• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 22:22
CEST 04:22
KST 11:22
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
TL.net Map Contest #22 - Voting & Ladder Map Selection2Code S Season 2 (2026) - RO8 Preview5[ASL21] Finals Preview: Two Legacies21Code S Season 2 (2026) - RO12 Preview2herO wins GSL Code S Season 1 (2026)7
Community News
StarCraft II 5.0.16 PTR Patch Notes may 26th122Weekly Cups (May 18-24): MaxPax wins doubles0Crank Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League5Weekly Cups (May 11-17): Classic wins double1Code S Season 1 (2026) - RO8 Results2
StarCraft 2
General
The Death of Cheese: From a Professional Cheeser StarCraft II 5.0.16 PTR Patch Notes may 26th TL.net Map Contest #22 - Voting & Ladder Map Selection Code S Season 2 (2026) - RO8 Preview TL Poll: How do you feel about the 5.0.16 PTR balance changes?
Tourneys
Maestros of The Game 2 announcement and schedule ! RSL Revival: Season 5 - Qualifiers and Main Event Crank Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League GSL Code S Season 2 (2026) Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament
Strategy
[G] Having the right mentality to improve
Custom Maps
[D]RTS in all its shapes and glory <3 [A] Nemrods 1/4 players
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 528 Infection Detected Welcome to the External Content forum Mutation # 527 Hell Train
Brood War
General
FlaShFTW vs A.Alm Grudge Match Event Data needed BGH Auto Balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ Quality of life changes in BW that you will like ? Soma's ASL Finals Review
Tourneys
[ASL21] Grand Finals [Megathread] Daily Proleagues Escore Tournament StarCraft Season 2 [BSL22] WB Final & LB Semis - Saturday 21:00 CEST
Strategy
Any training maps people recommend? Muta micro map competition [G] Hydra ZvZ: An Introduction Fighting Spirit mining rates
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne ZeroSpace Megathread Path of Exile
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
Vanilla Mini Mafia Mafia Game Mode Feedback/Ideas TL Mafia Community Thread Five o'clock TL Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Dating: How's your luck? Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Trading/Investing Thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine
Fan Clubs
The herO Fan Club!
Media & Entertainment
[Manga] One Piece Anime Discussion Thread [Req][Books] Good Fantasy/SciFi books
Sports
McBoner: A hockey love story 2024 - 2026 Football Thread TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Formula 1 Discussion
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread Facing Challenges in Mobile App Development
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
Esportsmanship: How to NOT B…
TrAiDoS
Why RTS gamers make better f…
gosubay
ramps on octagon
StaticNine
ASL S21 English Commentary…
namkraft
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 2830 users

[G] Improving on one's own - Page 4

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 3 4 All
Fencar
Profile Blog Joined August 2011
United States2694 Posts
June 04 2012 08:01 GMT
#61
On April 23 2012 01:54 ShatterZer0 wrote:
Why steal a pro build order? Just make one yourself if you have enough time on your hands to be practicing it a dozen times on a build order tester. Better yet, don't test it. Ladder it and see where it's funky.

Make a style for yourself

Don't justify things with "Because MC does it", justify it with your own strategic sense and logic!

I can testify that this works, but don't go too off the rails.

My own example is from TvP. I would go 1rax FE into 4rax Stim/Shield marine/marauder push that hit earlier than a lot of timings and often would outright win the game, which was awesome. I stopped doing it around diamond, when I dabbled in a variety of builds, but I could probably do that build again if I wanted to.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
decaf
Profile Joined October 2010
Austria1797 Posts
June 05 2012 16:15 GMT
#62
On June 04 2012 12:20 Belial88 wrote:
Show nested quote +

I strongly disagree with both of you.
@ShatterZer0: First off, you simply do not have the time or experience to make up your own build orders that will keep up with build order pros came up with. Plus as I already stated, if you do something different everygame you're going to make extremely different mistakes everygame and you'll have an insanely hard time fixing those mistakes.
Even pros like Stephano who supposedly have their own styles all learned from other pros until they were good enough to justify such deviations. Why would you try to reinvent the wheel?

Im an EU Bronze level player, and I have found that Build orders and pros replays don't apply at this level.

I follow building groupings, and play in a style that suits me - this way I UNDERSTAND why I need to do something rather than doing it by memory.

I don't want to fall into the trap of seeing PvZ (for example) and my brain ticking...9 Pylon (Scout) 13 Forge etc etc. I want to think, okay dependent on what the Zerg is doing when I scout i'll switch my build order. FFE is a very open build and if I see early pool, I cannon up and get that gateway down and chrono out that Zealot to wall off vs his lings. If I see hatch first I can match him by taking an expansion before I pop down a forge so I can keep up with him in terms of macro.



