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Hello,
I am plat T, playing T again after a long switch to Z.
I want to improve and at least get to diamond at the end of the next season, but I suck terribly, especially in TvP, where I lose approx 90% of my games
Here is a typical replay :
1 vs 1 TvP Bel Shir Beach
I want to know everything that sucked, I know there is a lot of things, a terrible amount of bad plays.
My feelings on this match :
- I was not able to pressure with marines because of good stalker presence, he wounded a lot of my rines
- I was supply blocked for 1 / 2 mins @ 78 pop which is bad because I missed a window
- Medivacs were very late
- When I engage, I have 25 / 30 supply more, but I moved to put my units in good position instead of fighting, and lost a lot. I did not have enough vikings too.
However, this is really a typical TvP for me. As long as there are colossi, I lose, it s simple. It takes too much time to get a critical amount of vikings and when I go late game, I lose against Colossi + HT, no matter what I do.
I tried the 3 CC build Day9 explained but I get crushed by 2 colossi all ins with this.
I don't know what to do :
- stick with a standard build
- go 1/1/1 and punish fast expands
I watch some streams of higher players and it seems I am not the only one with this problem...
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first of all, 111s dont punish FEs
Things you did wrong were:
float 1000 minerals when you were attacking.
the 12 minute attack without medivacs and combat shield
slow medivacs
I think the best way to play is to get hyper aggressive once you get medivacs, you didnt
Into the late game you did 3 things wrong:
wait too long with engaging, you were maxed WAY too long before you engaged. Resulting into floating resources and such
Have wrong unit composition (too many marauders not enough ghosts
Terrible micro/army positioning <--- prolly cost you the game
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The search function really helps.
Just a couple of things you'd find:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=290571
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=232753
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=303159
The first is an all-inish timing attack before 10 that relies on a combination of killing a few SCVs with an early Hellion drop, and Raven/PDD. If executed well it can be very effective.
The second is a really complete 111 framework for dealing with all kinds of scenarios, where the core involves a timing push around 150 food. It was created before the BFH nerf, so that bit is dated, but it's still a solid standard build that you can adapt to circumstances. (e.g. if you detect an early expand, you can either drop your expansion earlier, or go for the Thor all in.)
The third is just one version of the 1 Rax FE, of which there are many.
Against Colossus, the trick is to scout it in time and have a plan for how you're going to deal with that in your build order to get Vikings out.
Against HT, if you don't go for the kill before storms are up, you definitely need to work on Ghost and Bio micro or you'll have a difficult time.
Finally, so much depends on macro. It's quite possible to FE and have no more economy by 10:00 than a well-executed non-FE build, if your own execution is not that great.
EDIT
Just to piggyback on MrBGJM below, you have 72 food incl 38 SCVs at 10:00. (+2 casualties) With a 1 Rax FE and good macro mechanics, it's possible to have around 100 food at 10:00, of which about 50 are SCVs. So there's a basic benchmark to shoot for with this build.
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As much as tactics are a nice thing to learn and get into, they arn't worth the practice until mid~high diamond.
Quite honestly, you could easily make diamond doing nothing but 3 rax pushes while expanding into 6 rax marine only. You barely even need to scout a whole bunch.
The bottom line is having the best mechanics.
You seem to always have wayyyyy too many resources and that is a fault of mechanics, if you spend your money you just win games, im not even joking.
Going for timing pushes and doing all these really elaborate schemes they are fun and nice, but unless you have the mechanics to pull them off and make units and make workers and get upgrades and expand and etc etc etc, it really is a waste of time.
If you have better mechanics (micro macro) you will simply outplay your opponent all day long and become better than those you play on the ladder easily, then and only then, when you have solid mechanics and can you do things like getting things ghosts with emp and doing a drop an expansion while expanding making units and pressuring his front.
Simply put, master your mechanics before anything else, you wont find any good players in mid~high diamond who wouldnt have mastered mechanics.
No seriously, if you have good mechanics a zerg player can do nothing but make queens and drones and get into diamond.
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How do you want to kill/ pull ahead of the toss?
There is like 3 common answeres.
1: 2 rax deny his nexus or kill some probes and you have your cc done
2: Harass 1-1-1ich with banshee or hellion drop.
3: Do a 2 base medivac timing.
Have a simple plan and try to execute it as effective as possible. Reading a 10 page guide written for high master/ gm players when they play against the same probably dont give as mush.
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1. you don't let them kite your marines like that
2. double ebays before starport?
3. your main was over saturated at one point while your nat had like only 12 scvs
4. 2base mining and still sitting pretty 4 at rax, you should drop another 4 when you decide to drop your mules like that
5. saw colossi tech at 1st engagement, didn't mass viking. 4 colossi you must have at least 16 vikings to win that shit
6. not enough vikings, no ghost.
7. macro
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As a Protoss player, the best situation for me is when a Terran player decides that he wants to go against my death ball. When my Observer scouts a Terran moving out, I automatically feel that I win (and I do win 95% of my death ball games). The games I lose? When the Terran goes for heavy harass and messes up my upgrades and Collosi off of two bases. That makes it VERY hard to take a third (because HTs and Collosi are your fail-safe for getting a third) and it's almost impossible to attack into bunkers, turrets, and sieged tanks. Basically, I endorse a LOT more harassment. That is one way to weaken his death ball and econ before he can get to the stage of Protoss where he automatically gets to 200/200 every time you kill his army, with a TON of Archons, Chargelots, and High Templars.
