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Okay, so with the very sudden Season Three lock in a few days, I've been starting to become more active on the ladder, and I've been losing more on the ladder. I am playing Diamond players, but I don't feel like I'm at their level at the current moment. Even other high Plats are giving me trouble. I'll post two replays of my latest ZvT and ZvP.
The ZvT
http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=235959
The ZvP
http://www.gamereplays.org/starcraft2/replays.php?game=33&show=details&id=235960
The ZvT one isn't very long (it only goes to three bases) and the ZvP one is very long (50 minutes). I think looking at the latter is more important because I struggle much more in the late game than before.
Hopefully someone can take the time to look at, and list, all of my errors and hopefully I can practice and fix those before the lock. Thanks.
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A few comments on your first ZvT game :
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7:00 - 8:00 -- Your saturation is less than optimal at your main base, whereas your natural is fully saturated.
8:00 - 9:00 -- You didn't need to lose all of those lings in order to scout, especially when you saw the bunker and the expo. 2-3 lings to check his number of harvesters and / or trying to pick off a mule should have been sufficient.
14:00 -- By this time you know he hasn't taken a 3rd, you should have pulled back and prepared for his inevitable push.
15:00+ -- Your engagement leaves much to be desired. You allowed your banelings to waste on his tank and thors, your injects at your base were not going down (which led to a dismal stream of reinforcements), your mutas were not even involved, and your lings, without any supporting units, were not enough against his tanks, thors, and unscathed marines.
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Keep practicing on your macro, keep those injects going, and making sure that you engage better in the actual engagements.
Comments / Tips on your Engagement :
- Send the roaches in first, quickly followed by the speedlings. You want the tank-shots to go off on the roaches instead of your lings.
- Control the banelings separately, and make them follow the marines, bypassing the tanks and thors. Your lings can clean up when the marines are gone.
- Magic box your mutas over his thor, and snipe tanks while your roach / ling / bling force is engaging the rest of your army. Don't just let them sit idle while you lose the game.
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Hope this helps.
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15:00+ -- Your engagement leaves much to be desired. You allowed your banelings to waste on his tank and thors
Just a comment on this: I was trying to move the baneling behind the Thors into the marines, but for some reason they were wasted on the mech army instead.
Keep practicing on your macro, keep those injects going
Here's a problem I have. Whenever I'm being pressured in even the slightest, I just panic and focus on the engagement and forget about actually macroing. How can I fix this?
Another thing is I use the inject larvae trick, however, I have noticed that it is inaccurate. A lot of the time when I do the trick, a Queen sitting next to a Hatchery will ignore it and go to inject a Hatchery on the other side of the map. However, it's really fast and can be used in an engagement without much trouble. Should I use it over normal inject or not?
- Send the roaches in first, quickly followed by the speedlings. You want the tank-shots to go off on the roaches instead of your lings.
This did happen in the ZvT, actually.
- Magic box your mutas over his thor, and snipe tanks while your roach / ling / bling force is engaging the rest of your army. Don't just let them sit idle while you lose the game.
Well, with the playstyle I use, I spend all of my gas on Banelings and have a small group of Mutas primarily for minor harass, but mostly for stopping drops. Should I make more Mutas instead?
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On October 07 2011 14:44 ProphetFear wrote:Show nested quote +
15:00+ -- Your engagement leaves much to be desired. You allowed your banelings to waste on his tank and thors
Just a comment on this: I was trying to move the baneling behind the Thors into the marines, but for some reason they were wasted on the mech army instead. Here's a problem I have. Whenever I'm being pressured in even the slightest, I just panic and focus on the engagement and forget about actually macroing. How can I fix this? Another thing is I use the inject larvae trick, however, I have noticed that it is inaccurate. A lot of the time when I do the trick, a Queen sitting next to a Hatchery will ignore it and go to inject a Hatchery on the other side of the map. However, it's really fast and can be used in an engagement without much trouble. Should I use it over normal inject or not? Show nested quote +
- Send the roaches in first, quickly followed by the speedlings. You want the tank-shots to go off on the roaches instead of your lings.
This did happen in the ZvT, actually. Show nested quote +
- Magic box your mutas over his thor, and snipe tanks while your roach / ling / bling force is engaging the rest of your army. Don't just let them sit idle while you lose the game.
Well, with the playstyle I use, I spend all of my gas on Banelings and have a small group of Mutas primarily for minor harass, but mostly for stopping drops. Should I make more Mutas instead?
I recommend day9 daily no.309 "The Right and Wrong way to learn"
Doing this helped me with my injects.. I'm by no means a master but now I do them much better than I did before.
Basically he wants you to isolate the problem and prioritize it over anything else, including winning the game.
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For the ZvT, you were in a good position until you made a critical mistake engaging in the middle of the map. When your opponent moves out like that, you want to go to your lings that are furthest away from his army and turn those into banelings. Don't morph the lings that are in the centre of the map, they won't complete in time. For the lings in the middle of the map, you should run around his army to do a counter attack, or simply position them somewhere behind his army for a flank. Keep pumping units until he reaches your creep, and when you're ready, you charge in with everything you have, making sure to target the marines with the banelings. Since you had the economy advantage, it was in your best interest to delay engaging his army as long as possible, as your army would grow in size faster than his.
The second game was pretty hilarious, his mass zealot/sentry/collosus deathball was owned repeatedly by your baneling drops. A few notes:
- if you crush your opponent's army and have units left over, that means you might have over-made units, so you might want to counter attack him afterwards while droning yourself to catch up, or just all-in attack him. In your case, you had a ton of lings left after the first engagement, so drop a dozen into his main, while running some more lings into his third base.
- when doing baneling drops, you can queue up several to drop simultaneously. It is harder to react to them all that way
- you had hardly any upgrades, he was 3-1-3 at the end while you were only 2-1. For a 50 minute game, you should have been 3-3 by the halfway point.
- hive tech is pretty good against protoss, no reason not to tech to brood lords or ultras in such a long game
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ZvP:
Honestly, I watched the first 30 minutes thinking there was no possibility you could lose.
+ Expansions. You need to balance it out. You expanded very aggressively against his forge FE, and you weren't quite prepared for his first push, losing two hatches. Ouch. But later in the game you didn't expand at all, running on only 1-2 mining bases, and by the end, long distance mining from a single base. Try to have 2, preferably 3 mining bases from the mid-game onward. So, maybe slow down on the expos in the beginning, but remember to constantly expand later.
+ Be aggressive. Baneling drops on his mineral line are cute (and effective), but after killing his army, you were re-maxed within 60 seconds, and you could have crushed him. It was 120 food to 200 food. I never saw you attack. If you just A-moved, you would have won.
+ Unit composition. Not really important. You could have won that game with pure lings and banelings, had you actually attacked. But you would have had an even easier time of it if you went tier 3.
There are other things, like scouting and upgrades, but honestly, if you just did the first two, expand and be aggressive, you would have won that easily. Positives: your macro was pretty good.
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EPT
