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Hi, I am Fencer, a Mid Diamond level Terran player.
I have a Dilemma. I do not know what style to go for, while improving my Macro, Multitasking, and Micro. The three styles that are viable in my eyes, are Sky Terran, Sky Mech, and Bio.
Sky Terran is a very fun strategy, causes many protoss tears on ladder, but is also very fragile, more so than Bio. If I play it correctly, I can crush many protoss on ladder. If I play without much Micro, or if I don't react enough to an incoming push, then I will be crushed by a larger army.
Example Replay
In this replay I utterly crush him, and he Bad Manners me without a GG. He does not put on any pressure, and I do not make the recommended two bunkers at my natural because I scout Stargate tech, meaning a much smaller army.
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When I play Bio, I usually must greatly outmacro my opponent while denying his expansions, to win. If I do not either deny his 4th, or kill a lot of probes, I will often lose to instant-remake gateway armies. Also, if I do not properly engage nearly every single time unless I am very far ahead, I will lose my army to storms and chargelots.
Example Replay
In this game, I do not expand, drop, or attack as much as I should have, but I manage to consistently deny the Protoss' 4th and 5th bases, leading to me overpowering him with sheer force after many battles.
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Sky Mech is a more immobile strategy, that, in my opinion, centers around Tanks, and Banshees. During my single game with the style so far, I gather that you must harass the Protoss as much as possible while being cost-effective with Hellions, and Banshees, while securing a strong map presence with Siege tanks and Static defenses.
Example Replay
In this game I lose, but I realize it is because I did not push early enough, or harass enough. And I was floating far too many Minerals. It was also a very fun game, though I lost. 
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TL;DR Should I go Sky Terran, Sky Mech, or Bio while improving? I like the Sky + X styles better personally, and any one of them may be better in the long run.
Criticism on my play is also welcome, though not the point of this thread.
The verdict, is actually not decided yet. I keep changing my mind, sorry everyone.
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I would say skymech, but only because I love sky terran and I don't think pure sky terran is viable PvT.
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First, showing replays where you win is not that helpful, and makes it look like you are showing off. If you are asking why do certain styles not work better than other show the replays you are losing with said styles. A lot of people will not give your replays the time of day of you winning because you won and probably did not make that many mistakes. So please show replays of the first two styles losing.
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Canada1866 Posts
I would argue it doesn't really matter exactly which style you choose as long as you're practicing an active style with multitasking. I think the reason you like the Sky + X style is because there is a lot to do, but that's the same of any harassment oriented style. Things like microing banshees, doing drops, and executing timing attacks WHILE maintaining excellent base timings and mechanics are the keys to rapid improvement.
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I think standard bio is the way to go. Do not make the mistake of trying to sit back and out macro the Protoss. Protoss late game army is insanely powerful, especially if you get 4 colossi + storm. Drop lots, trade armies, do multi pronged attacks, kill a lot of probes, expand aggressively, scan constantly for colossi/templar tech switches, make a PF once in a while, and micro your butt off. The term I use for terran's with good micro is "slippery". Constantly try to keep your MM force away from colossus fire and templar until vikings thin the numbers of colossi or you emp all the templar, respectively. Spread your forces to get an excellent concave. Start double upgrades early. Be absolutely ruthless about picking off zealots as a protoss chases after you. Never simply stim and run away unless you are severely outmatched.
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It might be a good idea to post replays of him winning, considering he wants us to compare the styles and judge. It wouldn't exactly be fair to say, "oh, here's the style I'm thinking about, but I didn't do it right in this replay." Afterall, in the OP he stated
Criticism on my play is also welcome, though not the point of this thread.
He can always post replays of him losing, once we identify which style should theoretically be best, and from there we can work on improving his play and finding contingencies for every situation.
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Not a sky terran or sky mech style at all....
A) I am a whore for standard, and none of those (sky + whatever) are standard
B) the investment is SO much, and you can achieve the same thing with bio or mech or bio-mech for less
C) Skymech is SUPER weak to protoss....