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On January 22 2012 22:34 DePHIB wrote:Hello, I am plat T, playing T again after a long switch to Z. I want to improve and at least get to diamond at the end of the next season, but I suck terribly, especially in TvP, where I lose approx 90% of my games Here is a typical replay : 1 vs 1 TvP Bel Shir BeachI want to know everything that sucked, I know there is a lot of things, a terrible amount of bad plays. My feelings on this match : - I was not able to pressure with marines because of good stalker presence, he wounded a lot of my rines - I was supply blocked for 1 / 2 mins @ 78 pop which is bad because I missed a window - Medivacs were very late - When I engage, I have 25 / 30 supply more, but I moved to put my units in good position instead of fighting, and lost a lot. I did not have enough vikings too. However, this is really a typical TvP for me. As long as there are colossi, I lose, it s simple. It takes too much time to get a critical amount of vikings and when I go late game, I lose against Colossi + HT, no matter what I do. I tried the 3 CC build Day9 explained but I get crushed by 2 colossi all ins with this. I don't know what to do : - stick with a standard build - go 1/1/1 and punish fast expands I watch some streams of higher players and it seems I am not the only one with this problem...
Okay, I will nitpick on some VERY small things, but they matter. I will also tell you small details that would make a BIG difference.
1) You build your Supply Depot 50 minerals late. Why is this important? YOU'RE BEHIND. Protoss has Chrono Boost. Every second you fall behind is 1.5 seconds ahead that Protoss gets in terms of worker production. So simply put, being a second behind is MORE penalizing that it looks against Protoss if they are hitting their Chrono Boosts. 50 Minerals is like 3 real time seconds, which is like 4-5 in game seconds, which is 6-7.5 seconds you're behind in economy, and 4-5 seconds you're behind in tech.
2) You sent your Supply Depot-making SCV to scout. Have it make a Barracks instead. There is NO REASON OTHER THAN PROXY GATES to scout that early with your SCV. And since your base is walled off with just a Barracks and a Depot, THERE IS NO REASON TO SCOUT THAT EARLY. If he put Gateways INSIDE your base, then fine scout inside your base; the lost mining time is significantly less than having a SCV scout a minute faster than it should, which basically moves your build 50 minerals faster, which means your CC goes down even faster, which means SCVs get made earlier which means more eco which means more shit.
3) You took way too much damage from the Probe harass. You lost an SCV and you constantly pulled workers off the line. Your build is 50-100 minerals slower (which now you're like 200 minerals mining time behind, which means you could've gotten your CC up quite a bit earlier. Pull off ONE SCV, click on it, and ignore it for the rest of the game unless it goes home (then pull your SCV back before it gets baited into a Probe surround in his Mineral line or a Zealot/Stalker bait). If he occasionally turns around his Probe to damage your SCV, then swap SCVs now and then. To be honest, as long as he doesn't harass your Barracks-building SCV, you can ignore it completely unless it drops a Pylon or a Gateway. But you actually lost a SCV that you shouldn't. You pull your injured SCV back, and pull the ones around it to kill the Probe.
4) You didn't scout. All your scouting did was allow you to say "I WAS IN HIS BASE!" You didn't count his Pylons, you probably didn't give a damn about how many Geysers he had, you didn't know his expansion timing, you didn't even know his Gateway count or the amount of energy on his Nexus. Granted, if you have photographic memory, you could've spotted MOST of these things at a glance; but I doubt you have photographic memory.
-Be ACTIVE with your scouting. Best case scenario, you see something big, AND you keep your SCV alive to mine more Minerals at home.
-1 Gas means he's not going tech heavy right away, which leaves it at a 1 Gate Expand or a 4 Gate (I threw out any 3 Gate variants because they SUCK without Sentries, which NEEDS 2 Gas). So try and see his expansion timing or assume he's going for a 1 base all in (with or without a later second Gas).
-2 Gas means scary shit: DT, VR, 1 Base Colo (O.o)/Robo builds, 3 Gate pressure. If you see him go with 2 Gas and do a 1 Gate Expand, then that means you have a timing to punish him for it. I'm not good enough to know exactly what it is and how you should/can hit it, but I assume standard Barracks pressure or a Bunker should suffice. Test it out yourself and see if you ever get the chance on that one.
-Nexus first, drop Bunkers on him. xD
-Watch what he's spending Chrono Boosts on. If he spends them on his Nexus, you can guess that he's going for an eco-focused build into the mid-game. If he spends it on his Cybernetics Core, he either wants to put on pressure or have Warp Gates up to defend your pressure. If he spends it on his Gateway, he wants you to gtfo.
5) Your CC was dropped at 450 minerals. And it was dropped outside your base. If he went for a 4 Gate or 3 Gate expand (and the information you got says that it's a BIG possibility for a 4 Gate), you'd be dead or shitting your pants. You didn't know where to put your CC, so that delayed you putting it down, but pick a place and put it there. If it's a bad decision, change it next game, but be decisive about what you are going to do. If you scouted his Nexus or him Chrono Boosting Probes like crazy, then a CC outside is fine.
