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This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think?
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On April 10 2012 10:32 mothergoose729 wrote:
This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think?
I'd personally love to read that. I've had some success so far giving my games a macro focus (at high platinum). I'd love to know how far this approach alone can take you.
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As a platinum-level player, I absolutely, completely agree. Every step up from my initial bronziness has been working on these fundamentals. There's still such a long way to go.
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On April 10 2012 10:32 mothergoose729 wrote:
This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think?
The only problem I see in this is that starting from wherever your current account is could cause problems when it comes to really observing the differences in league macro. For example, where they are at in bases/army/workers/tech when you hit with your maxed MMM or whatever. So you might have to tank down to bronze to add anything other than the most basic knowledge of where pure macro would settle out eventually on the ladder.
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On April 10 2012 11:12 Boiler Bandsman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 10:32 mothergoose729 wrote:
This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think? The only problem I see in this is that starting from wherever your current account is could cause problems when it comes to really observing the differences in league macro. For example, where they are at in bases/army/workers/tech when you hit with your maxed MMM or whatever. So you might have to tank down to bronze to add anything other than the most basic knowledge of where pure macro would settle out eventually on the ladder.
I don't think so. Pure macro can and will get you to diamond league. I got to diamond league myself using pretty much nothing but my macro. I question whether or not it would work to get me to masters though.
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I agree with your assertion, but I feel that this VOD is a bad example to prove (what I think is) your point.
You might not even realize it, but you are doing quite a few things in those games that are advanced beyond the point of "just build probes and pylons." You FE and are perfectly fine doing so because you scouted and knew how to read your opponents build. You're blocking hatcherys, building warp prisms for multi-prong aggression , altering your build based on scouting, and other things that are advanced far beyond the level of the player who needs to hear the "build probes on pylons" mantra.
Nothing wrong (in fact, everything good) about all that, of course, but I think your point would be much better shown by implementing a simple build with little scouting (e.g. Destiny's mass queen build, or the reddit guy that leveled to platinum on mass stalkers and no micro) and prove that just having great mechanics trumps all of the clever stuff that people try to do at these levels. Your Terran game was much better as you were obviously much less comfortable with it, so it was more demonstrative of your point. As for the others, it strikes me as a good player just being better and doesn't really support your position as well.
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On April 10 2012 13:20 SCbiff wrote:
I agree with your assertion, but I feel that this VOD is a bad example to prove (what I think is) your point.
You might not even realize it, but you are doing quite a few things in those games that are advanced beyond the point of "just build probes and pylons." You FE and are perfectly fine doing so because you scouted and knew how to read your opponents build. You're blocking hatcherys, building warp prisms for multi-prong aggression , altering your build based on scouting, and other things that are advanced far beyond the level of the player who needs to hear the "build probes on pylons" mantra.
Nothing wrong (in fact, everything good) about all that, of course, but I think your point would be much better shown by implementing a simple build with little scouting (e.g. Destiny's mass queen build, or the reddit guy that leveled to platinum on mass stalkers and no micro) and prove that just having great mechanics trumps all of the clever stuff that people try to do at these levels. Your Terran game was much better as you were obviously much less comfortable with it, so it was more demonstrative of your point. As for the others, it strikes me as a good player just being better and doesn't really support your position as well.
This is all true, but I don't really want to advocate pure macro. I just want to set a very good example of how with efficient APM usage and good mechanics you can play a solid game and absolutely smash opponents in the lower league. In the VOD I was more of aiming to set a good and very realistic/reachable goal for readers, rather than to prove a hypothetical point. Does this make sense?
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On April 10 2012 11:56 mothergoose729 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 11:12 Boiler Bandsman wrote:On April 10 2012 10:32 mothergoose729 wrote:
This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think? The only problem I see in this is that starting from wherever your current account is could cause problems when it comes to really observing the differences in league macro. For example, where they are at in bases/army/workers/tech when you hit with your maxed MMM or whatever. So you might have to tank down to bronze to add anything other than the most basic knowledge of where pure macro would settle out eventually on the ladder. I don't think so. Pure macro can and will get you to diamond league. I got to diamond league myself using pretty much nothing but my macro. I question whether or not it would work to get me to masters though.
