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Everyone thats reads anything on these forums understand the basics of the game. We all realize, especially at the lower levels that macro is the fundamental aspect in any game that determines the winner or loser. Whenever I see a thread from a lower level players asking for advice..its always the same response, "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!"
But the frustrating part is sometimes we lose because of wrong STRATEGY. I know this sounds silly to the higher level players out there...."How can you use strategy when u miss injects, are supply blocked, etc." But it does happen....and when it does, we come here asking for advice. But, sometime its hard to get advice, as soon it becomes known, that we are silver/gold players.
Another frustrating part is that us lower level guys know we need to work on our macro but its not something you can change overnight. Working on never missing an inject, macroing during a big battle, never being supply blocked are things that even diamond/masters players work on. Having perfect macro is something that some people may never even be able to achieve. We just might be too slow or our multitasking may never be at a great level.
But what what we can improve quickly on is our knowledge of the game. We may not have time to spend playing 10-15 games everyday but do have time to read up and ask how to counter a certain build I see. And it will help us immediately in our next ladder game.
I am not trying to be one of those silver guys who say, "but I play up to a diamond level..." Most of us know why we are in the level we are. We know our MACRO SUCKS but that doesnt mean we can't use strategy. Strategy wouldnt matter if I'm playing a much better player but in ladder were are evenly matched.
So, please take it easy on us lower level guys and help us out. Remember most everyone was where are at some point.
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There's a reason every looks down on low tier players, and just tell them to macro(and micro) better, and not worry about strategies as much. Multiple top tier players have shown that that you can basically do WHATEVER you want at low levels, and as long as your macro and mechanics are good, you will win most of the time regardless of unit composition. Players have 4 gated, 6 pooled, mass queened, mass marined, etc all the way to diamond and sometimes even masters, just by simply outproducing and out microing their opponents. Watch Destiny beat tanks, thors, High templar, etc, with queens, even vs people that were trying to stream snipe him, and knew what he was doing, and would still lose. That's why high level players say ignore strategies and unit compositions for right now.....because IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you're worrying about unit compositions while you have 3k minerals at 15 minutes into the game, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Having 4 less stalkers and having 3 more zealots and 2 more sentries instead just might possibly win you the game. Converting the 1500 minerals you have at the 10 minute mark to stalkers, and it wouldn't matter what composition you had, you're going to rofl-stomp your opponent.
TLDR: It's not that strategy is bad, but improving macro will generate far better results than improving unit composition and tactics.
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You may think that strategy is something that you can use in the next game - but you are incorrect. For instance, lets say you lose to a "timing push", but it was found that your macro was poor. The reason you lost is not because your opponent had some magical composition or an immaculate timing; rather, you lost because you didn't execute well.
If you concentrate and apply that "strategy", it may actually be detrimental to your game because as a low-level player, you shouldn't be thinking about too many things. The only thoughts you should have is execution.
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If you are evenly matched that's when improving your macro would lead you to winning the game as opposed to losing.
You can basically do whatever you want at low levels as long as you macro better, unit compositions don't affect much, other than say not building anti air when your opponent goes air. In general though improving your macro will be much more beneficial. At low levels it is very rare that a loss due to strategy couldn't have been a win if you had better macro.
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United Kingdom36156 Posts
On October 06 2011 20:48 Sm3agol wrote:
There's a reason every looks down on low tier players, and just tell them to macro(and micro) better, and not worry about strategies as much. Multiple top tier players have shown that that you can basically do WHATEVER you want at low levels, and as long as your macro and mechanics are good, you will win most of the time regardless of unit composition. Players have 4 gated, 6 pooled, mass queened, mass marined, etc all the way to diamond and sometimes even masters, just by simply outproducing and out microing their opponents. Watch Destiny beat tanks, thors, High templar, etc, with queens, even vs people that were trying to stream snipe him, and knew what he was doing, and would still lose. That's why high level players say ignore strategies and unit compositions for right now.....because IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you're worrying about unit compositions while you have 3k minerals at 15 minutes into the game, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Having 4 less stalkers and having 3 more zealots and 2 more sentries instead just might possibly win you the game. Converting the 1500 minerals you have at the 10 minute mark to stalkers, and it wouldn't matter what composition you had, you're going to rofl-stomp your opponent.
