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I wanted to discuss this with you guys as I feel that playing with a feel (obviously with some basic structure) is better in that you understand the decisions behind what you do instead of following a build, which usually has its protection against builds (generally unbeknownst to its user) and weaknesses. (i.e. a 14/14 will "inherently" protect against 6 pools as your lings are out faster than a 15h)
First off, I'm currently a top master player (at least I think I am) trying to make that final jump into GM. I've been analyzing my gameplay a lot lately, really trying to make that final push, and I realized that I really do not follow any particular "build." Sure I do the standard 15h 16p or what have you and react from that point. Perhaps this is just standard Zerg-styled gameplay, but after watching Spanishiwa stream, even Zergs have "builds" they go to and they work with and tweak to optimize it and make it good.
A big part of the way I practice is watching my replay and noting the decisions I made which caused me to lose. Did I take a terrible engagement? Did I forget to put down static defense in reaction to seeing his/her drop/air? It wasn't because my build was incorrect or contained an inherent weakness, but an improper decision made or terrible macro/micro. "Next time I'll be sure to drop my baneling nest if I see that many barracks." Do you think that this is the proper way to analyze one's gameplay or should there be an emphasis on build and what one should include in their build to prevent that from happening next time?
However, a lot of players are popular for their "builds." Parting is an excellent example of this, giving Zerg players a run for their money with his dreaded sentry-immortal all-in that he may decide to do or another variation that leads him elsewhere. Zerg players adjust to this by adjusting their builds, such as muta counter attacks or ling/hydralisk compositions. Obviously this is at a very high level of play, but it seems to me that more skilled players try to adjust their builds, probably because that's the only thing that may have caused them to lose and not their mechanics, macro or micro. Obviously no one player is perfect, but certain builds just counter others, regardless of a player's ability to play well.
Things to discuss: - At your level of play, do you value the understanding of a build or the proper execution of the build itself?
- At what league do you think players should try to engineer their own builds and tweak them?
- Should players be focusing on understanding or just macro/mechanics up to a certain point?
- (For higher level players) Do you think it's essential for more skilled players to have builds to tweak for improvement?
I'm not completely happy with my post as I feel I've left out a lot of things, and will probably tweak the post a little. Nevertheless, I appreciate your addition to the thread and I'm pretty open to discussion.
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I'm a high masters protoss player. I play mostly with my instincts. i create my own builds usually but i like to perfect them. im really bad at understanding why this happened vs this but thats probably because i dont analyze any of my replays or do any self review kind of things.
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I think this type of play is heavily dependent on incredible scouting and a shit ton of experience. Random newbs below masters shouldnt try to go by gut as heavily as someone who has a solid grasp of the game and a lot of experience with a large percentage of the timings/variations that can be thrown at you.
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Whether or not "playing by feel" is possible is very racially charged. For zergs, with their flexible production structure (e.g. switch seamlessly between drones and zerglings), it's possible to play by feel fairly easily. All you really have to do it build the proper building early enough and you can make whatever you need to make whenever you you need to make it.
Terran, on the other hand, could use a bit more of an order. I need to anticipate well in advance when I need my units and how many of them I need, which involves more than just making the tech building (e.g. making 2 barracks following a 1Rax FE) since I need to scale my production with my economy. Also, terran (and protoss) require more buildings, so it makes a bit more sense to structure that.
TL;DR Playing by flow works better for Zerg than for Terran.
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I kinda agree.....BO is good, but there is a time when you just have to play by instict....react to enemies etc
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You should have a build that you can deviate from as much as necessary but return to your original goal - so have x drones by x time, 3 bases fully sat at x time, take gases for fast x at x time etc.
If they decide to all in or take a fast 3rd then deviate to defend/punish accordingly. You can do that with Zerg quite easily. Playing the whole game by feel isn't really advisible. Usually you can understand what's going on with decent scouting anyway, and react accordingly without needing to go on instinct or guesswork.
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I'm quite annoyed at this, but I find SC2 rewards build order memorization and execution quite a bit (at-least/more-so for Terran and Protoss). It's maybe a bit less the case for zerg, but that's due to the fact that zerg tends to be so reactionary and defensive.