6) You clearly don't use hotkeys as much as you should. This is a BIG thing, because it caused you (among other small things like not dropping your buildings RIGHT when they need to be dropped) to miss a BIG timing to do damage. You moved out with your Marine squad (more on that later), and due to you spending WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much time on your Barracks, left them sitting at the Xel'Naga Watchtower. What you did with your Barracks could've been done in 3 seconds! You took at least 10! What did your opponent do in that time? He finished producing 3 additional Stalkers and reinforced his initial Stalker, which scared you and made you go home. 3 (esc as many times as needed to clear ques) x x c 33 (click tech lab) t 11 - DONE! Try that sequence out. Try to do it as quickly as possible. You'll find you can easily do it in no time at all! Then go back at the replay and look at yourself meticulously click EACH BARRACKS, cancel EACH QUE, and make EACH ADDON ONE AT A TIME. If everything up until now was executed perfectly, you should've been at your opponent's natural when you were at the Xel'Naga Watchtower. Also, your Starports were never hotkeyed, which means your Medivac and Viking production wasn't fluid, which means your Viking production was subpar (which you found out everytime you engaged).
7) Your macro needs work. Not getting supply blocked, making sure you're ALWAYS producing units, HOTKEYING PRODUCTION BUILDINGS. There were periods of time where if I were in your position, I would've hit my CC and Barracks hotkeys 5 times over each to make sure they were making something. And you only had 4 Barracks hotkeyed for the longest time, when you had 6 of them. This means your production suffers, which means you have less stuff, which means you're less likely to win battles.
8) (Now we're getting to more tactical stuff) When that Stalker went past your Bunker and poked at your Barracks, he should've died. Quickly unload your Barracks in the direction of the Stalker (rally the Bunker forward then press d for unload and quickly box select all your Marines), and stutter step micro INTO the Stalker. The Stalker dies, he loses map control gained from that Stalker, and you take no damage. Worst case scenario, he has perfect micro and kills 2 Marines. 100 Minerals and 2 supply for 125 Minerals, 50 Gas, and 2 supply. The gas alone makes it a good trade. He's out 50 Gas for Sentries, Colossi, Robotics Facility/Bay, Twilight Council, ANYTHING that he could've skipped a Stalker to rush for. This also means he has less map control/presence.
9) The timing when you decided to move out and pressure the Protoss with your Marines was PERFECT. The problem was your micro when chasing the Stalker. DON'T SPAM CLICKS ON IT! You want to move forward past the Stalker. If he tries to kite you, that means he has to stop momentarily to attack. When you get close to the Stalker, start stutter stepping forward (if you have the mouse accuracy, also try to focus fire weak/single Stalkers). If they get too greedy with the Stalker, it WILL die. Also, while doing this, click on weakened/singled out Marines and move them to the back of the group while you're moving the group forward. If you have the APM to spam clicks, you have the APM to do this, even with poor mouse accuracy. The problem was that you delayed the push by spending an eternity on your Barracks. Even though you delayed your push, you STILL COULD'VE DONE WORTHWHILE DAMAGE! If you went in earlier though, you could've killed ALL of his units (with good micro and focus firing), as well as delaying mining and maybe killing a few Probes. When you engage with your Marines, your goal is singular - SNIPE GAS UNITS. If he has Zealots, try to kite away from them first if you can, but your goal is to kill Sentries (easiest targets) and Stalkers. If you went in, I GUARANTEE you would've killed all 3 of his Sentries (which would've changed the game DRAMATICALLY). Get in, focus fire Sentries (even if he Force Fields you, select the Marines that have been trapped and focus fire Sentries). When the Force Fields wear off, start kiting Stalkers into the walls. If he refuses to engage, kill Probes and force him to pull them off mining. The result is that your Barracks are set up without him being able to pressure you, he either has to continue the game without Sentries or has to delay his tech in order to get more Sentries (300 Gas is no joke. That's a Robotics Facility and a Robotics Bay right there!), and you delayed his economy slightly (and the mining power of 2 MULEs put you ahead). You're basically delaying the entire game in your favor.
10) Your second attack (Stim timing) was poorly executed. You scanned his natural and saw 3 Sentries with full energy (12 Force Fields on a ramp that requires 3 to block), a Colossus, Thermal Lance researching, 3 Stalkers, and like 4 Zealots. Seeing that, you should KNOW you couldn't engage up the ramp. You would lose VERY badly (as you now know). However, the battle went well at first. You sniped his Colossus. At that point, you should've had your dead units (units trapped by Force Fields) focus fire the Sentries and try to kill them and have the rest of your army retreat. You are doing NOTHING by trying to force yourself up the ramp. You traded relatively evenly for the Colossus, but after that, the trade went in his favor. If you JUST traded half of your army for his Colossus and 3 Sentries, you're in a GREAT position. You traded a bunch of Mineral unit for gas heavy units (500 Gas).