TLDR: It's not that strategy is bad, but improving macro will generate far better results than improving unit composition and tactics.
Congratulations, you are one of those ppl the OP was talking about even though you were trying not to be.
These players are NOT dia/master + and he *already acknowledged this*, saying it's not something you can improve overnight, although of course they try to.
So in the CONTEXT that these players are forever striving to improve their macro, it seems entirely reasonable that they should be wanting to improve their strategical knowledge too. Especially as it's the strategical aspect that's more fun than "4eee 5c wzzzssee"
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On October 06 2011 21:01 marvellosity wrote:
So in the CONTEXT that these players are forever striving to improve their macro, it seems entirely reasonable that they should be wanting to improve their strategical knowledge too. Especially as it's the strategical aspect that's more fun than "4eee 5c wzzzssee"
Why focus on improving your strategical aspect when you can't even execute it at a decent level?
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i'd say strategy does not matter even at diamond or master level. i'll give you a mondragon example.
some time back, he was playing a ZvP on his stream. the protoss went voidrays while mondragon had roaches. his response? more roaches. and he won the game. your mind will tell you to build anti air but there's no need to, because even at that level, if your macro is crisp enough, you will be able to overcome strategy with macro. a lot of times when people win games are because they have a ton of shit.
on the strategy side, if you can't even macro properly what strategy do you want to use? strategy in sc2 is under the assumption that you have good macro and can hit timings well. don't look at strategy until you don't miss a single inject / mule / chrono boost etc. you need macro to execute strategy.
i can say 'alright im gonna go mass hellions!' so go on a quick match with my herpderp macro, and then lose because i attacked with 10 hellions with 1000 gas and 2000 minerals in my bank because no other units were made in the process.
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On October 06 2011 20:38 sfbaydave wrote:
Whenever I see a thread from a lower level players asking for advice..its always the same response, "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!"
But the frustrating part is sometimes we lose because of wrong STRATEGY.
Correct. Sometimes you may lose because your strategy is poor against a certain thing. If you were to play the exact same game again at exactly the same skill, but using a better strategy, you might win.
But if you macrod better you would win. It's also a rather pointless endeveour to puzzle out solutions for a strategy that might be causing you problems, when in fact that strategy might not even be workable in an environment where people are macroing better. It's wasted time. Working on your mechanics is NEVER wasted time.
Lower players often don't appreciate just how much difference macro makes. They think "yes, I KNOW I need to get better at macro, but...." without realising their armies could be TWICE as big, or more. You don't even need that many more units or workers to make a huge difference, eg close battles suddenly turn into easy victories, giving you map control etc etc.
Another frustrating part is that us lower level guys know we need to work on our macro but its not something you can change overnight. Working on never missing an inject, macroing during a big battle, never being supply blocked are things that even diamond/masters players work on. [snip]
But what what we can improve quickly on is our knowledge of the game. We may not have time to spend playing 10-15 games everyday...
You might be surprised at how quickly your mechanics can actually improve if you concentrate on it! Day9 did a good daily about this recently; pick ONE THING to try and improve, and work your ass off at that one thing. Think back to your laddering. Do you actually ever PRACTICE at anything? Have you ever played games where you've thought "ok, I am just going to concentrate on ALWAYS making SCVs", or "I am going to focus on ONLY making sure I am always keeping my gateways busy". Or are you just playing the game, and trying/hoping to win.
Try it. You might be surprised.
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basically because strategy is useless when you can't execute them. Simple example: A silver player starts a thread on the forum saying he has so much trouble vs zerg players who masses roaches off one or two base and allins, and makes it impossible for him to expand. Now most master or higher player knows that you can easily ffe and still hold roach allins. But if the silver player's macro isn't up to pair, then that build wont work.
Most strategies we know of evolve around having near to perfect macro, or else you wont be able to hold some of the timing attacks the enemy can throw at you. How are we suppose to help you by teaching builds you can't execute? Or worse yet if you are executing the right build, but not doing it right.