I'm much more of a fan of games which used more ingenuity and strategy and micro (which was a bit more the case with Brood War), rather than just running flat-out effective build orders (like 1 rax expand into hellion banshee or other stuff)
I find that in SC2 many players can win outright just by running a certain build and having reasonable macro despite having a deficit of skill or knowledge (like a platinum or diamond beating a masters)
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I play by feel pretty much all the time. And thanks to that, I'm rather mediocre player in SC2. I'm ok with that though, as I got no plans of ever becoming really good in this game.
Like in most other areas of life, doing something on a gut feeling is often times not very optimal, and gets shadowed by a reaction or action that is carefully planned or already trained. Sure if you have tons and tons of knowledge behind the feeling, it can be pretty darn close to optimal. But it'd be even better if you had a planned response to that same situation.
Anyhow, when trying to get better at the game, I would not say playing with feeling is a good idea. Makes enjoyable games though when you just wing it past some opening build.
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If you play by gutfeeling, and reach master league then you will be better than those who achieved master league by memorizing build orders.
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I personally play based on a very loose BO in the early stages then I go straight into what I feel will work better (I was diamond in WoL - haven't played any HotS yet cuz I wub campaign).
Although quite a few times it can cause me to lose because my build was slightly sloppy I feel it helps me understand the game better.
I do think that playing like this makes it more difficult to actually get a straight up all in down though. I can generally feel out a game up to any stages when playing vs. Zerg, for example. But if I try to Sentry Immo all in, because I'm not used to hitting really specific timings, my all in is late and will generally suck.
So I think it's probably better to feel it out if it's going to lategame. Even if just for the experience you get from it.
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Actually there is no build orders at all after 10minutes. You have to adjust to what ever your opponent is doing.
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I don't play 1s terribly seriously so its a little hard to say where i lie on the ladder. I wanted to push into masters before WoL ended (looked like i could) but alas i was in HOTS too much. I finished WoL with an 87-41, at #1 diamond playing only mech(even TvP).
For the first year perhaps i played protoss and almost only played teams, mostly 2s and mostly both with 2 friends who both played mech every game. As a toss player on both of these teams my role quickly became to defend and protect my terran buddy while he did his mech thing. Essentially i let him focus on tanks and while i dealt with harass and helped him upfront with his tank push when i could. With that being said, i played just about every game off the top of my head. I would 9 scout and me and my buddy would defend whatever all in we thought was coming, aided by a scan if needed and observers. It took some time but eventually my 'build' became gate-cyber-robo-stargate. There might be a forge fit somewhere in there but only in an emergency. Given the many all ins we faced in 2s, tanks bunkers and FFs could hold
just about anything. Observers were much needed detection and stargate gave counter attack options. A large reduction in early tank production stems from having to build AA (the best way to explain this is to point to the TvZ meching strategy of going hellions -> banshees -> thors, the thors would be tanks if mutalisks didn't exist), so going phoenix took care of that. Phoenix and warp ins are amazing at dealing with drops and other harassment, phoenix even in small numbers deal very well with small groups of units. Never thought i'd say missile turrets are great at killing ground units...but...phoenixes. This got us as high as 3rd in our masters division and would have been in the 2s GM league had it existed.
TL;DR ive always played by feel, its how i learned. I play mech nowadays in 1s because i feel it rewards me for paying attention to what my opponent is doing and responding correctly.
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To answer the question about when to invent your own build orders, the longer the game has been out, the more builds are figured out and refined so it becomes increasingly less likely that any build you invent is better than what's already out there. With HotS being newly released, anyone of any league should/could be messing around with builds, but as with WoL as time goes by its less and less worth doing for those at lower levels (i.e. non-pro)
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I think you don't have to learn build orders to be good, but if you play by "instincts" (which is a stupid word to use) you still have to have clear plans and timings on what you do (as in I open up in way X, then I hit a midgame attack timing as soon as I have a setup with 3 barracks and a starport as well as 2-4 Medivacs, and I'll use my factory to scout in his base to see the tech route. Based on that I either decide to get a second Starport or a Ghost Academy. I'll add 2 Barracks either way). Of course you don't have to have complicated plans like this, a plan for a game could just be I want Unitcombination X and I'll try to build Y amount of production structures on 1 base and Z production structures on 2 base and see how my economy works out when I constantly build units out of them. It's usually better to improve very slowly opposed to trying to improve in every area where you have flaws at once.
