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Many high level streamers and pros offer coaching sessions for money but how efficent are they really?
How much can one expect to improve/learn during a coaching session with a pro? Is it an efficent way to spend your money if you're looking to improve or is it just a glorified way to buy some time with one of your favorite players?
I've been having some money to spare lately and I have also plateaued in MMR (currently 5.1k) and I want to become better, but I feel like it's very hard for me to gauge my own errors and what I could do better besides the obvious things like not getting supply blocked etc.
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It depends on the coach. I wouldn't pay a top player to coach you. They aren't coaches.
A good coach doesn't just point out mistakes and tell you how they got good, they help develop your skills and tune your playstyle. I'd post some replays to have people look at your builds/play/errors, that could be as good as paying any pro to point them out.
But really, you should find a good coach.
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I saw PiG coached a guy who paid him and that was terrible, maybe cuz he's zerg who was trying to coach terran but he don't even know proper control groups binds etc for tvp, and that was a 'coaching tvp micro' session lol
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I know two people who got coaching from this guy, and they definitely has no regrets because one person ended up winning KeSPA cup and the other person ended getting Ro8 in the GSL.
I think it all depends. I feel like anything getting coaching relies on two things. You have to practice a lot after they coach you, and it's best if they coach you over a period of time. I kind of compare this to getting coached in an instrument. You can get teaching, but you need to have that teaching over a period of time as well as practicing in between sessions.
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To be perfectly honnest i don't think anyone should need a coach on SC2 with the amount of information you can get on forums. Coaching only (IMO) useful for people that don't have the time to watch streams/casters explain what's what, but who have money to get a shortcut.
But if you're 5.1k MMR and that you're using the decently viable meta build but that you don't get what you're doing wrong beside macro errors, supply blocks, micro mistakes etc... Well getting from 5.1 to 5.5 MMR is about getting rid of macro/micro/build order mistakes.
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On February 24 2018 10:36 SCHWARZENEGGER wrote: I saw PiG coached a guy who paid him and that was terrible, maybe cuz he's zerg who was trying to coach terran but he don't even know proper control groups binds etc for tvp, and that was a 'coaching tvp micro' session lol
I'm GM with Terran.
"Didn't know proper control group binds"
Ahuh..
Sure buddy
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?36843 Posts
On February 24 2018 13:05 PiGStarcraft wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 10:36 SCHWARZENEGGER wrote: I saw PiG coached a guy who paid him and that was terrible, maybe cuz he's zerg who was trying to coach terran but he don't even know proper control groups binds etc for tvp, and that was a 'coaching tvp micro' session lol I'm GM with Terran. "Didn't know proper control group binds" Ahuh.. Sure buddy Lol... Where did you come from? Do you just know when people on TL talk about you?
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people use different control groups.. no one is "right".. you can argue not using F keys for map location is "improper" play but I've reached GM without it and im sure many others have too.
Coaching in SC is more about situation awareness when talking about masters players.. you can teach build orders (easy to look up) and stuff, but the only way to get good mechanics is playing - so coaching really comes down to situational awareness to speed up the process of playing 1000s of games and figuring out those situations.. Example; that sOs vs herO series, not many people ever even get into those situations in the first place.. A good coach will help you with decision making and run you through scenarios like that, asking you "What do you do?" and then walking you through the options.. cause theres not one answer to every situation too.
This also is why Tastosis are great casters.. most casters say "this is what he should have done to win" but Tastosis says "theres multiple things they could have done" - for example there was a point in Group D PvP one (i forget which game) where Artosis said.. "I think that was the wrong decision he made, but I understand why he thought it would work, it was a worthwhile risk"... That is not something you hear from most casters, and something that should be thought about at high level coaching. mechanics is like one hour or two max then you just gotta put the time in.
Edit: and I personally think coaching is great and will take GM players to Pro level players if the coach is a good coach - not just a top player.. I've coached a lot in WC3 and we had players win WCG's off the back of weeks of coaching/situational training (detailing main opponents weaknesses, practicing specific strats for maps, etc)
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On February 24 2018 11:55 JackONeill wrote: To be perfectly honnest i don't think anyone should need a coach on SC2 with the amount of information you can get on forums. Coaching only (IMO) useful for people that don't have the time to watch streams/casters explain what's what, but who have money to get a shortcut.