Its either this, or when you come online and say "I'm having so much trouble vs collosus", our only answer that doesn't involve proper macro is "vikings"..and thats not very helpful either 
Edit: and yes, you can change your macro nearly over night But you need to have the right mindset. Like the poster above said, practice spesific things. I for one spend a lot of time on "yabot" until my builds are millisecond-perfect up to the 10 minute mark.
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another thing that is really kills my brain is that when I played the game and watched the replay and in some moment I was in 50 food lead and I just couldn't do something with op's army coz it was mass thors or pure mech
so it's chosen units problem but not macro imho
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The whole macro better thing is true, but still stupid for lower players.
In all reality, people want to play the game and enjoy themselves. You can't just "macro like pro" all of a sudden and jump up a massive level in your play. Yes a player could sit down and grind out a hundred (or probably much more) games on YABOT/Coach AI/Macro or Die until they have perfect macro, but it's not really fun and few players could pull that off. I've tried getting a friend who is new to the game to do that and he just won't because it's not fun.
It's unrealistic for someone who is bronze/silver to get good enough at macro to get to plat/diamond on pure macro alone. Yes a pro/semi-pro player could get to a pretty high level on pure macro but a bad player can't suddenly play like them so it's a moot point.
I'd also say that a pro player could virtually micro themselves up to a pretty high level. I remember one MC PvP where he had a mirror build to his opponent to the second while they both 4 gated. After the engagement he had like 4 stalkers more than his opponent and rofl stomped him with superior micro. A pro with high level micro could beat low level players who had vastly superior armies, just think of the ridiculous supply/resource levels you can overcome in something like Darglein's Micro Trainer.
If someone like Puma or MMA made only 3 medivacs filled with stimmed marines, then did nothing until their opponent was on 3 base with a large army, they'd probably easily beat everyone they played until masters with superior multitasking.
My point: Put a player with pro level anything in Bronze and he'll rofl stomp until platinum or higher. I concede that Macro is more important however.
The other problem is that "macro only" works only if you are significantly better than your opponent. If, for example, a bronze player could develop say gold level macro, he'd probably still not be able to pull off pure stalker vs bronze MMM whereas a masters level player could.
If the guy with gold level macro looks at the game and goes "oh, I should get colossi" he's going to rofl stomp his opponent, using some strategy will win the game where superior macro wasn't enough.
To take an analogy I've seen someone use before on here, if you train beginner football (soccer) teams to play each other and one learns tactics only and the other learn how to pass/shoot and be fit the team who learnt the basics (the equivalent of macro in sc2) not the tactics will win. However, a team with average fundamentals but good tactics will be able to beat a team with better fundamentals/skill and no tactics. An extreme example would be a team with good fundamentals ending up with no one defending because they have no tactics. A real world example would be something like Greece winning Euro 2004 despite not having any superstar players.
TLDR: While top level players can beat scrubs with macro only, a low level player can't just "macro like a pro". While they should focus on macro they should also think about what they're building to some extent to succeed more quickly.
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On October 06 2011 20:48 Sm3agol wrote:
There's a reason every looks down on low tier players, and just tell them to macro(and micro) better, and not worry about strategies as much. Multiple top tier players have shown that that you can basically do WHATEVER you want at low levels, and as long as your macro and mechanics are good, you will win most of the time regardless of unit composition. Players have 4 gated, 6 pooled, mass queened, mass marined, etc all the way to diamond and sometimes even masters, just by simply outproducing and out microing their opponents. Watch Destiny beat tanks, thors, High templar, etc, with queens, even vs people that were trying to stream snipe him, and knew what he was doing, and would still lose. That's why high level players say ignore strategies and unit compositions for right now.....because IT DOESN'T MATTER. If you're worrying about unit compositions while you have 3k minerals at 15 minutes into the game, you're worrying about the wrong thing. Having 4 less stalkers and having 3 more zealots and 2 more sentries instead just might possibly win you the game. Converting the 1500 minerals you have at the 10 minute mark to stalkers, and it wouldn't matter what composition you had, you're going to rofl-stomp your opponent.
TLDR: It's not that strategy is bad, but improving macro will generate far better results than improving unit composition and tactics.
that's not so true. The only reason how destiny managed to win with mass queens is not because he could just macro better. It is because the other player doesn't take advantage of the fact that destiny is only making queens.
