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Bosnia-Herzegovina439 Posts
On December 16 2011 01:17 Pokebunny wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2011 00:36 Mesha wrote:On December 15 2011 16:01 IamNatural wrote: cuz all-in = skill right  Just to clarify, i wasn't bragging, i was just making a plastic picture for the guy we are trying to help giving him example with what he can be high diamond. And it's not all ins, its good builds, builds have expo and every thing but somehow my play style is blind to everything beyond 10th minute  . ... That's completely the opposite, that means you have terrible mechanics, you're just able to follow a build. Your macro is actually probably terrible and that's the main portion on mechanics.
I think we have different understandings of these words. Since english is not my native language i consider mechanics as the ability to efficiently spend my APM. By doing that i watch my economy, army, build, micro in battles and eventually multitask as best i can. You say i have terrible mechanics and say i just follow a build. It is true that i follow a build but answer me this- could i rape a master with only following a build or do i need decent mechanics to manage everything to actually do something with that build? I don't know, i really hate to discuss all this subjects in deep since its hard to express what i think and everything could be rationalized and turned up side down so its never ending story. Its true that I AM NOT a macro player. I said it myself. But i still think i have good mechanics but just don't like long games and never actually practice long macro games so my mechanics for that part of the game are pure shit. Macro is main portion of mechanics but it just not the same to macro up to 10 minutes and say play a 30 minute game with constant harassing and stuff. If you are pokebunny the pro player, you know more than me and you are probably right about everything but the thing i was saying is true in my case - but i can't do anything if what i said is misunderstood or misheard. 
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Whenever you lose, make sure you know why and what to do instead. Watch your replays and pinpoint the cause of your loss.
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Remember, also, that skill doesn't rise linearly. You'll have jumps and spurts and then plane out for a while. There's way too much info here and elsewhere on how to improve for me to comment on that, but know that having a bad day (i.e. losing 6 straight games, or 9 or 12 if you're me >.>) doesn't mean you're stuck indefinitely. Just keep a cool head and be a student of the game and eventually you'll have another break through.
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On December 16 2011 02:42 Sippycup wrote:
Ok, so as requested I've gone ahead and got a replay up and running and loaded to gamereplays.org.
I watched your replay in some detail. Here are some thoughts:
First, you should be expanding faster. By the time you got a third, your main was clogged with drones. Even after the third was up, your main was oversaturated and your third didn't have enough drones. Of course, you also had a ton of money piled up, which leads to point 2...
Second: I'd recommend working on improving your larva inject timing. It usually breaks down for most people at some point, but you'll be best off if you can keep it going at least until you have four hatches up, whether expansions or macro hatches.
Third: None of the above will help if you don't use your larvae as they are produced. Here's a key factoid about larva production: hatches generate more larvae two different ways, with injects and with a default regeneration that's on a timer. The timer-based regeneration stops if you have more than 3 larvae unused at the hatch. To get the most out of that regeneration, you should be using your larvae as soon as you possibly can after they appear and do everything you can to avoid piling up past 3 until you're maxed on supply.
Basically, the overall picture I saw in that game was that you're not earning as much income as you can because you're slow to expand and slow to transfer drones. Also, because you only checked your larva status intermittently, you'd let a crap ton pile up and then spend them all in one burst, which deprived you of the extra stream of them you would have had from their regeneration.
There was a point where you were at 158/170-something supply, with over 2k minerals and 1k gas, and about 30 larvae piled up. That was enough to get you to max supply if you'd used them.
Here are some things I do that might help you out, given all of this:
I hotkey my hatcheries and hit that hotkey every few seconds no matter what I'm doing in the game. The moment I see available larva, I'll spam something, drones, units, whatever makes sense. Get in the habit of checking your larva status when you're looking elsewhere on the map to scout, or whatever.
I know when a base is saturated by ctrl-clicking on the drones. Two and a half rows, or 20 drones, is optimal assuming two gas geysers are up. Up to 28 drones increases the mineral income from the base, but it's better to take the extra 8 to another base coming up.
