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.
On November 21 2015 05:40 Grumbels wrote: 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.
I will tell you something, that could be true but depends a lot on the player's talents. A guy who play a lot but have no really good idea of the game or/and can not see their mistakes on replays will not really improve as fast as he could, and will fall behind when changes come because if the things he does work without knowing why, he won't be able to adapt. On the other hand, people who understand a lot of the game and waste more time watching replays could become maybe the best coaches ever, but they will not practice enough to increase their skill ingame, which leads to
1 - Good people playing without knowing exactly why 2 - Good people knowing the game but unable to transfer it to their hands
Both things are important, I prefeer to understand the game instead being good at it, but also few things are good "on paper", so excesively theorycrafting is not good without lot of practice as well.
In a game like StarCraft, it makes sense to make this list of "goals" to get the mechanical skills necessary. The transition from HotS to LotV was hard for me; (I stopped watching streams, and didn't have professional replays) the old build orders and unit compositions obviously would not work, and I could not make anything work. I had to start from the ground up, and that improved my focus. How many times as competitive players have we took the day and said to ourselves "I'll win the next 10 games straight and receive a league promotion, then proceed to hit the Play Now button after a loss just to tell ourselves that we made a mistake that could easily be fixed if you made a slight adjustment? By segmenting each task you can improve your skills as a whole and rather than focusing on a match, you're focused on your own improvement as a player.
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.
To respond to the nested message, you talk about StarCraft being enjoyed when you make practical decisions in order to get the best possible result. The purpose of the StairCase program is improve players' mechanical skill so that it does not limit their ability to make these practical decisions. Many people are new to the genre or game and will never understand the pace of the game if they just pick the game up and play from the get go, atleast that is how I felt.
To your second comment, think about learning how to play the guitar. For an aspiring guitarist who is learning to play for the first time, which would be easier: hearing a song and trying to mimic the sounds until there is some coherency in his play, or learning notes and chords so that he can learn to play everything song?
On November 21 2015 05:40 Grumbels wrote: 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.
I will tell you something, that could be true but depends a lot on the player's talents. A guy who play a lot but have no really good idea of the game or/and can not see their mistakes on replays will not really improve as fast as he could, and will fall behind when changes come because if the things he does work without knowing why, he won't be able to adapt. On the other hand, people who understand a lot of the game and waste more time watching replays could become maybe the best coaches ever, but they will not practice enough to increase their skill ingame, which leads to
1 - Good people playing without knowing exactly why 2 - Good people knowing the game but unable to transfer it to their hands
Both things are important, I prefeer to understand the game instead being good at it, but also few things are good "on paper", so excesively theorycrafting is not good without lot of practice as well.
The second type of player doesn't exist, unless you're talking about the highest level of play where absolute speed becomes important. What you call an inability to transfer knowledge to your hands is an euphemism for simply not knowing what to do in any given situation. Virtually any player is physically capable of the same speeds as your typical person in GM, they're just not as good because they don't know what they're doing. As your understanding improves your mechanics will improve, they're largely intertwined.
I think your mistake is equating what is really the ability to express yourself with an actual understanding of the game. If you're a very strong player yet you can't explain your decision making process to others then that's a complete side issue, totally irrelevant to the question of your playing strength.
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.
To respond to the nested message, you talk about StarCraft being enjoyed when you make practical decisions in order to get the best possible result. The purpose of the StairCase program is improve players' mechanical skill so that it does not limit their ability to make these practical decisions. Many people are new to the genre or game and will never understand the pace of the game if they just pick the game up and play from the get go, atleast that is how I felt.
To your second comment, think about learning how to play the guitar. For an aspiring guitarist who is learning to play for the first time, which would be easier: hearing a song and trying to mimic the sounds until there is some coherency in his play, or learning notes and chords so that he can learn to play everything song?
What I call practical decision making involves mechanics, play style, strategy, it's not narrowly focused on build orders and unit compositions. It's about acquiring some measure of control over the outcome of the game and treating it as a game, not a series of tricks or feats. It's about crafting a play style which is robust and effective, i.e. it allows you to make decisions that affect the outcome of the game. I don't think the Staircase lets you do any of this. (example: adding spare barracks that correspond to your level of mechanics, or learning to appreciate the importance of scouting and responding to your opponent's unit composition)
To be honest I have a tendency to distrust most methods and tutorials, since uniformly they're based on someone's personal background as a guitar player, psychology student, basketball coach or whatever, who then try to map their experiences to learning Starcraft without appreciating that all good Starcraft players are a product of mass gaming and not of structured practice methods. You can't ignore the evidence and just use some outside method to no particular success and then expect that people give your theories credit just because you made a fanciful parallel to some other, totally different field.
I don't get the OP. No one is going around saying anything about this specific improvement guide to playing SC2, which is one of many guides to playing SC2, so I can only presume that it is only a thinly veiled promotion of said improvement guide. The music analogy makes no sense either. Last time I looked, playing music didn't involve an opponent trying to defeat you. So what would be the best analogy? Not that there needs to be an analogy. Well SC2 is essentially a 1v1 sports. There's loads of 1v1 sports and they other than stuff like physical training there only exists one way to improve. Mindfully playing practice matches.