But if you're 5.1k MMR and that you're using the decently viable meta build but that you don't get what you're doing wrong beside macro errors, supply blocks, micro mistakes etc... Well getting from 5.1 to 5.5 MMR is about getting rid of macro/micro/build order mistakes. Agree with this. Snowfall said a coach can help with decisionmaking but any player who's focused on improving and has a good mindset will analyse their replays and look for mistakes himself so I'm sceptical a coach can do anything. Maybe players with a bad mindset are in need of a coach but that's it. Fixing macro mistakes is obviously also something a coach can't help with because it's mostly about playing a lot. Every player knows the fundamentals of macro (spending money, not getting supplyblocked etc)
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On February 24 2018 14:38 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 11:55 JackONeill wrote: To be perfectly honnest i don't think anyone should need a coach on SC2 with the amount of information you can get on forums. Coaching only (IMO) useful for people that don't have the time to watch streams/casters explain what's what, but who have money to get a shortcut.
But if you're 5.1k MMR and that you're using the decently viable meta build but that you don't get what you're doing wrong beside macro errors, supply blocks, micro mistakes etc... Well getting from 5.1 to 5.5 MMR is about getting rid of macro/micro/build order mistakes. Agree with this. Snowfall said a coach can help with decisionmaking but any player who's focused on improving and has a good mindset will analyse their replays and look for mistakes himself so I'm sceptical a coach can do anything. Maybe players with a bad mindset are in need of a coach but that's it. Fixing macro mistakes is obviously also something a coach can't help with because it's mostly about playing a lot. Every player knows the fundamentals of macro (spending money, not getting supplyblocked etc)
I don't completely agree. Sometimes it just is helpful to have someone else look at things from a different perspective. And there's some tips and tricks or responses to specific situations that can be hard to pick up from just watching VODs or replays--I recall one the European pros getting gaulzi to coach them on cannon rushing responses for example.
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If you aren't sure why you're losing or need help with something specific, I would say it's useful. you're already at a pretty high level, so now it comes down to how you understand the game (and of course perfecting mechanics further). When you scout, do you know what to look for? When you lose, do you know why you lost when you watch the replay (other than simply saying "Oh I didn't see him move out" could you think "Oh I should have put a unit here and I would have seen that attack and possibly held").
If you don't understand some of those, coaching from a GM can be very beneficial. One of the biggest differences (other than mechanics) from Master to GM is game understanding. Knowing how to react to what you scout is very important. A lot of players miss the small details that can give away what your opponent is doing. Just to give an example of this.
If a lower level player sacrifices an overlord at the natural at 5-6 minutes into the game against a Protoss player, sees no gases at the natural but no buildings or tech. Instead of realizing their opponent is either doing a fast 3rd or a 2 base all in, they are either confused or not sure what their opponent is doing and don't verify a third or prepare for the all in. To a high level player this is obvious what is going on (or should be) and will react accordingly. You may not know what specific all in their doing (assuming you scout no third), but you know to prepare for it and can have a fairly good guess at what all ins are coming.
TLRD: Yes it can be helpful if you get a good coach who understands the game well.
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Well a lot of Starcrafts skill development is using the tools at your disposal to complement your play style to the best of its ability, whether that be using location hot keys, rapid fire, proper control grouping, proper key bindings etc etc. If you take the example of professional athletes in other sports, coaching is vital in reinventing your skill set and excelling further after hitting a wall. While Tiger Woods was one of the best players in the world he was still under going coaching to relearn his golf swing, which he has redeveloped three times during his career. Each time after reinventing his golf swing Woods went through another peak of success because while his game sense and technical knowledge was top notch, relearning his golf swing let him implement his other skill to a higher degree. With that in mind, a lot of coaching is redeveloping an important skill that is at the core of your play, and then setting yourself up for better habits in the future. I'm fairly new to legacy of the void but there is no denying that coaching was a very central part of what made Korea's Broodwar scene and later their Starcraft 2 scene so competitive and high level. Simply put, the infrastructure behind each of the players lets them develop their tool and skill set to a much higher level than with a dozen solo pros, in part because they never have the time to enshrine bad habits in the center of their play. With that in mind, a coach could be best seen as a way to break down walls that you just can't get past because of bad habits, which is really hard to break past by yourself because most of the time you don't even see them as bad habits.
