EPTSince I have an injury that prevents me from playing I thought I might share some experience I gained while switching races (Zerg -> Terran) 3 months ago.
I'm decaf and a mid-high masters EU terran (well, as soon as my hand is functioning again) that's been playing Zerg for one and a half years. I've written several guides so far, but the most notable is probably this one:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=277693
I'm writing this because occasionally I see threads popping up asking "how to improve fast" and when I read through the replies I see many advices that seem wrong to me so I'm trying to give my point of view on the matter.
When switching races I obviously wanted to get to my old level as soon as possible (I'm not quite there yet), so I practiced in the most efficient way possible. I know there's many people out there who aren't as determined and probably won't be able to practice in such a way and that's totally fine. This is directed towards people who _really_ want to get better.
When switching races I sticked to custom games for a very long time. I didn't go to ladder and tried my best. I've never ever played terran before and I didn't want to "ruin my stats". If you want to improve you have to accept at one point that ladder stats aren't important though - but beginning with customs is the best way anyway. This being said I'l start off~
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The most important thing to have when wanting to improve is practice partners. You will find some there
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=312140
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=328110
or you can go to any teamliquid channel ingame and ask for games. Once you have them you're ready to go.
This is what that practice regiment looks like:
- Pick one matchup
- Pick one build order for that matchup from a well-established pro
- Practice that build in a build order test map
- Play your build vs practice partners
- Do this for all matchups
- Go to ladder
- Expand your knowledge
I will go over all the points in detail in just a second.
Pick one matchup:
You pick the matchup you're most insterested in, because this will give you the motivation you need. For me that matchup obviously was TvZ, since I've been playing Zerg for so long. It is important to only stick to one matchup, because you won't be able to focus on so many different builds at the same time. Not only the build orders are different, but also the way you micro against each race.
Once you know how to play one matchup, the next one will become easier to learn - you already improved your macro and mechanics practicing TvZ (or whatever matchup you like) solely.
Pick one build order for that matchup from a well-established pro:
Picking the right build order (replay) is essential. You don't want to waste time. First off, what is a well established pro? Any non-korean except naniwa, stephano and thorzain is not, all code s koreans are.
Obviously player have strong and weak matchups, this is very key also. When you're looking for a strong TvP player, who comes to mind? Polt, MKP, Puma; TvZ? MMA; TvT? alive - and so on.
If you aren't sure which player is good at which matchup go to the search bar and type in the player's name and look it up in the TLPD. I recommend to look at the SC2 korea and internation statistics - foreigners heavily skew the statisitcs.
It's also always nice to have several replays displaying the build. Get ready to write down every important thing in your notepad. Depending on the build 8-15 minutes into the game. You should have a clue how many production facilities you can support off of 2, 3, 4 etc bases - just watch the replays and count the facilities in the mid to late game.
Additionally, this build MUST be a macro build i.e. 1rax FE, double expand w/e. Suck up build order losses and do not deviate, the build should not be overly greedy - just standard macro builds. Also do not choose games of teammates playing against each other (those are likely to be weird).
Something I liked doing is searching through the day9 archives looking for interesting matchups featuring good players, it's where I got my TvP and TvZ build from. Tournaments like IPL release replays, this is where you get 'em. If you don't find any the day9 VOD or even a GSL VOD is sufficient to copy the build anyways - it's just harder.
As per request, here's an example of how I do it:
+ Show Spoiler +
http://drop.sc/122678
13 rax (3marines)
14 gas
fac (6hellions)
reactor on rax
fac -> rax
22 CC
TL on rax
stim
fac -> .
rax on reactor, rax
7:30 starport, gas, reactor on fac/rax
starport -> fac
9:40 CC
10:00 TL on fac, ebay
Probably hard to decypher for some people, but that's how I take my notes. I left out that a couple of barracks will be added after that ebay, but I now that anyways. After that it's pretty standard marine tank medivac play. I picked this build, because it's extremely good vs greedy zergs and vs ling inf play (I don't like to play against that) and it also leaves you behind with a reactored starport which is great. I also got 2 other builds that include 6 hellions so I can mindgame a little bit. 13rax 14gas with 3 marines is something I always do in TvZ, don't think Polt did it.
Practice that build in a build order test map:
Now this is the most important and simultaneously the hardest part. Many people will struggle here to keep the motivation up, but this is where we save most of our time. When you have picked the right build order for you you need to practice it without having opponents ruining your day. You need to get a feeling for the build at first. Look at what the pro does, how does he move his units? where does he look? what is he looking for? what triggers certain actions? Copy the build 100% without even thinking about what you do - thinking about the game comes later.
