EPTGreat post though!
[G]/[D] Why You Lose and How to Win -Using APM effectively…
| Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy |
Emperor
Norway68 Posts
Great post though! | ||
|
sicueft
United States130 Posts
| ||
|
MrLlama
United States454 Posts
On June 19 2012 04:27 sicueft wrote: I'm a high plat Terran and I just can't get used to hotkeying my units. I can macro/micro well and I don't have any problems with manually boxing and selecting units in engagements. I don't know if this would help my play. Any suggestions for practice that someone can actually use while playing real games? Do you mean physically hotkeying them or using the hotkeys in a battle? There's really not much wrong with not using a lot of army hotkeys. I don't use many because I enjoy and am used to manually controlling the units with boxes and the sort. That being said, it's useful for when you split your army and such and if you have a lot of spellcasters so I would recommend just practicing hotkeying either multiple armies so you can counter attack and still control your main, or doing something like: hotkey 1: Main army hotkey 2: spellcaster. It's simple, yet will help you differentiate the two. | ||
|
ZeroClick
Brazil63 Posts
I've a question: I'm a zerg player, and I think necessary to play with another races, in order to know basic aspects of that races. What's the the level that you recommend where I can "pause" playing with my race and start to play another races? How much time do you find good to that pratice? | ||
|
MstrJinbo
United States1251 Posts
On June 19 2012 17:37 ZeroClick wrote: MrLlama , nice guide, thanks! I've a question: I'm a zerg player, and I think necessary to play with another races, in order to know basic aspects of that races. What's the the level that you recommend where I can "pause" playing with my race and start to play another races? How much time do you find good to that pratice? Don't think it's necessary at all to offrace. Between your own games and watching vods you should pick up everything you need to know. If you want to offrace for your own personal enjoyment, go for it. Just don't expect it to greatly improve your main race. | ||
|
Grubbegrabbn
Sweden174 Posts
Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I beleive even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago. There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead. The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's). | ||
|
Flyingdutchman
Netherlands858 Posts
On June 19 2012 23:34 Grubbegrabbn wrote: Great guide, I have just one small addition to make. Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I believe even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago. There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead. The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's). Yeah, to me the distinction between bronze and silver has gotten bigger in terms of player skill. Blindly a-moving your army is probably the best way to stay in silver, not get out of it. | ||
|
Runlet
5 Posts
On June 09 2012 08:35 PlacidPanda wrote: This would be true if skill in Sc2 was a set thing, however to improve you have to push yourself, that is the basic rule in any sport, whether it is soccer, weightlifting or starcraft. Saying to a young soccer player, dont learn how to dribble well, at your level speed is all that matters, work on that, is simply bad advice. Doing this micro little tricks at first do hurt your overall game. However as you improve you learn how to do these things AND macro, and this is where repetition and practice to come in to improve your skill. I see your point that you don't want the bronze player wasting their apm scouting with their probe while they have 5 probes sitting idle in their main, but thats just common sense, and not really anything revolutionary. That's right. | ||
|
Emporium
England162 Posts
I was reading some of the strat for silver, and if i don't drop in TVT, they certainly will and then i am almost certainly going to be behind, regardless of how focused i am going to be on my macro. Definitely need to re-look at some of the guide. it definitely falls down, because you are assuming that everyone in each is similar, and that they streamlessly improve at the same rate, this just isnt the case, some people would have to got silver league through gold league level macro, but have bronze league army composition and understanding so trying to get them to macro better, which is there strong point already wont be as effective as say trying to improve their army comp/pos/understanding. EDIT: dont get me wrong i like and understand the concept of what you are trying to achieve, but it just isnt practical, if i hadnt scouted 95% of my games in silver, then i wouldnt have realised they were SPECIFICALLY going for build, for example a 4rax gasless 1base allin, and so to defend adequately, to stop that i would have to scout, or alternatively taking a quick second, but saying 'you can take a second at the five min mark, build it on the high ground if you need to' is ridiculous, because even high bronze players have specific builds they are going to do, and even if they only half achieve it, an allin build will still be effective against a more macro build. that however defensive they play wont be able to hold off. secondly, sometimes, giving a little bit of your apm away to this is good, because even if you dont hold off what you do see that time, as you so rightly have said, your muscle/,mind memory will remember for future reference and will be able to better survive in the future. the short and long of what i am trying to say is, through experience are you going to learn, and by limiting anyone at any level to the guidelines, is not a long term view, to improve. The guidelines you have set out to improve are just a coincidental happenstance to playing/practicing to improve. | ||
