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I just read through this and god it's fun. I've been spending some time coaching people from gold to diamond and all I can say is : you guys don't really know what you are talking about. Neither plat players nor diamonds players can macro/micro half decently. I can't even do that myself and i'm sitting at top 15 master league.
However, I can relate to the OP. I bought SC2 on release and I wasn't good. I was in bronze league and made my way up to high master. But the first plateau I hit was definitely from plat to diamond. I spent 4 seasons in plat cause I couldn't figure out how to make dem units. I eventually reached diamond as T then switched to Z, fell back to plat and then went back up to diamond.
Plat is where players have put enough time in the game to start making the game fun in a different way. When you get there, it means you've been trying to play around the lines of good. You've been trying to reach good. In the lower leagues (bronze/silver/up to top 25 gold) there's nothing close to good. They just mess around until one of them wins.
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On April 26 2013 04:37 nak0z wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2013 02:10 Mallidon wrote:On April 25 2013 13:00 nak0z wrote:
Well, I was bronze a year ago and never had any RTS experience but I've played shitloads of games ( I would say few thousands ) in the next 2 season. First season, bronze to top silver. Next season, top silver to top master in my division ( ranked #600ish) by cheesing every single game.
It is sad and boring so I've decided to play the legit way... to be honest, I've no knowledge in macro games or whatsoever, but using 3rd party programs, I've learned the concept of scouting and able to defend and have a concept or idea of what my opponent is doing. I've quitted on and off during the past year, now I'm a 1200 points HOTS Master...
I would say experience comes on handy.. everytime you lose, ask yourself what you did wrong. If you win, ask yourself what you can improve on and what your opponent's mistake and that way you will learn and process faster. What? Doesn't sound legit to me... I used the program to know what my opponent is doing. I can still get to somewhere around the rank without any programs. I think that`s pretty legit. Even though you know when to safely macro up, but strategy and timings of when to push also plays an important role in higher leagues.
O ok, I guess that makes sense.
/sarcasm
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On April 25 2013 12:46 thurst0n wrote:
If you do these 3 things, I guarantee you will get to diamond level MINIMUM.
1) Make workers until you have 60-70 on 3 bases.
2) never get supply blocked
3) never have over 500 minerals.
I can't do these unfortunately, sometimes i get 2/3 but.. it's hard out there man. Stick with it, just have fun.
Well I think you are highly overestimating the skill in diamond and over simplifying your points.
1) So make workers and no units? Probably not gonna win you many games in plat. Probably what u meant was "Keep adding on workers whenever you don't have to make units, until you have 60-70 and 3 bases.
2) Anticipate your supply needs. Are you ramping up to attack? Are you droning hard? If you currently have less than 10 free supply and aren't making any drones/units then make some overlords. Much better to have 40 free supply and 300 less gold than having 7 free supply and an attack hitting your base.
3) This one doesn't even make sense. Most zergs in dia have stupid high unspent resource counts. Zerg build in waves. If you want to go for a huge muta attack, you need to bank up huge min/gas first. If you've spent your time dilligently keeping your minerals low, you now can only make 5 mutas..... you lose. What you actually want to do is similar to point 2. What are your plans? Are you going for a huge macro based game? Do you want 90 drones before you make any units? If so, keep pumping drones and making macro hatches and keep your money low. If you want to go for a big ling/bling attack, stop making drones, hit your injects and pump lings, dont spend gas. When you are nearly ready to go, start saving the minerals to morph your banes.
Starcraft isn't simple. The difference between bronze and plat isn't talent or mechanics, those things help, but its about understanding what to do in what situation. Many Master League players got there by cheesing every game, their macro mechanics suck and if you can survive their cheese, you win... even if you are bronze, because their mechanics are just as bad as yours.
Nothing is worse for a player trying to improve than to be given oversimplified bullet points on what they should do. The guy even admits he can't do all 3. To get to diamond is very simple, either perfect a cheese or learn the game.
Focus on understanding why you should do this or not do that.
Think ahead, always have a plan.
You learn more from losing one game than winning fifty, so be happy about the wins but dont' be sad about the losses, use them to make u a better gamer.
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On April 25 2013 12:18 MrGh0st wrote:
Unable to break out of Silver I found myself at a constant loss. This was obviously before the option to switch regions or play UnRanked matches for the sake of trying out new builds.
One day, a few months ago, I lost a whole MMM BioBall to banelings and festors. I sat, I stared at my computer screen, I contemplated life itself.
After several drinks and a trip to the E.R. to stitch the wound in my hand, I decided to take a deep breath and said "You know what? I'll try Zerg..."