Set milestones for your expansions. Something arbitrary like expanding on 20, 60, 100 supply is probably a good place to start. Expand whenever you are out of larva -- but don't saturate more than three bases, because that will eat into your army. Instead, transfer drones from base to base as they get mined out. The additional hatcheries serve as extra larva production until you're ready to start mining from them.
A few points that are probably less important:
Particularly vs. Terran, focus on spreading creep rapidly across the map toward them. The creep tumors give you vision and a LOT of warning, which is very important, because it is essential to engage a moving Terran army when tanks are unsieged, unless you have an enormous numerical advantage. Also, speed-upgraded banelings on creep move rather fast.
Try placing a ling at each location the other player may go to expand. Then, when they show up to grab the expansion, you'll see them. Even if they see you doing this they probably won't run around the map just to kill one ling per empty expo.
You could refine your early game build order a good deal more. Your first priority after your pool comes up should probably be to get a queen immediately. Ling speed can wait a few seconds. Anyway, a 14 gas 14 pool build optimally will leave you with about 250 minerals and 100 gas when the pool comes up, which is enough to start speed and a queen immediately, and having the queen up will get you ahead faster in economy.
Around the 24 minute mark, you ran into the tank/PF/thor defended front with about 60 zerglings and 16 or so banelings with speed, and thousands of minerals and gas in the bank. Your attack didn't do that much damage. Now, tank and PF are optimal anti-zergling and baneling defense, and that many thors are optimal anti-muta defense, so I probably would have just avoided attacking there and then. However, if you'd spent your money on turning those 60 zerglings into banelings, and rolled them all in there directly at the PF, you would have destroyed your opponent's only mining base and probably all the SCVs there too.
Basically, if I were to play a Terran who turtles that long on two bases, my plan is to cover the entire map with creep and expos, max out right outside their front door, build up a ton of resources and larva, tech up, and wait. The longer they stay in there, the worse it gets for them, the creep lets me see everything they're doing before they do it, and all I have to do is send in an overseer every few minutes to make sure they're not getting clever with battlecruisers or something.
Edit: I don't mind playing super-passively vs. a turtling Terran. It's remarkably easy to throw a maxed-out army at a Terran front and lose everything if they're hyper-focused on defending. However, I do watch and shut down their expansions, and once their couple of bases are completely mined out, they have no choice but to come to me, at which point I can clean up.
The Terrans to be afraid of are the ones who drop you every 2 minutes for the whole game, then show up with a sizeable army.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina439 Posts
I just want to say one last advice and i ll stop spamming your thread . Don't measure your progress on daily basis!!! Measure your progress and compare with your previous skills on at least monthly basis! Good luck man. That's it from me.
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Just make sure you constantly inject, if you find yourself with a ton of extra minerals outside of an incoming battle, make a lot of overlords so you dont get supply blocked at the wrong moment later on.
Also, try to harass them if you find yourself not knowing what to do, most bronze players will stop whatever it is they are doing and watch battles if any of their units or structures are being attacked.
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Truly, the only way to improve at this game is to play the macro game. You have to not care about your record, and rather care only about improving your macro game. First focus on your macro; once mastered, look into the "cheese" builds that pro-players employ to surprise their opponents in series, as these can be useful for series and taking quick games on the ladder if you've, say, played one too many ZvZ's. It's also always nice to have variety. You have to just force yourself to play a macro game. It's the only way to fundamentally improve. Even if you could rush in and kill your opponent...keep macroing up, draw the game out for as long as you can. It will really help with the multitasking.
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On December 16 2011 04:00 CadaverSculptor wrote:
Even if you could rush in and kill your opponent...keep macroing up, draw the game out for as long as you can. It will really help with the multitasking.
Plus, practicing a macro game as a rule will force you to practice identifying and defending rushes of various kinds, and believe me, there's nothing at all like seeing someone attempt some all-in rush that you spotted three minutes before and precisely countered.