|
MrLlama
United States454 Posts
On June 19 2012 17:37 ZeroClick wrote: MrLlama , nice guide, thanks! I've a question: I'm a zerg player, and I think necessary to play with another races, in order to know basic aspects of that races. What's the the level that you recommend where I can "pause" playing with my race and start to play another races? How much time do you find good to that pratice? I think it's important to understand the other races. A lot of times it will help you understand where they are weak because all of the sudden you realize what a pain mutas are in pvz or being caught not sieged up in tvz or whatever. I think you should try to be about a league below your own with other races, but this shouldn't need a crazy amount of practice. I ladder as zerg, but when I do fun practice games with friends a lot (or 2v2, 3v3, 4v4) I'll play random or an offrace so that I can get better at it. Funny story, this week I turned on SC and hit the ladder button (then minimized to change music). When I came back in, it was at the loading screen and I apparently had randomed my race. I got protoss and was facing a zerg. I knew all of the things zergs hated so I ended up putting a pylon to block his natural, sending the early zealot at like 5:30 with a stalker behind it, macroing up pretty well, and hit at 10:20 with a blink stalker timing attack that he was unable to hold. I wouldn't say I'm always able to win high masters games as a protoss but having a good sense of what my opponent hates definitely helped. On June 19 2012 23:34 Grubbegrabbn wrote: Great guide, I have just one small addition to make. Silver league nowadays is nothing like silver league when the game was released. Saying that its currently possible to win in silver league with just mass queens is silly. Perhaps its possible if youre a smurfing GM but its not a general strategy I would suggest to anyone. Same goes for mass marines only. I beleive even Dragon failed at mass marines @silver league in a smurf session I catched a couple of months ago. There are good bronze/silver/gold guides for beginners right here in these forums (by FilterSC among others), just point to them instead. The rest is good stuff though, will use it to try to hit gold (if I can just convince myself to quit playing silly 4v4's). 1. I just beat a silver with mass queens a couple days ago to once again prove it was possible. Granted, I'm high masters but that's the point. With great master level macro you can win with pure queens. And if you look at the FilterSC guides he wins plenty of games with only marines. That being said, I'll try and once again take a look at the silver/gold level. I'm going to repeat myself from before because I think a lot of it is that people in those leagues make these comments because they don't quite realize what it's really like to have perfect macro and what you can have. Even when they play their best macro game ever, it's generally still well below masters level macro and thus they think they are getting close to topping off and a little more macro won't be much help at all. It's a very hard concept to grasp and I may not have a perfect understanding of lower leagues but I think my experience in playing this game at a higher level can be useful. I was reading some of the strat for silver, and if i don't drop in TVT, they certainly will and then i am almost certainly going to be behind, regardless of how focused i am going to be on my macro. Definitely need to re-look at some of the guide. See this isn't true. If you had awesome macro, then you would be in a great spot when he dropped because you would be way ahead of him and have way more units. I'm a zerg player but send me a message and I'll gladly 1v1 you where I play you straight up and you can do whatever you want. I'm going to simply mass a nice army, and basically a-move it to your base once it gets big enough. You can drop or use cloak banshees or whatever you want and you'll see how far behind you are by simply not macroing at the same level. On a side note, I think this thread has spurred a new series idea (which wouldn't be able to be started until august when I go back to school but that's okay). I think I'd simply call it, "30 APM or Less" in which case I would play games at various levels (probably bronze-gold) using only 30apm or less. I would intentionally move slowly, not spam, and focus on all the important things that truly win games. With this I could also showcase how to hold all sorts of things. 2 rax bunker rushes, proxy stargate, dts, banshees, etc...(All with 30apm or less of course). | ||
