I am a Basketball-Coach for 16 years now. I train referees as well. I am a SC2-Coach since 2011 (no money, just for fun).
When a Silver player ask a question in a forum the following advice is often given out: - "Just play the game!" or - "Watch Pro streams! Learn their builds and gameplay!"
If I would do the same as Basketball-Coach, I would tell my youngsters: "Watch Michael Jordan and do what he does!"
Frustration would be a result, quitting the sport is most likely, too.
In school you start with "1+1", not Algebra.
I have no goddam clue, why a player in the lower leagues, should learn to spam (which leads to mistakes of course) or why they should start with "a solid build" like
which heavily relies on good Blink-Micro and Warp-Prism-Harass.
A Silver or even Gold player is not able to execute that BO (Build Order) correctly. Playing NexusFirst PartinG has Blink ready at 8:16. PartinG attacks Bunny at the 9-minute-mark, having 7 Stalkers at the front at 8:27.
A Silver player would hit both timings only in 1 of 100 games.
"Just play the game" is the first misconception I want to mention. To improve in SC2 you need - Time - Focus - Quality of practise
Just playing the game won't do. You have to watch your Replays, think about your mistakes and so on. Please learn what Jak has to say to you about Time, Focus and Quality of practise.
Misconception #1: TheStaircase forbids ProGamer builds! No, that is wrong. In Step #4 you can use "PartinG - The Big Boy Build" to harass your opponents with Blink. The same applies for the other races. Keep in mind, that a good player can complete the Staircase in 24 (6 x 4) games, if he is able to reach his league goal (e.g Grandmaster) in 4 out of 5 games. The average player needs about a 100 games. Afterwards you have a solid understanding of Macro & Mechanics and you can move on.
Misconception #2: TheStaircase does not allow gas! No, that is wrong. It does not allow gas for the first two steps. If you are a skilled player or you have real talent, you will move to step #3 after 8 games, because you have to pass your league goal only 4 out of 5 games.
Misconception #3: TheStaircase forbids Cheese! No, not at all. You can play 6Pool, Proxy-Rax, CannonRush. I tell my "students" to pick a Cheese-BO in one matchup, when they practise #2. This is only 33%. 67% still is training Macro and Mechanics.
Misconception #4: TheStaircase isn't fun! On the contrary! All my students (which were about 150 by over the years) tell me things like: "I do not fear the ladder anymore, because it does not matter, if I win or loose." "I wanted to train Diamond-EU, but I got stuck on NA-ladder because TheStaircase in Platinum is so much fun."
Misconception #5: Taking no gas in #2 and a ton of gas in #3 is too difficult Who says you have to take a ton of gas? Play 5 games with 50 gas (WarpGate) or 100 gas (Lingspeed, Stim). If pass your league goal, you can add 1 gas (2.500 HOTS, 2.000 LOTV) and afterwards play double-upgrades with 2 or 3 or 4 gas. Everything, which is not forbidden by the rules, is ok. Start as fast as you want, start with things you like the most. Have fun!
Misconception #6: TheStaircase was invented in WOL. It is not viable in HOTS/LOTV! You are wrong. I will let these screenshots/videos speak for themselves.
HOTS:
Stats in 75 games (Bronze to Diamond): - PvP: 63% - PvT: 74% - PvZ: 59%
LOTV:
Videos
Just InGame-Sound: MiSu beats a Grandmaster-Zerg using TheStaircase #3
German: Saipen beats a Diamond-Terran and a Diamond-Protoss using TheStaircase #3
Dont wantt o be that guy but i just have to be. I saw the staircase way back when, i valued it at the start as i thought it was just a good way to 'practice' even though id played the first start craft and then of course up to brood war. The way i see it now is 'here is a spoon, dig me a hole'. So you did! The hole got dug! I then started paying for a bit of coaching from SlayersMin (at the time), and a few others and they pretty much laughed at it saying, if you see this, build this! thers nothing hard about building this just make sure you at least try to set yourself up. The lesson here was defending zvz ling muta, (before the spore!!!) and Min said right you are building infestors and banes . . You need gas for these main units SO take all the gas you possibly can. At your league the other guy wont have that much either so just do and build as much as you can but favor infesters first! The advice liveed with me till today and its never been wrong. Point of the story is, hers your spoon but ill go ahead and use a fuckin spade and get more experience while doing so. No offense intended here, Jak gave a lot of people a starting point and its good for that but for development, i persoanlly think it gets you there (wherever there is) slower
I think the common advice is a result of what progamers tell aspring progamers to do and that is very different from what your goal is here (turning average players or below-average players into above-average players).