For example, mass queens would have lost to any terran that simply put one or two ghosts into their army.
your last statement is also arguable. ZvP shows it quite clearly that even if Zerg can have macro'd up 200 food, they can just lose to a 170 food protoss deathball if engaged in a bad position and just get stream roll'd
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I'm just middle-ish to high diamond on EU, but I'll give my view on it:
What I've seen from Bronze and Silver players, the "just macro better" thing is essentially true. This does not only mean training your mechanics to a reasonable level but also grasping the basic idea behind Starcraft - the whole thing about "streamlining" your economy and production, so you don't fall behind. In Bronze and Silver, you can have a good strategy, but it doesn't work out if your enemy simple has double the units. Its as simple as that.
Also, you can't apply many proper strategies at that level of play, because your enemy doesn't react and play accordingly. Strategies which seem to work in bronze/silver will not work in higher leages at all and vice versa. So strategic advice is very theoretical and doesn't apply to actual games at that level.
Around gold and platinum, things get more interesting but still people reach their limits quickly: Usually the one know knows how to play beyond 1-base while staying alive wins. That all the strategy you need, and it is achieved by proper macro and mechanics. If you don't lack units when the enemy attacks, you have a reasonable chance of surviving. If you survive and got better mechanics/more bases than your opponent, you'll win macro-wise.
Many lower-leage player confuse strategy with "suprises" and gimmicks. Going DTs is not a strategy. Just doing a drop is not a strategy. Going for a specific unit-composition is not a strategy.
Having a game-plan and being able to adjust it on-the-fly comes much closer to strategy - and this relies on macro.
Strategy has to do with possibilites of yourself, your enemy, adaption, timings and reactions, and all these become meaningless if the players don't macro properly.
If I gave a silver player strategic advice he might be able to apply it at some instances, but most of his games will still be decided by the question "who has more". At least if nobody does critical mistakes like suiciding an army - but thats not strategic either.
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On October 06 2011 20:38 sfbaydave wrote:
Everyone thats reads anything on these forums understand the basics of the game. We all realize, especially at the lower levels that macro is the fundamental aspect in any game that determines the winner or loser. Whenever I see a thread from a lower level players asking for advice..its always the same response, "Dude, forget the replay....work on your macro!!!"
But the frustrating part is sometimes we lose because of wrong STRATEGY. I know this sounds silly to the higher level players out there...."How can you use strategy when u miss injects, are supply blocked, etc." But it does happen....and when it does, we come here asking for advice. But, sometime its hard to get advice, as soon it becomes known, that we are silver/gold players.
Another frustrating part is that us lower level guys know we need to work on our macro but its not something you can change overnight. Working on never missing an inject, macroing during a big battle, never being supply blocked are things that even diamond/masters players work on. Having perfect macro is something that some people may never even be able to achieve. We just might be too slow or our multitasking may never be at a great level.
But what what we can improve quickly on is our knowledge of the game. We may not have time to spend playing 10-15 games everyday but do have time to read up and ask how to counter a certain build I see. And it will help us immediately in our next ladder game.
I am not trying to be one of those silver guys who say, "but I play up to a diamond level..." Most of us know why we are in the level we are. We know our MACRO SUCKS but that doesnt mean we can't use strategy. Strategy wouldnt matter if I'm playing a much better player but in ladder were are evenly matched.
So, please take it easy on us lower level guys and help us out. Remember most everyone was where are at some point.
I am not extremly high level (diamond). I will try to explain why macro better is the usual advice. Let's assume a silver league player wants to know from me how to play better and shows me a replay of him loosing to a certain strategy. Then I watch the replay and realize that by the time the important engagement happens he could have had 40 zerglings and a base more. Then I see little use say what would be a better strategy, because if he had these 40 lings he wouldn't have lost in the first place. So the reason why he lost might look to him as if it was strategy, but the real reason is that his macro was bad. He could stick to the same strategy in the same situation, execute it with better macro and win.
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The reason that people say "Macro better /improve your macro" is because alot of players like Destiny and Day 9 where they do perfect macro and just mass 1 unit.
I remember watching destiny just mass Roaches. Even though they have no anti air, he got to low masters by using just roaches by having good macro.