My point isn't that it wouldn't work relative to your league. Rather, I'm saying starting at bronze and progressing up would provide a kind of "snapshot" of the various leagues with regard to macro, compared to your more-nearly-ideal play. I guess I was thinking about making it deeper than a simple "pure macro gets you to X points in Y league" experiment. Of course, I'm being pretty cavalier with YOUR ladder points here...
My original point was that if you simply switch to your pure-macro-only build, you'd just drop straight from your current rank to gold/plat/diamond, wherever the ultimate MMR of pure macro is, without passing through and observing lower leagues like Gheed has/does. He's known as "That worker rush guy", but he really does have some interesting takes on bronze. Obviously that would be a huge project to do your macro research like that, but I'm just throwing ideas. Like I said, not my points and not my time...Why not dream big?
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On April 10 2012 14:17 Boiler Bandsman wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 11:56 mothergoose729 wrote:On April 10 2012 11:12 Boiler Bandsman wrote:On April 10 2012 10:32 mothergoose729 wrote:
This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think? The only problem I see in this is that starting from wherever your current account is could cause problems when it comes to really observing the differences in league macro. For example, where they are at in bases/army/workers/tech when you hit with your maxed MMM or whatever. So you might have to tank down to bronze to add anything other than the most basic knowledge of where pure macro would settle out eventually on the ladder. I don't think so. Pure macro can and will get you to diamond league. I got to diamond league myself using pretty much nothing but my macro. I question whether or not it would work to get me to masters though. My point isn't that it wouldn't work relative to your league. Rather, I'm saying starting at bronze and progressing up would provide a kind of "snapshot" of the various leagues with regard to macro, compared to your more-nearly-ideal play. I guess I was thinking about making it deeper than a simple "pure macro gets you to X points in Y league" experiment. Of course, I'm being pretty cavalier with YOUR ladder points here... My original point was that if you simply switch to your pure-macro-only build, you'd just drop straight from your current rank to gold/plat/diamond, wherever the ultimate MMR of pure macro is, without passing through and observing lower leagues like Gheed has/does. He's known as "That worker rush guy", but he really does have some interesting takes on bronze. Obviously that would be a huge project to do your macro research like that, but I'm just throwing ideas. Like I said, not my points and not my time...Why not dream big?
Alright, I think I see your point. It would be interesting and instructive to show what pure macro in lower leagues can do. It would make whatever the result is more compelling as well.
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In order for someone to get progressively better at the game is to tell them to attack (not at 200/200, but at something like 60-80 supply). You can only learn 'oh so much' from building 'probes and pylons', but if you don't teach a low-league player to be aggressive, then he will never learn WHY he needs to macro better. The 'Why should I macro' is a fundamental problem with most low-league players, they simply rank the importance of macro as somewhat low.
It may not directly teach them to constantly build probes, but eventually it will catch on to them why they need to macro better and basic multitasking (building probes, pylons and fighting units while focusing on their army). The core knowledge of what they will learn is what your opponent will approximately have and you can gauge how well he is.
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It's a good thread. Straight macro can still take you surprisingly high, atleast on Europe-server. I did nothing but gasless expansions to lots of stuff for a season and was on top of a master division half way through it. I thought it displayed quite well how lacking the approach of many competitive players was. Especially as in none of my 3000+ (?) games have I ever followed a rigid build order. Didn't do it when I picked up SC2 again because for Terran a gasless expand is not optimal in my opinion, in any match-up.
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On April 10 2012 13:22 CecilSunkure wrote:
This is all true, but I don't really want to advocate pure macro. I just want to set a very good example of how with efficient APM usage and good mechanics you can play a solid game and absolutely smash opponents in the lower league. In the VOD I was more of aiming to set a good and very realistic/reachable goal for readers, rather than to prove a hypothetical point. Does this make sense?