D) off of my soapbox about non-standard play, I believe if you play Bio correctly, you MUST focus on all of those (macro, multitasking, micro) to win. To me, there is no point in doing something to train a SINGLE specific thing if you can do another and train multiple at the same time. Similarly, Bio is a very mobile, aggressive style that seems to fit the overall trend of what you want to do. If crazy people in GSL can pull it off with aplomb, why try to do something else? If they can make standard work and do it well, why do you need to do anything else? (thats a larger question I have to the SC2 community as well)
I didn't put any of my analysis of the replays because you didn't want any. Standard will get you the most wins because of better play, allow you to improve more faster, as well as teaching fundamental though processes needed to be viable at higher levels. If you do wonky shit, the thought processes needed to have good decision making are vastly different from when you are doing standard play.
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On December 29 2011 09:35 Hossinaut wrote:
Not a sky terran or sky mech style at all....
A) I am a whore for standard, and none of those (sky + whatever) are standard
B) the investment is SO much, and you can achieve the same thing with bio or mech or bio-mech for less
C) Skymech is SUPER weak to protoss....
D) off of my soapbox about non-standard play, I believe if you play Bio correctly, you MUST focus on all of those (macro, multitasking, micro) to win. To me, there is no point in doing something to train a SINGLE specific thing if you can do another and train multiple at the same time. Similarly, Bio is a very mobile, aggressive style that seems to fit the overall trend of what you want to do. If crazy people in GSL can pull it off with aplomb, why try to do something else? If they can make standard work and do it well, why do you need to do anything else? (thats a larger question I have to the SC2 community as well)
I didn't put any of my analysis of the replays because you didn't want any. Standard will get you the most wins because of better play, allow you to improve more faster, as well as teaching fundamental though processes needed to be viable at higher levels. If you do wonky shit, the thought processes needed to have good decision making are vastly different from when you are doing standard play.
Hello, I'll address your points in order:
A) They may not be standard, but they work. Maybe my replays don't show this, but if you're not convinced you can check here for the Sky Terran guide which I got it from, and here for the Sky Mech guide.
B) For better or for worse, I already spent a large amount of time on Sky Terran, and my days of meching in platinum will make Sky Mech fairly easy to pick up, so your point is null.
C) If you watched the replay of Sky Mech which I lost, you can see that I did a few things wrong, such as not harassing enough with banshees and hellion drops, not making enough hellions or ghosts to tank and deal damage, and letting the protoss get too greedy for lack of scouting.
D) Well, Sky Terran is also a very aggressive style, because it's basically mass banshee with raven and viking support until the late game. I actually beat an unprepared master player using Sky Terran with constant probe harassment and keeping him on two base, while I expanded to (I think?) a total of four. This was in a King of the Hill game though, but if you want the replay anyway I'd be happy to provide it.
These strategies that I am on the fence about doing/not doing, have not been proven to be completely viable, nor vise versa.
I'm not looking for the most wins faster, I'm looking to have fun while improving as quickly as possible. If you watched the replays, you could see how the strategies are viable, and where I could go from there as to improving and various strategies.
On December 29 2011 07:51 TangSC wrote:
I would argue it doesn't really matter exactly which style you choose as long as you're practicing an active style with multitasking. I think the reason you like the Sky + X style is because there is a lot to do, but that's the same of any harassment oriented style. Things like microing banshees, doing drops, and executing timing attacks WHILE maintaining excellent base timings and mechanics are the keys to rapid improvement.
Thank you, I'm still not sure which style to pick, though.
On December 29 2011 09:34 theonlyshaft wrote:It might be a good idea to post replays of him winning, considering he wants us to compare the styles and judge. It wouldn't exactly be fair to say, "oh, here's the style I'm thinking about, but I didn't do it right in this replay." Afterall, in the OP he stated He can always post replays of him losing, once we identify which style should theoretically be best, and from there we can work on improving his play and finding contingencies for every situation.
Thank you, this is what I was thinking when I made this thread. Luckily for my example game of Sky Mech, there were some clear cut bad decisions and bad macro on my part which lead to me losing. Though I'm not sure I posted a good example game of Sky Terran, due to me crushing the Protoss so hard, and him not responding to my air play.
