On October 09 2011 13:48 Hectic wrote: No, i don't mean build oerder, i mean strategy.
for example: in ZVZ i might advise my crappy friend to try and use a defensive opening build order, while they aim for a 2 base roach push with +1 attack and speed to finish the game
that is the strategy, and now they know what the hell they are trying to achieve, and now they can practice it, even if it's not the best strategy.
Now they can work on, or find a build order to achieve this strategy, and improve their macro att he same time
if i didnt give them this focus, or they didnt find their own focus, they wouldnt know what to practice and hence there would be no opportunity to refine 'macro'.
still more effective to give him a build order and what he should have at time x in the early game. if you give a low level player guidance that ignores his poor macro (coddling), you find yourself saying: look, it's ok that you are supply capped by your 2nd overlord and are floating 400 mins because of it, but use those 400 minerals to make this just because you have the money now.
no sense in trying to get him out of a situation he only found himself in because he has bad macro. you don't tell your 12 year old son that he should avoid trial if he's found with 10 pounds of heroine on him ten years down the road. you raise him not to have 10 pounds of heroine on him.
but still, the two go together, I think we are both arguing the same thing, i'm just pointing out that the player need to have direction as well as working on macro
you cant have one without the other. thats all i'm trying to say. Of course you want to them to work on the macro as well, but it cannot be the ONLY focus.
On October 09 2011 14:01 Hectic wrote: but still, the two go together, I think we are both arguing the same thing, i'm just pointing out that the player need to have direction as well as working on macro
you cant have one without the other. thats all i'm trying to say. Of course you want to them to work on the macro as well, but it cannot be the ONLY focus.
i'll concede that giving him a general "goal" to work towards in a game is important, but the goal is largely driven by the build. and you can just as easily draw a straight line between the execution of the build and how much success he will have it, and the execution is driven by mechanics.
On October 09 2011 13:48 Hectic wrote: No, i don't mean build oerder, i mean strategy.
for example: in ZVZ i might advise my crappy friend to try and use a defensive opening build order, while they aim for a 2 base roach push with +1 attack and speed to finish the game
that is the strategy, and now they know what the hell they are trying to achieve, and now they can practice it, even if it's not the best strategy.
Now they can work on, or find a build order to achieve this strategy, and improve their macro att he same time
if i didnt give them this focus, or they didnt find their own focus, they wouldnt know what to practice and hence there would be no opportunity to refine 'macro'.
still more effective to give him a build order and what he should have at time x in the early game. if you give a low level player guidance that ignores his poor macro (coddling), you find yourself saying: look, it's ok that you are supply capped by your 2nd overlord and are floating 400 mins because of it, but use those 400 minerals to make this just because you have the money now.
no sense in trying to get him out of a situation he only found himself in because he has bad macro. you don't tell your 12 year old son that he should avoid trial if he's found with 10 pounds of heroine on him ten years down the road. you raise him not to have 10 pounds of heroine on him.
Yes the heroine ref was awesome, but no one ever acknowledges my posts cause im still sub-3-digits. It's depressing and I feel like I might need some heroine.
Or maybe I just need to macro better. But heroine seems like the easier choice.
Haven't read all of the thread, but enough to know what it was about atleast for the first 6-7 pages. Sorry if the tone changed since then. Anyway, I'm a silver-league zerg and have gotten the "just macro better" tip alot of times, and while it's rather unspecific it is true, to a point. Most games I focus on alot of various aspects and thus my macro end up slipping a bit, but now and then I focus more on injects and less on what to actually build.
Recently played a ZvP-game vs a top-gold protoss where according to sc2gears, I had 81% inject spawning ratio (avg gap 6.6sec) which I would consider quite good, esp since I see even pros letting queens get energy here and there when there are other things that take up their focus and it dropped a bit due to 2 queens dying to zealot-drops.
This was a 24min game, and I ended up on 5 bases with queens at 4 of them. My army consisted of mass-upgraded roaches, and I mostly just a-moved since I was focusing on macro. With the way I played, I just barely managed to win even though I was constantly hugely ahead in supply and I constantly denied his third (killed it off 3 times and had it cancelled another 3).
Now, granted I had full mapcontrol and was handling my injects well and a huge economy compared to my opponent, the game was too close. With a proper gameplan other than "macro macro macro" I most likely would've won alot faster, and with more ease. Hell, I even ended up losing one of the engagement due to FF's just before my burrow movement finished but due to the superior macro I had 200/200 again by the time he reached my natural.
