I have a replay! But first id like to say ive been playing SC on and off for years, but never like this before. Back a few years ago in Highschool i just used to play money as toss. Now I'm back and trying to learn the "Right" way to play. Its fun and interesting because its all new to me. Ive read the reccomended threads and browsed around but still have some questions. Whats a soft and hard counter? I mean what do they mean? How does one get involved in iccup? Is it worth it for someone as bad as me? How do the ratings work? And thats about it for now..
As for my playing. Ive all the builds for toss and i think i understand the purpose of them. I guess im not good at scouting my opponent or understanding what counters what. Whenever i go for more troops vs tech, i seem to get stopped anyway then their tech kills me. If i tech or FE i get rushed and vice versa
The other thing is too, i need help killing supported seige tanks. They are my bane. I dread playing against terran just because of them. Its easier if i can flank them somehow but say on LT when you have cliffs on each side its quite hard flank and i cant win head to head.
As for this game, why i lost. I would say im slow in my macro. I'm pretty good early game i think, but when theres more things to worry about i loose track of others. Put pressure on me so i have to defend? Really screws up my macro. Any tips for this or is it just practice? My unit production was slow as was my tech. I saw he was teching right away and i tried a small push, but was stopped. I was going to try to go lots/goons/archons/arbs with a DT drop but he just outproduced me and got me on that push. I know i suck horribly, please be nice. I havnt won a game yet and i try to play noobs. Heres the rep: http://repdepot.net/replay.php?id=29108
yeah i play toss and i hate the PvT matchup because of tanks as well. Playing terran lategame is a bitch and i reccommend that you either try to finish the game early, or out-macro the shit out of them. if however, tanks and a support units are giving you trouble, go for zealot bombs. they rape tanks even when supported with vults. on the occasion that you do go into late game with terran, arbiters with stasis and offensive recalls are the way to go. arbiters can efffectively cripple the terran economy and with enough scouting, you can even shut down their main unit production building. stasis is used to put tanks out of commision so that you will not have to face the brunt of the terran army at once ,and you can pick off the tanks easier
a hard counter is more of something being a direct counter. Kind of like zerglings and swarm being a hard counter to goons. A soft counter would be something that works, but isn't a direct counter. Like hydralisks against goons. It can work, though, with proper micro.
Thanks for those definitions, if anyone watches the replay can you offer some advice? or am i right with just being slow...
Ill try zealot bombs, i did stop my friends tank push once by flanking with reavers from behind his tank line while i pushed, but he just messed up making turrets..
I'm not too keen on the strategy of PvP (Because I'm a terran and I also hate watching pro pvp), but there's a couple of things I saw which I thought would help you.
1. Rally your gateways to your choke. Instead of going back every time to get them from your gateways and move them to your choke, rallying does this automatically.
2. Consider your tech choices more carefully. You built DTs after he had observers out. True, they helped during the reaver drop, but, besides that, they did very little. Also, you built two stargates and an arbiter tribunal and didn't really do much with them.
3. When you expand, move 6-8 probes from your main to your natural. This is called maynarding, and it's done so that you can reach full saturation at both bases quicker (because 2 nexuses make probes faster than one).
When you just started the match, you sent all your probes to the same mineral patch. This makes that your probes will wait for the others to finish mining the patch and slows your mineral count down. Try to send them to different patches at the start so your economy will be better during the first minutes. This is called 'splitting'.
Alright guys. I tried some of your suggestions and i can see some improvement. I got a win over a terran, but he was worse than me which is a hard feat. I played my friend who plays terran twice, got raped both times. The first time with tanks, i was late getting the leg upgrade so that didnt help.
The second time i think i played pretty damn well, he just seems faster. I didnt watch the replay yet but the game was pretty much over. He lost his attacking/only force but left me with 2-3 goons and a drop took out all my probes at my main, so in the end i was more setback then him. I probably could have tried to recover but i wanted to get into another game and he would have rolled over me anyway.
Anyway.. take a look at my playing in this one and give me any pointers you have, i didnt watch it yet. I think my friends pretty damn good at toss, at least to me.
Wow, 42 apm. Firstly, you don't need to worry about why you lost too much, because the answer is your mechanics. Everyone starts out this way, but you basically need to get amped up and play faster. You also need a build order that you use. Just one, with variations depending on what your opponent is doing. For example, in PvT you might do a 2 gate goon -> expand build, and you watch your opponents fact timing carefully to determine when you are expanding/teching/adding gates and macroing. Subtle things and finer details of strategy aren't all that important. Just get a good build and learn it inside and out, and work on mechanics. I would also suggest watching a few FPVods of decent players. Not necessarily progamers though, because its very difficult to jump from 42 apm beginner to progamer. But watch some mid level foreigners and just see that they do soo much more, and see how they use the UI and stuff like that.
On January 18 2010 08:32 Sc1pio wrote: move 6-8 probes from your main to your natural. This is called maynarding
No it's not. Seriously stop calling it that. It's getting really annoying.
Yes, it is called maynarding. Enlighten yourself before trying to correct others.
lol owned.
as far as your issues, start out slow. go into single player and practice doing a few builds off liquipedia ( i recommend 1gate obs for pvt, ffe into +1 speedlot for pvz, and 2gate reaver for pvp). Once you know them by heart up to like 50-60 supply, go onto iccup and apply those builds to multiplayer. You'll get your ass handed to you a lot, but eventually you'll find yourself winning. Also, once you have builds down you can concentrate on making your hands move faster because your build will be second nature. Always watch replays when you lose, and if you can't figure out why you lost, ask someone. PM me on iccup and I can help you out sometime. stoned_rabbit.
I have a couple of newbie questions of my own if Dabba doesn't mind. When I am first starting I am really trying to focus on my BO and I have trouble scouting. I know I want to keep my probe in his base as long as possible but what way should I go about it?
Right now I am hot-keying my probe and then I hold shift and keep clicking in the vicinity of his base (using the minimap) to string a chain of commands for my probe and keep him moving. When I'm there I might then do the same thing but click around his base, mainly making my probe do a z-pattern back and forth. But I find that I can't actually micro him because my BO will suffer greatly. Is there a better way than what I am currently doing for my skill level?
Also, is splitting the same thing as cloning? I'm not good enough to do it yet but I find myself, after the probes initially head to the same minerals, selecting one at a time on the way back to the nexus and assigning them to a different mineral patch.
Yeah im not that good at keeping the scouting probe alive. I hotkey my nexus so i can just shoot back to main to continue my build as each probe finishes
not messing up your BO is about 10x more important than keeping your scouting worker alive. Basically you have to get into the habit of going back every 2-3 seconds while keeping your BO in tact... just got to practice it a lot
Also after you get your b.os down as much as people are against it, spamming a bit at the start of a game HELPS before I did it in the middle of a game my max apm would be like 120 then after starting games off with a little spamming I can hit 220 for a few moments ingame. And with it helping me play faster my aims gone from 60-130ish
EPT