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Fencer, I'm not exactly a T player. I wouldn't at all be able to help you learn anything more than you already know about general Terran stuff. The best I can offer is to play some ZvT games with you and see if I can tear apart your builds. What it seems to me is the stuff you do will work in ladder, best of 1 scenarios, but weak to series play. But that's only a theory, we won't know til we test it.
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My honest opinion is that if you just can play enough to keep it up, try playing several different styles. This way you will have more variety in your play. For some it means getting better BoX results, for some it means more fun. Also, you shouldn't rely on 1 style for all the matchups, since for example bio is really hard to pull off, if not even just bad, against zerg while it is the standard against protoss.
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On December 29 2011 10:43 theonlyshaft wrote:
Fencer, I'm not exactly a T player. I wouldn't at all be able to help you learn anything more than you already know about general Terran stuff. The best I can offer is to play some ZvT games with you and see if I can tear apart your builds. What it seems to me is the stuff you do will work in ladder, best of 1 scenarios, but weak to series play. But that's only a theory, we won't know til we test it.
I guess we can 1v1 in Bo3, my CC and Username are in my quote section. Though, I have a replay of TvZ right here showing, in my opinion, some of my more solid play, though I don't drop enough, and every base after my third and my first attack is delayed. Replay here.
My TvZ and TvT play is also extremely standard, if more than a little greedy past the 10 minute mark. The reason I'm having such a problem with TvP, is just how the matchup is with Bio, the massive amounts of AoE, and chargelots. I had a game where I was ahead, but lost because I looked away from my army for a few seconds too long. The result is, I lost my main army, and did not have enough reinforcements streaming in to defend his push.
On December 29 2011 10:51 tablet wrote:
My honest opinion is that if you just can play enough to keep it up, try playing several different styles. This way you will have more variety in your play. For some it means getting better BoX results, for some it means more fun. Also, you shouldn't rely on 1 style for all the matchups, since for example bio is really hard to pull off, if not even just bad, against zerg while it is the standard against protoss.
The reason I made this thread, is that these styles are vastly different from each other, aside from -maybe- sky terran and sky mech, the reason being, with both of these you use harassment, to try and take the initiative and with sky mech, macro up a very large tank/banshee/raven/ghost force, or with sky terran, a large raven/banshee/viking/battlecruiser force. I don't have the time to keep up with all three of these styles, though picking two of them would be an okay compromise, though I only see that working with Sky terran and Sky mech.
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I understand that you have replays. But the best thing you can possibly do, to explore the potential use of a style, is to have one person time and time again try to beat it. That's when you learn whether something's a strategy, or a gimmick; whether it works every time, and has contingencies for every situation, or if it's kind of a one-shot deal. Any replay you send is going to be a one-shot deal, because it happens on ladder. If you want true, solid analysis, it takes more than one game vs the same opponent. 2-3 games vs the same guy guarantees it's not a gimmick.
A gimmick would be, say, burrowed roaches. If someone does that every game, in a certain match-up, in series play his opponent will lose to it (maybe) once, then just get detection. What is crucial is to decide whether your strategies fall into that category.
I also second the concept that playing the same style in every match up is usually a bad idea.
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On December 29 2011 10:01 Fencer710 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 09:35 Hossinaut wrote:
Not a sky terran or sky mech style at all....
A) I am a whore for standard, and none of those (sky + whatever) are standard
B) the investment is SO much, and you can achieve the same thing with bio or mech or bio-mech for less
C) Skymech is SUPER weak to protoss....