11) The instant you saw Colossi, you should've went double Starport with Reactors. Swap out the Reactors on your Barracks if you feel you really need to. More Vikings and Medivacs will do you more good than a few extra Marines. 4 Medivacs is all you really need (though more is nice until you hit like more than 8, which is overkill, but can be used for drops). Rest to Vikings.
12) You maxed out faster than he did. Unless you have upgrades about to finish, trade armies or do SOMETHING to drop your supply (and hopefully trade well). There's no reason to sit around maxed as it give your opponent nothing but time to catch up. When you attacked his bases, you didn't need your whole army to do that. Pull off a small group (with a Medivac so maybe you can transition to escape and drop another base) and harass his bases instead. If he pulls his whole army, then punch another or critical location. Protosses are prone to 1A syndrome. Punish them for not splitting their armies. Even if you lose units and he doesn't lose any of his army, he's still at HIS base, and you only lost a handful of units, which should easily have been replenished (since you're maxed and are probably generating a bank of resources), so you're safe from counterattacks. HOWEVER, you STILL want to do damage with this harass (unless you keep all your units alive then I guess just pull back and try again a little later).
13) The last engage was BAD. You were low on Vikings (poor rallies and poor macro; shift rally your Starports to the front of your base then to your Vikings or straight to your Vikings), so his Colossi didn't die remotely fast enough. The problem was your formation. You were is a triangle/ball formation, which is GREAT or Colossi and Psi Storms. How should you have engaged? Well, make a concave, an ARC around his units. It was kind of hard given that his expansion and it's cannons were in the way, but that just means you should engage somewhere more open. Instead you sort of sat in a ball, ate Storms in the face, and died. If your army was spread out better, you would've taken less damage from splash, and more of your units would be doing damage. It's pretty simple. It's like splitting Marines against Banelings, but with MUCH more margin for error. Right before you go in, pull half of the group to go to the side, then pull a smaller portion of that group further to the side, and repeat until you get an arc (do this to both sides of your army if you have the APM). Or you can pre-split (like in TvZ), then Stim and go in. Most of your army will clump back up, but it will be a MUCH more spread out formation than if you went in as a ball, and if you split while the units went in, you will retain a good arc formation. Spreading and splitting DURING a battle is sort of a last resort; basically when he comes at you and you go "OH SHIT! I'M NOT READY FOR THIS ENGAGE!"
14) Early on, with your first 3 Marines, I did not like their formation. Yes, it's nice to split and get an arc, but consider the ground that they are covering. If he pokes from either side, only 1 Marine would be engaging a Stalker. If he sends a Probe, then it's good, but if he sends a Stalker, it's a 1 on 1 fight.
15) When you take your third base (when you make the CC), make 3-5 Barracks at the same time (whatever gets you to the 7 Barracks mark) and hotkey them immediately. Doing things this way, your Barracks production will never be late and you will always have all your Barracks easily accessible to make units. More units=good. I go with 2 Reactors and rest Tech Labs (unless I go into a ridiculous Barracks count or Marine/Ghost/Medivac/Viking, then I'll make more Reactors obviously). I liked your third base timing. Expanding behind pressure is always good unless your pressure gets RAPED like it did. In-base 3rd CCs are also good since you can expand whenever you feel safe and if you need to defend, just put up Bunkers at the front, which is easy to defend.
Like I said, a lot of this was little stuff. They are very easy to fix (the mechanical ones) and the tactical ones come simply with more practice. I used to suck at splitting against Banelings, but now it's pretty easy to do (even if it's sloppy, it'll be effective). As a result, splitting against Protoss or making an arc before any engage is pretty easy. Knowing your Marines would do damage in the beginning comes from trying it and watching as Protoss players don't micro their Sentries or spend their micro on Sentries as you kill their Stalkers. Knowing to back off after you killed the Colossus comes from playing often enough to gauge that you had no chance of winning the battle. Knowing to snipe Sentries comes simply from being told it's a good thing to do and realizing it's AMAZINGLY easy in practice as well as theory. I mean, even if you don't kill them, you likely weren't going to kill much or anything else and those units were dead anyway, so might as well squeeze out every bit of use from them (which becomes a mentality you stretch out across your play and eventually through hundreds or thousands of games makes you good at trading, microing, and gauging fights before they happen).
I don't argue your decision to go for early double upgrades (I do this myself, though I take my gasses later and take 3-4 at once to power my tech), but you need to understand your gas income. Looking at your gas and the double EBays, you should realize you won't have enough gas to do both immediately, which means you spent 125 mineral that could've been spent later, which frees up that 125 to be spent somewhere else. It takes a bit of practice and experience to get a blind feel for this sort of stuff. Good players actually just link timings with something else. Like "oh, my 4th Gas finished, so I should make this building now" or "I finished this upgrade (or halfway done or 1/3 done or 2/3 done), so I should make this building immediately or expand immediately". Your Armory should've went down earlier (obviously). Try to keep track of the process of your upgrades so you know when to drop your Armory. Even if you start your upgrades earlier than me, I will finish 3/3 faster if I continue them seamlessly.
