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On November 04 2014 21:16 Tzyx wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness I have massive problems with collosus. I tried all the things to fix it. But so far, the most productive has been to write ADD VIPERS on a sticky note along the top of my monitor. I add them every time i expect/see collosus, and although i lose horribly mostly still, i feel like just having them in my army every game is helping me practice with them. I started out thinking urgh I'm terrible with these (and i still am) but at least now i can drag the odd collosus in. I think it's just one of those things that you need to keep doing until you got the hang of it. Feels like a moral victory every time i kill one of those god damn tripods lol.
It's not a bad idea to just get them with +2 I suppose. Even if they don't have colossus, blinding cloud is still very useful. I'll try that again for sure.
On November 04 2014 21:39 brickrd wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness thats how the majority of semicasual/amateur players at mid levels of play feel, dude. we all watch pro games and compare ourselves to an impossible standard where we expect to be executing things above our own heads. one of the reasons you might not "want to think" is because you're too focused on doing everything fastfastfast, spamming move commands etc. while not really knowing what your strategy is. it's fine to slow down your game for the sake of actually making decisions, in fact in most cases for most player it's probably much better to play that way its tough to try to imitate builds, but you can take it one step at a time and make little connections that help you remember things, like taking your gas at the natural when you have exactly x drones mining there or timing things as associations with each other like lair->baneling nest->start baneling speed when lair finishes for example. you dont have to connect the whole jigsaw all at once. one thing that helped me a LOT when i was a ~plat zerg was forcing myself to look at my gas all the time, gas income, gas bank, tech, tech plans, etc. if you have gas, what is it for? which first, 2/2 upgrades or spire? etc e tc etc (i know im giving zvt examples but im just speaking generally). setting aside workers and production, a "build" is really just a sequence of gas investments
I am not a fast player by any means. In fact, one of my worst problems is that I can't keep up with what I want to do, both physically and mentally.
The gas thing is sort of what I try to do... but often times I'm very underdroned and don't have to minerals to keep up... which is a horrible thing to even think of happening as a zerg. I do keep the general ideas of "start tech when lair finishes" and when to take gas (though I often forget and get natural gas late). I guess I just really have no idea what I'm doing, despite watching way too much pro stuff I am completely clueless about this game outside of very, VERY basic unit compositions. You'd think I'd learn a thing or two, but not really.
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I'd suggest you make the game simple as can be and stick to 1 build order per race, at least till you get more comfortable. This will help give you a consistent flow to all your games and pretty soon you wont have to "think" about the builds because all the repetition will get you to the "execute" mode. It will, gradually start to full under "automation" and not confusion.
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United States4883 Posts
On November 05 2014 00:20 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2014 21:16 Tzyx wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness I have massive problems with collosus. I tried all the things to fix it. But so far, the most productive has been to write ADD VIPERS on a sticky note along the top of my monitor. I add them every time i expect/see collosus, and although i lose horribly mostly still, i feel like just having them in my army every game is helping me practice with them. I started out thinking urgh I'm terrible with these (and i still am) but at least now i can drag the odd collosus in. I think it's just one of those things that you need to keep doing until you got the hang of it. Feels like a moral victory every time i kill one of those god damn tripods lol. It's not a bad idea to just get them with +2 I suppose. Even if they don't have colossus, blinding cloud is still very useful. I'll try that again for sure. Show nested quote +On November 04 2014 21:39 brickrd wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness thats how the majority of semicasual/amateur players at mid levels of play feel, dude. we all watch pro games and compare ourselves to an impossible standard where we expect to be executing things above our own heads. one of the reasons you might not "want to think" is because you're too focused on doing everything fastfastfast, spamming move commands etc. while not really knowing what your strategy is. it's fine to slow down your game for the sake of actually making decisions, in fact in most cases for most player it's probably much better to play that way its tough to try to imitate builds, but you can take it one step at a time and make little connections that help you remember things, like taking your gas at the natural when you have exactly x drones mining there or timing things as associations with each other like lair->baneling nest->start baneling speed when lair finishes for example. you dont have to connect the whole jigsaw all at once. one thing that helped me a LOT when i was a ~plat zerg was forcing myself to look at my gas all the time, gas income, gas bank, tech, tech plans, etc. if you have gas, what is it for? which first, 2/2 upgrades or spire? etc e tc etc (i know im giving zvt examples but im just speaking generally). setting aside workers and production, a "build" is really just a sequence of gas investments I am not a fast player by any means. In fact, one of my worst problems is that I can't keep up with what I want to do, both physically and mentally. The gas thing is sort of what I try to do... but often times I'm very underdroned and don't have to minerals to keep up... which is a horrible thing to even think of happening as a zerg. I do keep the general ideas of "start tech when lair finishes" and when to take gas (though I often forget and get natural gas late). I guess I just really have no idea what I'm doing, despite watching way too much pro stuff I am completely clueless about this game outside of very, VERY basic unit compositions. You'd think I'd learn a thing or two, but not really.