D) off of my soapbox about non-standard play, I believe if you play Bio correctly, you MUST focus on all of those (macro, multitasking, micro) to win. To me, there is no point in doing something to train a SINGLE specific thing if you can do another and train multiple at the same time. Similarly, Bio is a very mobile, aggressive style that seems to fit the overall trend of what you want to do. If crazy people in GSL can pull it off with aplomb, why try to do something else? If they can make standard work and do it well, why do you need to do anything else? (thats a larger question I have to the SC2 community as well)
I didn't put any of my analysis of the replays because you didn't want any. Standard will get you the most wins because of better play, allow you to improve more faster, as well as teaching fundamental though processes needed to be viable at higher levels. If you do wonky shit, the thought processes needed to have good decision making are vastly different from when you are doing standard play. Hello, I'll address your points in order: A) They may not be standard, but they work. Maybe my replays don't show this, but if you're not convinced you can check here for the Sky Terran guide which I got it from, and here for the Sky Mech guide.B) For better or for worse, I already spent a large amount of time on Sky Terran, and my days of meching in platinum will make Sky Mech fairly easy to pick up, so your point is null. C) If you watched the replay of Sky Mech which I lost, you can see that I did a few things wrong, such as not harassing enough with banshees and hellion drops, not making enough hellions or ghosts to tank and deal damage, and letting the protoss get too greedy for lack of scouting. D) Well, Sky Terran is also a very aggressive style, because it's basically mass banshee with raven and viking support until the late game. I actually beat an unprepared master player using Sky Terran with constant probe harassment and keeping him on two base, while I expanded to (I think?) a total of four. This was in a King of the Hill game though, but if you want the replay anyway I'd be happy to provide it.
The argument wasn't whether the strats worked or not. The question to me was one of improving more facets of your play simultaneously, and standard play (EG bio) will always do this most efficiently and most quickly.
My second point was poorly worded- what I meant was the investment in time and resources can be reduced with similar effectiveness by going mech or bio-mech instead of sky-mech. If you are comfortable with meching against P, why not just do that? Why do non-standard?
You still never addressed this point:
"D) off of my soapbox about non-standard play, I believe if you play Bio correctly, you MUST focus on all of those (macro, multitasking, micro) to win. To me, there is no point in doing something to train a SINGLE specific thing if you can do another and train multiple at the same time. Similarly, Bio is a very mobile, aggressive style that seems to fit the overall trend of what you want to do. If crazy people in GSL can pull it off with aplomb, why try to do something else? If they can make standard work and do it well, why do you need to do anything else? (thats a larger question I have to the SC2 community as well)"
I have read and relatively understand the styles you're talking about, but I don't understand how they are better than standard play. I do not understand how standard play can not get you an equivalent number of wins while more efficiently improving your play. I do not understand how if you're trying to improve you're focused on doing builds that you say you're doing for fun. If you are trying to improve, you're not looking to have fun. You're looking to see errors in your own play, you're looking to not give yourself breaks.
To any masters/ etc players out there that play non-standard: In my opinion, its not the best idea, but hypothetically, you have the mechanics and skill with the game to pull it off. I wouldn't necessarily say that its the most optimal to play non-standard because completely honestly, you're not going to revolutionize play like a top result with a new or newly implemented strategy in a major tournament will (MLG Columbus + hellions anyone? <3). However, you do have the capability to pull it off. Cool. If MVP wins tournaments by playing super standard and safe and consistent and NesTea was (hasn't been winning recently), why is standard bad? If the top players can do it and win, why shouldn't you?
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I would stick to bio, it is proven to be viable at all levels of play and is extremely flexible and powerful.
If you stick to relatively standard play it means there will always be a wealth of resources to draw from and examples to look at. You will be able to pick up tips and ideas from watching pro matches and from watching professional streamers.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On December 29 2011 20:00 Hossinaut wrote:
To any masters/ etc players out there that play non-standard: In my opinion, its not the best idea, but hypothetically, you have the mechanics and skill with the game to pull it off. I wouldn't necessarily say that its the most optimal to play non-standard because completely honestly, you're not going to revolutionize play like a top result with a new or newly implemented strategy in a major tournament will (MLG Columbus + hellions anyone? <3). However, you do have the capability to pull it off. Cool. If MVP wins tournaments by playing super standard and safe and consistent and NesTea was (hasn't been winning recently), why is standard bad? If the top players can do it and win, why shouldn't you?