Anyway the point I wanted to make was that yes, "work on your macro" is correct advice to give. But it's also very unspecific and lackluster, and if people ask for help there is for sure things you people with more knowledge can point out that they can use *while* working on improving their macro. For me, besides letting my macro slip most games at various times, bad scouting past 6-7min mark and failing to have a proper gameplan in ZvP (other than "deny third, keep colossi count low") and ZvZ (other than out-expand him) one of my major problems currently is that I'm bad at analyzing replays of losses and see where I went wrong except when there's the obvious glaring mistakes. I'm sure most others that post questions have similar things that could be pointed out to them so that advice could be "work on your injects, and at making sure you scout your opponent past the x min mark, and also do blabla" rather than just "work on your macro". Just my 2cp.
On October 09 2011 14:11 Darth Caedus wrote: Yes the heroine ref was awesome, but no one ever acknowledges my posts cause im still sub-3-digits. It's depressing and I feel like I might need some heroine.
Or maybe I just need to macro better. But heroine seems like the easier choice.
don't worry. we are all but actors on a stage. this thread will most likely fall into the archives of the internet only to be replaced in a few months with a different name by a different person. also actors do a lot of drugs.
On October 09 2011 14:15 Vond wrote: Haven't read all of the thread, but enough to know what it was about atleast for the first 6-7 pages. Sorry if the tone changed since then. Anyway, I'm a silver-league zerg and have gotten the "just macro better" tip alot of times, and while it's rather unspecific it is true, to a point. Most games I focus on alot of various aspects and thus my macro end up slipping a bit, but now and then I focus more on injects and less on what to actually build.
Recently played a ZvP-game vs a top-gold protoss where according to sc2gears, I had 81% inject spawning ratio (avg gap 6.6sec) which I would consider quite good, esp since I see even pros letting queens get energy here and there when there are other things that take up their focus and it dropped a bit due to 2 queens dying to zealot-drops.
This was a 24min game, and I ended up on 5 bases with queens at 4 of them. My army consisted of mass-upgraded roaches, and I mostly just a-moved since I was focusing on macro. With the way I played, I just barely managed to win even though I was constantly hugely ahead in supply and I constantly denied his third (killed it off 3 times and had it cancelled another 3).
Now, granted I had full mapcontrol and was handling my injects well and a huge economy compared to my opponent, the game was too close. With a proper gameplan other than "macro macro macro" I most likely would've won alot faster, and with more ease. Hell, I even ended up losing one of the engagement due to FF's just before my burrow movement finished but due to the superior macro I had 200/200 again by the time he reached my natural.
Anyway the point I wanted to make was that yes, "work on your macro" is correct advice to give. But it's also very unspecific and lackluster, and if people ask for help there is for sure things you people with more knowledge can point out that they can use *while* working on improving their macro. For me, besides letting my macro slip most games at various times, bad scouting past 6-7min mark and failing to have a proper gameplan in ZvP (other than "deny third, keep colossi count low") and ZvZ (other than out-expand him) one of my major problems currently is that I'm bad at analyzing replays of losses and see where I went wrong except when there's the obvious glaring mistakes. I'm sure most others that post questions have similar things that could be pointed out to them so that advice could be "work on your injects, and at making sure you scout your opponent past the x min mark, and also do blabla" rather than just "work on your macro". Just my 2cp.
If your macro is that good and you lack strategy I suggest you move to the NA server, that could greatly improve your win rate.
On October 09 2011 14:11 Darth Caedus wrote: Yes the heroine ref was awesome, but no one ever acknowledges my posts cause im still sub-3-digits. It's depressing and I feel like I might need some heroine.
Or maybe I just need to macro better. But heroine seems like the easier choice.
don't worry. we are all but actors on a stage. this thread will most likely fall into the archives of the internet only to be replaced in a few months with a different name by a different person. also actors do a lot of drugs.
Thank you. Thank you.
I may or may not regret these post in the morning. I'm gonna go with: may, but it was worth it.
On October 09 2011 14:15 Vond wrote: Haven't read all of the thread, but enough to know what it was about atleast for the first 6-7 pages. Sorry if the tone changed since then. Anyway, I'm a silver-league zerg and have gotten the "just macro better" tip alot of times, and while it's rather unspecific it is true, to a point. Most games I focus on alot of various aspects and thus my macro end up slipping a bit, but now and then I focus more on injects and less on what to actually build.
Recently played a ZvP-game vs a top-gold protoss where according to sc2gears, I had 81% inject spawning ratio (avg gap 6.6sec) which I would consider quite good, esp since I see even pros letting queens get energy here and there when there are other things that take up their focus and it dropped a bit due to 2 queens dying to zealot-drops.
