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On January 31 2015 18:20 WSBlizzer wrote:Hello Staircase Users! I've been using the Staircase for 12 games now, and finally managed to pass 4/5 of my last games (Platin Benchmarks) with protoss. Now that I feel ready for step 2, I would like to know if anybody recommends some builds for this Step. I would really like to do some early aggression with zealots whilst macroing properly, so I get confident with multitasking, but the problem is I dont know how to. Maybe you do! If you haver any other tips for me, here are my Profiles: GGTrackerBattle.net [EU]
Okay, as player who was bronze few month ago, and now mid ML.. I used staircase, it helped me get to the game, and my advice, don't overcomplicate things.. zealot harras won't do anything to any race(if not just cheesing 2gate), protoss got stalkers to kite, zerg will overhelm you on creep and there is not many space to micro, terran just walloff.. So idea of improving multitask is nice, but what you should do, is to focus on making probes,expand,don't supply block yourself, and constant production. While doing this STRICTLY with hotkeys, try to play with 1 probe/zealot/stalker/observer, or whatever unit you have...Just control 1 unit on the field, and gather information, walk near watchtowers, go to they natural to see expand or not, try to sneak to the base...When unit dead, get new one , and scout with it while macroing, by this you can see, if you need more units to defend, where you can catch oponent offguard, when you can be greedy and etc...this will really improve multitask..Start to learn micro when you get to ~plat at least...before it, micro is far behind macro in terms of success..
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Hello!
I tried using this method but I am confused as for how to check my league goals and how to compare such goals with my replays... I did spend a good amount of time searching for those options in the website, but I still couldn't find them.
I am still in step one and it is very tiresome to play as Terran while using only marines, and I kinda want to advance to the next steps... But I don't know if I am ready yet.
Here is my ggtracker: http://ggtracker.com/players/1563799/Sclequer
Am I supposed to check that "spending skill"?
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On March 02 2015 04:27 luqui01 wrote:Hello! I tried using this method but I am confused as for how to check my league goals and how to compare such goals with my replays... I did spend a good amount of time searching for those options in the website, but I still couldn't find them. I am still in step one and it is very tiresome to play as Terran while using only marines, and I kinda want to advance to the next steps... But I don't know if I am ready yet. Here is my ggtracker: http://ggtracker.com/players/1563799/SclequerAm I supposed to check that "spending skill"?
Under settings, you have to choose staircase view, in order to check for your spendingskill and you satuartion speed.
The saturation speed can be found when you select a replay and got to the economy tab.
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On March 02 2015 06:16 WSBlizzer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2015 04:27 luqui01 wrote:Hello! I tried using this method but I am confused as for how to check my league goals and how to compare such goals with my replays... I did spend a good amount of time searching for those options in the website, but I still couldn't find them. I am still in step one and it is very tiresome to play as Terran while using only marines, and I kinda want to advance to the next steps... But I don't know if I am ready yet. Here is my ggtracker: http://ggtracker.com/players/1563799/SclequerAm I supposed to check that "spending skill"? Under settings, you have to choose staircase view, in order to check for your spendingskill and you satuartion speed. The saturation speed can be found when you select a replay and got to the economy tab.
Ah, thanks!
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Hello,
there is one thing that I do not fully understand around saturation speed. If I look at the stats on ggTracker (http://ggtracker.com/economy_stats#?race=terran&vs_race=zerg) for example I see a saturation speed for master of 4:19. If I look at the staircase benchmarks (http://ggtracker.com/econ_staircase#?race=terran&vs_race=zerg) I see a saturation speed of 3:54. Why this difference?
3:54 is possible if you do not get gas, but if you get gas at 13 supply, is that even possible to get to this benchmark (I do not think so)?
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ignore saturation speed. If I had more time I'd be working on a replacement benchmark, but for the time being just focus on the spending skill.
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On March 09 2015 10:22 JaKaTaKSc2 wrote:
ignore saturation speed. If I had more time I'd be working on a replacement benchmark, but for the time being just focus on the spending skill.
Thanks for clearing up!
I'm quite interested in what such a saturation benchmark would be. For Terran and Protoss it seems reasonable to have it be something like 'time with an idle CC/Nexus,' but for Zerg, well, it's hard for me to think of a benchmark that doesn't get mucked up if you have to make a round of lings to defend a counter attack (or even put on some pressure.)