The fact is, you can progress by having good macro and for lower level players it is way better to spend your time learning the most important part of the game before you learn anything else.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On February 23 2011 08:56 Saracen wrote:
As an addendum...
In my opinion, the main reason this thread exists is to help you think for yourselves (and hopefully reduce the amount of [H] threads that litter the forums). After all, why ask others for help when you can help yourself?
So, before you make a thread asking why you lost or what you could have done better, make sure you're doing everything you need to be doing first. You may think "only pros do everything consistently" or "I'm only in Gold league, I don't need to do every single thing" or "I may have done some things wrong, but my opponent did too!" This is a terrible mindset, especially in lower leagues, because that's where macro actually makes a huge difference. For the people who try to help you out, it's really frustrating to try to give advice on gameplay when you consistently see little things like getting supply blocked at 26 or not chronoing probes until you have 40 energy or not building enough barracks and then queuing 4 marines on each one. Each one of these "little things" adds up, especially in the early game, and could very well give you a disadvantage that's pretty much impossible to come back from. On February 23 2011 15:33 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2011 08:56 Saracen wrote:
As an addendum...
In my opinion, the main reason this thread exists is to help you think for yourselves (and hopefully reduce the amount of [H] threads that litter the forums). After all, why ask others for help when you can help yourself?
So, before you make a thread asking why you lost or what you could have done better, make sure you're doing everything you need to be doing first. You may think "only pros do everything consistently" or "I'm only in Gold league, I don't need to do every single thing" or "I may have done some things wrong, but my opponent did too!" This is a terrible mindset, especially in lower leagues, because that's where macro actually makes a huge difference. For the people who try to help you out, it's really frustrating to try to give advice on gameplay when you consistently see little things like getting supply blocked at 26 or not chronoing probes until you have 40 energy or not building enough barracks and then queuing 4 marines on each one. Each one of these "little things" adds up, especially in the early game, and could very well give you a disadvantage that's pretty much impossible to come back from. Somewhat agreed! While Macro'ing properly is definitely important, there is more to the game than just macro. Even if both sides macro'd poorly, so long as the army counts are around equal during battle that is all that matters (or if one side was greatly ahead, and lost). It is usually clear when one player loses because of macro and while 'better macro' would have won an even game, there are many other things which would have also won the game. It might have been better troop positioning, it might have been better micro, it might have been better decision making like countering instead of attacking head on. So while the little things add up, in an even game there are more factors at work than just macro. Also the "macro better" attitude isn't always the most useful attitude to have in the strategy forum. That could be applied to every single level and still be true!! It's an empty truth in this regard. So while the strategy forum can be used to get advice on how to macro better, there are also many other things that you could be learning from there - What unit composition beats what (this really is bronze information, and should be contained in liquipedia) - How to engage battles properly - How to make better decisions in game - How to gauge what your opponent is doing with minimal information Things like refining a build order, having a build order (-.-; ), this is my awesome new build order please rate it!!!!! and whatnot are all examples of bad questions to ask in the strategy forum. Once infinity's guide is out that should help with this though!
I'll just leave these here.
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no. better mechanics WILL still triumph at lower level. Mechanics are there so you can execute the strategy properly.
Example as Zerg:
If you miss your forget inject with your queen while 15hatching, you WILL lose to the 2 rax that has been constantly building marines + a few scvs. As a Zerg player, I've noticed the difference between my 'off' day and my good days comes down to pretty much me landing more injects etc. Just work on landing all your injects and keep producing units and a-move. If you're getting dropped, check whether you've injected, made a round of unit, and THEN worry about the harass. Play 10-15 games like that, and your brain will start remembering it.
If you don't believe me, watch Slayers_Dragon's stream sometimes when he gets new Bronze accounts. He beats players with pure scv's or ONLY marines against Banelings + infestors.
Yea what Plexa said, but one thing , "how do you practice making better decisions? " I think my decision making are good, but there's no metric to measure against.. =\
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United Kingdom36156 Posts
I don't think the OP is disputing that macro is the #1 way to get better. He's just saying it's not the ONLY THING in the game and he's right.