You CAN keep up with it mentally and physically. People try to make it more complicated than it is, but remembering all this stuff is just about collapsing it into more sizeable storage containers. If you read Josh Waitzkin's (sp?) "The Art of Learning", he talks about the concept of "slowing down time" -- that, when you see someone do something amazingly fast and precise, it's not because they are literally moving faster than you could, but because they have mastered the motions of the slow steps to a degree to which they can keep up with them moving quickly. Builds and mechanics are all about taking information in big chunks and learning how to digest them so that they become automatic over time.
That's why I really hate the notion that learning builds from pro players or trying to replicate what pro players do is impossible and wastes time. This is simply not true. You actually CAN replicate what pro players do, and even with exact benchmarks, it just takes some time to collapse the information and effectively "slow down the game" for you.
The other half of SC2 is an understanding of strategic ideas. I highly recommend spending some time reading or studying chess, as a lot of the main concepts of SC2 can actually be linked quite well to chess. When you analyze pro replays, take a look at what's happening and ask "Why does he move out and expand at the same time?", "Why does he deviate from his normal build here and build a tech lab...was it something he scouted?", "What is Jaedong's plan for the mid game, and why did he choose it?", etc., etc. Ask questions, make connections, figure out WHY things work the way they work, both compositionally and spatially.
Over time, concepts like the ETA (economy/tech/army) concept become natural. You find yourself automatically expanding on the opposite side of the map from your attack. You find yourself thinking about controlling drop play while keeping a strong mid map presence. You start to understand why certain pressures or timings work against some builds and why they don't work against others. You start to understand a lot. And again, this all gets compressed over time until it becomes a natural reaction and feels like you have plenty of time to make these decisions.
In short, just THINK about the game. Really think about the reasons behind why certain things work and what your inject cycle is and what responses you would do to certain scouting information, etc., etc. You are not limited mentally or physically; or, at least, your skill ceiling is likely much, much higher than you think it is.
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Help question:
I held off this attack
http://drop.sc/388662
but from the replay I think I only survived because my opponent made a few sloppy mistakes with his units (let robot units be sniped without gateway escorts, etc.). I can't rely on mistakes like that and I think this attack with better unit control would straight up kill me. How can I reliably defend an attack like this? Thanks!
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On November 05 2014 21:27 General_Winter wrote:Help question: I held off this attack http://drop.sc/388662but from the replay I think I only survived because my opponent made a few sloppy mistakes with his units (let robot units be sniped without gateway escorts, etc.). I can't rely on mistakes like that and I think this attack with better unit control would straight up kill me. How can I reliably defend an attack like this? Thanks!