I think coaching can be absolutely worthwhile if you don't have glaring errors in your play that can be "fixed". Getting supply blocked, mismicro'ing and mismacro'ing are all easily fixed with practice, but relearning the way you actually interact with the game very often requires help from a coach to get down properly, or a hell of a lot of practice by yourself. It's a lot like going from just mouse to mouse and keyboard for the first time, which completely changes your play style but still requires multiple dozen games to properly relearn how to play. A lot of new developments from here are a lot more subtle, like location hot keys changing the way you maneuver around the map and proper control grouping changing the way you micro fights. I'm not sure how helpful that all was or even how correct a lot of it is but if you feel like you're plateauing, post some replays to a discord and see if people can point out non game related mistakes (not just scout better or don't build this here), and if you aren't getting anything definite you can either really really look into your own play during a match and really tinker with your settings and play style, or skip a few hours of solo effort and get a coach.
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On February 24 2018 13:15 Seeker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 13:05 PiGStarcraft wrote:On February 24 2018 10:36 SCHWARZENEGGER wrote: I saw PiG coached a guy who paid him and that was terrible, maybe cuz he's zerg who was trying to coach terran but he don't even know proper control groups binds etc for tvp, and that was a 'coaching tvp micro' session lol I'm GM with Terran. "Didn't know proper control group binds" Ahuh.. Sure buddy Lol... Where did you come from? Do you just know when people on TL talk about you? He probably has a spybot deeply rooted in TL. or maybe he was lured by the "coaching" in the title thread
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On February 24 2018 11:36 FrkFrJss wrote: I think it all depends. I feel like anything getting coaching relies on two things. You have to practice a lot after they coach you, and it's best if they coach you over a period of time. I kind of compare this to getting coached in an instrument. You can get teaching, but you need to have that teaching over a period of time as well as practicing in between sessions.
i agree. to put simply, it's to put what you're learning into context and communicating with the changes.
closer to 2010 i had no issues hitting GM in Asia/Korea by trying very hard to play efficient but not practicing meta builds. i didn't understand them very well so i adjusted what i knew. coming back to the game in 2018 and actually learning to play exact has been much more difficult. without experience and thinking about what you're doing: - you don't know the most important areas to nail - what options you have - how to combat different compositions for what you've got.
with someone reviewing things with you you can change bad habits such as being stuck to one playstyle.
the goal (which is unfortunately very hard for almost all players) is to be able to play better and then to finish a game as fast as possible. it's not by all-inning that you do that, it's by overwhelming using units when they're strong. if your oppo. is good, he will push you into a longer game and expand your play too. a coach can remain objective and take everything in and frankly say that you should have ended the game.
for a game like starcraft (which is fast), preparation is a large portion of the gameplay. do you have the mechanics and the knowhow to do something? i would usually say you don't teach the instrument before you teach someone what music is. but with starcraft it's important that a player knows exactly what they want to do in the game, and ideally they're listening to what the other player is doing too. to do that, the first step is mechanics and unlike learning an instrument this is not like learning where to place your fingers for a note. it's always having a plan for your next play, which builds gradually to having the band of instruments that you want to win with. it's managing what is important and what is not and a lot of players lose sight of that even if they're a very good player normally.
i came back to this game and relied on stalkers instead of adepts in PvZ. it simply doesn't work for the options that zerg has. you can't just cut out an option because you're uncomfortable with it. so to keep an open mind, i think a coach is a good example for their player that nothing is black and white.
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On February 24 2018 17:50 nanaoei wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 11:36 FrkFrJss wrote: I think it all depends. I feel like anything getting coaching relies on two things. You have to practice a lot after they coach you, and it's best if they coach you over a period of time. I kind of compare this to getting coached in an instrument. You can get teaching, but you need to have that teaching over a period of time as well as practicing in between sessions. i came back to this game and relied on stalkers instead of adepts in PvZ. it simply doesn't work for the options that zerg has. you can't just cut out an option because you're uncomfortable with it. so to keep an open mind, i think a coach is a good example for their player that nothing is black and white. I don't think you need a coach to realize that... Simply watching pro players play does the same.
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On February 24 2018 14:38 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 11:55 JackONeill wrote: To be perfectly honnest i don't think anyone should need a coach on SC2 with the amount of information you can get on forums. Coaching only (IMO) useful for people that don't have the time to watch streams/casters explain what's what, but who have money to get a shortcut.
