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I've been playing SC2 for about a month or so now, and I want to pick a race and start working more seriously on my builds and matchups. The following is an extract from my blog, and I'd appreciate the advice of more experienced gamers.
Preemptive edit: I know there is a tendancy to respond to the "help me pick a race" topics with "just pick the one you like and get on with it". Well that's easy enough, I really like the Terrans right now - although Protoss also seem really cool.
However, in this case I am considering two specific issues that I think may become long term problems, and I am hoping that more experienced gamers will be able to tell me whether these problems are real, or simply imagined.
As promised, I spent some time this weekend looking at how to extend the 3 Rax build after the push fails to knock an opponent out completely. I did not actually play many more ladder games, but I do have some more replays from before this weekend to post over the next few days or so.
Despite the lack of ladder matches this weekend, the mid-game exercise has been very useful, and it has focused my mind on some of the decisions I need to make.
How we got here.
While not exactly crushing my opponents, I have used the 3 Rax build with a certain degree of success. More importantly, though, I feel that the structure provided by the 3 Rax build has been giving me a framework with which to learn and improve.
Using the same build in every in matchup has given me benchmarks to measure myself against. I know that at time X I should have Y units and Z upgrades. Anything less than that is poor play, and my mechanics are at fault - that's a clear incentive to develop crisper play.
I also get to see a myriad of other strategies (ie, my opponents) measured against the known quantities of my own build, which helps me understand other builds and races, in addition to my own. Because the build is rigid, I've been forced to find micro solutions where I might otherwise have looked for macro solutions.
So all told, I'm very happy with where this approach has taken me, and I would whole heartedly recommend it to any other new player.
Why it's time to move on.
That said, I am starting to feel a little restless. I'm not going to pretend that I've reached the limits of the build, or that I'm playing it perfectly. Some people have taken 3 Rax all the way to Masters, and I am nowhere near that level. However, I am gaining enough experience to see the limits to 3 Rax, and to want focus on something else.
To begin with, 3 Rax is actually quite slow, with the early game is devoted to building infrastructure to support later troop production. A perfectly executed 4 Gate, for example, will hit at about 5:40, which is 2 whole minutes earlier than 3 Rax hits. At that stage, 3 Rax has about one Marine and one Marauder to fight of 4 Gate's 16+ supply army.
It's also quite hard to build on 3 Rax after the push. My testing this weekend shows me that I either need to cut unit production (which seems bad after losing a bunch of units, and also begs the question as to why I built so many production facilities in the first place) or actually tech up quite slowly, around the constant unit production.
That, in and of itself, is not actually too bad. After all, I would have a large army to fall back on. However, it's a large, one dimensional army. The units are not terribly mobile (no Medivacs), have little reach (no Tanks), and die fairly easily to AOE effects (all Bio). To top it off, I lack the ability to produce hard counters.
For this reason, I don't actually think that working on a mid-game for 3 Rax is the right approach; an all-in is probably better. And practicing all-ins exclusively is going to leave me as a fairly one dimensional player.
So, it's time for me to move on.
The Terran option.
After asking myself the "what next" question, I've got two potential answers. If I want to stick with Terrans, I would probably switch to a 1-1-1 build.
I'm actually really impressed by this build, as it unlocks so much fun stuff early in the game. While the early build does not change much between matches, the units produced can be customised to the enemy (Hellions against Zerg, etc), so it would be a step towards having completely different openings against each race.
The build also supports early aggression. A back of the envelope calculation would put a fast Medivac drop at about 5:40, the same time as an early 4 Gate. While unlikely to completely knock an opponent out, it does give me an early game focus and a way to apply pressure before expanding. I like that.
And because all the tech paths are unlocked early, it should be much easier to respond to specific threats with solid counters - getting early Thor's against Muta harass, for example.
All told, this is a build that looks like loads of fun.
The Terran problem.
It's not all kittens and rainbows in Terran-land, though. In fact, I have two specific long term worries about playing Terran: APM and the mirror match.
It is generally accepted (and backed up by tournament data) that each race, while being fairly well balanced and equally difficult (this is NOT an "X is easier than Y" post), requires/rewards different levels of APM. In particular, Protoss requires significantly less APM than Terran, which in turn requires slightly less APM than Zerg.