Say it's a PvT. As a Protoss you've decided to go mass stalkers against a marauder only army. Now, having 20 more stalkers due to good macro is of course going to be very important. But it might also be nice for people to explain that stalkers suck against marauders and he should try chargelots instead.
Grossly oversimplified example, but you get the point.
1) More units = more win - true
2) You make the right decisions (strategy) = also more likely to win - true
Edit: what Plexa said
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Every time a thread like this starts, there will be some condescending jerk who will post something like, "I started a new account and lost all my placement and landed in silver and got to diamond doing nothing but lings/marines/stalkers trollolol". While I usually *hate* the tone of these posts, they do demonstrate the point very well -- honestly, at low levels, you will be able to win 90% of your games if you just are able to build more stuff than your opponent.
For a long time I was stuck at Diamond level, even after knowing "what counters what" in different situations, making sure I was cheeseproof, knowing I was building the right "stuff", and relying on some good WC3-level micro. My opponent would come in with an overwhelming 1a army and crush me, and I blamed it on the game being "coin-flippy" or "not about skill". After watching the replays, I would see where I was missing chrono boosts (I was playing Random at the time), or missing SCV builds, or missing mule drops and losing to a timing attack. 15 minutes into the game I would have a beautifully composed and perfectly micro'd 130-140 food army, while my opponent is barrelling down my throat with 200/200.
For a full week, I decided I was going to make sure I was constantly building SCVs every game. No matter what. I didn't care if I ended up at 150 SCVs, I was going to have full worker saturation. And I had a lot of really dumb losses that week b/c I was so focused on SCVs that I didn't micro my units properly, or forgot to build my factory on time or what have you, but I didn't care -- I kept building SCVs.
Then I took another week and made sure that I never missed a single depot. Oddly enough, a week of full SCV production had trained me to never forget an SCV either -- so after 2 weeks of dumb losses, I was able to never get supply blocked and never forget an SCV.
The next week, I found out that with full SCV production and all my depots on time, I was able to support a LOT more production than before. Where before I would only be able to support maybe 3 rax and a starport, now I could support 6rax and 2ports at the same in-game time. So I had another week of making sure I would build my production buildings on time, and that they were constantly producing.
In the middle of that week, I hit Master League without really trying. Simply from building more stuff. That was 6 months ago, and I still use the same techniques to improve now -- that's why I'm sitting around 1300 Masters and still improving.
That's why we tell you to macro better -- your perfect compositions, your timings, they will only get you so far without a good, solid core of mechanics. I promise you, if you focus solely on your mechanics for a while, you will have some stupid losses for a while -- don't get frustrated over them, and just learn from them. Get used to being in the habit of producing workers, supply, and units. Over and over. Eventually, that will all become automatic, and *then* you can get to the flashy part where you perfectly micro and hit timings that will destroy your opponents. After all -- how can you hit perfect timings if your macro is so bad that it comes a full minute or two late?
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I am myself one of the lower level players, and I can see this too..
Not that high level players are wrong: indeed if we had better macro, we would have won almost all of the games we lost (except maybe for some particular cases, like lack of detection against DT or totally wrong army composition, and so on..).
But what I think is that there's something those high level players are not considering (and I'm saying that from my lower level rank, so I admit I can be wrong on this): having better macro is something that every player must strive for, even good ones.. that's something which is always true.. something for which sometimes there's larger room for improvement, sometime there's less..
..but if my opponent is able to macro as good as me (and if it's not now, it WILL be, thanks to the match making system), then there are other things that are really important to consider, for example:
- scouting
- unit composition
- harassment/drops
- aggression
- engagement position
- micro
For example, I've lost may games I had better macro in, in multiple ways: by a-moving marines into tanks, by going hatch first against 6 pool, by mistakenly moving instead of a-moving, by forgetting detection, by having not enough antiar, by being too passive letting opponent tech safely, by engaging up ramps, by getting BCs when I did not have Viking superiority.. the list could go on.
Of course I don't lose too often in those ways (thank god!), but it happens, and I have to understand those things on my own. When we low rank players post replay here, we usually look for tips like those.. we take the macro inability for granted. And we KNOW it's the main reason we lost, but we see no reason why we can't at least try to improve in different fields..
In the end, 200 food pure colossi still lose to 100 food pure vikings 
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EPT