Needless to say since those few months ago I went from Silver and now I just recently got promoted to Platinum.
I feel like there's a hidden message here...
But seriously, Zerg horribly OP.
FOR REAL NOW, ALL JOKING ASIDE (thank god for HotS though), getting up there only a minimum level of SOLID macro and SOLID strategic thinking. Now, what this means is, everything makes sense. For example, you might be spending all your money, but if you have no workers, or you spent it on completely useless things (especially at useless times), then it slows you down a lot. If you went CC first into an EBay then straight into a Raven, with mass turrets or whatever, and managed to somehow spend all your money, your early resources went into almost 100% useless things. A few Ravens do nothing on their own. Turrets do nothing. An EBay does nothing until you have gas for upgrades and won't defend any sort of push. So for a Zerg, you'd be doing 15 Hatch->16/17 Pool->16/17 Gas->4 Lings+Double Queens->Drone up with double evo upgrades+third base->Lair tech or a pool first relatively similar variant (obviously much different in ZvZ).
Then strategically, you'd be thinking about attacking the proper locations, defending where they're likely to attack and ONLY committing the minimum requirement to defense, getting the most cost efficient tech with a good army composition, and expanding when necessary/possible while denying any mining bases you can (or at least pressure them if you can without taking significant losses). Note how I said mining bases, since some lower level players always ram into the same location (the natural or the third) even if there is nothing of value there for them to take such a risk to attack what will normally be a very defensible location. Of course, if you can ram into the natural or main (sometimes even the third) and win a convincing battle, you'll win immediately whereas doing that push on the 4th or 5th base will just shut down a base (even though you can keep pushing, but your opponent might have remade an army strong enough to push you back, though if you regroup, you can continue a second push).
From there, you will generally choose one that you will focus on and specialize in. Of course, you will look to improve both, but it's easier to focus on greatly improving one first. I chose to improve my mechanics, and I have lost to players with much weaker macro and mechanics because strategically they were far superior (to the point that it covered the difference in macro and more). But just because their macro was weaker doesn't mean it was particularly bad. It's solid, but far from perfect. Working on your macro takes less intelligence to improve, but it takes more games (since 1 mistake throws everything off, and you want to ingrain the habit of not making a single mistake except for mistakes in decision-making). Improving strategically can be done very quickly as long as you can analyze why you lost and why you won in every game, analyzing the decisions that both you and your opponent made. So you don't need to commit a ton of time to improve, but you can't just blindly with no direction and expect to get better. Obviously, you can't be 100% casual at anything and get to a high level at whatever you choose to do. Experienced RTS players can get to a really high level, but they aren't really "casually" playing the game.
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MMR aside, it would interesting to know exactly how much fewer games higher ranked players actually play to beat the equation and not get demoted, I can imagine that lower league players who play a lot and lose may have a wider variety of awareness of the game in terms of losing which is a funny thought.
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Some people said plat to diamond isn't about building more stuff anymore, well yes it still is. Plats are far worse at spending money on 3 bases. So, defend allinish attacks and get to 3 bases and make sure you learn to macro harder. You can get into masters by building nothing but marines + upgrades and medivacs after the early/mid-game (make sure to add other units like tanks if you scout an early allin).
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On April 25 2013 12:44 TechSc2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2013 12:35 U_G_L_Y wrote:
Some people are Masters with that many games. Some people languish in Gold or Platinum for years even though they play 400 games a season and a focus on improving. If the amount you can play is fixed, then your league will correlate to your talent and to how much you focus on correcting flaws in your play. Quoted for truth. It doesn't ALWAYS matter how much you can play, time+talent+repetition = your skill ceiling. Also you want to ask yourself the question, do you WANT to get promoted higher yes or no? are you happy with where you are now, there are plenty of people that don't care about their leagues and just play to have fun. And ofcourse with all sports, the higher you get in leagues, the more effort it takes to improve as fast as you did before. Even till the extend that you cannot improve that fast ever again.
It's funny how you quoted that guy for truth, now I must quote you for it.
You need to be happy with your league. I was masters in 1v1 for 7 seasons and eventually grew tired of it. I didn't put too much effort, but it took me about an hour and a half a day to maintain and at some point it became too much. Now I play about 4 games a week and happily stay on top of diamond.
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My stay in bronze was probably the longest. But then I moved fairly quickly from silver, to gold, to plat. Then I spent a looooot of time in platinum. I just wasen't constistent in my play. I've never been. Maybe I just play too often when I'm fatigued. Anyway, I found the move to diamond pretty hard actually. Was actually demoted back to gold for two days, but I found that a good learning experience. Now I'm in diamond and trying to make the next step. Also off racing as terran to gain a slightly better understanding of that race.
