I haven’t posted here in a while, but I thought I would finish of 2012 why some screenshots to demonstrate the Christmas Spirit of the Starcraft community. This is from a game from the the 27th of December.
I’m not really certain that he honestly thought that Zergs have the duty to attack Terran armies head on at all times? It just seems to weird.
This is a hard subject that I have been struggling with for quite a while. I have a handful of friends who are in silver/gold and while I suck at the game, I am still doing a little better than them. They are not new to the game, they just don’t improve that much if at all.
In itself this is not strange. Improvement is rarely gradual. Most often it is in jumps. For instance, my ZvP improved dramatically when I realized that versus a fast expanding Protoss it was safe to do nothing but drone until 6 minutes in the game. From one day to another, my win-rate went from 10% to 35%. Much better.
If you are in silver or low gold you are probably having problems with the following:
If you have 1000 games behind you and still are in the lower leagues, then you are probably aware of all of the above problems and yet seem unable to step beyond it. So what to do?
Things I have tried:
None of it reliably works. Any ideas?
I got a beta key last night. Wuhu!
I just played my first game where I random’ed against a zerg and lost. I ended up as Terran and of course I had to see if I could rely on widow mines. They are kinda fun in large numbers, but they probably still take some knowledge to use efficiently.
In the end I lost to ling/ultra and then he switched to swarm hosts for the humiliation effect.
The things I wondered about the most was whether there were any general improvements to battle.net in the beta, but unfortunately no. No shared replay watching, no automatic mini tournaments. Basically just the plain old battle.net. Hopefully they will add that later and the game I just downloaded just tests the multiplayer balance.
According to tradition I kinda owe a posting on how Season 8 ended for me. End result was about 150 1v1s plated and a end result as around #15 in my Platinum division (not that you really can compare that to anything).
I think it was a confusing season. Statistics shows that I did slightly better against Terran and Protoss compared to in Season 7 (and slightly worse against Zerg, which is annoying as ZvZ for a long time has been my best match-up).
I still find it extremly hard to beat both Terrans and Protoss as they can be so passive and just roll me over in the late game. In ZvZ I’ve decided to become better at taking my 3rd base, as I’ve run into some limitations to my 2-base muta opening. Not to the extend of it costing me games, but because I can see an opportunity to be even better at this matchup -- I wish I could see similar oppertunites vP and vT.
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…
I find that not letting wins and loses get to you is one of the most important things you have to accomplish. Not letting the loses get to you is obvious, but the wins can get you too! I think having a plan to each matchups and being able to modify it to match the map you are playing is the trick.
After a couple of loses it is easy to get angry and then you start gambling. I.e. you’ll not play safe enough hoping to get ahead by cutting corners or you’ll over defend all set on not getting wiped out early. Either will cause you more loses.
Winning a lot builds confidence and suddenly you are not playing against an opponent, but just by yourself. And something this opponent does may be totally unexpected and even if you did see it coming, you did nothing to handle it since you were mentally in a whole other game.
The important thing is to treat each game as a new game. Being alert and aware of the signs you see from your opponent as well as sticking to your plan.
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.
I’m playing an extraordinarily amount of ZvZ. It seems like slightly less that one out of two games are ZvZ. Last season I did badly in this matchup, but due to the high number of games I think I slowly got better at it. This season it is my best matchup.
My standard build is a safe early expand followed up by defensive banelings. Then I drone and tech towards mutas while slowly adding spine crawlers for defense.
Its important to attack with the mutas as soon as the first batch is out and to be prepared for the inevitable roach/ling counter. If you survive the counter, the game is won.
What I don’t like about this is that it feels slightly cheesy. You basically depend on doing knock-out damage with your mutas. Kinda like a lurker drop in Brood War. However, if you do just marginal damage or your opponent has infestors with fungal out, you can still win by playing the game out carefully and transitioning to roaches supported by your mutas.
I think this style has its limits, but since I suck at this game I have until now not encountered many players who can stop this instantly.
I haven’t actually played much so far in season 6, but after getting promoted to platinum, I feel that everything has become much easier. I think this is a misconception and I have just gotten better, but maybe it is too early to tell.
The matchup I feel most confident about is ZvP and that is the one with the lowest win rate. Maybe my improvement in ZvT can be explained by the nerf to ghosts, but it seems to me that I have figured out how to drone harder in the beginning of a ZvT game. This has given me some wins I didn’t get two months ago.
ZvZ is just a mystery. Easier opponents in Platinum compared to Gold. That is the way it feels.
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 just wanted to post a little Christmas greeting and to get everybody in the holiday mood I’ll include the farewell message from my last opponent, before I head out for our family gathering.
Here is to hoping our present tonight will be the skills to get promoted to Grand Master league soon!
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.
I suddenly realized that I have been living in a gaming illusion for the last year. When the beta came out, I found myself in Diamond even though I never made it higher than C- on iCCup. I told myself that I was only good and high ranked in comparison to all the new players on battle.net, but despite that the feeling that I belonged in the top was so easy to get used to.
I guess that the two times I have dropped down to Bronze to make my way up was a way of feeling good about my skills. But right now I have a hard time making it higher than platinum. That is embarrassing.
I guess I will have to take some time to recalibrate my expectations. That sounds tough.
Check this photo album out! I went to BarCraft Copenhagen for the MLG Providence Final. It felt like an odd experience, but kinda cool too. I wish I could have stayed longer than I could, but unfortunately I only got to see about 10 games at the bar.
Most games goes like this:
The steps are basically just interrupted by making exactly enough units to survive what ever my opponent has and maybe some harassing as well. But the predictable thing is that everything revolves around the target for a greater spire.
The two reasons this is so single-track like is the need for air defense coupled with how hard the Ultralisk blows. A 1-1-1 from a Terran requires Mutalisks or extreme luck. Anything that includes either Void Rays or Collosi requires air units too. Hydralisks are nice as a supplement, but they are fragile and slow.
Even Zerg, which for the longest time was just roach/infestor battles have turned more and more towards Muta/ling battles. Not quite the same as the two other matchups, but close enough for it to feel a little stale.