Make sense, and as it happens, I like the idea that you aren't advocating that (pure macro). I think far too many good players spout the "macro > all" line, as if the rest of the game skills are irrelevant.
But I will still argue that it weakens your assertion in this post, because you're saying that people need to concentrate more on basic mechanics and then showing a video of you doing much more than that. Which, to me, could be construed as admitting that that *isn't* enough to make it past these opponents. I know that's not what you're intending, just reporting to you how it came across to me.
To clarify my point, when Destiny did his all queen build, he wasn't advocating building nothing but queens as a playstyle, merely attempting to demonstrate that superior mechanics overwhelmingly trump players < plat/diamond.
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On April 10 2012 14:57 SCbiff wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2012 13:22 CecilSunkure wrote:
This is all true, but I don't really want to advocate pure macro. I just want to set a very good example of how with efficient APM usage and good mechanics you can play a solid game and absolutely smash opponents in the lower league. In the VOD I was more of aiming to set a good and very realistic/reachable goal for readers, rather than to prove a hypothetical point. Does this make sense? Make sense, and as it happens, I like the idea that you aren't advocating that (pure macro). I think far too many good players spout the "macro > all" line, as if the rest of the game skills are irrelevant. But I will still argue that it weakens your assertion in this post, because you're saying that people need to concentrate more on basic mechanics and then showing a video of you doing much more than that. Which, to me, could be construed as admitting that that *isn't* enough to make it past these opponents. I know that's not what you're intending, just reporting to you how it came across to me. To clarify my point, when Destiny did his all queen build, he wasn't advocating building nothing but queens as a playstyle, merely attempting to demonstrate that superior mechanics overwhelmingly trump players < plat/diamond.
I think you raise a valid point.
I would say the key message is to focus on macro as a way to overcome deficiencies in your game, not trust macro to make up for deficiencies in your game.
I've found myself increasingly using ling Infestor style lately, for example. In order for it to work at all, I've needed to learn to macro. 0/0 lings will not keep you alive, so if you don't get your gas timings and expansions down reasonably well, get the infestation pit and your upgrades, you'll die.
I recently played a game where I could say two things:
1. If I had have taken my fourth faster and planned a transition to broodlords, I would likely have been able to win
2. If I had have been more on the ball with macro, I would have been able to overrun my opponent before I got to that situation.
Being told that statement 1 doesn't matter at all because of statement 2 is not helpful. It's not incorrect, but it's not helpful.
I'll admit I was probably busy trying to land fungals and get surrounds while my queens sat idle and I floated 3k minerals. I know that's what cost me the game before I got into an engagement with an inferior army. And that sort of thing is definitely on my mind.
But here's how I put it. Each and every game I'm trying to make sure I don't fail at macro. I've had games where my queens have <25 energy while I'm on 3 base 12 minutes into the game, and I'm proud of that, but I dont' forget that those were games where I didn't really get messed with in those opening stages, so it's not so fantastic.
Next time I play, I'm going to work damn hard to make sure I'm not floating minerals. Already I've pushed myself so I can eek out more drones safely, get spore crawlers and no longer die to DTs, get those gas timings and expansions to enable an earlier infestation pit because damnit void rays suck, and so on.
Most of these adaptations come from statement 1 adjustments, not statement 2 adjustments.
I agree that you can't achieve the statement 1 goals without improving macro, and that should always be the first avenue for improvement. If I want to work out how to transition to broodlords safely, you can bet the best way will be to not float so many minerals, which could have been a hatch, 2 geysers, a dozen drones and a spire.
But I would suggest that "focus on macro, it will solve all your problems" doesn't quite get the message across. You need to identify the problem you want to solve before you can begin to use macro to solve it.