Your Starport timing was fine (prefer the second one to go up earlier, and AGAIN - hotkeys). Having it out earlier instead of upgrades gives you a different path. Going with upgrades means you're trying to win a war of upgrades in exchange for losing out a bit in tech. You still gain an advantage either way, though Medivacs come out faster, but upgrades cost less gas so it means it's easier to start them earlier. (I play greedy and go for both ASAP, starting +1/1 around the time I start my Factory.) Having a Starport however, means you are more mobile, which means you can threaten to drop him. Upgrades give you no such pressure, but they DO say "hey, my army is stronger than yours". Being up 2 upgrades is big in a battle. So Starport gives mobility and durability while Upgrades threaten a strong frontal push or engage - something to consider when choosing one over the other (drops are the generally suggested tech path because they allow you to be aggressive yet pretty damn safe due to the added mobility; and mobility and aggression means Protoss has to stay on their toes). Also, get Turrets up. If he went DTs, you would've taken a lot of damage, whether it been 1 base or 2 base DTs.
I didn't see any engage where you had 20+ supply over your opponent except the last one, which was just a bad engage (he might've been ahead in upgrades too, 3/3 vs 2/2).
Again, Marine pressure WOULD'VE done damage as long as you focus fire Sentries and Stalkers with good micro.
Medivacs were late as a result of early double upgrades (if you sit in your base, Upgrades are better; if you want to move out, Medivacs are better since they let you retreat and drop his main if your army pulls him out of position).
12 Vikings is all you really need. With EMPs, even if he has more Colossi, they will be weaker at the start of the fight. better to sacrifice a LITTLE on Vikings to have more Ghosts. I think the acceptable value of Vikings to Colossi is 2 Vikings to 1 Colossi. You NEED Ghosts in the late game. Good Psi Storms are deadly, and EMPs damage the Protoss army anyway. And if you're maxed, try to have your Vikings a little bit ahead of your main army. If you can catch his army and snipe Colossi for free, GREAT! If you trade all your Vikings for all of his Colossi before a fight, you are GOLDEN! If he tries to blink into your Vikings and doesn't see the bio ball behind it, his Stalkers die (and Colossi are much less scary without Gateway units blocking for them).
And I don't know what 3 CC build Day[9] talked about, but it seems quite greedy (just by hearing it's name). 2 CCs is where you are safe until you get something (like Stim+Medivacs) or do something (pressure him with a small push or drops) to keep yourself safe. Straight up going 3 CC seems dangerous to me. This isn't TvZ where Marines+Bunkers and maybe a few Tanks keeps you safe from a ton of all ins. Also, be mindful of how many Bunkers you put up (for future reference). If you do something like a non-committed Bunker pressure (drop a Bunker at his natural and he didn't spot it) and did a lot of damage with it, THEN putting up a bunch of Bunkers is a good idea because you're ahead (so you don't want to take damage from any sort of dumb all in). However, if you're even and you're scared of pressure and put up 3-4 Bunkers, that's 300-400 Minerals you used to commit to defense, which means he can freely spend 400 Minerals to expand (keep this in mind when Protoss threatens a 6 Gate or some sort of 2 base all in, which is why it's important to have units out on the map to scout for expansions). You are now behind and turtling (which means you aren't likely to expand anytime soon). Drops will then be your only way of getting back into the game, but if he's good he'll know that and be perfectly ready for every drop you do.
To be honest, your build is perfectly fine. It wasn't the build that was bad, it was your execution (not macroing/controlling perfectly) and decision-making that cost you the game (more so decision making; not pressuring and twice committing to bad engagements cost you big time). Execution is easily fixed by playing more and knowing what to focus on. Decision-making just comes from playing a lot and being put into those situations where a critical decision needs to be made. MMA and Mvp are DAMN GOOD Terrans because their decision-making is top tier. They know when they can or can't engage. MC is the same. In the NASL finals against PuMa, who else would have the balls to decide to do 2 all ins in a row in the critical 7th game? The only reason he lost is because PuMa's decision-making was better (and under tremendous pressure to top it off). That crisis management alone won him the finals, not his build. Just keep working hard and you'll be a solid Terran. Improve your macro/hotkeys and you'll be Diamond league in a few weeks. Improve your on-the-fly decision-making on top of that and you'll be Master's league before the end of the season. It's easy to analyze replays and pick out the EXACT mistake or decision that cost you the game, as well as pose a solution, but it's hard to put it into practice and think of those solutions the instant they need to be executed, which is what splits the scrubs with good mechanics from the players that win tournaments.
PS, there were probably a bunch of other little mistakes, but I got tired of trying to remember them all, and I felt that these are more of the things you should focus on as well as what decided the game.
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Hello,
Ok first, thank you all, and especially RyLai, for all the input. Seriously, I needed to read it coming from someone else, even if I know a lot of the things, I looked, and looked again the replay, and started to work my mechanics, even playing solo and fixing supply goals.
I come from warcraft 3, and I know I have some potential APM-wise, but I just suck at decision making and at macroing. I have to improve now. I don't know why it works better vs Z, maybe because plat Z mostly suck more and don't have the mechanics to be effective...
Thank you again for your time, sir RyLai
I owe you a good coffee or a beer
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On January 23 2012 01:08 GrassEater wrote:
3: Do a 2 base medivac timing.
I think this guy in onto something here.