John's guide also has a section on one-base all-ins that should answer your question: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-strategy/467244-tl-strategy-presents-scouting-in-zvp#onebaseallins
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hey guys, just wondering, if the terran opens like hellion banshee into 3cc, what time will his first pushout hit? just curious when id need to start pumping units again etc
trying to fix my ZvT atm but im very bad at adapting my play for
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On November 05 2014 13:03 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2014 00:20 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 21:16 Tzyx wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness I have massive problems with collosus. I tried all the things to fix it. But so far, the most productive has been to write ADD VIPERS on a sticky note along the top of my monitor. I add them every time i expect/see collosus, and although i lose horribly mostly still, i feel like just having them in my army every game is helping me practice with them. I started out thinking urgh I'm terrible with these (and i still am) but at least now i can drag the odd collosus in. I think it's just one of those things that you need to keep doing until you got the hang of it. Feels like a moral victory every time i kill one of those god damn tripods lol. It's not a bad idea to just get them with +2 I suppose. Even if they don't have colossus, blinding cloud is still very useful. I'll try that again for sure. On November 04 2014 21:39 brickrd wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness thats how the majority of semicasual/amateur players at mid levels of play feel, dude. we all watch pro games and compare ourselves to an impossible standard where we expect to be executing things above our own heads. one of the reasons you might not "want to think" is because you're too focused on doing everything fastfastfast, spamming move commands etc. while not really knowing what your strategy is. it's fine to slow down your game for the sake of actually making decisions, in fact in most cases for most player it's probably much better to play that way its tough to try to imitate builds, but you can take it one step at a time and make little connections that help you remember things, like taking your gas at the natural when you have exactly x drones mining there or timing things as associations with each other like lair->baneling nest->start baneling speed when lair finishes for example. you dont have to connect the whole jigsaw all at once. one thing that helped me a LOT when i was a ~plat zerg was forcing myself to look at my gas all the time, gas income, gas bank, tech, tech plans, etc. if you have gas, what is it for? which first, 2/2 upgrades or spire? etc e tc etc (i know im giving zvt examples but im just speaking generally). setting aside workers and production, a "build" is really just a sequence of gas investments I am not a fast player by any means. In fact, one of my worst problems is that I can't keep up with what I want to do, both physically and mentally. The gas thing is sort of what I try to do... but often times I'm very underdroned and don't have to minerals to keep up... which is a horrible thing to even think of happening as a zerg. I do keep the general ideas of "start tech when lair finishes" and when to take gas (though I often forget and get natural gas late). I guess I just really have no idea what I'm doing, despite watching way too much pro stuff I am completely clueless about this game outside of very, VERY basic unit compositions. You'd think I'd learn a thing or two, but not really. You CAN keep up with it mentally and physically. People try to make it more complicated than it is, but remembering all this stuff is just about collapsing it into more sizeable storage containers. If you read Josh Waitzkin's (sp?) "The Art of Learning", he talks about the concept of "slowing down time" -- that, when you see someone do something amazingly fast and precise, it's not because they are literally moving faster than you could, but because they have mastered the motions of the slow steps to a degree to which they can keep up with them moving quickly. Builds and mechanics are all about taking information in big chunks and learning how to digest them so that they become automatic over time. That's why I really hate the notion that learning builds from pro players or trying to replicate what pro players do is impossible and wastes time. This is simply not true. You actually CAN replicate what pro players do, and even with exact benchmarks, it just takes some time to collapse the information and effectively "slow down the game" for you. The other half of SC2 is an understanding of strategic ideas. I highly recommend spending some time reading or studying chess, as a lot of the main concepts of SC2 can actually be linked quite well to chess. When you analyze pro replays, take a look at what's happening and ask "Why does he move out and expand at the same time?", "Why does he deviate from his normal build here and build a tech lab...was it something he scouted?", "What is Jaedong's plan for the mid game, and why did he choose it?", etc., etc. Ask questions, make connections, figure out WHY things work the way they work, both compositionally and spatially. Over time, concepts like the ETA (economy/tech/army) concept become natural. You find yourself automatically expanding on the opposite side of the map from your attack. You find yourself thinking about controlling drop play while keeping a strong mid map presence. You start to understand why certain pressures or timings work against some builds and why they don't work against others. You start to understand a lot. And again, this all gets compressed over time until it becomes a natural reaction and feels like you have plenty of time to make these decisions. In short, just THINK about the game. Really think about the reasons behind why certain things work and what your inject cycle is and what responses you would do to certain scouting information, etc., etc. You are not limited mentally or physically; or, at least, your skill ceiling is likely much, much higher than you think it is.
