I’ve been playing around with xsplit and twitch settings a lot and finally made my stream work. The key breakthrough as actually been something so simple as to clean out the fan attached directly on my aging HD4870 graphics card. Yeah I suck at cleaning up my computer cabinet too.
In order to celebrate this amazing feat, I’ve redesigned my stream logo.
The channel is located at http://twitch.tv/fafnerx . Go Subscribe if you want to have a cheap laugh at my expense.
Just to show how amazingly bad my play can be, check out this recording where I can’t even select the correct race and end up playing as Protoss.
For a while I have been counting my win. I don’t care too much about achievements in game, but I am kinda looking forward to my 500th win as Zerg on the 1v1 ladder. I don’t know why, but I am.
At the moment I am at 298 wins and I’ll probably reach 300 tonight. I also know my velocity, which is around 50 wins a season. That should guarentee the 500th win about 4 seasons.
But there is a catch: I pretty much assume there will be separate ladders for Wings of LIberty and Hearth of the Swarm. And so the question becomes, will we have another 4 seasons before HOTS is released? I don’t really think so, which puts me under some kind of pressure.
If I didn’t suck at the game I could simply improve my win rate. Then I would get there sooner with the same number of games ;–). I don’t think that will happen though…
Something happened to my ZvT and ZvP in season 7. And not something good. It is kind of embarrassing, but if it wasn’t for my solid ZvZ I would probably be crying.
I blame the new maps that have come with the last couple of seasons. The only one I liked was Korhal Compound and now it seems as if that too has gone from season 8. Nasty.
I guess I really need help in the two other matchups. Unfortunately I don’t know any accomplished platinum level Protoss and Terrans on EU to practice against. It is a bit of problem, but I suppose I have to study some pro-players and make their builds work for me too.
I got a link to a VOD where Illusion does a spine crawler/Queen-rush and I just had to try myself. Basically you never build gas and not many drones either. When you have your first queen and a bunch of Zerglings out, you take three drones and go for the Protoss entrance.
Once you get there you plant a hatchery, cancels it and place a creep tumor where its creep was. Then adds spine crawlers and reinforces with Queens and more Zerglings.
With the new Queen speed and range it is remarkably efficient and I quickly got three wins with this cheese. Most players made comments like “Wow, that is a cute strategy” or similar. That is rare when you do a cheese.
In my fifth game I met someone who knew how to counter this. Apparently it is possible to stop, although not necessarily extremely easy.
This is just a short update of the recently finalized season 5. I ended up playing exactly 100 games (somehow I lost one replay in the process). I had clear impression that I did reasonably well in ZvP, but terribly in the two other matchups. The numbers, however, tells a different story.
Apparently I did okay vs. terran and only really had problems in ZvZ. I guess I had a lot of fairly quick wins vs. terran that I just forgot about and only remembered the long drawn out games that didn’t end so well for me.
Anyways, I played roughly half my games vs. platinum players and the other half vs. gold players. With a 50% win rate I hoped for a promotion to platinum. That I didn’t get in season 5 (it came 5 games into season 6 though).
I’ve just read the interesting article about SQ ratings on teamliquid and simply had to see if there was anything in this number that I could learn from. In order to do that I calculated the SQ ratings based on the last 8 games that I, Bartokaj and Sethos have played in 1v1. Bartokaj and Sethos being two of my friends.
I’m gold looking to advance to platinum, Sethos is a solid Diamond player and Bartokaj is in Silver. According to the article, there is a an expectation that the difference in SQ rating are reflected more or less in league. Bronze: 45’ish, Silver: 45-50, Gold: 50-55, Platinum: 55-60, Diamond: 60-70, Master: 70-80 and Grand Master: 80 and above.
| Me | Bartokaj | Sethos | |
| 1 | 66 | 55 | 72 |
| 2 | 60 | 47 | 75 |
| 3 | 55 | 62 | 73 |
| 4 | 65 | 48 | 50 |
| 5 | 63 | 43 | 55 |
| 6 | 66 | 58 | 53 |
| 7 | 54 | 77 | 65 |
| 8 | 63 | 60 | 49 |
| Average | 62 | 56 | 62 |
I don’t know whether the expected values are because the data for the original analysis is from the North American ladder or what. I don’t think the values I found in my own small study reflects the expected levels very well.