How does this transfer to SC2? 1) Play the game. preferably ladder. I go to chat channels and see players asking how to improve, yet they have played less than 10 ladder games over a period of months. There's no point asking how to improve if you aren't playing the game.
2) Be mindful. This can be achieved from many ways, from over complicated way that no one can understand like the link provided in the OP, which seems to involve registering to another website and only a fifth of the post is actually dedicated with what to do, or repeating a simple mantra of building more stuff. Or telling new people to watch pro replays becuase it's simple to type.
In the end, anybody who plays mindfully will improve faster than a method which no one can adequately explain even in the very post that it is advertised under.
Yeah, I don't get that either. Don't you already have a thread about this thing? You saying that there are any "misconceptions" about the thing, but that silently assumes that there are people talking about it, which I do not observe to happen. Nobody is saying that you can't follow your favorite approach to SC2, but I think you are extremely overestimating how much other people care about it.
Yes, some of these threads are old, but new players often ask for strategies and as you can see the often asked questions regarding TheStaircase.
And I am bombarded with questions "How to improve" and "TheStaircase does not teach to scout, right?".
There are many, many misconceptions regarding TheStaircase.
===
If you teach guitar you should know techniques like
Though this is not a guitar it demonstrates: Simple techniques. Repetition. I am a basketball coach for 16 years now. I know how ppl learn. I do not teach the "Triangle Offense" if my team can't dribble the ball correctly or play a simple Give and Go.
If someone wants to play 40 games a week using ProGamer BO's and ProGamer-Micro, he will learn the game, but keep in mind he then will complete TheStaircase in a few days. I think you can complete TheStaircase in 100 games from #1 to #7. But if one has a job and family, he might only achieve 5 games a week. And then TheStaircase is better for him then doing the ProGamer-Way.
Even TLO says: "It seems to me that far too often lower league players are tying themselves unnecessarily to the way progamers play. They see, learn and even get taught builds of progamers, without adjusting them to their own skill level. Let me give you an example of how you can change that and probably have a better personal experience with the game.
Let's say you're Zerg, you're on 3 bases and struggle with macroing. You tend to float minerals and gas like it's nobody's business and get frustrated after another loss with 2000 minerals unspent. Macro is hard! But it doesn't have to be, it's only that hard if you want to play ''perfectly'' but aren't yet capable of it. So how can you make it easier? Don't entirely copy progamers!" Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/495925-tlo-on-macro-mechanics
TheStaircase encourages ppl to play the game. My students often times were afraid of the 1on1-Ladder. Playing TheStaircase often times (more than 80%) leads to more games, because winning and loosing does not matter anymore. The player tries to improve, he tries to play better Macro & Mechanics. And he has fun doing it.
Hey Guys, I'm one of those guys who are displayed in the opening post. I came in touch with TheStaircase about a year ago, when a new guy called MiSu (also mentioned in the OP) joined the clan. He trained newbies all day long. These noobs made pretty good progress and became solid training partners after some time. We had a little talk because I wanted to know about this method he was using and why is he was teaching it. He mentioned, that a good learning way is: Keep it simple! Try to focus on one thing only. To train, Mechanics, Micro, Macro, Scouting, Multitasking all at once would be the opposite and really difficult. Focus on Macro, improve your Macro, learning the right Mechanics for it along the way. So the rest needs to be simplified as much as possible. Therefore he used TheStaircase, keeping the Units and Tech simple and set the students focus on the most important part of StarCraft 2: Macro.
Shortly after our conversation, he wrote a little German guide. I got suspicious how this could work, lings to master. Now I needed to give this one a try. A Zerg guide was written, so I needed to try another race, so Protoss was choosen and I wanted to write a guide myself, because I wanted to challenge myself in an educational way of playing StarCraft. As a self-experiment I wanted to see how far Macro can go. With my own stricter version of TheStaircase I raised up from Bronze to Diamand within 75 games. Surly masters would be cool, but Protoss isn't that entertaining than playing my mainrace and I don't like grinding games. I tried the same few weeks ago in LotV and it still works great, got diamond with TheStaircase within 60 Games. So there is no need to build couter units or any fancy strats to get into the higher leagues, Macro is enough
Also TheStaircase is pretty easy to execute so every beginner can play it and can get used to StarCraft without overextending. Also they are forced to figure out things themself. Everyone higher than average can easily point out, what problems they have with Macro, when analyzing their Replays.
For myself I needed to get used to way less options in Scouting and Harassing. So figuring it out is pretty cool. Scouting, getting used to StaticD, when adding Gas go get full use of it, spend the money in a efficient way. It might sound strange, but it helped me a lot, to see the game from a "Noob perspective".
TheStaircase is a cool tool to improve at the most important thing in StarCraft the Macro. I can highly recommend it for new player and for everyone below Diamond/Master. You can make it into Masters without TheStaircase like I did. In retrospective I was more unfocused at the game and took a lot more time to get better.
Hope I could give you a little overview from a player perspective.
And I'm sorry for my bad English skills, am not used to this language anymore :/
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SaFWcYr.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bE0jGE1l.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/F0QNeWNl.jpg)
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