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There is no reason that you should follow what your favorite professional SC2 players do completely blind. They use the builds that they do because it works for THEM. What works for someone else doesn't necessarily mean that it will also be the best option that you have. Everyone has their own unique playstyle that they are comfortable with. Furthermore professional gamers will have spent hours more perfecting every aspect of their build down to a tee. Their mechanics are superior to the average gamers by a large margin. As a result if you try to copy what they are doing, you may be missing a key point in the build. You may have less workers, miss a couple of Injects or build up excess Chronoboost and miss the timing that the build is going for.
It isn't that you should not copy other peoples' builds, its that other builds may not cater to your own unique playstyle. The builds themselves are most likely sound and are a great base to start from, but it may not be the right build for you. You can create your own build that revolves around your own playstyle and could help you improve in certain areas that you want to work on.
1. Have a Plan!
To create your own build, you need to have a direction to follow or guide your decisions throughout the game. This isn't a case of saying to yourself "I will max out on Stalkers and then hope for the best". You need a specific checklist that has guiding principles which occur in every game you execute this build. These are anchor points that your play will resolve around and you will always move towards after a slight deviation.
I'll use a quick example of one of my own builds to illustrate this. I use a FFE build where I get three Dark Templar to accomplish a variety of things. My first goal: scout the enemy. I send a DT to each of the Zerg bases, if possible, and get a full scout on my opponent to ensure no shenanigans. I check tech buildings, army size and composition and whether or not there is a third base. I also clear the Xel'naga towers and kill any Drones that I can. I then get a third base up relatively quickly and get Collosus at the same time. Once I max out with 3/0 I take my fourth and push out.
That is the quick summary of my build, and should reflect what your own plan looks like. You don't want an extravagantly long complicated plan. More complications can lead to a larger variety of problems. Also notice how there is a set order in which you should make your plan. Mine is: Dts & Collossi army/ third&fourth&push. No matter what happens in each game this is a very simple order you can always fall back to and still be on track.
2. Have a Way to Scout
In your build you MUST allow for some mechanism to scout your opponent. Even the best builds have weaknesses and you need to know what your opponent is doing so you do not fly blindly into a trap. Scouting comes in a variety of ways. Simply put, you scout your opponent either by: direct scouting unit (IE worker unit/Overlord/Observer), some form of harassment (Reapers/Mutalisks/Voidray+Pheonix) or with a push.
The push does not even have to be an attack, it just has to give you an opportunity to look at your opponents army. In my build my scouting is done by my Dark Templar, and before them my initial scouting Probe. After the DT's I have an observer for scouting purposes. For Protoss the three effective ways to directly scout your opponent are Observers, Hallucinations and Stargate units. As Terran you can drop, or scan. As Zerg a speed Overlord or Overseer with Zerglings scouting the front should suffice for direct scouting in most situations.
3. Know How to Deviate
There is no such thing as a "good vs everything" build. If there is, it would be better named a "mediocre against everything" build instead. For example, a Thor/Helion push requires a very different response than a Marine/Tank push does. Once you have scouted what your opponent is doing, you should use the information at hand to edit your build to better fit the situation. For example, if my Dark Templar scouted a large Hydralisk force I would delay my third base and get Collosus up faster (disregard expansion, acquire Collosus).
After I am safe I would take my third base immediately and return to plan. That is the key of deviating. No matter what happens you must know what to do in order to return to plan once it is safe to. Once seeing Hydralisks, I don't completely freak out and turtle up and mass up on Collosus and Stalkers. I change the order I get some things ever so slightly and then move back on track.
The key is to not get thrown off by the unexpected. Once something unexpected occurs, calmly adapt to it and steer back towards your next anchor point of your build. Always have your end goal in mind and constantly move towards it.
4. Screw the Specifics
What I mean by this is essentially, don't get all hyped up on the numbers if you are a lower league player. Rigid build orders of X on Y food does not mean you are a better player. It simply means you are good at following a list. As you improve things like that or specific unit counts become more important as your mechanics improve and you keep hitting the mark constantly and shortening the time each run through.
