EPTIt is also more or less identical to an immortal/sentry expand which is incredibly good which means learning to find a transition point between the two can make you very versatile. You can also be creative with it by adding in warp-prism/sentry harass and stargate variations.
[D] All-ins (Immortal/Sentry) good for improving? - Page 2
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naggerNZ
New Zealand708 Posts
It is also more or less identical to an immortal/sentry expand which is incredibly good which means learning to find a transition point between the two can make you very versatile. You can also be creative with it by adding in warp-prism/sentry harass and stargate variations. | ||
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myRZeth
Germany1047 Posts
On September 23 2012 17:24 Vermiiifuuge wrote: You're taking a quote without saying who said it and without giving us an idea about what context it was said in and then you're misusing it to argue people whose mechanics arent top-kespa level should always go for macro game. A build like 3 Immortal 1-1 push is great for practicing forcefielding positioning and decision making which Im sure would benefit the OP. Edit: typo. that s totally wrong i m a high level player myself, and what i can tell you is that if you go for a macro game you can also learn forcefield positioning, just because of holding roach ling all ins and decision making can be learned 10 times in a macro game you don t have a lot of decisions to make if you re going for an all in | ||
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Tuczniak
1561 Posts
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iglocska
Norway589 Posts
On September 23 2012 17:44 myRZeth wrote: that s totally wrong i m a high level player myself, and what i can tell you is that if you go for a macro game you can also learn forcefield positioning, just because of holding roach ling all ins and decision making can be learned 10 times in a macro game you don t have a lot of decisions to make if you re going for an all in I feel that unless you are already at a certain level, players seem to fall apart in many ways in the late-game and still win since their opponents also fall apart (as long as we're not talking about high master / GM). Building your play up from the ground up, with crisp play on 2 bases, then slowly, once you can execute it well starting to play 3 base plays is the best way to improve. Good 2 base play teaches a lot of the basic mechanics and allows you to drill the most important aspects of good play (constant production, army management, reinforcement during engagements, scouting, early defense, etc). Afaik Artosis talked about this on his blog, how the Korean players went through phases of 1 basing, 2 basing and doing crazy macro games lately during the lifetime of the GSL, hence why they are so good. | ||
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HoMM
Estonia636 Posts
Allining is great mechanics practice, and once you know you can execute your allins perfectly, you know that it is now the time to move on to learning macro play. | ||
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Pursuit_
United States1330 Posts
I would say if you already have great mechanics, like the brood war pros do, then playing macro games will help you understand the game better faster. For improving mechanics, I feel like hitting specific timings (all-ins included, especially those that hit after 9 minutes or so) is more efficient. Because your build will vary little based on what your opponent is doing, you get to focus on making sure your macro is perfect up until the timing and you can work on control and macro'ing behind your attacks with the attack itself. | ||
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iglocska
Norway589 Posts
On September 23 2012 18:05 Pursuit_ wrote: I would say if you already have great mechanics, like the brood war pros do, then playing macro games will help you understand the game better faster. For improving mechanics, I feel like hitting specific timings (all-ins included, especially those that hit after 9 minutes or so) is more efficient. Because your build will vary little based on what your opponent is doing, you get to focus on making sure your macro is perfect up until the timing and you can work on control and macro'ing behind your attacks with the attack itself. Exactly. A sentry immortal all-in isn't the same as doing a 6 pool / 7RR each game, it allows you to improve your mechanics quite a bit. | ||
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myRZeth
Germany1047 Posts
On September 23 2012 17:32 CodeskyE wrote: wow that was bisu who said that. thank you guys :D no problem  are you a bisu fan? | ||
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Vermiiifuuge
Korea (South)112 Posts
On September 23 2012 17:44 myRZeth wrote: that s totally wrong i m a high level player myself, and what i can tell you is that if you go for a macro game you can also learn forcefield positioning, just because of holding roach ling all ins and decision making can be learned 10 times in a macro game you don t have a lot of decisions to make if you re going for an all in If you're a high level player, how come I've never heard of you? | ||
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Archybaldie
United Kingdom818 Posts
Winning with macro will improve your micro, macro, timings, knowledge of the early/mid/late game, economy management, multi tasking, defending, harassment, positional play and transitions. I've also found my knowledge of "how much damage i've done" improves with macro based play. I've done x amount of damage, i can sit back and defend. I've taken Y amount of damage i have to go and get something done to win this. You can learn quite a bit with "all-ins" but you can also learn those things wiith macro oriented playstyles. You just need to decide which aspects of your game to work on. Also the most important aspect is what do you enjoy the most? Also you can stagger your gameplay. Game 1 and 2: Macro game 3 and 4: all in. Etc etc Though macro oriented play can get frustrating, it can also expose more weaknesses that you have and help you work on those specific things. But really, just figure out what you enjoy and do it, it's your game you payed money for it you have to find out what makes the game worth it to you (everyones different). | ||