I always liked to go to orion's build order test map and play the build for 2-3 hours straight. I wouldn't dare to play vs others when I still made so many mistakes in my build. This includes supply blocking yourself, forgetting upgrades, wrong gas timings. You want to copy the pro as best as you can, you don't need 400apm to play a build perfectly.
Play your build vs practice partners:
Now this is the time to see if the hard work has paid off. You will find yourself in a situation where you're overwhelmed by how much more you have to do now. You will make many mistakes in your build order. Maybe you want to go back to the build order test map one more time to fix all the mistakes you found. It'll take quite some time till you're able to execute the build in a way it doesn't bother you anymore, but the first win will be worth it. It is _very_ key that you do not deviate your build no matter what. If you do something else every game you will make extremely different mistakes every game and you will have an incredibly hard time fixing them. You don't even need very good opponents for the first few matches.
Obviously, the better you are the faster you'll learn.
Do this for all matchups:
Now you know how to play one match up. Back to the beginning. Don't worry, you will learn much faster now and you'll already be used to the practice environment. I suggest picking the mirror matchup as the last one you learn, because it requires the most knowledge about the race you're playing.
Go to ladder:
After all that hard work you're ready to go to ladder. If you've done your homework carefully you should be able to get to masters within one week. You'll notice that you don't even have to micro your units, you'll just have way more than your opponents anyways. The only thing that is going to be annoying a little bit is the fact that you're going to lose to cheese quite often, since practice partners don't really cheese a whole lot. This is what you can learn from ladder though, dealing with a variety of different playstyles.
Expand your knowledge:
Now that you do know how to play one build order per matchup it is wise to learn other build orders. You want to be able to react to the map and positions you're playing on so maybe learn a 2rax if you're playing a TvP on shattered temple or w/e. Just be smart about what you do.
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What is left to cover?
Micro:
I primarily have talked about picking the right build orders and take the right steps in order to improve but I've completely overlooked other aspects such as micro and mechanics. Micro and mechanics improve when grinding out a ton of games, but there's also a faster solution to this.
For practicing micro I love darglein's micro map. Just type in darglein into the search bar ingame and you'll find it. It has tons fo challenges varying in difficulty. If this is not enough you may also do the StarCraft masters thing released by blizzard. Since I switched from zerg to terran I had to learn how to split and stutter step properly so I made use of darglein's custom map. I get to level 40-something on the split level (with stim, speed and no creep ofc).
Mechanics:
Believe it or not, spamming is the key. I'm talking about cycling through your production buildings and not clicking ten times to send an SCV like I always see the north americans do on their streams. You want few, precise clicks for that. Spamming in the beginning helps to warm up your fingers and get a rhythm into the game. I recommend it.
Other than that the right hotkeys are important, too. I use all the hotkeys from 1 to 7 as Terran and 1 to 9 as Zerg. For the Terran hotkeys I picked IMMvp's set. I know many people say pick what suits you the most, but honestly, if IMMvp managed to get that good with the way he hotkeys it's proven it's possible. Just get used to it and it is what "suits" you. I don't believe there's better hotkey layouts, they're all the same (unless you fuck them up on purpose).
Other than that you will find enough information on everything if you just look for it http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=328028#7
Replays:
This is personal preference. It's not wise to watch 0% of your replays nor is it to watch 100% of them. I feel like watching the replay when I'm left behind with confusion after losing a game and I have no idea what happened or I won a game and want to see how hard I r~ped my opponent. It's not worth watching all replays, you could be playing instead.
Watching streams:
I thought I might add this just for the hell of it. There's only so much you can learn from watching streams. The things you learn from watching streams decreases exponentially with the time spent watching. It's good and actually important to see FPVOD material, but if it gets to a point where you're just wasting time and not learning new things it's kind of a waste of time.
Don't get me wrong, FPVODs are great, especially if you happen to have one of the build you're trying to learn.
This is how I learned to play terran and I got matched against GMs after 2 months of playing. Obviously I was already high masters with zerg so that helped a little bit. Due to real life stress and other things I'm more like mid-high masters right now, but I'll be back in a few weeks. It's worked for me and also for this guy + Show Spoiler + so I thought I'd share. Thanks for reading~.
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