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We could go for straight income over time (including gas). It would be weird for step 1 and 2. It may be a bit complicated, but we could have an income overtime (mineral only) and an income over time (including gas).
OR
we go for idle nex/cc time.
Zerg would be larva efficiency. A timer would go every second you had 3 or more larva at a hatch. But that's only useful for early game.
income over time might be our best shot.
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I would think income over time to be problematic. For one, the income calculation in the replay system is really erratic, and I think is part of the problem behind the saturation speed issues. (Perhaps this could be alleviated by changing the criterion to Workers Active.)
The other concern is, as I mentioned, if Zerg needs to make units, either to pressure or to defend, then they're income is set back. If someone doing the Staircase is in a situation where they really need to make units, then the Staircase will punish them even though they're not doing anything wrong. I don't think that's good.
The final concern is, as I understand, the Staircase is there to teach straight macro mechanics. If an inexperienced player is doing the Staircase at a low level and, for example, encounters reaper harass, an income method would punish them for losing workers to the reaper harass. I think the Staircase should emphasize less responding to the reaper harass (while still very important, I don't think this is really a skill that's in line with what the Staircase is trying to teach) and more keeping a calm head through the harassment and continuing to make workers perfectly in spite of the pressure. And indeed, at lower leagues, I think this (i.e. this mindset of focusing on making workers through the harass primarily and defending it secondarily) is still quite effective, as it develops good habits, and the harassing opponent is quite likely sabotaging his own eco to control the harass.
Those are my thoughts, at least. I think the Staircase is super cool and want to see it be the best it can. Keep at it, JaK!
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OR we go for idle nex/cc time.
I think this is the way to go. It would be great to have such a benchmark! As well as benchmarks for supply block (I feel this is a huge problem in lower leagues).
Thanks for the great work!!!
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income over time is a really nice benchmark. it has even more clear league separation than saturation speed does. the reason i originally went with saturation speed was because income over time limits strategic creativity and range.
concerning harassment, it is important to recognize that you are not playing in a vacuum (one of the reasons its strongly suggested to play on ladder). Players should be penalized for not dealing with harassment efficiently. Otherwise they might develop the mentality of ignoring harassment, or worse, thinking that taking damage from harass is not their fault, because it absolutely is. Luckily in the stuff league (Plat and under) there's very little harass.
TheStaircase isn't only there to teach straight mechanics. It teaches the basics of the game, in mechanics as well as in strategy. One of the biggest things TheStaircase teaches is that, contrary to popular misinformation, Sc2 is more than a game of unit compositions.
I think we had supply blocks as part of the metrics originally, but concluded that spending skill encompasses supply blocks: if you get supply blocked you will have a lower spending skill. So it wasn't particularly necessary as a benchmark. Having supply block stats would be nice to track as they would show a weakness in spending skill.
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That seems quite reasonable. My concern is that in some games against particularly aggressive strategies it seems to me inevitable that you will have to pull or otherwise sacrifice workers to defend. If that happens, you've usually lost hope of reaching a certain saturation speed or income benchmark. In order to pass out of a given level of the Staircase, you need to hope that these sorts of things don't happen in more than one of five games, which doesn't seem very fair or fun.
I see your point about players internalizing the fact that taking damage from harass is not their fault. However I think there's definitely a certain benefit to encouraging players to keep building workers in the face of harass. Trying to defend harass is visceral, from what I've seen. I would be surprised if someone just straight up ignored a banshee in their mineral line. Remembering to continue to make workers in the face of that, however, requires a lot more self-mastery than that.
Your experience far exceeds mine so I trust your judgement, but I figure no harm in making some suggestions. Cheers.
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No harm at all. I enjoy discussing with you 
I think that the benchmarks incentivize the player to continue building workers. Harassment is a particular puzzle, maximizing the number of workers at the end of the harassment is the goal. The spending skill benchmark prevents the player from moving on without solving the puzzle (to some extent).
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On March 10 2015 11:13 JaKaTaKSc2 wrote:No harm at all. I enjoy discussing with you I think that the benchmarks incentivize the player to continue building workers. Harassment is a particular puzzle, maximizing the number of workers at the end of the harassment is the goal. The spending skill benchmark prevents the player from moving on without solving the puzzle (to some extent).