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naggerNZ
New Zealand708 Posts
On September 23 2012 18:37 Vermiiifuuge wrote: If you're a high level player, how come I've never heard of you? I've won three GSL code S titles and I still am in a constant state of awe at the supreme high level skill of myRZeth. Since I've won three GSL code S titles, you know my opinion can be trusted. | ||
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AKnopf
Germany259 Posts
* I don't count decision making as a skill of macro games, as you cannot play without making decisions. Making decisions is very attached to the situation so that you actually need many kinds of decision making skills for each strategy. So which of these skill sets will make you "a better gamer"? For a tournament player, it is important to be able to execute different strategies and choose them accordingly to the situation at hand. For a casual ladder gamer, it is not that important to have many strategies, but to be good at one. If you want to climb up the ladder, know gotta your one strategy really well. If you do a Immortal-Sentry all in in each game on each map, you will soon know all the branches of that, because there all small timings you can adjust to the map, the expansion timing of your opponent etc. If you do a 4+ base macro game every game, you will need to learn to hold many kinds of rushes first, as most player wont let you get to 4 bases untouched. Then, when you have achieved that, you will soon know all the branches of that. When do I attack? How do I move my army (e.g. how do I cover my mother ship from being neural parasited)? If you play a mix of both, you will if course become a better all-around player, but your individual strategies will become worse. So my answer would be: If you want to climb the ladder and beat "better" players than you do now: Drill deep into one strategy. May it be an Immortal-Sentry all in or your super duper macro game. If you want to emulate your favorite pro gamer, try to go different paths, maybe depending on maps or so... | ||
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Balink
United States24 Posts
Typically there's less scouting and judgement with all-inning than a true macro game, which leads people to underestimate their importance in understanding the game. Sometimes its difficult to know why you lost a macro game, even when you check the replay, because there are so many variables from game to game you don't really know what you need to specifically work on. In the case of an all-in, however, most of your games will be exactly the same up until a certain point. This makes finding mistakes much easier. Eventually you figure certain tricks out, and your game starts to evolve. People say that all-ins limit the amount of experience/knowledge of the game because you never get to true late game scenarios. I think that all-ins narrow the game, certainly, but this is a good thing. The early and mid game in starcraft are hard enough to understand, and adding in the late game is detrimental for a new player's correct understanding of the game. A lot of people in lower leagues have no business even being in the late game because of huge holes in their game. But because they are playing against other people in lower leagues they can get away with it and draw false conclusions about the way to play. The trick is to not glaze over losses. You have to really analyze your mistakes and come up with a plan for next game, like "If I scout X, then I will take my third while applying less pressure than if I had continued with the all-in". When you start to stagnate around a 50% win rate and aren't making changes to your play, that's when all-inning becomes bad. I used to think that all-ins were only used by awful players who didn't care about improvement. Then I tried Immortal Sentry all-inning just about every PvZ, and got into diamond. From there I tweaked and tweaked until I found a new comfortable build involving gateway expanding into Immortal sentry all-inning. Now I gateway expand into light stargate pressure and play a very macro-oriented PvZ in masters. I went from plat to masters in 3 seasons like this. Skill doesn't mean anything. If you consistently beat diamond players, then you belong in diamond. It doesn't matter that you have one refined build and they have a couple rougher builds under their belt (or maybe a lot higher APM). There's no real way to define what skill is except for wins/losses and league. It sounds like the OP wants to increase his league as fast as possible, and working on the Immortal Sentry all-in is a great way to do that. | ||
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ineversmile
United States583 Posts
Going all-in should be about punishing greed. I don't think that's what this one is designed to do. | ||
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iglocska
Norway589 Posts
On September 23 2012 19:15 ineversmile wrote: There is a ceiling for how much you can learn from this build. You're basically going to understand how to use an army composed of 2 main units, some support from zealots and stalkers, and a warp prism. That's fine and dandy, but if you don't use anything else, how will you ever understand how to use DTs effectively against zerg? HTs? Phoenixes? Mothership? Chargelot+Archon? And what happens when this build becomes akin to the 1-1-1 in TvP, or the 3-base Roach/Ling max in ZvP? All-ins get figured out. Maybe they're hard to deal with, right now, but eventually the zergs are going to have defending immortal/sentry down to a science. When that happens, you will need to completely change the way you play the match-up. Going all-in should be about punishing greed. I don't think that's what this one is designed to do. This is just one matchup. He still has other builds for TvP and PvP. It's not like he never ever builds another unit. Also, "using units" in itself isn't exactly a hard to acquire skill if the metagame shift and he has to adapt, constant production, crisp timings, general unit control / force fields are skills that are always helpful to master. | ||