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Once you hit a certain level, you don't have to practice every day to maintain it generally, unless you play at GM level your mechanics get to a stage where they won't depreciate too much (unless you don't play for months on end of/c), if you keep up with the metagame (by watching a fair amount of games) without playing it only takes a certain amount of practice to stay at the same level.
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On April 25 2013 12:46 thurst0n wrote:
If you do these 3 things, I guarantee you will get to diamond level MINIMUM.
1) Make workers until you have 60-70 on 3 bases.
2) never get supply blocked
3) never have over 500 minerals.
I can't do any of these but 1 and I'm mid masters O.O
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This isn't a simple question to answer.
There are many variables, some which You will not like hearing.
Like any hobby, activity, or something you work towards bettering yourself at, time, proper focus and practice are all key elements. For *MOST* people, in order to progress and succeed, it takes a certain amount of routine practice, making note of your flaws and paying special attention to those in order to correct them. In the case of sc2, replay analysis, posting on TL for help, watching streams, other replays, tournaments , writing down notes/builds , etc.
To answer your question in some regards, typically there is a line that must be drawn for succession in this game. There's a point everyone will get to, in which if they really want to progress beyond, they must crank it down pretty hard, and start massing games, along with the analysis and studying tactics aforementioned, to really break through to a new plateau.
The part you might not like to hear- Some poeple are better at this than others. There's no denying some players have an innate ability to pick things up fast, learn , and master techniques far easier than the rest of us. I have several friends like this. They can play half as much as me, and go above and beyond where I'm at.
Also keep in mind, alot of sc2 players were heavy SC1 players, like myself. There was a huge built in skill transfer between the two games. No matter how much has changed, 75 percent or more of the mechanics and fundamentals are rooted directly from sc1. I'm still not master... I'm rank 1 diamond, but I've been playing this game since starcraft 1 (albeit not seriously competitive that whole time).
So , there's different aspects and variables, but in essence you WILL reach a point where you have to start focusing and mass gaming, playing smarter , and just doing your homework. Where that line is drawn, simply differs from person to person.
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Just wanted to add my personal experience into the mix here. I started playing RTS during WoL Beta, got placed into silver and spent a good month playing 20-30 games a day and got to the top of the ladder ( plat at the time was the top league ). Since then I have played maybe 30 or 40 games a month on average ( sometimes going 2 or 3 months playing not at all if the meta-game is shitty at the time ). During that time I've been in mid-high masters ( if I play enough to spend my bonus pool I'm always top 25 masters ) every season I played games in. I got the 1000 zerg games achievement after HOTS released, and that's counting a ton of team-games with friends, at least 30% of my games were team-game shenanigans.
So maybe there is some required period of true improvement needed to get to Masters but, in my opinion it's just like riding a bicycle and once you have it, you should keep it ( or get it back within 4 or 5 games upon returning ) so there is no needed to play like 400 games a season every season ( maybe one season, to improve ).
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On April 25 2013 12:18 MrGh0st wrote:Greetings! I've been a lurker for quite awhile on TL's website. I've enjoyed reading all the guides for SC2 and the Live Streams in between breaks  I played WoL on the day of release as Terran and decided to really improve my skill in 1v1 for the next couple years. I failed miserably. Unable to break out of Silver I found myself at a constant loss. This was obviously before the option to switch regions or play UnRanked matches for the sake of trying out new builds. One day, a few months ago, I lost a whole MMM BioBall to banelings and festors. I sat, I stared at my computer screen, I contemplated life itself. After several drinks and a trip to the E.R. to stitch the wound in my hand, I decided to take a deep breath and said "You know what? I'll try Zerg..." Needless to say since those few months ago I went from Silver and now I just recently got promoted to Platinum. I was Rank 10 but have just kind of slipped to Rank 21 at the moment due to me not having the time to play. I guess this is where the main question comes in, and it was something I hadn't even thought about until my third loss in a row... Right now I'm hovering around 51% win in general so I think I'm where most people should be. The issue, however, is that I've only played 70 games this season. Whenever I'm getting absolutely STOMPED and destroyed it's against an opponent with anywhere from 250-450 games for the season (that's coming to a close.) I hadn't even put 2 and 2 together until tonight. Now that I'm in Platinum, am I past the point of watching fun TL replays and reading build guides on the forums? Can I no longer be a casual lurker and play a few games a week? Is this where a Starcraft player has to crank it up a notch from "Casual"? Bear in mind I'm not complaining about this imba or that imba, I'm just needing to know if 35-70 games per season ain't gonna cut it anymore. What have you all experienced? What can I expect? I can say for certain I won't have the time to put in a few hundred games every season. Any insight would be much appreciated
Hey top 16 master here , i don't actually play that many games a season around 75 or so , around 60% win rate overall. it all comes down to how much you improve in those games, i have seen players with 1000's of games played and they are stuck in plat or bronze or somewhere in between , quality over quantity.