I agree with you that Standard is Standard for a reason. For most Master League players, including those at my level, the best way to improve will be to play Standard most of the time, while practicing (maybe off-ladder with some partners, but there's no reason you couldn't do it on the ladder) the other builds, cheeses, etc you need for BoX series play a reasonable amount as well.
However, for people at the top of Master League / People in GM, things like "Standard" are important, but that doesnt' mean that you should necessarily stick to it. Although it's rarer and rarer that this is the case (due to fewer low-hanging fruit as time goes on) there are new things that standard is missing that needs to be included. There's no reason an excellent ladder player at the top of Master League or in GM League couldn't innovate this outside of tournament play.
The two obvious examples that come to mind are Spanishiwa with his no-gas Hatch-first play and iEchoic with his big-air TvT making only hellions on the ground. These are examples of successful non-standard play that was revolutionary, and came from the laddering of these respective players.
"But wait, Blazinghand," you say, "I understand that you are a boss, and are basically a sexy guy in general, but I don't ever see Spanishiwa's or iEchoic's build on the ladder nowadays. Why are you calling these things successful?"
To which I respond, "Thank you, Hossinaut! I am indeed a boss. You didn't need to take time to say that, though, since I'm in the middle of a strategy post. Still, I'm flattered. Here's why: Spanishiwa demonstrated that you can defend almost anything with queens and crawlers, and that extra queens (Queen #3 and #4 on 2 bases) are unbelievably good for creep spread, etc. Although nobody uses his exact BO any more, the strongest elements of it got incorporated into standard play. Zerg often stops mining gas after 100 for speed, and builds a 3rd queen (and sometimes a fourth), a hybridization of Spanishiwa's larvae-management ideas and what was standard before he wrote what he did. iEchoic is a bit more subtle, but there-- his build was a precursor, a necessary condition for Full Mech TvT. He showed the viability of an early-game composition of vikings and hellions with banshees for air-to-ground. Full mech is built off of the foundation iEchoic laid. Opening with quick hellions and air units is totally valid for the early game, especially with your ability to assert map control. The transition to tanks is natural given your infrastructure, and really, iEchoic's build still exists as a subset of 'full Mech TvT'. Although there's a lot of ways to play TvT, one of them only exists because of the discoveries iEchoic made."
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Actually the main reason I recommend standard is because I suspect that most people who go SkyTerran(tm), etc. are doing so because they hit a wall with standard play. Instead of working to address their problems in standard they come up with some "magic composition" that allows them to avoid addressing problems in their standard play.
It's far better to just man up and learn how to overcome your difficulties in standard. Yes you may win a lot of games vs people who have never seen your build before, but that doesn't mean that your skill has increased. If these builds do become more popular, players will defend them better and you will have to go back to standard anyway.
It is not as if there isn't plenty of room to innovate while sticking to standard, there are just so many possibilities, the variations are endless. How soon do I expand, what timing do I push, do I rush ghosts? medivacs? early stim? early upgrades? early third? constant pressure? Perhaps I could add in a few hellions, the odd banshee, etc. etc.