Listen to decaf. He's much smarter and better than you, and he's telling you that pros are much smarter and better than he'll ever be. If your build order doesn't look similar to a pros, then 100% you are fucking up. The pros have played more than 1000x games as you, you can guarantee that there isn't any build that you can come up with that they haven't done already.

100% - if the pros don't do something (like go infestors in ZvZ before hydras), it's because it's bad. You just are too low level to know why yet. I just learned at about 1000 points masters how much better hydras are than infestors in ZvP and ZvZ.




As always decaf, great guide. Your stuff is always completely top notch, and I hope one day my guides will be viewed as half as good as yours. I'm a 1100 points masters (random mid-masters scrub ;/ ) and I took a lot away from it.

Your bit about watching streams, can be applied to posting to forums (the reason I'm not in code s right now -_- ), reddit (the worst of all), and watching tournaments (i try to only watch match-ups that I'm currently questioning or struggling with, and only in the gsl, and in fast forward, as well as macro timings of zvp). All this stuff just kills your ranking - there's a reason you always hear the pros on SOTG (yea another horrible rank killer, but i listen to it at work on recording) like nony, nestea, destiny, naniwa, incontrol, idra, all say "i didnt see that game" or "i heard about it but didn't watch it" - it's because they are busy playing. You will very, very rarely see top players post on this forum, because they know to play more. Just perusing a couple series of GSL, and posting on TL for replay analysis (something thats really helpful actually) is all you need.

One thing though - I try to watch all of my replays, win or lose (unless it was a stupidly easy win), to see if maybe I won because he didn't push out, if I lost because I didn't push out, and macro benchmarking. I don't think it's bad to watch 100% of your replays, you can always 8x through them, and just check out the questionable parts. The worst is when you rage over a game and refuse to watch it.

Another tip I'd add though - saying glhf/gg. I'm seriously the most bm person on b.net, I'm a huge rager, I offensively gg and everything. But I decided to start saying that stuff just to try it out, and I realized very quickly that it helps you log in more games. It lets you get over losses much quicker and keep playing, it just lets you play with less tilt... you don't need to be GM to do it (every time someone says 'glhf' to me i'm so tempted to just say 'fuck you'), just robotically do it, and walla, your gaming will increase as will your rank.

That's too much appreciation x:
I actually thought about adding the stuff about teamliquid as well, because it really consumes a lot of time, but I thought better not tell people to sturp lurking TL 24/7 on TL. Don't think mods would appreciate it~ But yea, all those tasks that actually do nothing else but waste time - watching streams, browsing TL or doing whatever might as well be spent on improving (at least if it's time you're kind of investing in sc2 anyway).

I always gl hf but I never gg. That's simply how I do it, if you go into a game and simply gl hf you rarely ever get tilted, like you said. I used to rage occasionally, too, but one of my sc2 friends got banned for it so I quit raging and turned into a gl hf robot. But I really don't wanna start one of those useless "to gg or not to gg" discussions so I'm not gonna add it to the OP.

And about the replay thing, I still believe watching 100% of your replays is a waste of time. If you know why you lost, you really don't need to watch it, the chance of maybe finding something you might improve on is so small, you're better off starting anothe game.

Just for information, because you seem to enjoy my guides, it'll take a couple of months before I can write my next guide simply due to the fact that I don't get to play a whole lot - my tendonitis still is not cured, I've been having it for 3 months now - 3 months of not playing TT My next guide will be TvX anyways, oh well. The terran section is lacking anyways
MilExo
Profile Joined September 2011
South Africa139 Posts
June 11 2012 04:41 GMT
#63
@decaf: Regarding mechanics and spamming your macro cycle, would you recommend tabbed production or separate production? I really love the guide and want to make sure that I get the right habits down when practicing. As a protoss player I normally have separate hotkeys for Nexus, Gateways, Robo/Stargate, Forges but have read that some people recommend just doing Nexus/Upgrades and Production as two separate control groups as this makes the macro cycle easier. Your thoughts on this?
zmansman17
Profile Joined March 2011
United States2567 Posts
June 11 2012 05:08 GMT
#64
This is a Great guide. However, 2 seasons ago when Terran was starting to have trouble as a race, I opted to learn how to play Protoss. I used 1v1 obs for about 30 games and then took to ladder on another account. In only a few days I was able to hit rank 1 master Protoss (same point value as my Terran). While that may not be the experience of everyone, I do recommend testing the waters in 1v1 obs before purchasing another account or using your first account.
♞ - His EKG is flattening get me a defib stat! Prepped and Ready! - ♞
decaf
Profile Joined October 2010
Austria1797 Posts
June 11 2012 09:57 GMT
#65
On June 11 2012 13:41 MilExo wrote:
@decaf: Regarding mechanics and spamming your macro cycle, would you recommend tabbed production or separate production? I really love the guide and want to make sure that I get the right habits down when practicing. As a protoss player I normally have separate hotkeys for Nexus, Gateways, Robo/Stargate, Forges but have read that some people recommend just doing Nexus/Upgrades and Production as two separate control groups as this makes the macro cycle easier. Your thoughts on this?