After 2 medivacs, go drop while sending a scout to figure out if he's going to hit you hard or not. If you see robotics support bay on two bases, you must skip all medivacs and go straight vikings. If you do not see support bay, get more mmm and crush him before his third is up and running. I think you could seriously use some coaching if your serious about improving. I'm mid masters, but I've struggled just like you and figured out builds strategy that helps me climb the ladder. Remember that when they patch the game, everything changes and you must adapt.
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Well I am not against the idea of coaching however, I m now 26 yo, I had my time @bw & wc3, lost a lot of reflex and capacities, for sure, and with my life I cannot play like 15 games a day like good ol' times 
Especially, my micro and decision making is far worse than before (I was not a good player, but I felt more comfortable than now), I take bad engagements, and stupid things like I don't know if my 25 marines and 5 marauders can take a XX stalkers + sentry army etc...
So I think coaching is not really the best option now, I should first play more, and more...
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On January 24 2012 05:25 DePHIB wrote:Well I am not against the idea of coaching however, I m now 26 yo, I had my time @bw & wc3, lost a lot of reflex and capacities, for sure, and with my life I cannot play like 15 games a day like good ol' times Especially, my micro and decision making is far worse than before (I was not a good player, but I felt more comfortable than now), I take bad engagements, and stupid things like I don't know if my 25 marines and 5 marauders can take a XX stalkers + sentry army etc... So I think coaching is not really the best option now, I should first play more, and more...
You say you wouldn't mind a coach and that you don't have a lot of time to play games.
Then you say you think you should play more and more games. Those two statements don't work well with each other. You're doomed. Just pony up for $20 for 4 hours of coaching (4 1 hour sessions).
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Streaming my response + replay anaylsis right now: http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/HardCorey
VOD: http://www.twitch.tv/hardcorey23/b/306368260
Consensus: You played pretty well man. I liked the economic opening so realistically you wouldnt be able to do a lot of pressure until you have medivacs for drops. I go into your replay pretty in depth in my video analysis. A big part of your problem is engaging the protoss army head on, thats what a protoss wants, he wants you to always engage him with his whole army there. You want to engage him everywhere else, dealing damage to his tech (forges, robos ect) while peeling apart his army and the going for outer bases 3rd/4th with the rest of your army. Overall you just have some small stuff in your overall game plan that could be worked on, but your general game sense and unit composition were pretty good.
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On January 24 2012 07:19 HardCorey wrote:Streaming my response + replay anaylsis right now: http://www.teamliquid.net/video/streams/HardCoreyVOD: http://www.twitch.tv/hardcorey23/b/306368260Consensus: You played pretty well man. I liked the economic opening so realistically you wouldnt be able to do a lot of pressure until you have medivacs for drops. I go into your replay pretty in depth in my video analysis. A big part of your problem is engaging the protoss army head on, thats what a protoss wants, he wants you to always engage him with his whole army there. You want to engage him everywhere else, dealing damage to his tech (forges, robos ect) while peeling apart his army and the going for outer bases 3rd/4th with the rest of your army. Overall you just have some small stuff in your overall game plan that could be worked on, but your general game sense and unit composition were pretty good.
Your analysis feels very shallow. You aren't even paying attention to the game for the first 10 minutes. You didn't even look at the attempted Marine pressure.
While you put a lot of focus on executing in the late game (which is good; just not by itself), you focus very little on the early and mid-game, which sets yourself up to play the late game. If you payed attention, you would've noticed that the Marines moved out, then pulled back, doing nothing. If he went through with that push, 1 of 2 things would've happened: 1) the Protoss player continues the game the same but with less units for the second push, and more importantly - NO SENTRIES; or 2) the Protoss remakes those 3 Sentries and delays his Colossi production by 300 Gas, which means by the time the second push comes he won't have Colossi.
I feel your future analyses would benefit greatly by watching from the player's perspective (at least for the lower levels; since higher levels will generally have solid mechanics and deciding factors will be either one bad decision or a miscontrol or a build order loss).
And the Protoss didn't "barely hold off the pressure", he demolished it (though he lost a Colossi and some Zealots; though he traded that for a majority of the Terran army). The Terran gets out with 8-9 Marines against 7 Stalkers and 3 Sentries, which would obviously beat the Marines. If the Terran was streaming reinforcements, they MAYBE he could've broken through... An extra few Marauders and Marines would break that, especially with 1/1 about to finish and Protoss at 0/0 without Charge.
1 Rax Expo power builds are great builds to punish greedy Protosses and to be safe through your Marine count (and later your Marine pressure) while you put up Add Ons and get your tech. Even if they aren't being greedy, you can do damage with good control and at least force the Protoss to back up and not camp at the front of your base with Stalkers.
And he didn't have enough Vikings (the result of NOT HOTKEYING HIS STARPORTS and getting the second Starport late). The Protoss has 5 Colossi, and the Terran engages with 7 Vikings. Even if you focus fire down the Colossi, if you engage with that low of a Viking count, you WILL lose. That on top of not having Ghosts to negate Psi Storms and clumping up cost him the final battle. Colossi and High Templar LOVE to engage bio balls. A bio arc would've done better (and some Storm dodging on top of that would maximize your army's potential in that engage).