However, looking at my own numbers, I wonder why I have so high an unspent average as I do. Right now I play Zerg, and as a Zerg you are often limited by the number of larva and I am often not so concerned about how much money I have in the bank. Holding my money there allows me to instantly make 25 supply worth of what ever I need. Had I already spent the money, my options would be more limited.
In the early game I can see that I could work more on having enough larva available. I’ve already started working on that recently by getting my third hatchery quite early compared to a month ago.
Anyways, it is really interesting to compare your gameplay via a analysis like this and look at what you can easily do to improve this aspect of your game.
This season I’m trying to make another run from bronze and up. I still have no clue as to how a Zerg beats a good Protoss, but right now I am trying to side step that problem by working my way up and learning from the experience.
Getting my alternate account to bronze was not a problem, but I probably should have settled on silver instead. For now I have played and won about 75 games in bronze and still not really started to meet any silver players. I kinda think that the system is punishing me for intentionally getting into bronze.
In fact I think my behavior is wrong and that Blizzard should do something to prevent yoyo-ladder players. Players that one day is in a high league, then has an amazingly long losing streak followed by an equally long winning streak.
Another phenomenon I think is messing up the ladder are the portrait hunters. People in bronze that have 3000 wins and no game longer than 5 minutes. They are clearly either win-trading or something similar. I hate to think about what this does to the gaming experience of someone who really is bronze level.
I’ve been a little inactive lately. Initially due to out vacation to the US, but that is – unfortunately – over now.
I still haven’t quite recovered from the fact that I fell from Diamond to Gold after my switch to Zerg. At some point you realize that you are doing something fundamentally wrong and in my case it seems like it primarily has been by trying to play a macro game as Zerg. Either than cannot be done or I just haven’t figured out how to.
The problems have been greatest against Protoss. In the late game Protoss seems close to impossible to beat even when you have a 200/200 army and 5k in the bank.
My reaction have to try different timing attacks and the earlier the attack, the more successful I have been. It works especially well against Protoss that fast expand behind a wall-in.
I’ve even been going back to the 7RR build although I consider that an all-in kinda opening. You end up with 7 roaches, no speed for the follow-up zerglings and only 16 drones mining. With such an opening you pretty much have to win right there or you are left far behind.
Anyways, the result of my tighter openings have been a massive winning streak and yesterday I got back to platinum. I don’t plan to stay there, but whether that is wishful thinking I don’t yet know.
I don’t know why, but starting season 3 I have switched to Zerg. I suppose that completes my journey, that started out with me as Protoss in season 1 (and the last years of Brood War), Terran in season 2 and now Zerg in Season3.
Initially I lost a lot. First I got demoted to Platinum and then to Gold. I assume that I am actually better than that in the long run, but a lot of my loses came from droning to hard. And the further down I fell, the more this happened! I think it is because that in Gold a 1-base play is way more common than in Diamond.
In Gold, people are remarkably polite! Or something.
I find ZvZ fun and fast pased. ZvT a little scary and ZvP puzzling hard. But I’ve stopped falling down the ranks and are figuring things out on my way back up.
Today I have been laddering a lot. Well, what amounts to a lot for me, as the total number of games were just 14. I lost the vast majority of the games, which of course annoys me a lot. I don’t think I should lose this much when I am not even in Diamond yet.
I’m still learning Terran and there are certain things that I just don’t seem to be able to get right. Today my pet annoyance have been people who have done risky things and when I tried to punish them for taking those risks, I got rolled. Examples includes a protoss that fast expanded on Delta Quadrant and so on. I’m of the firm belief that that should just not be possible to get away with and yet he did.
I have also tried to loosen up my Terran vs Zerg game play which has a tendency to become a little passive while I max out on two bases. But apparently moving out early is something I haven’t mastered yet.
I streamed a lot of the games I played to, but I don’t think my loses are especially interesting to watch as they are not even close games.
Here are a couple of the good games:
And another which was also kinda okay:
If I have to mention anything positive from today, it should be that my Terran vs Terran is still my best matchup and the games I won against Protoss were all due to good use of EMP.
EMP is currently the corner stone of my mid to laIte game vs. Protoss and I wonder why I didn’t see it more back when I played Protoss?
I find setting up a solid video stream to be one of the most frustrating exercises possible. And yet I have actually managed to set one up. Quality is not fantastic as I am limited to uploading on a fairly crappy ADSL line, but the quality is acceptable.
I’m playing very casually these days, so actually catching a moment where my stream is online is probably not that easy. I can however upload the videos to YouTube after the stream is done. JustinTV has that nice feature.