A successful SC progamer ultimately has to coach themselves and if they can't do it at a low skill level, where there is a TON of low-hanging fruit, then they're not gonna be able to figure shit out at the highest level, where it's nearly impossible to find the thing that'll consistently improve win rate. People may as well filter themselves out early on if they can't even copy what current pros are doing, much less find out improvements to make on what pros are currently doing.
If a player has no aspiration to become a pro but rather just wants to become more competent to have fun with the more advanced parts of the game, then I think it's great to develop and teach a program like this.
I kind of agree with what some of the other replies are.. Not saying this method is terribly bad but, You can't ever learn anything if you try to look for easier ways to learn. I've said this in the past on this system years ago. Break out the Notebook and be prepared to play. If you want to get better you got to try to get better not just expect it to fall down to you.
Your talk about timing on blink build, you are considering this lower player to be playing someone at much higher level. A lower level players defenses will also be off timing so it will balance out (beauty of the ladder system) I mean lets face it timing of builds are based on 2 things in my opinion
Knowing The Building and Following It Correctly (which this system doesn't really help with)
Having the mechanics / APM to execute it correctly so you can follow it (Which this system once again doesn't help with)
when i say the system doesn't help meaning that it doesn't help anymore than if you never touched the system before. Gaming, Learning your keyboard, and Mouse control. Which really last 2 comes naturally after you play enough games.
I feel this system might be good for the person without any direction maybe or guidance.. But if someone is studying replays and trying to learn to get better from them..I feel will improve quicker than someone going by a system to this kind of standards. I feel most competitive players would probably agree on this as this is the method alot of players have used and still currently use to this day.
Thanks for this, I'll have to try this. Last time I played this game was during WoL, so it's been awhile; I think this might be just the thing to help me improve. I work 40-50 hours a week, so I generally can only play from 8:30pm - 12:30pm, so around 4 hours a day. Hopefully this will be enough time, if I can focus for all 4 of those hours
There's so many great guides on how to macro better, but I feel like more newbie guides need to at least mention how important having a concave is (even at low levels you can lose with better macro if you attack into a concave) and the RTS triangle of attacking > expanding > defending > attacking, which is especially important at low levels where people telegraph their strategy.
Yes, macro is the most important thing, but pretty much every low level game that I've lost despite outmacroing my opponent involved attacking into a concave or choosing the wrong strategy in the RTS triangle.
On November 12 2015 06:14 -StrifeX- wrote: I kind of agree with what some of the other replies are.. Not saying this method is terribly bad but, You can't ever learn anything if you try to look for easier ways to learn. I've said this in the past on this system years ago. Break out the Notebook and be prepared to play. If you want to get better you got to try to get better not just expect it to fall down to you.
You make it sound like the staircase is a learning shortcut for a player looking for "easier ways to learn".
It's actually a structured method to training ... and if you train well, you will learn faster.
As far as easier, there's no such thing. If you follow the method well, with diligence, you'll get better, and if you apply yourself at it, it won't be easier than laddering ... but you'll get better faster.
I agree with what Tyler is saying, like if you can't push yourself to figure out what it is you can improve on by yourself at the beginning, when it's by far easier to find what aspects of your play you can improve on (basically every single one of them), then if you wish to progress pass this and inspire to get, let's say, to grandmasters, it'll be near impossible to grind those few hundred games perfecting specifics aspects.
In the end it's a grind both on and off the game, thinking about it and playing it a lot.