And some things I want to add on from watching the game again (through his VOD), you should've delayed maxing out and make nothing but Ghosts (and Vikings, since you were behind on those). That, or immediately sacrifice supply with Marine drops to allow yourself to get those units into your army. Ghosts would've helped out a TON! I was going to agree on the leaving 2 minutes earlier bit for your second push, but you hit his front the instant you had Stim, so unless you threw up your Add Ons earlier (not really an option with this build), this would be impossible - which puts more importance on poking the front of his base and sniping gas units to try and delay his tech by making him remake those units (or go without them). You actually could've gotten your gas up a minute earlier, which moves the Stim push a minute earlier, which would've actually done wonders for that second push. But you were distracted by the Stalker at your front, so like 40 seconds earlier if you forget your gas timing. I mean, yes you have a few less units, but you have Stim and he has Gateway units, which means you win. Again, it's these little things that you can improve upon to turn a lost battle into a victory. You try to do little things to gain little advantages and eventually they snowball into an overwhelming lead. And the flank is a good idea (wasn't sure if it was the version with 2 ramps or not, and I was too lazy when writing my analysis to go back and check).
Having an overall game plan is good, and I feel like you have that already (you go 1 Rax expo, then go 4 Rax naked pressure into Stim timing, then getting Medivacs and a 3rd, then adding on Ghost while going for quick upgrades). Whether or not you need to make adjustments to it is something you do with trial and error or asking people for opinions on it. Otherwise, having little things to focus on is how you improve your execution of your game plan. And I mean VERY little things, like always splitting your army before an engage, kiting Zealots/Zerglings, dropping your Armories and starting 2/2 and 3/3 at perfect timings, scouting expansions, looking at your minimap (something I'm working on), watching your supply and making Depots at perfect timings, focus firing key units, sending a Stimmed Marine ahead of the army to check what is ahead, or paying attention to your drops and not losing them. Obviously, pick one at a time to focus on until you feel like you have the hang of it.
From there, you just optimize everything (game play and execution). Optimizing your game plan is harder, since optimizing your builds require a ton of testing and more often than not a practice partner to be sure of the build. You can be like Liquid'Tyler, who from what I hear develops some builds against easy computers in order to make sure his build is as smooth and tight as possible, THEN test it against a person (I think Day[9] said Tyler does things like that). Optimizing execution is simple through mass gaming since most of the things you are looking to practice will present themselves several times in each ladder game. You can't really develop a build on ladder because everyone does something different and a lot of players use very sloppy builds as well (only extremely high level players follow multiple well-detailed builds). But if you get some juicy tournament replays, you can probably just copy those if you analyze them well enough to know what's going on and why certain decisions were made. God I get off-track easily...
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On January 23 2012 00:43 MrBGJM wrote:
As much as tactics are a nice thing to learn and get into, they arn't worth the practice until mid~high diamond.
Quite honestly, you could easily make diamond doing nothing but 3 rax pushes while expanding into 6 rax marine only. You barely even need to scout a whole bunch.
The bottom line is having the best mechanics.
You seem to always have wayyyyy too many resources and that is a fault of mechanics, if you spend your money you just win games, im not even joking.
Going for timing pushes and doing all these really elaborate schemes they are fun and nice, but unless you have the mechanics to pull them off and make units and make workers and get upgrades and expand and etc etc etc, it really is a waste of time.
If you have better mechanics (micro macro) you will simply outplay your opponent all day long and become better than those you play on the ladder easily, then and only then, when you have solid mechanics and can you do things like getting things ghosts with emp and doing a drop an expansion while expanding making units and pressuring his front.
Simply put, master your mechanics before anything else, you wont find any good players in mid~high diamond who wouldnt have mastered mechanics.
No seriously, if you have good mechanics a zerg player can do nothing but make queens and drones and get into diamond.
I really don't like when people say that beacuse, no, going 6 rax marine won't get you into dia, all of the leagues are getting tougher and tougher for those players and are becomming more strategic, if someone in gold league does 6 rax rines, the protoss would have archons, colossus, high temps with storm and chargelots, they would be stomped.
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I personally like to do a 2 base medivac timing as someone mentioned above. Double drop into his main while having your main army (more like remainder) outside his nat. When you drop, he'll pull all his units to his main, so you attack with your main force at the nat. Kill probes, or anything important (forges, robotics bay, etc.). Try to save everything you can and escape with minimal losses while the Protoss just runs around stupidly all over his base.
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Wow thank you for all the answers
I practiced a lot with all your input and my TvP has got better. I also went from #40 plat to #5 yesterday in my div and got my star.
I also play more TvZ because I lose against dia TvZ, especially due to micro. I lost A LOT yesterday but also felt that my game stepped up very well.
Against P, I feel that my micro improved a lot, especially the marine pressure facts etc...
I changed my hotkey patterns.
It s a funny feeling because, before it was :
- 1 / 2 : army
- 3 rax
- 4 facs
- 5 CC
and nothing for starports / ebays / etc
It s because on Z i was like :
- 1 / 2 / 3 army
- 5 hatchs
- 6 queens
No I changed to :
- 1 / 2 / 3 army
- 4 CCs
- 5 Rax
- 6 Fact
- 7 Starports
- 8 Ebays
- 9 Armories
I use this because it reminds me to do upgrades, i was usually very sloppy on 2 / 2. It s also a very difficult change. I have been playing with the first pattern for years on WC3... But the fact is that it forces me to be more focused.