For the beginning, an outline is far better. They are much less arbitrary and allow you be a little bit more flexible in your build as you play around with it. Instead of a builder order, have something more like a flowchart. IE: Gateway into Cybercore, into robotics as soon as possible into expansion when safe. People tend to get hung up a lot on the food counters which can just lead to confusion. Save yourself the confusion for the start and leave it out. This comes later, along with specific unit counts.
5. Know Your Own Playstyle
If you are making a build for yourself, and it goes against your own playstyle, DON'T DO IT. Granted this can be the point in specific areas you want to improve. For example I noticed at one point that my gateway unit control was terrible and so I 6gated every game for a week until it improved to a satisfactory level. Unless you are doing this, cater to your own strengths. This also goes for amounts of units and timings on bases.
I had a friend who couldn't understand why he was having so much trouble landing his third base against Zerg at a certain time. He complained that MVP does the exact same timing and is fine. The reason for this? He is not MVP. Maybe MVP can defend his third with 20 Marines and 3 Tanks, but my friend sure couldn't. Eventually he delayed it until he had about 30 Marines and he did much better (IE not dying). If you have a problem against something, change your play to adapt.
6. Tweak Your Build
Once you have your plan, run through it a number of times until you get a good base for your build. As you become more accustomed to it, you can start trying to improve the build in an ever increasing nitpicking manner. Watch through replays and pick a specific area you want to improve. Say for example you see in all of your replays you take your natural @ 6:40 gametime.
The next game try to shave it down to 6:30. Then move it down to maybe 6:10. Keep moving it down until you are happy with what you now have. Then move on to a different aspect. Don't try to change to many things at once because if you start losing more often, it becomes harder to identify what exactly is going wrong. If you quickened your expansion, and it gets stomped, its fairly obvious that you are expanding too early against what your opponent did. If you quickened your expansion and cut a few units, the problem could be one or both of the changes.
Conclusion
Don't get caught up in all of the hype of a build with precise timings and specific food counts. That is not what a good build is about. Those things are the end result of a good build after weeks of refinement. The more you play the closer you can nail down certain timings and more food counts as benchmarks so you know whether or not you are improving. Until that time comes don't sweat the small stuff.
Written by Quad on SCV Rush
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WOW, a really nice write up. I would also like to add that yes, take the pro's build but make it your own. Steal the build and modify it so that it has YOUR playing style. I wouldn't go as far and say don't steal it at all though.
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Good write up.
I suggest one thing in learning macro is learning how your future resource flows (im a protoss player), so as you design a build, make sure it flows well in terms of min/gas (ie: no point trying to get colossus, HT, void rays off 2 base)
Basic knowledge of resource flow is like once you reach templar tech, you'd notice you would temporarily have excess minerals. This means that you can do the following: -add gateways, -expand, -zealots. Planning ahead to get colossus? Well then build less stalkers/sentries. Getting the feel of when to add your 3rd/4th+ gases also helps greatly, especially if your trying to add another type of tech into your army.
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This is my style of play, i dont follow any build when i play. I just follow my instints and scouting information. I tried to follow specific builds but i always forgot something lol.
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A suggestion is to look very carefully at when you are getting what; compare it to other builds and see if it has similar weaknesses-- like at X food you're playing greedy and might be vulnerable to Y similar to build Z. I find this is one of the best way to quickly find if an opening is viable or not.
Also, don't do anything really complicated and think too far ahead of yourself. I've sat down, begun to think of "the ultimate PvZ build", and suddenly realize a few minutes later that my plan involves a triple nexus into carriers into mass zealot-DT... not very viable.
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Love the idea, now make a flowchart of it 
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On February 09 2012 22:31 Maggost wrote:
This is my style of play, i dont follow any build when i play. I just follow my instints and scouting information. I tried to follow specific builds but i always forgot something lol.
I totally agree. Too many people get hung up on executing whatever build MMA/NesTea/Huk was doing last week in the GSL and end up 1) not being able to cut corners like them because macro and micro can't keep up and 2) not being able to react to the other player and most importantly IMO 3) not have fun.
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Good read man, ive been doing my own build on some Terran builds i found just changing them around some and sometimes alot more when i see certain things going on haha. This was helpful imma pass it on to my friend trying to get into SC all he every does is talking about finding a build -.-
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Can someone make an infographic of this awesome write-up?!