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On December 29 2011 20:47 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 20:00 Hossinaut wrote:
To any masters/ etc players out there that play non-standard: In my opinion, its not the best idea, but hypothetically, you have the mechanics and skill with the game to pull it off. I wouldn't necessarily say that its the most optimal to play non-standard because completely honestly, you're not going to revolutionize play like a top result with a new or newly implemented strategy in a major tournament will (MLG Columbus + hellions anyone? <3). However, you do have the capability to pull it off. Cool. If MVP wins tournaments by playing super standard and safe and consistent and NesTea was (hasn't been winning recently), why is standard bad? If the top players can do it and win, why shouldn't you? I agree with you that Standard is Standard for a reason. For most Master League players, including those at my level, the best way to improve will be to play Standard most of the time, while practicing (maybe off-ladder with some partners, but there's no reason you couldn't do it on the ladder) the other builds, cheeses, etc you need for BoX series play a reasonable amount as well. However, for people at the top of Master League / People in GM, things like "Standard" are important, but that doesnt' mean that you should necessarily stick to it. Although it's rarer and rarer that this is the case (due to fewer low-hanging fruit as time goes on) there are new things that standard is missing that needs to be included. There's no reason an excellent ladder player at the top of Master League or in GM League couldn't innovate this outside of tournament play. The two obvious examples that come to mind are Spanishiwa with his no-gas Hatch-first play and iEchoic with his big-air TvT making only hellions on the ground. These are examples of successful non-standard play that was revolutionary, and came from the laddering of these respective players. "But wait, Blazinghand," you say, "I understand that you are a boss, and are basically a sexy guy in general, but I don't ever see Spanishiwa's or iEchoic's build on the ladder nowadays. Why are you calling these things successful?" To which I respond, "Thank you, Hossinaut! I am indeed a boss. You didn't need to take time to say that, though, since I'm in the middle of a strategy post. Still, I'm flattered. Here's why: Spanishiwa demonstrated that you can defend almost anything with queens and crawlers, and that extra queens (Queen #3 and #4 on 2 bases) are unbelievably good for creep spread, etc. Although nobody uses his exact BO any more, the strongest elements of it got incorporated into standard play. Zerg often stops mining gas after 100 for speed, and builds a 3rd queen (and sometimes a fourth), a hybridization of Spanishiwa's larvae-management ideas and what was standard before he wrote what he did. iEchoic is a bit more subtle, but there-- his build was a precursor, a necessary condition for Full Mech TvT. He showed the viability of an early-game composition of vikings and hellions with banshees for air-to-ground. Full mech is built off of the foundation iEchoic laid. Opening with quick hellions and air units is totally valid for the early game, especially with your ability to assert map control. The transition to tanks is natural given your infrastructure, and really, iEchoic's build still exists as a subset of 'full Mech TvT'. Although there's a lot of ways to play TvT, one of them only exists because of the discoveries iEchoic made."
"But wait, Blazinghand," you say, "I understand that you are a boss, and are basically a sexy guy in general, but I think you deserve this statement with your well thought out and comprehensive response! :D"
@Willzzz, totally agree, although Blanzinghand's points are just as valid in my opinion.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
It's also worth noting that the iEchoic and Spanishiwa examples are from some time ago and are from players who are basically at the top of the ladder. Your average bear in Master League can't really bust out a new style and revolutionize a matchup like this, and again, it's likely that any "revolutionary" changes in a matchup have already been discovered, at least for TvZ and TvP. TvT is still in a state of relative flux (is biomech standard, or is mech standard? they're both viable), but none of the recent big changes in any matchup have come from people laddering, and none of them have come from people laddering outside of the very top players on the ladder.
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Dear Blazinghand,
How do your points relate to the point that the OP was bringing up? How would you respond to his post? Would you say that its important, as someone that isn't going to make waves with a new style of play, as someone that is looking to improve, to play and use non-standard play? Would standard play be better for doing these things in your mind, as long as he takes into account *how* some current trends will affect standard play?
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On December 29 2011 20:00 Hossinaut wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 10:01 Fencer710 wrote:On December 29 2011 09:35 Hossinaut wrote:
Not a sky terran or sky mech style at all....
A) I am a whore for standard, and none of those (sky + whatever) are standard
B) the investment is SO much, and you can achieve the same thing with bio or mech or bio-mech for less
C) Skymech is SUPER weak to protoss....
