in this post i'll recap my progress i've done so far in the last couple of weeks.
!Warning: May contain traces of Zerg-QQ!
Ok, so in the last post i tried to explain why it is really hard for me to find joy in practicing 1v1. This still applies, so because i know the main thing i need to improve at the moment are my mechanics, i figured that i can as well work on that in teamgames.
Plus it bugged me that i have been placed in Gold in 4v4 before and i wanted to get rid of the Gold Icon from my profile. Therefore i started playing 4v4s in random teams, and what can i say - it was good fun. Of course you have the occasional match with really awful mates, but that didn't not bother me too much. I figured out a pretty solid speedling into muta build and tried to mechanically play it out as best as possible. With that, i quickly accumulated around 70 Wins with a winrate around 60%. Of course that was during the time the ladders were locked, so i still was in gold. As soon as that was fixed i got promoted from gold to platinum to diamond in literally 2 games -> Mission accomplished here for now.
Next thing i thought, it would be nice to bring myself into diamond in 3v3 random. So i started playing that, and funnily it took me exactly 6 games (5 win / 1 loss) to get into diamond -> Mission accomplished here too.
Logically the next step would be to play 2v2 until diamond, but i don't really like 2v2 with random guys, because 2v2 in contrast to 3v3 and 4v4 has some legit strategy and teamplay component, which is really hard to do with a random guy.
So with the confidence of around 80 Wins in 4v4/3v3 and two promotions into diamond under my belt, i started playing 1v1 custom games again. But man, 1v1 is so much harder. My practice partners are mostly high diamond or low masters players, and i pretty much can't win a single game at the moment, after having played like 20 games. I guess i need at least 50 more custom games, before i am solid enough to hit the ladder.
Its really really frustrating and rage inducing to play Zerg at my skill-level, because it feels like everything is so much harder to pull of than with the other two races and every single tiny mistake fucks you right up. Build too many drones -> dead, build too many corrupters -> dead, miss-micro your units into force fields -> dead, beeing late on too many injects -> dead, and this list goes on and on and on.
I really don't think Zerg is inferior to the other races in terms of balance, but for players around my skill its sure a LOT harder to win games. I feel its like having three different sports-cars all with the almost the same values horsepower, topspeed and acceleration, but the terran and protoss cars are automatic and have like all these driving support programs while the Zergmobile has like 8gears, 5pedals, 4levers and 8buttons which you need to operate simultaneously. Sure you can win races, but it feels like a lot harder to do.
Obviously i stood on the verge of switching races multiple times, but i am not willing to throw in my Zerg-towel just yet. My current plan is to keep playing these custom games for at least 50 games or so and just don't care about winning or losing at all and just focus on my mechanics, my builds and my overall gameplans. I really hope to get through this without ending up with hypertension or losing of all my hair or sth :D