But playing without build orders doesn't mean that you can somehow defy the rules of which amount of production structures (for T and P) is optimal on what economy, when you should expand for it being as quickly as possible AND safe etc.
I think if you don't learn build orders it is very easy to just play for a long time and don't learn anything from it, once you hit a certain level. You still have to go as deep into the game as people with build orders are going if you want to improve, you just have a different way of memorizing things.
That said, sticking heavily to build orders only works for clear all-in timings (which are still good to learn). Otherwise I think your way of learning things is good, you just have to make sure you don't forget how you dealt with strategy X when you beat it 
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I think there is a misconception here. Top players don't just perform builds. Builds don't win games, decisions do.
So what does your build do for you?
Your build dictates your pace at which you transit into the various stages of the game. Day [9] does talk alot about getting the feel of the build and understanding the decisions as to when to take gas etc. rather than memorizing 12 rax 13 gas 15 orbital etc.
Pro players tend to have certain stylistic builds as it they feel most comfortable from those positions. Things such as the immortal sentry all in are simply options they choose to bring in a BoX series game. Creator would be a very good example of this. Forge expansions into 3rd bases were his build. They didn't always follow the exact same production but the general idea was to get to 3 bases and then hit a timing with his tech. A more recent example of how builds dictate the game would be the Marine King vs Yoda in the latest code A game 2. Marineking used his build to generate an upgrade advantage over Yoda and used this advantage to make certain decisions, such as baiting Yoda's army out of position to hit his base when he had an upgrade advantage.
MVP would be a very strong case for this. Tastosis have been heard saying that he has so many builds therefore making him very hard to predict, however he is a Terran player who plays with what you might call "flow". Making decisions based on what he has scouted and what his opponent does not know. Although his mech was what made him famous, he still played bio and bio mech compositions on different maps as he felt that they were better on those maps during his 2011 dominance period. Even in 2012 his decision making transcended the common conceptions of build orders, punishing protoss players by exploiting windows in which he knew they were weak to triumph. However he still has "builds", which is way of puting himself into the most comfortable position to play his decision making game, which was how MMA exploited him in the Blizzcon finals to score that famous/infamous win.
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On March 14 2013 11:42 DyEnasTy wrote:
I think this type of play is heavily dependent on incredible scouting and a shit ton of experience. Random newbs below masters shouldnt try to go by gut as heavily as someone who has a solid grasp of the game and a lot of experience with a large percentage of the timings/variations that can be thrown at you.
I'd like to point my experience as a way to disagree with you.
I used to be diamond zerg (about 15sh on the league)... then I switched to terran...
I lost A LOT, and that eventually placed me in silver league (facing low silvers and some bronzies as well). Then I gave up following build orders and did what I wanted, based on scout and my (poor) game sense...
I honestly believe that changing this playstyle was a big part of what got me into platinum.
Yes, I do realize being plat (or even my former diamond placing) is nothing, but I got promoted twice in 2 weeks.
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I think there isn't a build order except the opening.
I am diamond zerg and switched to terran for a while and I did 1 rax FE into pure bio and stayed in diamond.
The rest of the game is more relied on positioning, macro and multi tasking to be honest
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On March 14 2013 11:42 DyEnasTy wrote:
I think this type of play is heavily dependent on incredible scouting and a shit ton of experience. Random newbs below masters shouldnt try to go by gut as heavily as someone who has a solid grasp of the game and a lot of experience with a large percentage of the timings/variations that can be thrown at you.
It's not really that hard to move up leagues by just winging it. I went from bronze to diamond just doing whatever the hell I felt like doing at the time.
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Ask not what strategy can do for you, but what you can do for strategy.. is that it OP??
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EPT