D) off of my soapbox about non-standard play, I believe if you play Bio correctly, you MUST focus on all of those (macro, multitasking, micro) to win. To me, there is no point in doing something to train a SINGLE specific thing if you can do another and train multiple at the same time. Similarly, Bio is a very mobile, aggressive style that seems to fit the overall trend of what you want to do. If crazy people in GSL can pull it off with aplomb, why try to do something else? If they can make standard work and do it well, why do you need to do anything else? (thats a larger question I have to the SC2 community as well)
I didn't put any of my analysis of the replays because you didn't want any. Standard will get you the most wins because of better play, allow you to improve more faster, as well as teaching fundamental though processes needed to be viable at higher levels. If you do wonky shit, the thought processes needed to have good decision making are vastly different from when you are doing standard play. Hello, I'll address your points in order: A) They may not be standard, but they work. Maybe my replays don't show this, but if you're not convinced you can check here for the Sky Terran guide which I got it from, and here for the Sky Mech guide.B) For better or for worse, I already spent a large amount of time on Sky Terran, and my days of meching in platinum will make Sky Mech fairly easy to pick up, so your point is null. C) If you watched the replay of Sky Mech which I lost, you can see that I did a few things wrong, such as not harassing enough with banshees and hellion drops, not making enough hellions or ghosts to tank and deal damage, and letting the protoss get too greedy for lack of scouting. D) Well, Sky Terran is also a very aggressive style, because it's basically mass banshee with raven and viking support until the late game. I actually beat an unprepared master player using Sky Terran with constant probe harassment and keeping him on two base, while I expanded to (I think?) a total of four. This was in a King of the Hill game though, but if you want the replay anyway I'd be happy to provide it. The argument wasn't whether the strats worked or not. The question to me was one of improving more facets of your play simultaneously, and standard play (EG bio) will always do this most efficiently and most quickly. My second point was poorly worded- what I meant was the investment in time and resources can be reduced with similar effectiveness by going mech or bio-mech instead of sky-mech. If you are comfortable with meching against P, why not just do that? Why do non-standard? You still never addressed this point: "D) off of my soapbox about non-standard play, I believe if you play Bio correctly, you MUST focus on all of those (macro, multitasking, micro) to win. To me, there is no point in doing something to train a SINGLE specific thing if you can do another and train multiple at the same time. Similarly, Bio is a very mobile, aggressive style that seems to fit the overall trend of what you want to do. If crazy people in GSL can pull it off with aplomb, why try to do something else? If they can make standard work and do it well, why do you need to do anything else? (thats a larger question I have to the SC2 community as well)" I have read and relatively understand the styles you're talking about, but I don't understand how they are better than standard play. I do not understand how standard play can not get you an equivalent number of wins while more efficiently improving your play. I do not understand how if you're trying to improve you're focused on doing builds that you say you're doing for fun. If you are trying to improve, you're not looking to have fun. You're looking to see errors in your own play, you're looking to not give yourself breaks. To any masters/ etc players out there that play non-standard: In my opinion, its not the best idea, but hypothetically, you have the mechanics and skill with the game to pull it off. I wouldn't necessarily say that its the most optimal to play non-standard because completely honestly, you're not going to revolutionize play like a top result with a new or newly implemented strategy in a major tournament will (MLG Columbus + hellions anyone? <3). However, you do have the capability to pull it off. Cool. If MVP wins tournaments by playing super standard and safe and consistent and NesTea was (hasn't been winning recently), why is standard bad? If the top players can do it and win, why shouldn't you?
Ok, first, all three styles need the three M's of Starcraft 2, as tang would say. Hellion and Banshee harassment is almost critical for Sky Mech and Sky Terran respectively, like drops are for Bio.
Like I said, the reason I made this thread, is to ask people what style I should pick in order to improve fast, though having fun is very nice, too.
Blazing hand and you had a very interesting conversation, and from what I gather, I can use things like Banshees in the Late game, which would be especially good if I got ship weapon ups for my Vikings and later on, the banshees, in my opinion. It would also provide a late game gas dump, since Banshees are so good against Colossus, Zealots, and Immortals. Feedback would be nullified by Cloaking energy dump; no need to EMP a friendly unit. Unfortunately, I also see that the verdict is that neither Sky Terran or Sky Mech is really viable in the long run, though tanks and banshees will probably be incorporated into the late game of Bio.
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Blazinghand
United States25551 Posts
On December 30 2011 05:34 Hossinaut wrote:
Dear Blazinghand,
How do your points relate to the point that the OP was bringing up? How would you respond to his post? Would you say that its important, as someone that isn't going to make waves with a new style of play, as someone that is looking to improve, to play and use non-standard play? Would standard play be better for doing these things in your mind, as long as he takes into account *how* some current trends will affect standard play?