I see what you are saying, that for a given opponent opener, to maximise spending I need to handle the harass as well as possible while continuing to as many workers as possible.
However, it doesn't change the fact that it is a lot harder to reach a given spending goal with certain opponent openers, which can be frustrating if you are trying to line up 5 games in a row, and end up against a proxy 2 rax in game 5. Is there a way to somehow discount the opponent opener in some way?
As you have access to the replay for the stats, you can make the stats depend on the opponent opener as well, and allow for a very high spending score with a correct reply to a rushy opener. Could be things along the line of allowing you to spend as much resources (or 0.7x as much or something) on units/fighting structures as your opponent? Good macro (or economy mechanics) against a rush are different than in a passive game, and maybe it would be possible to include that difference in the score.
Not sure about the details though... Can you come with a reasonable way to implement something like that?
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Maybe look at the resources spent on units over time for the opponent, and then discount a certain time from your spending calculation? If opponent spend 300 resources on fighting units before 4 minutes --> one minute discount in the spending calculation. etc.
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@Cascade
I think that would be very difficult to code. I don't do any coding (learning to code is low on my priority list currently) so we'd have to find someone who could do that. ggtracker is not being developed anymore, it is what it is and that is all. We'd have to find someone like sc2replaystats and convince them to commit time into making TheStaircase a part of their site (including spending skill).
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I'm a newbie who is currently on step 3 of TheStaircase, and I wanted to share something I've learned, in the hopes that others can avoid my mistake.
The tl;dr version is this: When you're on steps 1 and 2 of TheStaircase, DON'T get in the habit of using the "Select All Army" hotkey to send your troops to attack.
Here's why. Before I started TheStaircase, I had a habit of putting my army into two or three separate hotkeyed groups. (Zealots and immortals on 1, stalkers and colossi on 2, etc.) And at first, I did the same thing when I started TheStaircase. But then I realized it'd be a lot quicker to just hit F2 to select them all. After all, I'm only making zealots, and I'm not allowed to macro them outside my base anyway, so why not?
The answer to "why not" is that it became a bad habit. I got out of the habit of putting units into hotkeyed groups, and got into the habit of just hitting F2 and then attack-moving them somewhere on the minimap. Now that I'm in step 3, that habit has become a problem. My army doesn't consist of just zealots any more; there are also observers, warp prisms, and the MSC. So when I hit F2, I select them as well. And unless I catch myself in time, I end up sending those other units into battle alongside the zealots. This creates all sorts of problems. It moves my MSC away from bases it was defending, it pulls observers out of the patrol routes I've set up, it sends warp prisms to the front lines when they should have been sneaking up from behind, and so forth.
Now I'm having to deliberately break myself of the bad habit I picked up in step 1, and that's interferring with my progress through step 3. I'll pull it off eventually, but if I'd thought ahead a bit, I could have prevented it from being an issue in the first place. Hence this post; I wanna make sure others on TheStaircase don't make the same mistake. Hitting F2 seems like a convenient time saver at first, but if you get in the habit, you'll slow your progress later on. Let my tale of woe be a warning unto you all. :-)
(Btw, I want to make clear that this was MY mistake, and not at all a problem with TheStaircase. TheStaircase itself is awesome, and has already made me a better player even though I'm only on step 3.)
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I've done the staircase. Today was my first day... and the ones I win using just zealots with no gas... people rage hard on me. I feel bad. Even the ones I lose, they rage hard on me. jeezus, there should be a caution saying "you will get raged on".
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On March 26 2015 15:08 badugib wrote:
I've done the staircase. Today was my first day... and the ones I win using just zealots with no gas... people rage hard on me. I feel bad. Even the ones I lose, they rage hard on me. jeezus, there should be a caution saying "you will get raged on".
What do they say? Call you a noob? damn a-move race?
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"you're a legit bronze league", "how many gateways do you have?!" and no gg lol. In hindsight...they're not wrong...I just simply out macroed them...they didn't scout or anything...so their fault.
BTW Jak, thanks for introducing me and everyone here about this! I love the system you and your team created. It really does psychologically remove the nervousness of laddering, and its fun. I don't feel anxious about losing and I'm like buddha when trying to improve. Do you homeboy! DO YOU!!!!!!!!
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EPT