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maxing out on roaches by 12 mins is a piece of piss for me in silver..
bottom of bronze you are right ... but top of bronze is actually pretty close to the top of gold (for macro players) because the leagues have HUUUUGE overlap. IE a lot of players qualify in gold maybe but a lot of bronze players would beat them.
not really
Im just a shitty Gold, but whenever I lose too many games in the row and my MMR hit high silver players, I will just get a couple of easy win before starting to get matched up with Gold/Plat again
the matchmaking will play you with people around your skill, that's an undeniable fact. So if you still playing fellow Bronze/Silver/Gold then there is where you are supposed to be
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On April 10 2012 10:32 mothergoose729 wrote:
This thread has got me thinking a lot about this problem. I feel I have a natural aversion to the idea that macro is the only thing you need to get to masters league in starcraft II. I feel like, as a terran play myself, other aspects of the game are as important if not more important than macro because of the dynamics of the terran matchups. But that doesn't mean that it isn't true. I consistently out macro my opponents on the majority of my ladder games, but I never had truly excellent macro in any of my games. Maybe if I macro as close to perfectly as possible, I might be able to break master league?
I think starting my own discussion thread at this point would be redundant, so I am going to ask here: do masters league players truly believe you can make it to master with essentially excellent macro only? As a terran player, if I did a passive, economically focused build in all three matchups with an emphasis on maxing out first and attacking, would it be possible to reach masters league?
The answer I seem to be getting from the majority of people in this thread is "yes". I am thinking about starting a blog post about it, and putting the theory to test. Something like "Cecil Macro Challenge". Play some 200 games with only one build focusing entirely on macro only and see how far it gets me. Keep a sort journal documenting my successes and failures. Ignore pretty much everything else and see what flushes out. What do you guys think?
I plan on doing a similar experiment myself, based on attempting to replicate the "mass stalker to diamond" thing from a year or so ago. Unlike that guy, I don't have any prior experience in the higher leagues or with Protoss, so there's no chance of it being "tainted" with game sense or knowledge. The first step is to see if I can hit the same macro targets in a safe environment.
http://drop.sc/156912 One of Mass Stalker Guy's games
http://drop.sc/157423 My 4th practice session attempting to duplicate it, against the relatively tame Medium AI
So churning out the requisite number of probes, bases and stalkers doesn't seem that difficult. The next phase will be to see
-can I duplicate that macro output against a human opponent
-if so, how much better will my macro be relative to silver/gold/plat opponents, if at all
-will that macro advantage be sufficiently large to overcome my other shortcomings
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On April 09 2012 17:59 Ringall wrote:
I see a lot of "lol making drones is bad - I just die" comments here. (Or any variation of that. )
It just simply is not true. That is the exact piece of advice I received when I started in bronze. I began making probes (played protoss back then) non-stop. I would NEVER stop producing them. And look at that. I quickly went up to gold without any strategies or gameplans what so ever. I was just simply able to outproduce my opponent with my unit of choice (stalkers ftw)
Only when I reached gold, I needed to start thinking of things like saturations and build orders :3
So yeah. Awesome Piece of advice Cecil. I hope I had seen something like this when I started :D
That's not a fair comparision. You can easily play protoss and terran, ALWAYS build workers, and still have a safe build which survives to pretty much anything. You never need to cut workers to defend unless it's a cheese.
Zerg, the drones in your quote, is different. If you overdrone, you WILL die, there is no safe zerg build which lets you build the drones you want without pausing drone production to create units. This is why Zerg is the hardest race to do "macro into diamond" with, because it's so different. It's still true that zergs can win using macro, but they also need to know when to drone, where as any terran or protoss could learn a good standard build which never cuts workers, and as long as they do that and can keep their money low, they should win more than 50% of their games and eventually end up in diamond. A zerg who has perfect macro but no idea when it's safe or unsafe to drone will never get past gold.
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On April 06 2012 09:46 TheNessman wrote:
100% completely disagree and i have studied low level play for months of my life
User was warned for this post
edit: whatever , i Would say that in lower leagues, the most important thing is "to have a plan" as long as you have a plan you are going to be OK for now. if your plan is Ultras, go ultras. you might die 50% of the time to the first 5 marines your opponent sends at you, but you might also beat the other 50% that turtled off 2 bases to 3/3 reapers. If your plan is DT, go DTs. maybe in bronze league your opponent forgot to get an orbital so they don't have any way of scanning you. If your plan is bunker rush with 4 marines and all of your scvs, it just might work. 4gate for days if that's how you want to get better, i don't care. in lower leagues, everything goes.