I think I have a basic understanding of the concepts of the game, ETA, push timings and why why some things work and some dont. When I watch a pro game, I generally get the basics (VERY BASICS) of WHY a player does something. I guess it just does come down to practice, because I can't even think about doing them in game. It all moves too quickly and I can't scout well so I never know what my opponent is doing. I guess just thinking more about the game when I play is just another area of improvement I have to make, along with every single other area of the game (speed especially, 70apm is not acceptable for zerg)
Thanks btw, you put way too much time into this lol
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If you don't know what you are looking at, try listening to the commentaries. I found that help a lot to get an insight inside the Pro's head. I always picked up tips to remind myself on what to do in specific situations. For example: tech switch from land based armies to mutas or when to trade bases. These are things you can learn by watching pro plays and then add them to your knowledge. When you face a similar situation in a game, you know exactly what to do. For me, that's the fastest way of learning.
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On November 05 2014 08:36 11B wrote:
I'd suggest you make the game simple as can be and stick to 1 build order per race, at least till you get more comfortable. This will help give you a consistent flow to all your games and pretty soon you wont have to "think" about the builds because all the repetition will get you to the "execute" mode. It will, gradually start to full under "automation" and not confusion.
Very true! Much like driving a car, first sessions you are scared of too much information and can only think of small details, but when it becomes an automatism you start watching the road, surroundings, figure out better ways to reach the destination and so on.
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can somebody give me a brief overview of roach/hydra?
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On November 06 2014 06:14 KtJ wrote:
can somebody give me a brief overview of roach/hydra?
1. Get roaches
2. Get hydras
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On November 06 2014 06:16 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:Show nested quote +On November 06 2014 06:14 KtJ wrote:
can somebody give me a brief overview of roach/hydra? 1. Get roaches 2. Get hydras
insightful
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United States4883 Posts
On November 06 2014 07:35 KtJ wrote:thanks
If you need it in ZvP, look up Blade55555's Second Overview of HotS Zerg.
Lowko has a nice gasless ZvZ roach build order somewhere on Youtube as well.
On November 06 2014 01:18 Enigmasc wrote:
hey guys, just wondering, if the terran opens like hellion banshee into 3cc, what time will his first pushout hit? just curious when id need to start pumping units again etc
trying to fix my ZvT atm but im very bad at adapting my play for
First of all, you can get this information just by surveying a few games and writing down what time the first pressure seems to be coming, whether it be pro games or your own. Just sayin'.
Generally the Terran player does a poke with the first two medivacs around 10:00-10:30. If they keep hellions/banshees alive, they will also be included in this poke. The second major timing is ~14:00 as +2/+2 is finishing up and Terran is ~150 supply. If you watch a few soO games, you'll notice that he's benchmarked to be maxed around 13:30 with a lot of banelings so that he can just crush the 2/2 timing.
On November 06 2014 01:33 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2014 13:03 SC2John wrote:On November 05 2014 00:20 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 21:16 Tzyx wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness I have massive problems with collosus. I tried all the things to fix it. But so far, the most productive has been to write ADD VIPERS on a sticky note along the top of my monitor. I add them every time i expect/see collosus, and although i lose horribly mostly still, i feel like just having them in my army every game is helping me practice with them. I started out thinking urgh I'm terrible with these (and i still am) but at least now i can drag the odd collosus in. I think it's just one of those things that you need to keep doing until you got the hang of it. Feels like a moral victory every time i kill one of those god damn tripods lol. It's not a bad idea to just get them with +2 I suppose. Even if they don't have colossus, blinding cloud is still very useful. I'll try that again for sure. On November 04 2014 21:39 brickrd wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness thats how the majority of semicasual/amateur players at mid levels of play feel, dude. we all watch pro games and compare ourselves to an impossible standard where we expect to be executing things above our own heads. one of the reasons you might not "want to think" is because you're too focused on doing everything fastfastfast, spamming move commands etc. while not really knowing what your strategy is. it's fine to slow down your game for the sake of