So far I’ve recorded one ladder game. I’m mostly talking to myself in Danish though, so it might not be for an international audience.
The game is quite good I think. At least there is a lot of action all around and while I am sure my gameplay can be criticized for a lot of things, I’m actually mostly satisfied with it for now.
I especially like some of the big battles where I have to counter a ton of siege tanks using mostly marines. Coming from a Brood War background, it really surprises me every time it works.
I’ve taken a brief break from playing Terran to practise some Zerg on my main account. I’ve played 6 games so far, got placed in Diamond (probably thanks to all the protoss games I played on that account) and have done decently well after that.
At least one sign of you playing “ok” is that your opponent is bad mannered. Notice how I’ve basically rushed his base and run it over since he had no units, and he is implying that I am a cheesy noob! The pinnacle of it all is the Dark Templar Shrine he was going straight for while only building 2 units before putting it down!
I find that hilarious!
I really haven’t played since season II started. That is I played my placement match on the very first day and got placed in platinum. I kinda knew that would happen as only the season lock-down kept my smurf account in gold.
A couple of days later I played 3 games in a row and won two of them. The one I lost was basically due to me being stupid.
I’m finding that playing TvT has lost its charm. I’m still winning most of those games, but it feels kinda tough now compared to silver and bronze (I suppose that is only fair). TvZ is dominated by banelings which I find to be a very annoying unit that kinda breaks the game. TvP is still fun although very, very hard to win.
I guess I will eventually play some more game as I‘m very curious as to whether I can make it into diamond as Terran.
I’ve also contemplated what to do with my main account? Should I go down to bronze and reroll as zerg? I’m not so sure I would find it as much fun as what I have been doing with Terran.
I cheated the system and deserve no pity. I know that, so that is not my point of this posting. But the recent ladder lock-down makes no sense and I am amazed that Blizzard insists of the madness that we have today. I realize that they are trying to limit competition to small closed systems so move people can have achievable goals, but it would be nice if they made sense to. Removing loses from statistics is just another way of obscuring the problems rather than fixing them.
So I am in gold and heading up. That I got here by losing a lot on purpose is besides the point. I could have been a valid gold level player who recently improved a lot. Assume that I am.
I am about 1500 points away from the top spot in my division and I have a little more than a week to get there in competition with all those ranked about me. That is fine. Normally I would get the first spot as I would be promoted before that. That is fine, but it isn’t like that anymore. Due to the lock-down I am competing with those in my division. I’m clearly the better player ‘cause I am playing platinum and diamond players and winning about half of those games.
Number one in my league is also winning about half his games, but he is just playing gold-level players. Assuming we both mass games from now until season’s end, he will still by ranked above me simply because his opponents are easier than mine. Out wins will give us the same number of points since we have both reached our level – I just haven’t been promoted yet! Result is that the season will end with wildly inaccurate top 10’s in all but master league.
What is the point of that?
My smurf account was promoted to Gold league and suddenly I hit a bump in the road. This bump coincided with the new 1v1 ladder maps, which has undoubtedly made games more macro intensive and generally played hell with the timing attacks which have served me so well from Bronze to Gold.
To my surprise I’ve suddenly started to lose to Zergs and I suspect that is because Zergs in Gold has perfected most one base plays and I am still not comfortable enough with to Terran to know when a safe expand is possible. I could just do one base plays myself to counter this, but that is sucky in the long term and I won’t be trapped into that.
Anyways, while contemplating what to do against Zerg, I’ve tried to experiment with banshees vs. Protoss. They are fun!
But they are also really hard to get when faced with a determined 4-gate by a competent Protoss. There is definitely some work ahead of me before I start not sucking as Terran.
On and for the record. My stats are 71-49 by now or 71-24 if I take away the 25 loses I took on purpose.
That is a seriously hard match-up. Playing something other than Protoss is enlightening in a way I had hoped it would be. My smurf account is still in Silver and I just had an epic game against a player from Gold. Yeah, I know it sounds pathetic, but that is where I am at the moment.
In this game I was a victim of a dual gas steal. I countered fairly well and then met up with his dark templars. Even that did I survive, just to be met with a torrent of high templars and psi-storm. Annoying.
At the same time did my multiple ravens kill one base outright, harass another and simultaneously did a cloaked banshee get 21 kills in his main. And yet he kept coming. I find that mech works best late game, but without spider mines the matchup feels more shaky than in Brood War. Maybe I should have had more hellions and gotten ghosts earlier? I don’t know, but in the heat of the battle it is kind of hard to tell.