|
gxt313
United Kingdom1 Post
Thanks!  | ||
|
MrLlama
United States454 Posts
On June 21 2012 16:13 gxt313 wrote: Great post. Being at a lower level I find this kind of guidance very helpful. I often fall in to the trap of getting out colossus because I can rather than realising I don't need it and scouting too early. All of which I know I do and consistently make these mistakes. I think this post is brilliant in highlighting these mistakes so when I play later today I'm going to test out some of your hints and we'll see. Thanks! It's tempting to do because collosus are quite powerful and a lot of times you see them being big game winners higher up, but if you don't have the ground army to support them they lose a lot of their power and I see too many lower league players try to rush them. | ||
|
Tritone
Japan76 Posts
1) Minimal scouting. As Zerg, I feel like it's essential to get a decent amount of warning time before that opposing army shows up on my ramp between 4:00 and 8:30--if I don't, then I will have dumped every single larva into drones, instead of saving the last round of injects or two to build an army just in the nick of time. Fortunately all I need are 1 or 2 well-placed lings (in ZvP and ZvT) or overlords spread out over the center of the map (ZvZ). 2) Dealing with pressure, drops and other distractions. What I think higher level players take for granted is that they've seen everything: they know what's dangerous, what's not, how much an attack is likely to hurt them, how to defend against early pressure well, etc. And all the while they keep their cool and can continue to macro during this attack. This is not so easy as a beginner until you gain some experience. Of course there are other reasons I've lost games, like absolutely terrible engagement sense, pretty much insta-losing to cannon rushes, being thrown off my build by pylons or engineering bays destroying my natural hatchery timings, dying to banshees about 50% of the time, etc... but they're not my biggest problems. Unit composition is still a bit puzzling to me. I die to immortals a fair bit, but a few times my opponent has gone with an army composition that I literally could not even attack (roaches cant vomit at the air) and I STILL won due to just having the stronger macro and their mutas/banshees/void rays simply don't kill my gigantic roach ball in time. Those games are hilarious. Anyway, I don't think strong macro can win you 99% of games in the lower leagues. I'd say it's more like 90%. :-D | ||
|
mothergoose729
United States666 Posts
I agree with your approach a lot. Progressing through a league is 95% mechanical. You can do so much in bronze silver and gold just by making units and having a good build order, that you don't really need to worry at all about what your opponent is doing. It is really not until diamond league that you ever need to think to much about proper strategy or unit control or multitasking. Even in diamond league, the biggest difference between master league players and diamond league players is that master league players can macro and do other stuff at the same time. It isn't really so much scouting or strategy, its pretty much just APM. Focus on what wins games man. Totally agree. | ||
|
MrLlama
United States454 Posts
On June 23 2012 01:05 Tritone wrote: So as a new player who has been focusing on "macro only" for the past 10 days or so (which is about half of my Starcraft 2 playing career), I climbed from high bronze to 1st-in-my-division silver practically overnight, and now my MMR has me matched against mid-to-high golds most of the time, and I'm still not doing too badly. This is 90% due to focusing very hard on macro and repeating builds again and again until they are executed like clockwork (well, OK, a SINGLE build :-P). The other 10% of my improvement has been 1) MINIMAL SCOUTING and 2) LEARNING TO RESPOND/REACT TO PRESSURE APPROPRIATELY. 1) Minimal scouting. As Zerg, I feel like it's essential to get a decent amount of warning time before that opposing army shows up on my ramp between 4:00 and 8:30--if I don't, then I will have dumped every single larva into drones, instead of saving the last round of injects or two to build an army just in the nick of time. Fortunately all I need are 1 or 2 well-placed lings (in ZvP and ZvT) or overlords spread out over the center of the map (ZvZ). 