This makes sense, of course. When you look at Terran and Protoss, you can see that while Protoss probably requires more APM for base management (you Chronoboost twice as often as you MULE, and warping in units requires more button clicks than just ordering them from the Barracks), Terran units have more activated abilities than Protoss units. So in combat, while each side has casters that need to be controlled, Terrans are also doing a host of other things with their units that pushes their APM upwards.
The difficulty for me, though, is that I know that APM (especially spontaneous, rather than planned APM) is one of my big weaknesses as a gamer. That's why I suck at FPS games, but do rather better at games like EVE, which focus less on reflexes and more on understanding mechanics.
My fear is that I'm going to put a great deal of effort into learning to play Terran, only to find that I have a fairly low skill ceiling because my APM peaks too low.
My other concern is the TvT matchup. I've been watching some Day[9], and while every mirror matchup seems to involve scoring a series of small victories, TvT in particular seems to be a long, grinding game of Tank lines with harassment on the side. That kind of static play just does not appeal to me at all. Not even a little bit.
And yet that's likely to be about 1/3rd of my matches. Ugh.
The Protoss alternative.
If I want to step away from playing Terran, though, I could do something very similar to my 3 Rax practice with the Protoss 4 Gate. It's a strong opening (albeit not as overpowering as it once was) and it gives me those same benchmarks to measure myself against while becoming familiar with the new mechanics.
In addition to requiring lower APM than Terran, the PvP matchup since patch 1.4 seems like much more fun because each teir of their tech is viable, creating a certain "rocks-paper-scissors" feel to the unit compositions as each player tries to counter the other's army. This gives me the sense that there will be far more variance between PvP matches than you find in TvT.
What am I missing?
This feels like a big decision for me. After messing about with an intro strategy I want to start getting serious, but I've been putting off officially choosing a race for weeks now.
Any suggestions that are likely to tip the balance one way or the other?
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Play the one that you like the most and that's it man xD
Balance shouldn't enter in consideration choosing your race.
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Just choose your race by personal taste...balance issues are for really experienced players.
From my point of view you should go with Terran...cause there are not many Terran left on ladder,
Honestly i meet 1 Terran today out of 20 Ladder Matches -.- (Silver League here) :-)
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I see no reason for you to worry. You say your spontaneous APM is bad... but it won't be if you train. Pick terran, pick APM heavy strategies, practice them until they work, then check your APM again. Suddenly, APM will be your strength.
People spend so much time worrying about some innate talent which doesn't exist for anyone, getting good at SC2 is all about practicing and learning. You weren't born without the ability to do high APM, you just haven't trained it enough. Fortunately, it's not even hard to train, I went from 40 APM to 120 APM in BW from just learning to macro. In SC2, you won't get that high so easily, but using Macro Or Die and similar maps, I've gotten my EAPM to around 100 in SC2 and I peak at over 400. It's all about training.
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You should not chose about theoretical APM requirements for each race but if you want to play long term, you should think about the specificities of each race :
- Zerg is a counter-race, based on defense : you never dictate the game
- Protoss is defensive against T and agressive against Z
- Terran is an agressive race,you have to be active, pressure, harass, etc... on both matchups
You do not need massive APM to play SC2, no matter which race you play, it will be far less than in BW or even WC3.
Decision making is often the difference.
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Yeah, APM just increases naturally. I wouldn't worry about it too much.
You can always just mech, which (compared to every other playstyle) relies very little on speed and is all about making the right decisions. Of course, it's not the best against Protoss, but you said you wanted to 1-1-1 there so knock yourself out with that.
However, I think anyone wanting to be good should absolutely not shy away from areas they have issues with. The entire point of playing to improve is that you do things you're bad at. Simply avoiding them is not a good idea at all. If you think you have issues playing a specific style because of certain weaknesses that is the style you should be playing.
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I would say go with the 111, even while ignoring its blatent imbalance in certain matchups (TvP), it allows you to work on hellion drops and cloak banshee harrass etc, thus improving your one-base style to a level that is not just blind all-inning and thus will become viable even at masters level.