I'm sorry, I'm completely clueless when it comes to protoss TT I've played only like 3 games or so to show a fellow zerg how easy it is to all in with that race lol. Maybe someone more experienced with the protoss race can answer your question?
All I can say is that as a terran player I think hotkeying raxes, facs and ports individually is better than tabbing thru them. I guess both works though, since Mvp uses the individual hotkey setup and MKP tabs thru it so it's just a matter of practice. Something that's simply a good habit though is having both ebays and armories on one hotkey and tab thru those, since you don't need them that often so you don't waste much time tabbing thru things. I guess that applies to your Nexus/forge thing, right?

Btw, I'm finally coming back a bit from my hand injury. Haven't been able to play for 3-4 months and on day 2 of playing again I already defeated a GM player ^.^(the game only took 5 minutes, because I countered him perfectly, but oh well). My tendonitis is still there, but I think it'll go away soon. Prepare for more guides as I heal up~
scrub96
Profile Joined August 2010
United States76 Posts
June 11 2012 16:23 GMT
#66
I am not familiar with the build order test map you listed. I cannot seem to find a good one on the NA server. Is there a link to a map site with the specific map you use (orions?).
9-BiT
Profile Blog Joined January 2012
United States1089 Posts
June 11 2012 17:47 GMT
#67
Scrub, YABOT is the typical one. It has one for most commonly played maps.
kwark_uk: @father_sc learn to play maybe?
DAKnockout
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany3 Posts
June 21 2012 22:00 GMT
#68
Thanks a lot, this has helped me improving much quicker, though it can be hard to keep up the discipline at times
Prev 1 2 3 4 All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Replay Cast
00:00
Enki Epic Series #9
CranKy Ducklings104
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
PiGStarcraft558
ProTech455
WinterStarcraft238
RuFF_SC2 2
StarCraft: Brood War
GuemChi 5359
Rain 2712
Artosis 399
Snow 42
Nal_rA 31
NaDa 17
Dota 2
monkeys_forever312
LuMiX0
League of Legends
JimRising 618
Counter-Strike
Fnx 1624
taco 516
Super Smash Bros
hungrybox568
Mew2King51
Other Games
uThermal1183
shahzam822
C9.Mang0526
Day[9].tv459
Maynarde169
minikerr2
Organizations
Other Games
gamesdonequick1021
BasetradeTV231
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
[ Show 14 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• CranKy Ducklings SOOP180
• Hupsaiya 95
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Stunt538
Other Games
• Day9tv459
Upcoming Events
Sparkling Tuna Cup
7h 39m
WardiTV Spring Champion…
8h 39m
Maestros of the Game
13h 9m
The PondCast
1d 7h
Kung Fu Cup
1d 8h
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
1d 12h
Maestros of the Game
1d 13h
Replay Cast
1d 21h
Replay Cast
2 days
WardiTV Spring Champion…
2 days
[ Show More ]
Maestros of the Game
2 days
Replay Cast
3 days
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
3 days
Maestros of the Game
3 days
Replay Cast
4 days
Solar vs Classic
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
4 days
GSL
5 days
herO vs Rogue
Maru vs Cure
uThermal 2v2 Circuit
5 days
BSL
5 days
Replay Cast
6 days
Monday Night Weeklies
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

KK 2v2 League Season 1
RSL Revival: Season 5
Heroes Pulsing #1

Ongoing

BSL Season 22
IPSL Spring 2026
KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 2
Acropolis #4
CSCL: Masked Kings S4
YSL S3
SCTL 2026 Spring
WardiTV Spring 2026
Maestros of the Game 2
2026 GSL S2
Murky Cup 2026
IEM Cologne Major 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 2
CS Asia Championships 2026
Asian Champions League 2026
IEM Atlanta 2026
PGL Astana 2026
BLAST Rivals Spring 2026
IEM Rio 2026
PGL Bucharest 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 1
BLAST Open Spring 2026

Upcoming

BSL 22 Non-Korean Championship
CSLAN 4
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
CranK Gathers Season 4: BW vs SC2 Team League
HSC XXIX
uThermal 2v2 2026 Main Event
Heroes Pulsing #3
Heroes Pulsing #2
Esports World Cup 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer 2026
BLAST Bounty Summer Qual
Stake Ranked Episode 3
XSE Pro League 2026
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.