2) Dealing with pressure, drops and other distractions. What I think higher level players take for granted is that they've seen everything: they know what's dangerous, what's not, how much an attack is likely to hurt them, how to defend against early pressure well, etc. And all the while they keep their cool and can continue to macro during this attack. This is not so easy as a beginner until you gain some experience. Of course there are other reasons I've lost games, like absolutely terrible engagement sense, pretty much insta-losing to cannon rushes, being thrown off my build by pylons or engineering bays destroying my natural hatchery timings, dying to banshees about 50% of the time, etc... but they're not my biggest problems. Unit composition is still a bit puzzling to me. I die to immortals a fair bit, but a few times my opponent has gone with an army composition that I literally could not even attack (roaches cant vomit at the air) and I STILL won due to just having the stronger macro and their mutas/banshees/void rays simply don't kill my gigantic roach ball in time. Those games are hilarious. Anyway, I don't think strong macro can win you 99% of games in the lower leagues. I'd say it's more like 90%. :-D Congrats on making it to #1 silver and working towards gold! I think I'm going to have to edit my original post a tiny bit as I think having some map vision is important more now for zerg players. It's just when people think scouting they think of having perfect overlord spread for drops and sending units/overlords into the base to get their tech on time and blah blah blah which I didn't want. What I think is important is simply what you are saying about having a couple lings around the map to just notify the player when their opponent is pushing out so they can start making more units. And I'm sorry for lying, it only wins 90% of games  On June 23 2012 01:59 mothergoose729 wrote: Are you the butteryllama? GM zerg player from a few seasons ago? I agree with your approach a lot. Progressing through a league is 95% mechanical. You can do so much in bronze silver and gold just by making units and having a good build order, that you don't really need to worry at all about what your opponent is doing. It is really not until diamond league that you ever need to think to much about proper strategy or unit control or multitasking. Even in diamond league, the biggest difference between master league players and diamond league players is that master league players can macro and do other stuff at the same time. It isn't really so much scouting or strategy, its pretty much just APM. Focus on what wins games man. Totally agree. Thanks and I'm glad you agree. No I'm not butteryllama, just MrLlama. I'm starting to finally play a few GM players but it's still mostly high masters. I just picked up a student yesterday who I'm going to grind with for about a week or two to simply improve macro. Already after 1 day I've got him 20 more drones by 8 minutes and 60 more supply by 12 minutes, which should be enough to start winning more games. We'll see how he ends up after a couple weeks and I'll continue to report in. | ||
|
CrazyF1r3f0x
United States2120 Posts
-Work on timing pushes. In PvZ alone there are so many good 2 base timings you can hit that either go all in for massive damage, or allow you to expand behind them. Intresting, Axslav said the same thing on ChanmanV's pro corner. | ||
|
MrLlama
United States454 Posts
On June 23 2012 03:54 CrazyF1r3f0x wrote: Intresting, Axslav said the same thing on ChanmanV's pro corner. Well I'm glad that Axslav and I are on the same level of thought then. | ||
|
Creegz
Canada354 Posts
| ||
|
Snoodles
401 Posts
| ||
|
Emporium
England162 Posts
On June 21 2012 11:38 MrLlama wrote: See this isn't true. If you had awesome macro, then you would be in a great spot when he dropped because you would be way ahead of him and have way more units. I'm a zerg player but send me a message and I'll gladly 1v1 you where I play you straight up and you can do whatever you want. I'm going to simply mass a nice army, and basically a-move it to your base once it gets big enough. You can drop or use cloak banshees or whatever you want and you'll see how far behind you are by simply not macroing at the same level. On a side note, I think this thread has spurred a new series idea (which wouldn't be able to be started until august when I go back to school but that's okay). I think I'd simply call it, "30 APM or Less" in which case I would play games at various levels (probably bronze-gold) using only 30apm or less. I would intentionally move slowly, not spam, and focus on all the important things that truly win games. With this I could also showcase how to hold all sorts of things. 2 rax bunker rushes, proxy stargate, dts, banshees, etc...(All with 30apm or less of course). I guess I am a skeptic at heart, because although you are definitely much better than me . After reading what you have said, I cant see, that if i continuously produce SCv's up until the 8 Min mark, and also cloakshee you at around that timing aswell, even if i only kill 5 drones thats X amount of supply, as long as shee doesnt die, i havent wasted any resources, bar the 200/200 cloak, i have a unit that is viable still for harassment of not just supply but resupplying army etc, and im still going to be producing units such as marines/tanks etc, i may have slightly less of those, but then i have an extra banshee.I guess i would believe what you were saying if you could show me how and where im missing it, cos i try and self evaluate alot, and see if there are any timings that im missing, with scv production. So if you want to have a 1v1 and show me where that is, that would be awesome. Also, your 30apm and less idea is pretty frickin clever. | ||
| ||