actually making decisions, in fact in most cases for most player it's probably much better to play that way its tough to try to imitate builds, but you can take it one step at a time and make little connections that help you remember things, like taking your gas at the natural when you have exactly x drones mining there or timing things as associations with each other like lair->baneling nest->start baneling speed when lair finishes for example. you dont have to connect the whole jigsaw all at once. one thing that helped me a LOT when i was a ~plat zerg was forcing myself to look at my gas all the time, gas income, gas bank, tech, tech plans, etc. if you have gas, what is it for? which first, 2/2 upgrades or spire? etc e tc etc (i know im giving zvt examples but im just speaking generally). setting aside workers and production, a "build" is really just a sequence of gas investments I am not a fast player by any means. In fact, one of my worst problems is that I can't keep up with what I want to do, both physically and mentally. The gas thing is sort of what I try to do... but often times I'm very underdroned and don't have to minerals to keep up... which is a horrible thing to even think of happening as a zerg. I do keep the general ideas of "start tech when lair finishes" and when to take gas (though I often forget and get natural gas late). I guess I just really have no idea what I'm doing, despite watching way too much pro stuff I am completely clueless about this game outside of very, VERY basic unit compositions. You'd think I'd learn a thing or two, but not really. You CAN keep up with it mentally and physically. People try to make it more complicated than it is, but remembering all this stuff is just about collapsing it into more sizeable storage containers. If you read Josh Waitzkin's (sp?) "The Art of Learning", he talks about the concept of "slowing down time" -- that, when you see someone do something amazingly fast and precise, it's not because they are literally moving faster than you could, but because they have mastered the motions of the slow steps to a degree to which they can keep up with them moving quickly. Builds and mechanics are all about taking information in big chunks and learning how to digest them so that they become automatic over time. That's why I really hate the notion that learning builds from pro players or trying to replicate what pro players do is impossible and wastes time. This is simply not true. You actually CAN replicate what pro players do, and even with exact benchmarks, it just takes some time to collapse the information and effectively "slow down the game" for you. The other half of SC2 is an understanding of strategic ideas. I highly recommend spending some time reading or studying chess, as a lot of the main concepts of SC2 can actually be linked quite well to chess. When you analyze pro replays, take a look at what's happening and ask "Why does he move out and expand at the same time?", "Why does he deviate from his normal build here and build a tech lab...was it something he scouted?", "What is Jaedong's plan for the mid game, and why did he choose it?", etc., etc. Ask questions, make connections, figure out WHY things work the way they work, both compositionally and spatially. Over time, concepts like the ETA (economy/tech/army) concept become natural. You find yourself automatically expanding on the opposite side of the map from your attack. You find yourself thinking about controlling drop play while keeping a strong mid map presence. You start to understand why certain pressures or timings work against some builds and why they don't work against others. You start to understand a lot. And again, this all gets compressed over time until it becomes a natural reaction and feels like you have plenty of time to make these decisions. In short, just THINK about the game. Really think about the reasons behind why certain things work and what your inject cycle is and what responses you would do to certain scouting information, etc., etc. You are not limited mentally or physically; or, at least, your skill ceiling is likely much, much higher than you think it is. I think I have a basic understanding of the concepts of the game, ETA, push timings and why why some things work and some dont. When I watch a pro game, I generally get the basics (VERY BASICS) of WHY a player does something. I guess it just does come down to practice, because I can't even think about doing them in game. It all moves too quickly and I can't scout well so I never know what my opponent is doing. I guess just thinking more about the game when I play is just another area of improvement I have to make, along with every single other area of the game (speed especially, 70apm is not acceptable for zerg) Thanks btw, you put way too much time into this lol
It sounds like you're just missing mechanics then. I highly recommend searching "Zerg Inject and Creep Spread" in the arcade and play that for a few minutes every day. If you can spread creep down every lane, not miss any injects, and spend all of your larva, you can easily attain diamond/masters mechanics. I'll be making a video shortly to show how I practice on that map, and hopefully it'll be eye-opening to a lot of other players.