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This isn't really good for anyone in master+. Nothing in your builds will be optimized, this is more like "develop a halfassed gold league game plan" honestly. I don't mean to be rude, but the truth is that if you develop precisely what you described - something mediocre that puts you behind vs everything but loses to nothing.
Also, your method of tweaking is quite poor. You are basically describing practicing the build (shaving times down by 10 seconds), not at all really tweaking the build. When you do a build, you want to do everything for a purpose. Why am I taking my second gas at this time instead of adding another building first? Are there unnecessary units I don't need to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish? Shaving down a few seconds on timing helps but the way you are describing it is not really correct.
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You made some very nice points. I totally agree with a good amount of them, thanks for takin your time to write something up =] definitely gave me something to do at 9 AM haha
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If you want to "get better" it's probably preferable to just copy a build and focus on crisp execution. That will improve your mechanics and sense of timing - a key part of the game - since you will always have stable benchmarks to compare current games to. Only after you have the mechanics and specific timings down would I recommend tweaking builds to better suit your style.
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On February 10 2012 02:08 Pokebunny wrote:
This isn't really good for anyone in master+. Nothing in your builds will be optimized, this is more like "develop a halfassed gold league game plan" honestly. I don't mean to be rude, but the truth is that if you develop precisely what you described - something mediocre that puts you behind vs everything but loses to nothing.
Also, your method of tweaking is quite poor. You are basically describing practicing the build (shaving times down by 10 seconds), not at all really tweaking the build. When you do a build, you want to do everything for a purpose. Why am I taking my second gas at this time instead of adding another building first? Are there unnecessary units I don't need to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish? Shaving down a few seconds on timing helps but the way you are describing it is not really correct.
I don't think this guide is really intended for masters+. I know that at least when I'm planning out a build order, I'm thinking about my goals at very specific timings, what I need to have at those timings to achieve those goals, and how much other stuff I can afford while still covering the build's needs.
For example, against Z, I use a very tight +1 zealot void timing off of a FFE at 8 minutes. The timing attack requires a void ray, +1 weapons, 3 warpgates and a proxy pylon at 8 minutes. Hitting those goals leaves you with basically no extra resources, and there's really only one way to get all of that out by 8 minutes, so just hitting that timing dictates the entire build up to 8 minutes.
Another example is a a 1 gate FE opening that I use against Terran. Most of the scary early pressure that T can apply can be dealt with by having a strong army as WG tech finishes, so my goal is to have WG tech, 6 gateway units and a nexus by 6 minutes. It turns out that there are a lot of ways to hit these goals, and that these goals leave quite a lot of resources to invest in tech and economy. So from there, I think about where else I want to invest while still hitting that 6 gateway unit goal at 6 minutes. If I say I want to invest in constant probe production, I still have enough resources left at 5:30 for either an extra gateway (allows me to attack), a forge (fast upgrades), a robotics facility (fast observer) or a twilight council (blink harass). So here, my 6 minute timing goal narrows my options and gives me clear options about how I want to play the mid-game.
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On February 10 2012 02:08 Pokebunny wrote:
This isn't really good for anyone in master+. Nothing in your builds will be optimized, this is more like "develop a halfassed gold league game plan" honestly. I don't mean to be rude, but the truth is that if you develop precisely what you described - something mediocre that puts you behind vs everything but loses to nothing.
Also, your method of tweaking is quite poor. You are basically describing practicing the build (shaving times down by 10 seconds), not at all really tweaking the build. When you do a build, you want to do everything for a purpose. Why am I taking my second gas at this time instead of adding another building first? Are there unnecessary units I don't need to accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish? Shaving down a few seconds on timing helps but the way you are describing it is not really correct.
I dont think thats what this is about at all. Even top pros that "invent" builds, do it the way he described - just way more complex.
Of course you wont need to work on your mechanics much if your in GM, so your build wont be able to shave off 10s of seconds. The optimisation just comes from playing a lot of games with a goal and adjusting your build to things you lose to.
A great example is 1g expo, there are so many variations of it even though its a fairly simple opening.
The units you make, the way you scout and the chronoboost distribution can all make one opening very complex.
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Whenever I go mech I love to go double armory, once I have my expansion up and I have 2 fact + a 3rd fact on the way, makes me feel like I'm playing brood war again in TvT and TvZ.
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EPT