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Yeah, I think I play 80 something games/season on average (unless it's summer), have 60% win rate overall, and am Midmasters. soooo. I think it's not the amount of games you play, but it's the amount of time you spend improving. I could play 10 really terrible games, win half of them by luck, but not do anything to improve. (ex. not focus on anything). Or, I could play 4-5 games and learn how to use camera hotkeys, a new build, etc and get better.
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My first time making it to masters this season, and I played about 200 games, which is normal if am into Starcraft, which i am this season since Hots is fun. Just keep on playing and if you have no idea why you lost a game, watch the replay to improve
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On April 28 2013 05:19 FCReverie wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2013 12:46 thurst0n wrote:
If you do these 3 things, I guarantee you will get to diamond level MINIMUM.
1) Make workers until you have 60-70 on 3 bases.
2) never get supply blocked
3) never have over 500 minerals.
I can't do any of these but 1 and I'm mid masters O.O
Cause you're not a master's macro player. And you don't have to be a macro player to win high level games. Remember BoxeR?
Never getting supply blocked and never having over 500 minerals is unrealistic though (the most likely race to stay under 500 minerals is Terran). Protoss and Zerg are burst production races as they can't queue up units and produce units in rounds. And with theoretically perfect Terran macro (0 queue up time and 0 down time in production), you will end up being the exact same as Protoss and Zerg. It's more realistic to say keep under 500 minerals/300 gas(ish) per base you have until you max out and start banking while you look for a good engagement and set up for alternative late game transitions/tech switches.
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Hi everyone,
I am currently at Plat, and desperately want to get to Diamond.
I am stuck at Platinum for 2 seasons, but I have a problem: I beat quite many Diamond players (even top Diamond) when MMR. For low Diamond my winning rate is high, and it's not bad with top Diamond players. I met more Diamond players than Plat players. This suggests I am near Diamond as hell.
However, I still get stuck at Plat. I play ~250 matches this season, and winning near 150 matches. I play with improving mind, not cheesy.
So, sometimes it's disappointed.
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On April 28 2013 19:50 MasterDrone wrote:
Hi everyone,
I am currently at Plat, and desperately want to get to Diamond.
I am stuck at Platinum for 2 seasons, but I have a problem: I beat quite many Diamond players (even top Diamond) when MMR. For low Diamond my winning rate is high, and it's not bad with top Diamond players. I met more Diamond players than Plat players. This suggests I am near Diamond as hell.
However, I still get stuck at Plat. I play ~250 matches this season, and winning near 150 matches. I play with improving mind, not cheesy.
So, sometimes it's disappointed.
Had this one, you need to continue and one day a win streak will promote you up 
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On April 28 2013 23:43 RandomQueen wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2013 19:50 MasterDrone wrote:
Hi everyone,
I am currently at Plat, and desperately want to get to Diamond.
I am stuck at Platinum for 2 seasons, but I have a problem: I beat quite many Diamond players (even top Diamond) when MMR. For low Diamond my winning rate is high, and it's not bad with top Diamond players. I met more Diamond players than Plat players. This suggests I am near Diamond as hell.
However, I still get stuck at Plat. I play ~250 matches this season, and winning near 150 matches. I play with improving mind, not cheesy.
So, sometimes it's disappointed. Had this one, you need to continue and one day a win streak will promote you up
I had 2 win streak, pretty good, 25-3 and 16-2 i guess, but still stuck around :D Saw some people who promotes to Diamond in 50 matches, I'm jealous.
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On April 25 2013 12:55 U_G_L_Y wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2013 12:46 thurst0n wrote:
If you do these 3 things, I guarantee you will get to diamond level MINIMUM.
1) Make workers until you have 60-70 on 3 bases.
2) never get supply blocked
3) never have over 500 minerals.
I can't do these unfortunately, sometimes i get 2/3 but.. it's hard out there man. Stick with it, just have fun. Not as Terran.
I'm diamond and I only train marines, lol.
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EPT