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On November 06 2014 11:01 SC2John wrote:If you need it in ZvP, look up Blade55555's Second Overview of HotS Zerg. Lowko has a nice gasless ZvZ roach build order somewhere on Youtube as well. Show nested quote +On November 06 2014 01:18 Enigmasc wrote:
hey guys, just wondering, if the terran opens like hellion banshee into 3cc, what time will his first pushout hit? just curious when id need to start pumping units again etc
trying to fix my ZvT atm but im very bad at adapting my play for First of all, you can get this information just by surveying a few games and writing down what time the first pressure seems to be coming, whether it be pro games or your own. Just sayin'. Generally the Terran player does a poke with the first two medivacs around 10:00-10:30. If they keep hellions/banshees alive, they will also be included in this poke. The second major timing is ~14:00 as +2/+2 is finishing up and Terran is ~150 supply. If you watch a few soO games, you'll notice that he's benchmarked to be maxed around 13:30 with a lot of banelings so that he can just crush the 2/2 timing. Show nested quote +On November 06 2014 01:33 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 05 2014 13:03 SC2John wrote:On November 05 2014 00:20 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 21:16 Tzyx wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness I have massive problems with collosus. I tried all the things to fix it. But so far, the most productive has been to write ADD VIPERS on a sticky note along the top of my monitor. I add them every time i expect/see collosus, and although i lose horribly mostly still, i feel like just having them in my army every game is helping me practice with them. I started out thinking urgh I'm terrible with these (and i still am) but at least now i can drag the odd collosus in. I think it's just one of those things that you need to keep doing until you got the hang of it. Feels like a moral victory every time i kill one of those god damn tripods lol. It's not a bad idea to just get them with +2 I suppose. Even if they don't have colossus, blinding cloud is still very useful. I'll try that again for sure. On November 04 2014 21:39 brickrd wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness thats how the majority of semicasual/amateur players at mid levels of play feel, dude. we all watch pro games and compare ourselves to an impossible standard where we expect to be executing things above our own heads. one of the reasons you might not "want to think" is because you're too focused on doing everything fastfastfast, spamming move commands etc. while not really knowing what your strategy is. it's fine to slow down your game for the sake of actually making decisions, in fact in most cases for most player it's probably much better to play that way its tough to try to imitate builds, but you can take it one step at a time and make little connections that help you remember things, like taking your gas at the natural when you have exactly x drones mining there or timing things as associations with each other like lair->baneling nest->start baneling speed when lair finishes for example. you dont have to connect the whole jigsaw all at once. one thing that helped me a LOT when i was a ~plat zerg was forcing myself to look at my gas all the time, gas income, gas bank, tech, tech plans, etc. if you have gas, what is it for? which first, 2/2 upgrades or spire? etc e tc etc (i know im giving zvt examples but im just speaking generally). setting aside workers and production, a "build" is really just a sequence of gas investments I am not a fast player by any means. In fact, one of my worst problems is that I can't keep up with what I want to do, both physically and mentally. The gas thing is sort of what I try to do... but often times I'm very underdroned and don't have to minerals to keep up... which is a horrible thing to even think of happening as a zerg. I do keep the general ideas of "start tech when lair finishes" and when to take gas (though I often forget and get natural gas late). I guess I just really have no idea what I'm doing, despite watching way too much pro stuff I am completely clueless about this game outside of very, VERY basic unit compositions. You'd think I'd learn a thing or two, but not really. You CAN keep up with it mentally and physically. People try to make it more complicated than it is, but remembering all this stuff is just about collapsing it into more sizeable storage containers. If you read Josh Waitzkin's (sp?) "The Art of Learning", he talks about the concept of "slowing down time" -- that, when you see someone do something amazingly fast and precise, it's not because they are literally moving faster than you could, but because they have mastered the motions of the slow steps to a degree to which they can keep up with them moving quickly. Builds and mechanics are all about taking information in big chunks and learning how to digest them so that they become automatic over time. That's why I really hate the notion that learning builds from pro players or trying to replicate what pro players do is impossible and wastes time. This is simply not true. You actually CAN replicate what pro players do, and even with exact benchmarks, it just takes some time to collapse the information and effectively "slow down the game" for you. The other half of SC2 is an understanding of strategic ideas. I highly recommend spending some time reading or studying chess, as a lot of the main concepts of SC2 can actually be linked quite well to chess. When you analyze pro replays, take a look at what's happening and ask "Why does he move out and expand at the same time?", "Why does he deviate from his normal build here and build a tech lab...was it something he scouted?", "What is Jaedong's plan for the mid game, and why did he choose it?", etc., etc. Ask questions, make connections, figure out WHY things work the way they work, both compositionally and spatially. Over time, concepts like the ETA (economy/tech/army) concept become natural. You find yourself automatically expanding on the opposite side of the map from your attack. You find yourself thinking about controlling drop play while keeping a strong mid map presence. You start to understand why certain pressures or timings work against some builds and why they don't work against others. You start to understand a lot. And again, this all gets compressed over time until it becomes a natural reaction and feels like you have plenty of time to make these decisions. In short, just THINK about the game. Really think about the reasons behind why certain things work and what your inject cycle is and what responses you would do to certain scouting information, etc., etc. You are not limited mentally or physically; or, at least, your skill ceiling is likely much, much higher than you think it is. I think I have a basic understanding of the concepts of the game, ETA, push timings and why why some things work and some dont. When I watch a pro game, I generally get the basics (VERY BASICS) of WHY a player does something. I guess it just does come down to practice, because I can't even think about doing them in game. It all moves too quickly and I can't scout well so I never know what my opponent is doing. I guess just thinking more about the game when I play is just another area of improvement I have to make, along with every single other area of the game (speed especially, 70apm is not acceptable for zerg) Thanks btw, you put way too much time into this lol It sounds like you're just missing mechanics then. I highly recommend searching "Zerg Inject and Creep Spread" in the arcade and play that for a few minutes every day. If you can spread creep down every lane, not miss any injects, and spend all of your larva, you can easily attain diamond/masters mechanics. I'll be making a video shortly to show how I practice on that map, and hopefully it'll be eye-opening to a lot of other players.