So many times I feel that lower level players don't have a sense of what to DO . they get that they should be building econ and stuff, but they never know when to attack or how to defend. In lower leagues, i feel that you just need to do something and then see what happens. and by that point players can figure it out. as long as they understand this == every time you econ instead of building units, your macro will be better later -- , combine that with a solid , if not random plan, and you can probably get out of silver.
Source: working from low to high gold, thoroughly discussing strategy with my friend every day as he moved from low silver (just got the game) to near platinum, reading the blogs by that guy who worker rushes every game , being a caster, playing 2v2 with my friends who are bronze but also platinum , that page that discussed what you needed to get better at as you got higher in leagues, the last one being micro or something , 100s of 2v2 games from low to high gold as random. watching MKP, playing every race, being bad on my own, getting better, reading TL every day, not reading /r/starcraft.
seriously everyone in all of the TL strategy forum is turning into idra - "oh if i just macro the best i'll win automatically" , "oh i just have to hit my drone number as fast as possible and then nothing can go wrong" . SORRY If i just offended you with that statement.
there is a reason you are still bad. re-read your post and I bet you will see it.
Yeap, its your stubborn-ness to take advice from people who are much smarter and better than you at this game.
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On April 10 2012 13:22 CecilSunkure wrote:
This is all true, but I don't really want to advocate pure macro. I just want to set a very good example of how with efficient APM usage and good mechanics you can play a solid game and absolutely smash opponents in the lower league. In the VOD I was more of aiming to set a good and very realistic/reachable goal for readers, rather than to prove a hypothetical point. Does this make sense?
It makes sense, but it's completely unrealistic for a lot of players. When they hear "probes & pylons", they're thinking "all I have to do is keep making workers, not get supply blocked, and spend my money and I'll win". It's a complete misnomer. That's simply not the case when you have mechanics as absolutely god-awful as some of the people I know in Bronze->Gold. They react poorly to EVERYTHING.
You should watch a silver league player react to mutalisk harass. That might help you understand how the games you played aren't even on the horizon for them.
One of the things that seems consistent about "probes & pylons" explanations is that whoever is demonstrating it tends to make a push at a reasonable time. A lot of lower league players want to make 200/200 3/3 and go. Even that is generally ok, except they'll move command into a line of 12 tanks and lose everything. Their decision making has flaws you can't even comprehend because it's so ingrained in you.
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Just adding my 2 cents to this very helpful and informative thread. After reading this topic yesterday it inspired me to give SC2 another shot.
I love watching SC2, I follow the pro scene for more than a year now, and I bought the game itself last October. My results were horrible, I can't remember winning any real games, only if the guy left or didn't even know what game he's playing. I tried all the races for weeks but I was terrible even for the wooden league.
After this thread I tried again, without any real hopes or plans. As a terran I went for early wall-in and after that just macro like crazy. I payed close attention to SCV-production, made army (marine-marauder) constantly, whenever I went above 200 minerals I dropped a rax, teched as good as I could (stim, +1 +1, combat shield, etc), when I over-saturated the mineral line dropped an expo, so nothing really fancy.
As for the attack, around the time when +1 attack finished, and I had a rather strong MMM ball, I just simply A-moved the group to the enemy's natural, and I microed them just barely, target-firing important units, etc.