Result ?
Less apm but better moves...
Still learning, so I will put some more replays here soon
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On January 25 2012 09:46 Overlord17 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2012 00:43 MrBGJM wrote:
As much as tactics are a nice thing to learn and get into, they arn't worth the practice until mid~high diamond.
Quite honestly, you could easily make diamond doing nothing but 3 rax pushes while expanding into 6 rax marine only. You barely even need to scout a whole bunch.
The bottom line is having the best mechanics.
You seem to always have wayyyyy too many resources and that is a fault of mechanics, if you spend your money you just win games, im not even joking.
Going for timing pushes and doing all these really elaborate schemes they are fun and nice, but unless you have the mechanics to pull them off and make units and make workers and get upgrades and expand and etc etc etc, it really is a waste of time.
If you have better mechanics (micro macro) you will simply outplay your opponent all day long and become better than those you play on the ladder easily, then and only then, when you have solid mechanics and can you do things like getting things ghosts with emp and doing a drop an expansion while expanding making units and pressuring his front.
Simply put, master your mechanics before anything else, you wont find any good players in mid~high diamond who wouldnt have mastered mechanics.
No seriously, if you have good mechanics a zerg player can do nothing but make queens and drones and get into diamond. I really don't like when people say that beacuse, no, going 6 rax marine won't get you into dia, all of the leagues are getting tougher and tougher for those players and are becomming more strategic, if someone in gold league does 6 rax rines, the protoss would have archons, colossus, high temps with storm and chargelots, they would be stomped.
To be fair, the people who can legitimately pull this sort of stuff off are easily Master's league players, if not high Master's. To be able to pull off as bland of a composition as pure Marine requires the "whole package". This means solid micro (to split and kite), gamesense, macro, timings, and decision-making. This generally means you're WAY ahead of everyone else in the leagues you're playing at, and are basically giving them a massive handicap in an attempt to even the playing field. I've seen Jinro completely troll-stomp some players when he got a new account and had to level it past Diamond league. And by troll-stomp, I mean he did builds that were silly and STILL won by a large margin.
But if you COULD pull that off, then your mechanics are WELL above the level of the people you're playing with. That means that if you learned and practiced a legitimate build, you'd STOMP everyone and advance another league or two.
And I believe it's generally meant to be a 2 base all in, which means you won't have Colossi AND High Templar to defend. Otherwise I think the guy would just say mass Marines.
On January 25 2012 19:45 DePHIB wrote:
Wow thank you for all the answers
I practiced a lot with all your input and my TvP has got better. I also went from #40 plat to #5 yesterday in my div and got my star.
I also play more TvZ because I lose against dia TvZ, especially due to micro. I lost A LOT yesterday but also felt that my game stepped up very well.
Against P, I feel that my micro improved a lot, especially the marine pressure facts etc...
I changed my hotkey patterns.
It s a funny feeling because, before it was :
- 1 / 2 : army
- 3 rax
- 4 facs
- 5 CC
and nothing for starports / ebays / etc
It s because on Z i was like :
- 1 / 2 / 3 army
- 5 hatchs
- 6 queens
No I changed to :
- 1 / 2 / 3 army
- 4 CCs
- 5 Rax
- 6 Fact
- 7 Starports
- 8 Ebays
- 9 Armories
I use this because it reminds me to do upgrades, i was usually very sloppy on 2 / 2. It s also a very difficult change. I have been playing with the first pattern for years on WC3... But the fact is that it forces me to be more focused.
Result ?
Less apm but better moves...
Still learning, so I will put some more replays here soon
That's great progress! And now I understand the horrible hotkeys. O.o And yeah, that new setup is EXCELLENT! You don't NEED 3 hotkeys for your army (as any race if you're really good at battle micro; though 3 makes things MUCH better), 2 is enough for Terran for sure. I personally use Mvp's setup after trying NaDa's. It's simple and similar to NaDa's (can you guess who my favorite player is?), but with a hotkey for Starports. But since CCs are bound together, my APM when making SCVs is lower. Haha.
1/2 - Army
3 - Barracks
4 - Factory
5 - Starport
8 - CCs
9 - Expansion CC
0 - Main CC
I usually have my EBays near my Main CC, so I hit F2 or double-tap 0 to get to them, control click or double-click, and go from there. I do my best to check on them periodically through whatever chaos I'm going with.
If you can keep your upgrades flowing, your macro will become a notch better guaranteed. Later on, you'll win a fight so convincingly and check the replay to figure out why. Then you'll notice your upgrades were 3/3 18 minutes in versus your opponent's 1/1... Or 2/2 vs 0/0. And you'll just laugh.
TvZ is a whole different beast sadly... It's like TvT... But more deathball-ish and even slower (cause of that damn creep and the threat of a Zergling/Baneling surround and Muta harass).
Good luck with your progress! Looking forward to seeing improved mechanics and hotkey usage in your future replays.
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EPT