Thanks john
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On November 05 2014 13:03 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2014 00:20 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 21:16 Tzyx wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness I have massive problems with collosus. I tried all the things to fix it. But so far, the most productive has been to write ADD VIPERS on a sticky note along the top of my monitor. I add them every time i expect/see collosus, and although i lose horribly mostly still, i feel like just having them in my army every game is helping me practice with them. I started out thinking urgh I'm terrible with these (and i still am) but at least now i can drag the odd collosus in. I think it's just one of those things that you need to keep doing until you got the hang of it. Feels like a moral victory every time i kill one of those god damn tripods lol. It's not a bad idea to just get them with +2 I suppose. Even if they don't have colossus, blinding cloud is still very useful. I'll try that again for sure. On November 04 2014 21:39 brickrd wrote:On November 04 2014 15:01 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:On November 04 2014 14:52 SC2John wrote:On November 04 2014 14:04 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Alright guys, my mentality is slightly more stable again. I just have one question. When I'm going roach/hydra against protoss, what's the optimal way to deal with colossus. This is a basic question I know but whenever a protoss gets colossus against me no matter what I seem to try I lose. corruptors are trash, vipers don't work, and im just not good enough to flank them... so I'm kind of boned as soon as he gets any Agreed, a replay would do a world of good. In general, vipers > corruptors. Corruptors are more of a timing/emergency defense type of unit, whereas vipers tend to give you smoother transitions to the late game. If you're having trouble with colossus, I highly recommend the roach/hydra/viper timing, which Blade lays out pretty well in his older guide (Second Overview of HotS Zerg). In general, as long as you're keeping up on upgrades and you can get a nice concave, roach/hydra/viper can easily take on a blink/colossus army. And it's not hard to execute, that part is in your head. EDIT: I see you just posted one. I'll get to it in the morning, it's pretty late here. Ya, I still have a complete distaste for builds and it is completely in my head. I have this weird aversion to actually thinking... sounds crazy but I'm beginning to realize I have a horrible problem of trying to use as little brainpower as possible. It's fits in with my horrible laziness thats how the majority of semicasual/amateur players at mid levels of play feel, dude. we all watch pro games and compare ourselves to an impossible standard where we expect to be executing things above our own heads. one of the reasons you might not "want to think" is because you're too focused on doing everything fastfastfast, spamming move commands etc. while not really knowing what your strategy is. it's fine to slow down your game for the sake of actually making decisions, in fact in most cases for most player it's probably much better to play that way its tough to try to imitate builds, but you can take it one step at a time and make little connections that help you remember things, like taking your gas at the natural when you have exactly x drones mining there or timing things as associations with each other like lair->baneling nest->start baneling speed when lair finishes for example. you dont have to connect the whole jigsaw all at once. one thing that helped me a LOT when i was a ~plat zerg was forcing myself to look at my gas all the time, gas income, gas bank, tech, tech plans, etc. if you have gas, what is it for? which first, 2/2 upgrades or spire? etc e tc etc (i know im giving zvt examples but im just speaking generally). setting aside workers and production, a "build" is really just a sequence of gas investments I am not a fast player by any means. In fact, one of my worst problems is that I can't keep up with what I want to do, both physically and mentally. The gas thing is sort of what I try to do... but often times I'm very underdroned and don't have to minerals to keep up... which is a horrible thing to even think of happening as a zerg. I do keep the general ideas of "start tech when lair finishes" and when to take gas (though I often forget and get natural gas late). I guess I just really have no idea what I'm doing, despite watching way too much pro stuff I am completely clueless about this game outside of very, VERY basic unit compositions. You'd think I'd learn a thing or two, but not really. You CAN keep up with it mentally and