The results? Quite a spectacular run, the 5 placement matches were the following:
- 1: bronze 6-pool defeated like a boss, poor guys didn't stand a chance
- 2: bronze zerg with mass roach: by the time he scouted me and got to my base, at the 10 minute mark I had stim, concussive shells, +1 weapon, 15 marines, 6 marauders, and 2 medivacs, so I wiped the floor with him
- 3: gold terran with a mirror "build": he went MMM just like me, but had less units, less upgrade, basicly less everything than me
- 4: gold zerg: the baneling bust at 6:30 got me with my pants down, didn't stand a chance
- 5: platinum protoss went FFE, which helped me tremendously, I was able to build up a nice army and deny the natural, but since I suck at scouting, he was able to successfully tech-switch into double stargate, and the mass skillrays effectively raped me
All in all, with mostly focusing to macro, I got into mid-gold after the placement matches, which is crazy, since I've never been out out the wooden league. I know it's still nothing, but quite a big step to me. Now I know the weak spots, where I have to improve (scouting-scouting-scouting), but I know that at least I'm on the right path.
So a very big thanks to the OP, and everyone who contributed to this thread 
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On April 11 2012 03:10 TheDroneNextDoor wrote:Just adding my 2 cents to this very helpful and informative thread. After reading this topic yesterday it inspired me to give SC2 another shot. I love watching SC2, I follow the pro scene for more than a year now, and I bought the game itself last October. My results were horrible, I can't remember winning any real games, only if the guy left or didn't even know what game he's playing. I tried all the races for weeks but I was terrible even for the wooden league. After this thread I tried again, without any real hopes or plans. As a terran I went for early wall-in and after that just macro like crazy. I payed close attention to SCV-production, made army (marine-marauder) constantly, whenever I went above 200 minerals I dropped a rax, teched as good as I could (stim, +1 +1, combat shield, etc), when I over-saturated the mineral line dropped an expo, so nothing really fancy. As for the attack, around the time when +1 attack finished, and I had a rather strong MMM ball, I just simply A-moved the group to the enemy's natural, and I microed them just barely, target-firing important units, etc. The results? Quite a spectacular run, the 5 placement matches were the following: - 1: bronze 6-pool defeated like a boss, poor guys didn't stand a chance - 2: bronze zerg with mass roach: by the time he scouted me and got to my base, at the 10 minute mark I had stim, concussive shells, +1 weapon, 15 marines, 6 marauders, and 2 medivacs, so I wiped the floor with him - 3: gold terran with a mirror "build": he went MMM just like me, but had less units, less upgrade, basicly less everything than me - 4: gold zerg: the baneling bust at 6:30 got me with my pants down, didn't stand a chance - 5: platinum protoss went FFE, which helped me tremendously, I was able to build up a nice army and deny the natural, but since I suck at scouting, he was able to successfully tech-switch into double stargate, and the mass skillrays effectively raped me All in all, with mostly focusing to macro, I got into mid-gold after the placement matches, which is crazy, since I've never been out out the wooden league. I know it's still nothing, but quite a big step to me. Now I know the weak spots, where I have to improve (scouting-scouting-scouting), but I know that at least I'm on the right path. So a very big thanks to the OP, and everyone who contributed to this thread
Oh wow that's very awesome! This thread seemed to have bumped you two leagues near instantaneously. That's wonderful to hear, thanks
On April 10 2012 22:46 South wrote:
It makes sense, but it's completely unrealistic for a lot of players. When they hear "probes & pylons", they're thinking "all I have to do is keep making workers, not get supply blocked, and spend my money and I'll win". It's a complete misnomer. That's simply not the case when you have mechanics as absolutely god-awful as some of the people I know in Bronze->Gold. They react poorly to EVERYTHING.
You should watch a silver league player react to mutalisk harass. That might help you understand how the games you played aren't even on the horizon for them.
One of the things that seems consistent about "probes & pylons" explanations is that whoever is demonstrating it tends to make a push at a reasonable time. A lot of lower league players want to make 200/200 3/3 and go. Even that is generally ok, except they'll move command into a line of 12 tanks and lose everything. Their decision making has flaws you can't even comprehend because it's so ingrained in you.
I understand your intentions are good, but I don't see you think you'd know better about how a silver league player would react to mutalisk harass than I would. I used to be silver, and I've worked with many Silver league students. I also am not sure how you know better in that my VOD was unhelpful because I play better than some people that watch it.
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EPT
