threads out there.
This is going to help me a ton, TY again and please update with any new info! :D
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On July 08 2011 15:16 djengizz wrote:Are you really judging a guide by the use of the English language instead of its content? (And are you really using a poorly constructed sentence to do so? )
No. I was talking about how some people said the guide was well-written. I already said that in my first post.
Secondly, I was not (superficially) judging the guide in any other way— I read it, hence I was making a fully-informed personal review of it. Presentation is an extremely important factor in communication.
On July 08 2011 15:16 djengizz wrote:
Please speak for yourself.
No. As a top 1% of players, I understand things that most people do not. As a Starcraft fan (like anyone), I also know that far more than 50% of players are bronze, silver, or gold. In other words, most players (bronze,silver,gold) will not be able to make use of this because of the timing and strategy variance involved in such low-level play. Of course, that's only if they understand it, and are willing to spend a load of time trying to train their brain.
I'm not saying I know what's better for someone. If someone likes this guide then fine they can do what they want with it, but I would not recommend it.
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Very nice, well written guide. I've been meaning to find some common timings for these matchups but never got round to, so it's a major help to me. But indeed, i think you should use more range of times instead of specific down to the second benchmarks, but even so most people who will use this should know that there are deviations in timing with every indivudual player.
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On July 07 2011 14:19 Asday wrote:
I take it there's like a 0% chance of these accuracies translating to the lower leagues?
Either way, excellently written, and boatloads of information, thank you.
you dont need to change anything at a lower level
that timings are just THE EARLIEST possible threat
for scouting its not too much of a difference because you can still just continue to poke until you see what he is doing and even if it is much delayed you still should be able to scout the same things by just constantly poking and being careful how to react to what you see
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This is actually insane. Combine this with the information from the The Art of ZvT and The Art of ZvP threads and you know a whole lost about those matchups.
How long did it take you to write this guide?
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Very, very helpful. Posting in this thread so I can easily find it again and use as a reference.
Liquipedia could use something like this.
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Extremely well written by the OP, and I can see it being very useful for people in all leagues.
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been waiting for this for a long time.... u r LEGEND!
timings may be a bit too specific so try to have a bit more leeway, and when will this be on liquipedia
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Excellent initiative! I'll contribute with timings when I start playing again! Well done so far!
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What a lot of people are wondering, is how to apply these at a lower level, when builds are hardly refined.
The idea is that the time stamps that the OP provides is the EARLIEST possible time at which something mentioned will pose a threat to you or when it will occur, and if you're worried about something in particular, that's when you should cater to it. If it happens much later than the given time then in that case it'll just be a shitty build and you'll be able to crush it relatively easily.
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That's a pretty sick OP, I'm really impressed and have not read such an interesting post for a long time, hat's off sir.
I can say that the terran part is very accurate and useful. I'm not sure about the protoss part because I don't have any experience playing P, but this is still an impressive post.
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On July 07 2011 15:31 whoopingchow wrote:
Fantastic post. I'm only a Bronze level Terran, so a) I know what to benchmark myself at; b) I know what to look for in my matchups now; and c) I know how to hide units and buildings to confuse scouts :p. Thanks for an extremely well-written post!!
At bronze level you can't really predict much with scouting. At bronze level you can't really tell for example if your opponent has 3 gateways, that he's going for a 3-gate sentry expand, because at that level people just play pretty much by the "ear", if you will. And you can't really "confuse" your opponents because most of the people at bronze level can't read opponents by early scouting because A) their knowledge about openings and such isn't very broad yet B) their opponent is not following a spesific build, so we're back at the start basically where the opponent is playing by the "ear" and not following a spesific build and there for nullifying the scouting somewhat. Of course you can figure something out, but you shouldn't expect that if you didn't see A, he definitely will not go for B because that would be stupid. Don't overestimate your opponents and expect perfect and crisp play. Scouting at that level is just pretty much consisting just that he's not going for something "cheesy" like dt rush or banshee rush, so that consists just checking does he go for an early double gas etc.
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arbitrageur you are a smart and handsome scholar who is also a gentleman.
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EPT