This was a 24min game, and I ended up on 5 bases with queens at 4 of them. My army consisted of mass-upgraded roaches, and I mostly just a-moved since I was focusing on macro. With the way I played, I just barely managed to win even though I was constantly hugely ahead in supply and I constantly denied his third (killed it off 3 times and had it cancelled another 3).
Now, granted I had full mapcontrol and was handling my injects well and a huge economy compared to my opponent, the game was too close. With a proper gameplan other than "macro macro macro" I most likely would've won alot faster, and with more ease. Hell, I even ended up losing one of the engagement due to FF's just before my burrow movement finished but due to the superior macro I had 200/200 again by the time he reached my natural.
Anyway the point I wanted to make was that yes, "work on your macro" is correct advice to give. But it's also very unspecific and lackluster, and if people ask for help there is for sure things you people with more knowledge can point out that they can use *while* working on improving their macro. For me, besides letting my macro slip most games at various times, bad scouting past 6-7min mark and failing to have a proper gameplan in ZvP (other than "deny third, keep colossi count low") and ZvZ (other than out-expand him) one of my major problems currently is that I'm bad at analyzing replays of losses and see where I went wrong except when there's the obvious glaring mistakes. I'm sure most others that post questions have similar things that could be pointed out to them so that advice could be "work on your injects, and at making sure you scout your opponent past the x min mark, and also do blabla" rather than just "work on your macro". Just my 2cp.
The thing is macro and mechanics are suggested because they are the fundamentals of everything else. You said that with proper gameplan and other things, you would win faster and easier -- that is definitely true. Only working on your mechanics isn't supposed to be winning you all the games since working on your fundamentals is not the way you play optimally. To achieve a high winrate, you are supposed to utilize multiple elements combined together such as game planning and decision making.
When people say that the lower-level players should work on their macro, that is so that when you can achieve that, you can work on other things much easier since you don't have to consciously macro all the time. If, as you said, you are able to macro relatively efficiently, then now you can start slowly working on other aspect of the game you found lacking in you play and incorporate those without having to worry about so many things at once. It is much more efficient to work on one aspect at a time, and that why macro is the fundamental people are always advised to learn.
The thing is, people seem to think that when they are given the advice to macro better, that if they macro perfectly without caring about other things, they would win all or most of their games, which is not true. With proper macro in the lower leagues, you would be able to win more than you lose, and can rise among the ranks. Whether this process is a fast or slow one depend on a lot other things which are just variance of the system. However, with proper mechanics, when you rise to the higher level, you will be able to look at other aspects of your gameplay and improve upon those much quicker and more efficient since you have the proper basis to be able to adapt for any shift in skills or even the metagame.
So, yes, macro and mechanics only might now win you a lot of games easily, but like every other things in the world, you start from the basics and gradually improve until you'll be able to freely incorporate more advanced stuff. But, who knows, perhaps some people have natural talents and might be able to learn faster by learning other things first. For most people, though, starting from the basics will probably be faster although a bit less fun and interesting. Anyway, that's my opinion on the subject.
IMO newbs who want to get better at the game need to find some simple 1base build, for example 7rr, bane/sling, 4gate, dt drop -> prism/warpgate allin, rine/scv rush, 3rax allin, and just do that over and over again until they can execute cleanly without ever thinking about it.
Once they're able to do the build crisply they can start working on better micro in the battles, maintaining macro while fighting, expanding, even transitioning into new techs. At that point it's maybe, MAYBE time to start looking into what compositions are good against what, how to counter x build, etc etc.
Drives me insane people telling nubs to try macro builds like 1rax expo and then tell them to work on their macro. How the funk are they supposed to focus on macroing well when their brains are engaged trying to figure out what units to build and where to put their armies and how to defend vs drops and how to scout the enemy and blaarrghrghrghgrhrghrgh GG!?!?!??!
Previous post is good advice. The misconception that you can't learn macro off 1 base builds(P, T; 2 base for zerg) is pretty stupid. You have to start somewhere. And believe me, CLEANLY and CRISPLY macroing to 50 food off 1 base, is a good place to start and more than most sub diamond players can do. The key is encouraging them to actually take an expansion (even delayed). At lower levels you can expand off a build that would be all-in as fuck in a tourney and not be behind.
But yeah, cleanly macroing the first 6 mins of the game is the most important part, its just something better players take for granted.
There is nothing with 3-raxing (or 1-1-1 just don't pull scv) or 4-gating (or 3-gate robo) every game in bronze-silver-gold to build mechanics. Because it does.