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On December 16 2011 04:00 CadaverSculptor wrote:
Truly, the only way to improve at this game is to play the macro game. You have to not care about your record, and rather care only about improving your macro game. First focus on your macro; once mastered, look into the "cheese" builds that pro-players use to surprise their opponents in series, as these can be useful for series and taking quick games on the ladder if you've played, say, one too many ZvZ's. It's also always nice to have variety. You have to just force yourself to play a macro game. It's the only way to fundamentally improve. Even if you could rush in and kill your opponent...keep macroing up, draw the game out for as long as you can. It will really help with the multitasking.
I definitely believe in not caring about one's record and focusing on improving only (no.1 in Bronze is more like an insult, and a positive win rate is only useful to tell you that something has improved, if you haven't worked on anything, you receive no information). Yet, don't play only macro games, learn 1 or 2 cheeses. Go into a match where you know you need to execute perfectly for 5-10 minutes or need to play from a huge disadvantage if you mess up. I've actually become a much better player from learning the 111, as it forces one to think differently than in a macro game. Micro and tactics play a huge role, and as I only really won by out-macroing before, I've learnt a ton. But macro is still the ultimate goal, just spend 50-100 games drilling some tricky all-in build.
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If you are still stuck in bronze, you almost certainly have some fundamental problem(s) with your macro. I just saw that you posted a couple of replays, which is a great way to get some advice.
Having said that, I feel that the main problem most people in bronze have is they're trying to do too much at once. Keep it simple. Learn 1 build. Make it a simple, safe and standard build. Something like speedling expand. Don't worry about different builds for different MUs. If expanding is throwing your game into a tailspin, don't do it. If scouting (or multitasking in general) is messing you up, don't do it. Don't do anything that disrupts just refining down one build. Once you get that down so you can do it in your sleep and it's very crisp, add something to it (expand, scouting, etc). Refine this down so you have it cold. Repeat. Eventually, learn more builds and how to adapt your build to what your opponent is doing, but only after you have the basics down.
Don't worry about winning. Your goal is not to win, it's to learn. Yeah, I know, it's hard to lose. Any competitive person will hate losing, but to improve you have to get past that and look at your losses as opportunities to learn so that you'll get better and not lose to that again.
I see a lot of people who "practice" by just throwing themselves at the ladder, over and over and over, until they get frustrated. If you don't know what you're doing wrong, just mashing out games isn't going to fix it. Practice is an important part of learning, but only if it's smart practice. Find out what you're doing wrong, and spend 10 games doing nothing but make sure that it doesn't happen (or however many until you feel like you have it figured out).
Last of all, don't get discouraged. SC2 is a hard game, and it takes almost everybody a LONG time to improve. Those "I made masters in a month" people as usually full of it, or they cheesed their way to victory. Think of it like getting to an expert level at playing basketball, how long would that take you? Years, I'd wager.
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well, i think Z has a steep learning curve as you rely a lot on scouting (and understand what you see). So you need to have good knowledge of the other races in order to advance. You can compensate bad scouting and bad game sense by playing a cautious build order which basically hits all the timings (early pool for safe expansion, get detection in time, get some safety spines, larvae pooling). If you train to execute a safe build perfectly, you can reach diamond no problem. At this point you'll probably need to start cutting corners and take some risks in order to keep your win rate.
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Masters zerg/protoss that offers free 30 min lessons. Pst me if your interested
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On December 16 2011 04:47 Sippycup wrote:
Got another replay. ZvP this time. Tried to be more aggressive and focus a tad less on my economy. I ended up having way more resources than I needed again, only supply blocked myself 2-3 times.
Watched this one too.
Again, I think that working on using all your larvae as they come up will be the best thing you can possibly do for your macro. It's one thing to have money piling up, but if you have a ton of larvae, a ton of money, and a ton of excess supply, you could have a bigger army in seconds if you attend to it.