physically. People try to make it more complicated than it is, but remembering all this stuff is just about collapsing it into more sizeable storage containers. If you read Josh Waitzkin's (sp?) "The Art of Learning", he talks about the concept of "slowing down time" -- that, when you see someone do something amazingly fast and precise, it's not because they are literally moving faster than you could, but because they have mastered the motions of the slow steps to a degree to which they can keep up with them moving quickly. Builds and mechanics are all about taking information in big chunks and learning how to digest them so that they become automatic over time. That's why I really hate the notion that learning builds from pro players or trying to replicate what pro players do is impossible and wastes time. This is simply not true. You actually CAN replicate what pro players do, and even with exact benchmarks, it just takes some time to collapse the information and effectively "slow down the game" for you. The other half of SC2 is an understanding of strategic ideas. I highly recommend spending some time reading or studying chess, as a lot of the main concepts of SC2 can actually be linked quite well to chess. When you analyze pro replays, take a look at what's happening and ask "Why does he move out and expand at the same time?", "Why does he deviate from his normal build here and build a tech lab...was it something he scouted?", "What is Jaedong's plan for the mid game, and why did he choose it?", etc., etc. Ask questions, make connections, figure out WHY things work the way they work, both compositionally and spatially. Over time, concepts like the ETA (economy/tech/army) concept become natural. You find yourself automatically expanding on the opposite side of the map from your attack. You find yourself thinking about controlling drop play while keeping a strong mid map presence. You start to understand why certain pressures or timings work against some builds and why they don't work against others. You start to understand a lot. And again, this all gets compressed over time until it becomes a natural reaction and feels like you have plenty of time to make these decisions. In short, just THINK about the game. Really think about the reasons behind why certain things work and what your inject cycle is and what responses you would do to certain scouting information, etc., etc. You are not limited mentally or physically; or, at least, your skill ceiling is likely much, much higher than you think it is.
100% agree! When I was just winging it, I was low master. It would take a lot of mental energy to think about what to do, and what to build.
Once I started memorizing the builds. my apm shot up 100 points and now am in gm. It really really makes a difference.
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I have looked but can't find anywhere a guide on how to do the standard inject method (which as I understand it is pressing space bar to go to each base) - how can I adjust my setting so that I can navigate between hatcheries like that?
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On November 07 2014 01:44 capcomist wrote:
I have looked but can't find anywhere a guide on how to do the standard inject method (which as I understand it is pressing space bar to go to each base) - how can I adjust my setting so that I can navigate between hatcheries like that?
Go to your Options > Hotkeys > Global > Camera and look for Base Camera. It has a standard hotkey of 'Backspace'. Change this to Spacebar.
Now, every time you hit spacebar, you return to a base of yours (in your case, a hatchery). This makes it easy to inject because your hatchery is always in the center of th escreen.
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On November 07 2014 02:52 SC2Toastie wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2014 01:44 capcomist wrote:
I have looked but can't find anywhere a guide on how to do the standard inject method (which as I understand it is pressing space bar to go to each base) - how can I adjust my setting so that I can navigate between hatcheries like that? Go to your Options > Hotkeys > Global > Camera and look for Base Camera. It has a standard hotkey of 'Backspace'. Change this to Spacebar. Now, every time you hit spacebar, you return to a base of yours (in your case, a hatchery). This makes it easy to inject because your hatchery is always in the center of th escreen.
Also worth noting is that you can bind it to Shift + Spacebar which allows you to keep the spacebar function on recent alerts or whatever it's called.
This is the way I have it set up.. press 4 (queens) > hold shift > press "v" > spacebar > click > spacebar > click.. ect
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EPT