On October 09 2011 13:48 Hectic wrote: No, i don't mean build oerder, i mean strategy.
for example: in ZVZ i might advise my crappy friend to try and use a defensive opening build order, while they aim for a 2 base roach push with +1 attack and speed to finish the game
that is the strategy, and now they know what the hell they are trying to achieve, and now they can practice it, even if it's not the best strategy.
Now they can work on, or find a build order to achieve this strategy, and improve their macro att he same time
if i didnt give them this focus, or they didnt find their own focus, they wouldnt know what to practice and hence there would be no opportunity to refine 'macro'.
im arguing this, because i have helped several players go from 0 RTS experience to daimond level player, and i know for a fact that only telling someone to make their macro better makes them feel shitty and unmotivated because they still don't have a game plan.
The way to improve your league is to Macro, whether you like it or not. On a basic level, if you have more workers mining on more bases, more unit-producing structures and constant production, you will simply have more shit than your opponent. More units > less units (micro becomes irrelevant).
Micro is just making your units more cost efficient so that if your army is roughly the same size as your opponent (not just in supply, but in mineral and gas cost), you come out on top with adroit micro. However, micro is not needed at lower levels. Mainly, just masters -> GM.
This leaves us with Strategy or the idea of an overarching plan. Having some objective is important (ie, a timing push with stim or a roach/ling push), but the real value at lower levels is not trying to follow some cut and dried "strategy" that you "learned" from some stream (Where your timing will be way off from the pro's timing), but instead in LEARNING why this strategy exists. ie. How is it that pros can pull of this timing? Examining how pros *Macro and set up the infrastructure to produce X amount of units at time Y.
The only other strategic point is the idea of Tactics. Tactics are the small, short term strategic moves that lead to an advantage. Maybe you use use multi pronged harass, mutas to pick off scvs, and then sending lings to another location. Or dropping zealots from a warp prism in the main and hitting the natural with your main force. Tactics are important, but not at all at low levels.
tl;dr So the conclusion is simple and remains what everyone else has said. Learn to macro to move up from lower leagues. Top 6 Master Terran here..
Exhibit A for why you lower level players need to shut up and listen to the better players. They are better for a reason.
This is Destiny casting a bronze league game. Forget his commentary.
Look at what the players are doing.
Zerg opens with a pool/gas into an expand.
Protoss goes 4gate.
However, look at how poorly they execute both builds.
The Protoss is queueing probes, meaning his gate goes down later than it could. He nearly misses making his second pylon in time because he has three probes queued. His cybernetics core goes down and he has FOUR probes queued up. He makes a pylon when he is at 29/42 supply, for no reason, instead of spending the money on another warpin.
The Zerg! He goes for a pool-gas expand build. Doesn't put any guys on gas for 30seconds or more. Goes for the hatchery far too early instead of getting his queen first. By 10 minutes into the game and with less than 30 drones in total, the Zerg is floating nearly 1000 minerals and gas. He also has a bunch of energy on both queens because he hasn't been injecting.
The STRATEGY of each player was fine! Protoss planned to go 4gate, Zerg wanted to gas/pool expand and then went roaches upon suspecting 4gate.
4gate is a great opening on close position spawn games! Gas pool expands are a great opening against Protoss in general, and roach is a good response to a suspected or scouted 4gate. The spine crawler was a good decision!
Neither player needs to change anything about their strategy. They just need to execute their strategies properly instead of sucking at it.
The STRATEGY of each player was fine! Protoss planned to go 4gate, Zerg wanted to gas/pool expand and then went roaches upon suspecting 4gate. 4gate is a great opening on close position spawn games! Gas pool expands are a great opening against Protoss in general, and roach is a good response to a suspected or scouted 4gate. The spine crawler was a good decision! Neither player needs to change anything about their strategy. They just need to execute their strategies properly instead of sucking at it.
This is good! You've critiqued their respective strategies and found that there's nothing fundamentally wrong there. So all that's left is macro criticism. And I don't think anyone in this thread has claimed that low leaguers don't often have good strats. But when you post a replay its nice to get the distinction between -your strat was good, if you execute it a little better you could win And -your strat was terrible. If you switch to this better strat *and* improve your macro a bit, you would have won. Most TL threads boil down to one of those two. But what some people in this thread, and *only* in this thread seem to be recommending is -your strat was terrible. But if you had macro three of four leagues ahead of your opponent you would have won anyway. Neglecting to mention the months or *years* of effort that could take to achieve, by which point they might not even be playing the game still.