On November 12 2015 06:14 -StrifeX- wrote: I kind of agree with what some of the other replies are.. Not saying this method is terribly bad but, You can't ever learn anything if you try to look for easier ways to learn. I've said this in the past on this system years ago. Break out the Notebook and be prepared to play. If you want to get better you got to try to get better not just expect it to fall down to you.
You make it sound like the staircase is a learning shortcut for a player looking for "easier ways to learn".
It's actually a structured method to training ... and if you train well, you will learn faster.
As far as easier, there's no such thing. If you follow the method well, with diligence, you'll get better, and if you apply yourself at it, it won't be easier than laddering ... but you'll get better faster.
I'm actually saying it would take longer using the system compared to someone not using it. I think person willing to study pro replays try to do the builds and study them. He/she eventually would excel past someone on this system.
Does the system work? Well honestly any system works where you are in a game and playing no matter what you do. Is the system the fastest way to improve? I highly disagree with this
Why would I disagree? simple there is no evidence or enough facts to say this system is better. I have yet to see anyone compare this system to any other system on the rate of improvement based among a field of new players. This is why I find when this statement "You will learn faster" or "get better faster" using this system. Every time I see that statement I look at it as marketing tool to get more people involved and try to boost up it's use.
I mean I know a lot of time and effort is put into this, I am thankful for people willing to try to find a way to make things better. If you truly believe and want to make a successful program / system. You have to test it against anyone and everything. You will fail but it shall only drive it to improve and eventually live up to it's statement.
What I write is strictly my opinion, and I have offered in the past to try put this system to the test. it was avoided and refused. My arms is always open to test this system / method. if the interest is there now please feel free to PM me.
Does the system work? Well honestly any system works where you are in a game and playing no matter what you do. Is the system the fastest way to improve? I highly disagree with this
I highly disagree with this statement.
Why? All other systems I encountered over my 4 years of coaching have some things in common:
You have to ladder about 30 games a week, about 5 games per day and you have to know how to analyze your Replays. You have to know your BO (Build Order) and hit Timings & Benchmarks with it. E.g. 4Gate with 4 Gates ready at 7:30 is rubbish, since a good 4 Gate starts at 5:42 (5:32 plus 10 seconds).
This kind of process: Many ppl do not have the time to play consistently 5 games a week. I have trained more than 100 players in the last 4 years and many of them found 5 games per week - 20 games a month - too hard and they quit the training.
TheStaircase works with 5 games per week. TheStaircase works without knowlege about the game, your own Replays and what a ProGamer knows. A Diamond player showed me a Replay (PvZ) 2 weeks ago.
"Why did I loose?" My answer: "Are you f******* kidding me?"
What happened? 3.000 Overmins and counting at 18 minutes. At the 24-minute-mark he lost all his bases (except one) to Mutas (which he did not scout) and he was on one base with
67/16
Saturation. 67 workers on one base.
"Are you f******* kidding me?"
This guy played like you tell ppl here. He watched Pro-Streams, he learned spamming, but he never learned building Probes & Pylons the right way (a few gaps here and there). Too few Probes and and a high TSC (Time Supply Capped aka many SupplyBlocks) were a result.
> Why would I disagree? simple there is no evidence or enough > facts to say this system is better.
I do not have the time and money to pay 200 SC2-players to test this method from Bronze to Diamond.
Jak's thread has more than a thousand answers. I doubt there is any guide out there, which can compare to that many answers.
Last words powered by Jak:
The LAN Experiment Starcraft 2 had just come out and I had planned a big LAN party with many of my friends. Some of them had never played Starcraft at all before, but were very excited about the new game and wanted to try it out. One of my friends, we’ll call him Yukon Cornelius, had never played Starcraft before and came early so that I could show him the ropes a bit before everything got started. I found a safe build for him to learn and wrote it down for reference and tried to explain as much as I could about the game: Unit compositions, counters, strategies, and all the things that I learned to play the game. He was eager to learn and began working on his build order. When the rest of my friends came and we started playing games and setting up brackets, I checked in on Yukon to see how he was doing. He had been playing for about 9 hours at that point and he was getting very frustrated and not showing very much improvement. Many of my friends chalked this up to the idea that “Starcraft is a really hard game”, but I wasn’t satisfied with stopping there.