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On December 15 2011 05:26 GhostKorean wrote:
As bronze your goal should be
1. Never stop producing scvs
2. Keep your money as low as possible
It's alright if you stay on one base the whole game in bronze you'll still win if you spend all your money on one base with good mineral saturation
As for the cheese, learn a build order and do it over and over to get it as refined as possible. Do things like scouting at the same food every single game to get used to every single timing. Micro should not be a focus at all. Instead, just send your units to attack and go back to make more units even vs a 2gate proxy. Learn reactions to different cheese builds through experience, and since you're doing the same build over and over your reaction to the cheese should be mechanically performed every game
The basic harvesters, money, and not get supply blocked will apply all the way to diamond. There are so many people in diamond league that don't make enough probes and can't spend their money on 2 or 3 bases still. It is definitely the key to get to masters or at least diamond for sure. If you can spend your money, constantly make probes, and not get supply blocked too early (you'll die to a rush) you will be able to find out how to play the game and defend against strategies because you're doing it right. The money that comes with making consistent probes is extremely significant.
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Advice:
- Play 3 games in a row, don't stop in between games. As soon as you hit the score screen, queue up another game.
- Once you finish, pick one of the games to review. Ideally a game you lost, and a game you were most confused about.
- Review the replay of that game, and find 3 things that you can work on pertaining to what happened in that game specifically. Make sure your criticisms are constructive and they are things you can realistically improve on in the next few games.
- Repeat. As much as you can.
^ This advice should get you into diamond at least, and GM if you have enough hours to spend which you probably don't.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina439 Posts
Hey man, just by accident i stumbled upon one of dApollo's videos and it is titled "Starcraft II - Zerg Tutorial Working up from Bronze League - Part1". Hahaha, it is perfect for you. Here is the link dApollo zerg tutorial. He is good at what he does, he is good player and a caster. From what i have seen in this video, he is good teacher also.
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I've had the same problem as you when i first picked up the game. I was getting roflstomped in bronze not because of mechanics but because i had no clue what i was reading on my opponents. Had no clue how to stop bunker rushes, or all the pretty toss allins. Didnt use hotkeys, supply blocks and so on.
How i got out of bronze quickly was with 7 rr, belive it or not, and that got me up to gold. After i got up to gold i actually started reading my opponents starting build easily and reacted properly. Im not saying you should cheese non-stop but you rly need to get out of bronze to enjoy some better game.
Mass some games with a good executed 7rr and you will see how much its gonna improve your early game mechanics.
Only after you start understanding the game you should actually bother with fancy stuff. I know cheesing ur way out of bronze sounds lame but only after you hit better opponents u can start progressing as a player.
In 4 months time,on and off, playing ladder ive got up to high diamond and my understanding of the game improved immensely.
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On December 16 2011 00:08 Sippycup wrote:
So far today in my matches against hard and very hard Protoss I've noticed that around 10 mins I seem to have a really huge surplus of minerals, and I'm pretty sure it's due to over-droning, but I'm not 100% sure. I've been trying to take a third around 10-11 mins, and it seems to be working, but I still have a surplus of minerals and a tad over on gas. I can never seem to whittle things down to that 0 level.
EDIT: On second thought, maybe it's due to me just building units as a reactionary measure when I notice some kind of push is coming. I think things will be totally different when I'm playing on ladder again.
Does that mean I'm focusing TOO much on my economy mid game?
It probably means you're missing larvae injects. It also means you're definitely on the right track. The first step is to improve your macro/economy. Something you've seem to have accomplished. Now you need to start focussing on those injects. A small hint by the way: ctrl+click on a drone in a base. If you see 4 drones on the bottom line, that means that base is fully saturated. No need for more drones there, so just rally that hatch to a mineral patch in another base. The trick now is to try to keep those minerals down by making units. Keep in mind though, your first priority should always be to drone as much as possible and only make units if you feel some early aggression is coming your way.
But yeah, once you're around that 10-11 minute mark and you see +1K minerals start making units. Throw down a macro hatch too.
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your Country52797 Posts
Making workers is not enough past bronze league.
Silver-plat players will consistantly make the same number of workers, with micro being the deciding factor, and I have seen a very small gap between the silvers that make half as many workers as I do and the silvers that make only 30-40 workers (large difference). The trick in low leagues, I believe, is to grasp all the fundamentals and then focus on 1-2 areas at a time.
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EPT