Oky let me explain to you why it is pointless to focus on anything else until you have decent macro and decent unit control. This morning i dropped a lil bit to more on the ladder and i played this game vs a 1.3k point guy on master. Its a rep of me winning so pleas don't flame to much on that but the point i want to make is the following. http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=236227 This guy executes a strategy exactly how a bronzy would, he goes for the spine at front on ovy creep + nydus in the back of my base but he does it of 2 base instead of rushing it of 1, due to that fact i should ( theoretically at least) not be able to scout it. Now if someone did this strat to me of 1 base it would require a significant response from me but fact is that this low on the ladder ppl don't actually execute this kind of strategies ( even cheeses ) that require very good unit control and timing and thus they will do something silly to make it work better for them ( like doing it semi all in with more units of 2 base like this guy did ). Now if i was in say low master, i would have likely lost to this just as a plat or diamond player would loss to a platinum/diamond player if he/she was doing what my opponent did.
Pleas note that what i do ( 4 tech structure + late wg ) is basically what this guy would want me to do, not have units, yet i am able to hold and be ahead, not cuz i countered what he did, not cuz i had a great tactic as follow up just cuz i am "close" ( did some mistakes cuz i am totally shit after being on a losse streak ) to my macro "cap" of 2 bases as toss. If a low master/diamond player was playing instead of me he would have lost, not due to his tactic BUT due to the fact that his dt would have been out few secs later, his stalker wouldn't be out as fast, he wouldn't pull probes as quick, he wouldn't know how much he can tech while under that preasure and would get his colossus bay or even his 3rd to late, he might not be so confident in sending that war prism to snipe...etc While my opponent on 2 base tho he was doing a horrible build played a horrible build almost perfectly since the horrible build is easy to play almost perfectly. In more then 90% of the cases when a low level player losses to an opponent that "crushed him" is cuz the opponent did something really easy ( say 4 rax marauder with stim or w/e ppl do in silver/gold league nowadays ) and the other guy did something around the line of a 1 gate expand, the problem is not that the 1 gate expand can't defend that 1 base all in the problem is that player 1 is macroing and microing almost perfectly of 1 base with 1 type of units while player 2 is not with 2 base and 3 types of units, and thus the only advice you can get is 1 use an easier build til you macro/micro is better or 2 strive to micro/macro better. That is why, and i believe most would agree, it is pointless to give an advice to someone bellow diamond or so, since his opponent most likely just had better macro or an easier build and thats why he won thus it is almost impossible to give a "strategy" advice to someone who won't be able to use the strategy well enough to do what the strategy is intended to do and a 5 secs mistakes makes a godly strategy a terrible one ( see 4 gate in pvp before the wg timing nerf, it was the best if you had it right away but if you missed a crono and waited 7 sec more of the warp in 100 and 1 defensvie build would just shit on it since they had an immortal or enough units up to hold it without sweating.
On October 09 2011 19:12 Dhalphir wrote: A poor strategy executed well is still better than a good strategy executed badly. That is the core of the matter.
Yeah ...
Whenever I want to help a Zerg platinum and below, 90% of the time, I point out flaws in their opening builds. Simply because if they fix that, they will just have enough stuff to survive later on.
Exception being if it's a 200 / 200 battle after both player have left each other alone because they couldn't be bothered to attack.
It doesn't matter what "strategy" or "micro tactic" you use when you're fighting 12 marines with your 8, which I see all too often in the lower level games, the most common reason low level players lose is because the opponent simply had more units.
It's annoying to hear over and over, but that's because it's important, and trust me, it IS something you can change and fix in one night, you just have to have it as a priority at ALL times.
This is an interesting topic. On one hand "Improve your macro!" is almost a required statement at all levels. But the statement has meaning on the same level as telling a painter he needs to paint better. Somebody is a student, asking you what they should draw for some contest, you're not going to suggest to them, "Well, that anti-smoking poster you made would win if you painted better." Instead, the reasonable thing would be to say something along the lines of, "I don't like the color used for the black lung disease. Try using fuchsia instead!"
The bottom line, if all you have to say is "work on your macro," then don't say anything. However, if your advice is along the lines of "don't queue up so many probes and you can get that gate down faster." That is much better advice.
That being said, if they're just getting rolled because of some unit comp, might as well steer them in the way of another strategy before talking about macro. If somebody is massing marines against colossi or HTs and you tell them to macro better, you're insane.
EPT
) to my macro "cap" of 2 bases as toss. If a low master/diamond player was playing instead of me he would have lost, not due to his tactic BUT due to the fact that his dt would have been out few secs later, his stalker wouldn't be out as fast, he wouldn't pull probes as quick, he wouldn't know how much he can tech while under that preasure and would get his colossus bay or even his 3rd to late, he might not be so confident in sending that war prism to snipe...etc