I was constantly short of gas, but his zealots requires no gas. Right now I feel tempted to go back to playing Protoss for a few games just to see if I can make it work from that side.
51 game minutes for one game. Probably my longest and most nerve wrecking game so far.
I’ve grown a little tired of Protoss. Honestly, I think the race is broken and will need some serious changes to become fun to play again. At least the race is no way near as much fun as it was in Brood War. My guess is that we will have to wait for the expansion to see anything but minor tweaks.
In the mean time I have decided to try my luck with Terrans on a new account. I’ve basically upgraded the trial account I used in January to a full account and I am now working my way up from bronze. I hope I will learn how to play Terrans on my way up.
I have played around 80 games on the account and lost 25 of those on purpose. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t advance too fast for me to learn.
Here is a replay pack with 4 of my latest games. It consists of one TvZ, one TvP and two TvT. The reason is that there seem to be a lot of Terrans in bronze and silver.
Terran vs Protoss
This game is kinda funny. I wanted to do a fast banshee harass and then expand all over while keeping him in his base. Unfortunately he hit me with blink stalkers at the same time and I had very little defense. I lost my main and the game became weird from there. Fun game all around though.
Terran vs Zerg
This is a good macro game with drops, banelings and tanks all over. I don’t think my opponent was anything special, but the game demonstrates why I think Terrans are fun to play. You have some many options all the time.
Terran vs Terran
By far the most fun mirror matchup to play in Starcraft II. That in itself is reason enough to play Terrans. I do however feel that I miss something in my game here. There is an option to be aggressive with mid-game marauders and I just don’t feel like I know how! That is why most of my TvT turns out to be: create a tank line, expand like hell and then mass battle cruisers to win. A little one sided, but effective so far.
All in all I am having a lot of fun trying this out. Not sure if I am completely done with Protoss, but that I will decide later on.
I know PvZ is considered slightly in Protoss favor at the moment. That is not what I experience. I’ve lost 9 of my last 15 games – the majority of those against Zergs. In my frustration I have probably been a little on a tilt too. Not a pretty thing.
I think that the main reason for my loses is an overall shift in the meta game. And that I feel that I am behind on the learning curve here. A couple of months back it was all about mutalisks and using the mobility of Zerg vs Protoss. That has caused me to go light on zealots which now has become a problem when mass zerglings into roaches seems to be the new standard opening.
I suck at this game and often feel that I mis-click more than I should. Or mis-judge the situation when in hindsight it was obvious what I should have done. That becomes frustrating after 6-7 loses in a row. And everything just builds on top of that.
Now I am simply dreading playing versus Zerg and at the same time I find Protoss vs Protoss a really complicated and scary matchup. I’m considering a race-switch, but I also know it is a huge change and that there is a lot I would have to re-learn. I wish I didn’t suck so much at this.
So I have only about 3 minutes left on my Trial Account which means that I won’t be playing any more games on it. At least not for now.
In the end I managed to get 38 games done in the 7 hours of play 
time. 10 games I threw on purpose, 5 I really lost and 22 I won. From a confidence building perspective, playing in Bronze is certainly good! I didn’t manage to get out of Bronze, but in the end I was mainly playing people in Silver and even got one match against a Gold player.
I think this has a lot to do with me encountering a lot of other players considered for promotion. I think the match making system prefers people of similar MMR-rating and of the same league. This means that people who are close to being promoted will more likely meet each other and those who do well in those matches should be promoted first.
Another factor is probably that you don’t get promoted before you have leveled out in skill. As long as you still do good even when matched up against higher ranked players.
So what did I learn playing these games? First of all the level in Silver is actually a lot higher than I had imagined. Or I got to play a segment of the Silver league, which is. People have decent macro and at least try to copy builds from higher leagues. I really think that the level of play that I encounter in Diamond is only slightly better than what I have met in Silver.
One difference is that barracks play is a lot more popular compared to mech-builds. Especially in TvT this is the case. There are also Protoss’ going mass carriers. Something I actually lost to once and I think my mistake was to think that I could just ignore it since I obviously was the better player. That kind of hubris will get you killed even in Silver.
I think I’ll end this post with this little gem: In my third game I SCV rushed prezemo and killed 4 of his probes, then I attacked my own in order to not win. He obviously thought that he was pro and I was not.
Download the last replays here (28-38).