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TvT doesn't have to be a tank grind, but it's well worth learning to play the standard matchup because it teaches you a lot about macroing well, the importance of positioning and air dominance. Try iEchoic's build for a fun tankless alternative - it is quite tricky to pull off but if you're set on going tankless it's one of the best strats going.
I'd also recommend moving away from finding 'a build I can win with' (I know that's tempting when you're new) and towards scouting, predicting and reacting - again it's a tougher thing to learn but ultimately you'll be a better player for it. You're on the right track with 1-1-1 there. 3rax and 4Gate are all well and good, but they are kind of cheap 1-base strats that win on a single push or leave you massively behind if they fail. Here is a nice TvP opening that got me thinking a lot more about the importance of very early pokes and pressure and adapting your play according to what you see (good for micro practice too).
As I'm sure many people will tell you, APM's really not important until you get to the higher leagues. Use hotkeys for everything, practice a lot, and it'll go up naturally. Good macro and scouting will get you to gold at the very least.
As for what race to go with, play Terran follow your heart.
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Protoss is a pretty easy race if you like to do simple (all-in) builds.
But then again, terran is just as easy if you're going to do only 3rax and 1-1-1s as you said in OP.
Also, stop worrying about APM, unless you're at the top of the korean ladder, there's always something useful to do with your APM, whatever the race you are playing, and there's no "apm limitation" some races have and some other's don't. (for fun, I tried to win custom games with each race without more then 10-15 apm, you'd be surprised how many master players you can beat with just a clean execution of a build).
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Play each race and pick which is your favourite. Like everyone else has mentioned, APM and other factors won't be relevant until the higher leagues. Just keep playing and you'll improve.
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You're over thinking it. Play to have fun,
1-1-1 vs P is fun (whether the all-in variety or not)
999 rax-bunker cheese push vs Z if fun, so is 11-11 and so is reactor-hellion
TvT is shitty granted, so iEchoic or if you want the game over 3 rax all in with 12 scvs,
By the way not sure why 3 rax is only giving you 1 marine and 1 maurader at 5:40. with 1-1-1 i at least have a bunker with 4 marines so make sure you are not slipping on macro.
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United Kingdom10823 Posts
One thing I've noticed is that my APM seemed to just go up depending on what race I play, in terms of how I enjoyed it. I used to Random, but have now switched to Toss full time, because I enjoyed played all 3 MUs as Toss. And as a random tangent, my APM was higher since I felt like I knew where it should be going (totally wrong, but at least I wasn't sitting around being confused!)
I think if you enjoy the match-up enough, your APM will naturally go up. But it should not be a deciding factor.
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Do you want to become a pro?
No? Pick the race which is the most fun to you! Why?
-) APM doesn't matter if you're not Pro. You will get to 50-100 "blizzard"-APM average pretty soon. Everything is playable up to masters with that!
-) You're gonna have the most fun with that race.
-) Zerg can be pretty fun as well, so probably consider that as well.
Yes?
Pick Terran. Not due to any imbalances, but Terran is the least volatile race imo. Long runs in tournaments against weaker players are therefore way easier.
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TvT doesn't have to always be a tank fest, although it did seem like that at the start for me. My opinion is that it's the best of the mirror matchups to play (I can't stand ZvZ, as it is so volatile and different from SC2 as a whole), PvP is fun to watch at a pro level, especially when blink stalkers are involved, but seems really frustrating to actually play. With the bigger maps, you can go bio, but you would need to play an expand based game, and not focus on getting 3 rax with stim early. I know one person on here who made 3 rax work at higher level, but it really does cripple your economy and non-barracks tech so much, that it should be regarded as an all-in strategy to use if you scout a very quick expo etc.
Edit: thinking back, I didn't enjoy doing 3 rax when it was my default strat. I think it's build-and-hope, rather than react and counter. I enjoyed winning the games, but not the games themselves that much. You might enjoy Terran more once you are comfortable with other strats.