Oh my Point was mostly that there does exist legitimate nonstandard play at the high level. As far as the op goes it looks like the guy wants to improve but his main goal is to have fun while doing so. All this and more is possible with nonstandard TvP. That being said a transition back to standard later would necessitate a difficult readjustment in his micro and macro unless he also practices standard regularly. Standard may be the quickest and most complete way to improve but those do not qualify it as "best" unless those are the chief standards by which you measure. Add in a subjective standard like fun and things get substantially more complicated.
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On December 30 2011 09:58 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2011 05:34 Hossinaut wrote:
Dear Blazinghand,
How do your points relate to the point that the OP was bringing up? How would you respond to his post? Would you say that its important, as someone that isn't going to make waves with a new style of play, as someone that is looking to improve, to play and use non-standard play? Would standard play be better for doing these things in your mind, as long as he takes into account *how* some current trends will affect standard play? Oh my Point was mostly that there does exist legitimate nonstandard play at the high level. As far as the op goes it looks like the guy wants to improve but his main goal is to have fun while doing so. All this and more is possible with nonstandard TvP. That being said a transition back to standard later would necessitate a difficult readjustment in his micro and macro unless he also practices standard regularly. Standard may be the quickest and most complete way to improve but those do not qualify it as "best" unless those are the chief standards by which you measure. Add in a subjective standard like fun and things get substantially more complicated.
Hmm, actually I have one more question after all: Can I do both Bio and Sky Terran while improving? It seems like doing Sky Terran once or twice in a BoX would be extremely powerful, or on ladder, kinda like playing an 'off race' without going to that extreme. The other alternative is to just go Bio about 90% of the time, unless I'm doing some sort of all-in like the 1-1-1 to blow off steam. I don't have a huge amount of patience, and Sky Terran is extremely fun for me to blow off steam by massing super cool air units.
What are your thoughts on this?
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Jinro is known for his banshee/sky terran play in a lot of match-ups, but mixes it up with bio. I'd say you absolutely can mix things up. I wouldn't even worry about %s... just find which maps suit which style best, and abuse the shit out of it.
Hope the session the other night helped you btw
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Theres no reason why you can't mix in non-standard play if you're primarily practicing standard play. Specifically if you're specifically trying to have fun or blow off steam. :D
The only thing that I would recommend is to do plenty of thinking about how lessons learned in one style transitions to the other and vice versa. Inevitably, there are similarities and lessons that you can draw from.
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On December 30 2011 16:00 theonlyshaft wrote:Jinro is known for his banshee/sky terran play in a lot of match-ups, but mixes it up with bio. I'd say you absolutely can mix things up. I wouldn't even worry about %s... just find which maps suit which style best, and abuse the shit out of it. Hope the session the other night helped you btw
On December 30 2011 16:13 Hossinaut wrote:
Theres no reason why you can't mix in non-standard play if you're primarily practicing standard play. Specifically if you're specifically trying to have fun or blow off steam. :D
The only thing that I would recommend is to do plenty of thinking about how lessons learned in one style transitions to the other and vice versa. Inevitably, there are similarities and lessons that you can draw from.
Thank you guys! I'll be sure to do this in TvP for sure, and eventually in TvZ and TvT as well if I find the time to learn it. ♥
Our session taught me that Multitasking is a extremely good skill to have, if you have two banshees and use them correctly you can even beat master players just through probe kills. Though, I also learned that scouting is even more important with those styles than with Bio, due to the fragile nature of the early game with Yoshi's build.
Multitasking is also a similarity between the two styles, both rely on harassing the opponent to bring out an economic lead, an army lead, or even a tech lead through drops or banshee harassment. I have not been doing very much multitasking with Bio, just because I want to end the game with sheer amount of units, akin to my TvZ play, which can also benefit from this, as I almost never do drops. Sky Terran, and everyone on teamliquid, tell me that harassment is extremely good against protoss due to their slow units, so the skills with Multitasking I learn with Sky Terran will let me drop more and more. I might even mix in banshees before four or more bases, because they're just so good!
Thank you again.
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