But if you're 5.1k MMR and that you're using the decently viable meta build but that you don't get what you're doing wrong beside macro errors, supply blocks, micro mistakes etc... Well getting from 5.1 to 5.5 MMR is about getting rid of macro/micro/build order mistakes. Agree with this. Snowfall said a coach can help with decisionmaking but any player who's focused on improving and has a good mindset will analyse their replays and look for mistakes himself so I'm sceptical a coach can do anything. Maybe players with a bad mindset are in need of a coach but that's it. Fixing macro mistakes is obviously also something a coach can't help with because it's mostly about playing a lot. Every player knows the fundamentals of macro (spending money, not getting supplyblocked etc)
Coaching of the fundamentals is very useful if the coach knows what he or she is doing. Of course you can find the errors (for example supply block) yourself and if the coach simply points them out then that is useless. However not many people knows how to actually get better at it; simply playing a lot of games is far from the best method. There are many less known techniques/exercises/mindsets that a coach can help the student with when it comes to the fundamentals, even for high level players.
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I think demuslim makes a very good point about coaching, in that the online nature takes a lot of opportunities away. So if you wanna be coached have a webcam to show you hand, mouse placement, sitting posture etc...
Also, an interesting fact about the history of coaching comes from football with Yale vs Harvard in like 1900. One university hired a coach, and the next 20 years the record was like 50 - 2. Now that a coach is useful in teamsports I think is kinda obvious today, but I do feel there is a lot of value to be gained from coaching even in solidary activities. Usually people benefit from music teachers for various instruments. And while it is true that all information is online about sc2, so is all information about music today. That does not mean you know all of it and know how to navigate it. So yeah, get a coach.
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On February 24 2018 18:39 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 17:50 nanaoei wrote:On February 24 2018 11:36 FrkFrJss wrote: I think it all depends. I feel like anything getting coaching relies on two things. You have to practice a lot after they coach you, and it's best if they coach you over a period of time. I kind of compare this to getting coached in an instrument. You can get teaching, but you need to have that teaching over a period of time as well as practicing in between sessions. i came back to this game and relied on stalkers instead of adepts in PvZ. it simply doesn't work for the options that zerg has. you can't just cut out an option because you're uncomfortable with it. so to keep an open mind, i think a coach is a good example for their player that nothing is black and white. I don't think you need a coach to realize that... Simply watching pro players play does the same.
well that's exactly what i'm saying with your first sentence. where in my post am i saying that i've received coaching? and how do you learn that stalkers are no good then? do you wait to find someone play a game in this style? do you blindly copy professional play in lower MMR games?
meta play has been refined quite a lot already since the season start. just a month of play. the solution is simply to copy the best players to improve?
if we're talking about coaching, this is just someone who keeps you honest with yourself and learns most of your worst habits. i understand some people focus up and get into something with some firm guidance. it bridges a player between being able to play the game with everyone else, and being able to imitate meta play from the best players. we're talking about effective rate of improvement, not about what is possible. i could be a billionaire right now, technically without the best education in the world, but i'm not. i could be the best starcraft player in the world, but i'm not. at some point it's just not exactly being realistic with yourself and you have less time to put into an activity that should be fun.
you got money and you dont mind supporting someone for their service. why not talk to someone about what they can help you with, and give it a try?
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On February 24 2018 19:03 nanaoei wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2018 18:39 Charoisaur wrote:On February 24 2018 17:50 nanaoei wrote:On February 24 2018 11:36 FrkFrJss wrote: I think it all depends. I feel like anything getting coaching relies on two things. You have to practice a lot after they coach you, and it's best if they coach you over a period of time. I kind of compare this to getting coached in an instrument. You can get teaching, but you need to have that teaching over a period of time as well as practicing in between sessions. i came back to this game and relied on stalkers instead of adepts in PvZ. it simply doesn't work for the options that zerg has. you can't just cut out an option because you're uncomfortable with it. so to keep an open mind, i think a coach is a good example for their player that nothing is black and white. I don't think you need a coach to realize that... Simply watching pro players play does the same. well that's exactly what i'm saying with your first sentence. where in my post am i saying that i've received coaching? and how do you learn that stalkers are no good then? do you wait to find someone play a game in this style? do you blindly copy professional play in lower MMR games?
Why not? The pros play the most optimal way to play the game so if you want to be as good as you possibly can copying them will give you the best results.
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On February 24 2018 19:03 nanaoei wrote: the solution is simply to copy the best players to improve?
Yes, just play like TY.
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