If you've been playing for a month, and this is your first RTS, then your APM will improve eventually. I've only been playing since retail, and am only at about 80-90 blizzard APM, but it has slowly crept up (am Gold with Zerg and Plat with Terran). Strangely, as an FPS player for many years, I can jump straight back in to a game of quakelive and feel quite competitive, whereas after a year of SC2, my units still don't do what I'm trying to tell them, I missclick, get flustered etc. I think what you are used to, and what you have experience with really helps, so it might be best to just chose whatever race, and not feel like you have to compensate for a low APM (which is only natural if you've not played much).
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On January 23 2012 21:56 Geiko wrote:
Protoss is a pretty easy race if you like to do simple (all-in) builds.
But then again, terran is just as easy if you're going to do only 3rax and 1-1-1s as you said in OP.
Also, stop worrying about APM, unless you're at the top of the korean ladder, there's always something useful to do with your APM, whatever the race you are playing, and there's no "apm limitation" some races have and some other's don't. (for fun, I tried to win custom games with each race without more then 10-15 apm, you'd be surprised how many master players you can beat with just a clean execution of a build).
10-15 APM is impossible unless you cheese, you would lose because of lack of units since just building units will easily get you over 20 APM.
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On January 23 2012 22:22 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2012 21:56 Geiko wrote:
Protoss is a pretty easy race if you like to do simple (all-in) builds.
But then again, terran is just as easy if you're going to do only 3rax and 1-1-1s as you said in OP.
Also, stop worrying about APM, unless you're at the top of the korean ladder, there's always something useful to do with your APM, whatever the race you are playing, and there's no "apm limitation" some races have and some other's don't. (for fun, I tried to win custom games with each race without more then 10-15 apm, you'd be surprised how many master players you can beat with just a clean execution of a build). 10-15 APM is impossible unless you cheese, you would lose because of lack of units since just building units will easily get you over 20 APM.
That was using standard 4 gate and a moving my units.
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If you haven't tried all the flavors, I am agreeing with the general consensus and suggesting you to play Random for at least one ladder season. You'll have fun learning all the races, and understand how the game works and the mechanics of all matchups. This will give you a deeper appreciation if you enjoy watching the professionals play in big tournaments. For the longest time, I had no idea what to dissect from a top level Code S Protoss vs Zerg, so I decided to play Zerg for a little while (after already having a lot of experience with both Protoss and Terran) and afterward gained a lot of respect for Zerg players in their view of Protoss. Just like in TvP, playing as Terran you must scout aggressively and micro your heart out... Zerg has to be just as vigilant, but less in terms of army and more into "agressive" economy. The whole why you should pool before hatch first because of cannon rushing the natural off of a forge expand I was clueless to. Also I was clueless to what to think about busting down a forge fast expand and all that stuff. After playing Zerg for a while, it's a much delicate matchup just as Terran is with Protoss and having smart scouting paths and persistent poking will force you to learn playing like that is valuable to all races. It also helps you when you switch back to Protoss and play against a Zerg because you will know all the basic timings and what to expect.
Basically, you learn more about the game as a whole, and have a deeper appreaciation playing as Random for a while.
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you should probably stick with terran, since it sounds like toss would be waay too easy for you... 
But really, as people say: just choose the one you find the most fun.
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On January 23 2012 22:25 Geiko wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2012 22:22 Tobberoth wrote:On January 23 2012 21:56 Geiko wrote:
Protoss is a pretty easy race if you like to do simple (all-in) builds.
But then again, terran is just as easy if you're going to do only 3rax and 1-1-1s as you said in OP.
Also, stop worrying about APM, unless you're at the top of the korean ladder, there's always something useful to do with your APM, whatever the race you are playing, and there's no "apm limitation" some races have and some other's don't. (for fun, I tried to win custom games with each race without more then 10-15 apm, you'd be surprised how many master players you can beat with just a clean execution of a build). 10-15 APM is impossible unless you cheese, you would lose because of lack of units since just building units will easily get you over 20 APM. That was using standard 4 gate and a moving my units.
That's pretty hilarious. Still, 1 action to select warp gates, one action for every unit you place, extra actions when switching which unit you're building.. so it should be at least 6 actions per warpin, which you probably do more than once a minute. Adding the a-move to that should add enough actions to push it over 10. That said, I seriously doubt a master player would lose to a 10 APM 4gate ^^
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EPT