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ineversmile
United States583 Posts
On September 23 2012 19:17 iglocska wrote: This is just one matchup. He still has other builds for TvP and PvP. It's not like he never ever builds another unit. Also, "using units" in itself isn't exactly a hard to acquire skill if the metagame shift and he has to adapt, constant production, crisp timings, general unit control / force fields are skills that are always helpful to master. Wow, talk about completely missing the point of what I wrote. He uses only one build in PvZ. He wants to become a better player. If you use only one small set of units in each game, you will have no idea how 2/3 of the units in the arsenal work against that specific race. Yes, you can learn how Chargelots (for example) interact with Terrans and in the mirror match, but they function completely differently in PvZ due to fungal growth and roaches existing. Yes, you can learn a lot from executing the same 2-base build over and over again, but there's still a ceiling to what you learn. At a point in time, he will have mastered forcefields and basic 2base mechanics, and that's when it's time to move on. There is more to the game than building half a dozen gateways and executing forcefields. | ||
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rikter
United States352 Posts
All that said, at some point you should add in some new builds, both to expand your knowledge, keep things fresh, give yourself some options so that instead of rigidly doing the same build you can scout and decide what to do instead. I include 3 base plays in this, because if taking another base in response to an opponents play is never an option for you, it is a real hole in your game. I just think this is the last hole that needs to be plugged, not the first. | ||
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meltingmykohchoo
166 Posts
On September 23 2012 16:27 lordsurya08 wrote: I'm a platinum league Protoss player and my goal is to improve as quickly as possible, since time is valuable. Although I am going to talk about PvZ, this is just an example and I think this discussion covers all ins in all matchups. Every PvZ I do the same build - 2 base 7-gate immortal/sentry all in. This build is much harder to defend than it is to execute. I win almost every single game. But I'm not sure if I should continue with the build. The upside of Immortal/sentry is that it wins me games. Winning games raises my MMR, which means I face better opponents. By playing against better opponents I can improve quickly - or can I? The downside is that because I all-in every PvZ, I have little experience playing lategame PvZ. Since Immortal/Sentry is harder to defend than execute, by using this build my MMR is artificially inflated. Eventually I will face better players who can defeat the all-in. Due to my limited PvZ skillset, I will then lose many games against better players, but because there players are so far above my head, I won't be able to improve at all - or will I? The above analysis suggests that there is both an upside and a downside, but I'm not certain about either. The question is, if I want to improve as quickly as possible, which outweighs the other? At what point should I put down Immortal/Sentry and try a different play style? Any playstyle will help you improve imo as long as you focus on the appropriate things. Some people just 4gate all the time, get into platinum, and think "ugh this is as far as I can go with this strategy". NO! they are just focusing on incorrect things. They're the type of players satisfied with things like "oh he got lucky with his scout" or "meh my money was only 700 for a second". All inning can really make you a much better player. W/ no experience in brood war (other than customs, mouse only btw) I made it to diamond (before masters league existed) with 4gate only and stayed there when I started playing macro games. I knew what mistakes to look for and what to focus just from playing. Any playstyle will help you improve but since you are only a platinum player I recommend focusing on Just a couple of builds and playstyles to help you develop a foundation for the game. Play more macro oriented games to start because in a longer game you have more opportunities to make mistakes and mistakes are good! losing is good too. When you lose you learn. For dramatic improvement winning and raising your mmr should not even come to mind, you are just playing to learn and to develop your mechanics | ||
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Zrana
United Kingdom698 Posts
"I all-in every game but feel like it's just cheap wins and i should play macro. However I don't wanna lose so help me justify all-inning as a valid way to play". | ||
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iglocska
Norway589 Posts
On September 23 2012 19:33 ineversmile wrote: Wow, talk about completely missing the point of what I wrote. He uses only one build in PvZ. He wants to become a better player. If you use only one small set of units in each game, you will have no idea how 2/3 of the units in the arsenal work against that specific race. Yes, you can learn how Chargelots (for example) interact with Terrans and in the mirror match, but they function completely differently in PvZ due to fungal growth and roaches existing. Yes, you can learn a lot from executing the same 2-base build over and over again, but there's still a ceiling to what you learn. At a point in time, he will have mastered forcefields and basic 2base mechanics, and that's when it's time to move on. There is more to the game than building half a dozen gateways and executing forcefields. If he still needs to figure out how chargelots interact with fungals, then I assume his mechanics will also be very sub-par and just practicing the same 2 base all in over and over will help him improve. | ||
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