After watching him play, I came up with an experiment. I told him to only focus on 3 things: Keep your money low, build pylons ahead of time, and build only zealots and probes. The result was mind bending. He wasn’t only beating some of my other friends who had just recently picked up the game; he was beating me; he was beating my friends that had been playing in the beta, with our build order notebooks, counters, and strategies; and he was having fun doing it. I had many LAN parties to follow, and repeated this experiment; the results were consistent. The players I taught with this approach had more fun, improved faster and won. The players I taught with the strategic approach got frustrated, overwhelmed, and lost.
When a Silver player ask a question in a forum the following advice is often given out: - "Just play the game!" or - "Watch Pro streams! Learn their builds and gameplay!"
If I would do the same as Basketball-Coach, I would tell my youngsters: "Watch Michael Jordan and do what he does!"
Frustration would be a result, quitting the sport is most likely, too.
I have to say this is the most accurate thing I've read about Starcraft community. I made thread about lack of tutorials 1-2 months ago and tutorials really matter, especially in Starcraft. I started playing 1.5 years ago and I had same problem, and when I saw tutorials like ones Lowko make, I jumped 2 leagues above.
Mmhh it is interesting, could be useful for 2 friends I want to hook and they have no idea, so they keep refusing to even try to play it because it is hard =/
I tend to be quite skeptical about these sort of programs. It's pretty much impossible to verify whether they actually work because of the self-selection bias and placebo effect, furthermore there are way too many types of players for there to be a universal method and Starcraft is too different to just straightforwardly map music teaching or sports training methods (which imo Jakatak tends to misapply anyhow).
Certainly I think it's quite inane to bore people with exercises and multitasking training and to tell them that you should ignore all the fun parts of the game and focus on building drones (so that they can get more resources they can't spend, and more units they can't control). And I think it misunderstands what playing to win means; it's not that you should play "correctly" and develop proper habits, it's that you should learn to make the best practical decisions to get the best results in accordance with your goals which might include both fun and winning.
Now, there is a subset of people that don't dedicate themselves to the game enough to really improve (which would happen naturally if they would only sit down and actually play) and that still care about ranking and improvement -- at least superficially. In my opinion these sort of optional self-improvement schemes are virtually never likely to lead to significant results outside of the rare case where it kickstarts someone actually sitting down to focus, and therefore they're mostly a waste of time and serve only to entice people who care too much about trivialities like ranking.
Grumbel basically what you said i agree with 100%. I feel it's matter of someone wanting to learn than anything else. A person must evaluate themselves and improve off of what they are weak out and focus less on what they might be stronger at during that time...
and im not exactly sure what purpose would be for GM player to start at bronze and use this system. I mean he's already GM so system that supposely works not going to show any effects on him. It's just setting up the system to look successful, when actually the player himself is already successful before the system.
On November 21 2015 04:51 -StrifeX- wrote: Grumbel basically what you said i agree with 100%. I feel it's matter of someone wanting to learn than anything else. A person must evaluate themselves and improve off of what they are weak out and focus less on what they might be stronger at during that time...
I should add that I teach guitar and I strongly feel that the parallels between music and starcraft are not that great and that people like destiny or jakatak make a mistake whenever they promote the connection. All pro players in SC2 have become good by playing ladder and just improving their weaknesses like that, while no pro players have come from structured methods like the Staircase. There was this anecdote posted on TL which, iirc, was something like: there was a clan with some players that were always silent and hitting the play game button, while others were continuously discussing strategy and watching replays and analyzing and so on. And over time the first group of players would become obviously superior at the game, just because they were actually doing something. I find that story really easy to believe.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SaFWcYr.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UU8k0txh.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bE0jGE1l.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/F0QNeWNl.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://cdn0.gamesports.net/storage/1000/1140.png)
