Starcraft II

[CSamurai]

Mega spoilers inside. DO NOT READ if you haven't seen the GSL.

PROTOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!

oGsMC may not be my favourite protoss player on earth, but he did make an impressive showing. Game two was simply amazing for both players.

[CSamurai]

I had a few comeback/close games in the past couple days. I thought I'd post a few here.

[yoyoma]

Cross posting this epic game I had here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblo ... _id=178809

[yoyoma]

DOUBLE POST

CAPSLOCK ON BBQLOLZ

I got promoted to diamond woooo! o/

[CSamurai]

Congrats, Ducky!

I'll refrain from complaining about my own particular rank lock.

[Chew Terr]

Congratulations, Yoyoduck!

[Solomon]

3 rax: it's impossible to stop.

[CSamurai]

It's unpossible!

Today was a day of cheese.
Normally I don't see much cheese any more, but I had a guy six pool me, which destroyed one of the two gates I threw down to wall off, but didn't stop me from beating it back, and a guy cannon rush me on Steppes of War. I beat both of them, but it makes me wonder, why are cheesers in silver and I'm in bronze, beating them down?

Of course, only the 6 pooler was in silver. The cannon rusher was amateur hour all the way, an early bronze.

But still. 6 pool is easy to beat. I mean, the first thing I did was learn to recognize a six pool, and defend against it.

Are there really people who die to a 6 pool in silver and gold?

I'm 20 games up, which means it's time for the matchmaking system to match me against high golds, watch me lose 10 games, and match me against low bronze again, since this seems to be the cycle.

Any golds/plats out there who would like to play practice games with me? I need terran/protoss players more than zerg, but I could use higher level zerg players to build mutalisk mobs for me to die to. Protoss and Terran I die to pretty much everything, so I need a lot of training there.

[CSamurai]

Something happened today.
Something no one cares about but me.
Something no one will notice.
I got promoted to silver.

Still winning, so I must be doing something right, though my last win could have easily turned into a loss had my opponent A) pushed, or B) built something to kill my zealots, rather than more stalkers, sentries, and immortals.

I've been experimenting with 1 base zealot void ray builds, but I did a fast expand this game, and was behind in unit count for about half the game. But all he built was stalkers and sentries, so I upgraded to chargelot, and stomped him.

[MountainGo]

Something happened today.
Something no one cares about but me.
Something no one will notice.
I got promoted to silver.

Yay, the system is finally starting to wise up! For those who don't know, this guy has played 800 games and has so many points that he's already #1 in his Silver division!

By the way, I still have trouble with 6-pool when it's on a 4-player map and I don't scout it early :/

[Numsgil]

Something happened today.
Something no one cares about but me.
Something no one will notice.
I got promoted to silver.

It's a Christmas miracle!

[CSamurai]

Something happened today.
Something no one cares about but me.
Something no one will notice.
I got promoted to silver.

Yay, the system is finally starting to wise up! For those who don't know, this guy has played 800 games and has so many points that he's already #1 in his Silver division!

By the way, I still have trouble with 6-pool when it's on a 4-player map and I don't scout it early :/

Am I at 800 games already? I really should slow down.

I didn't even notice that I had taken #1 already. See me trying not to worry about rank.

[schilds]

Something happened today.
Something no one cares about but me.
Something no one will notice.
I got promoted to silver.

Pix or it didn't happen!

[CSamurai]

My thoughts on the ranking system, after promotion.

I was recently promoted from the top 500 of bronze, straight to the top 2000 of silver. They left me enough points that I was placed at rank 2 of my silver division, and the games I've played since have shown a higher quality of build and macro than bronze, but not so much higher that I could tell when they slipped bronze players in on me.

So, Ideally, what a ranking system would look like is:

Skill 0-100 Bronze
Skill 100-200 Silver
skill 200-300 Gold
skill 300-400 plat
Skill 500-XXX Diamond.

I think it actually looks more like this...

Skill 0-200 Bronze
Skill 50-250 silver
skill 100-300 gold
skill 200-400 plat
skill 300-XXX Diamond.

I think there's some broad overlap, and I think that through an error of skill calculation, or just because of this overlap, the top 1-2% of the divisions are actually wildly misranked.

I mean, really, going from 100th percentile bronze to 99th percentile silver is /gratifying/, I will give you that, but it hints that the system is broadly and systemically broken.

Then again, maybe they just weren't planning for a total noob to play 800 games and not get all that much better. I may be breaking the curve just by quantity over quality. I play 5-10 games a day, on work days. I sometimes play upwards of 20-25 on days off. You'd think with this much play that I'd be vastly improving, but I still struggle with a lot of things.

Mostly, I struggle with nerves. I know what I need to do, and doing it is, generally speaking, not a huge issue. But when I'm startled, or see something I didn't plan for, or get attacked, I get nervous. I get doubly nervous when I'm playing a terran because they have so many options for beating me, each of which requires a different build. 3 rax.. I don't know what to build to beat that, since nothing I do works. Sometimes I get lucky and can rush out a collosus before they get down to attack me. Banshee harass, I need 3-4 gate robo to hold it off to start, transitioning into phoenixes to end it longer term. Thor Rush: I don't know how to beat this due to the SCVs being impossible to kill. Immortal/collosi with a mix of stalkers and zs sometimes have some success, if the thors don't have barage cannons to take out the heavy hitters. If they do, wave goodbye to my base.

I try to stay calm, and not panic, but depending on my nerves, my plans often fall apart under harassment.

I guess that's why, after 800 games, I'm just chobo at everything.

Some goals for the new year:
Don't Panic
Enjoy Cheaper Observers
Make More Probes
Play for fun

[MountainGo]

Mostly, I struggle with nerves. I know what I need to do, and doing it is, generally speaking, not a huge issue. But when I'm startled, or see something I didn't plan for, or get attacked, I get nervous.

I feel the same way. So far, the best thing I've found to calm down is NOT to do breathing exercises or whatever, but to engage in the game and just consciously return to the basic question, "What is the current game situation (The eternal go questions actually apply: 1. Am I weak? 2. Is he weak? 3. Where is the largest point?), and what move do I want to make as a result?" No matter the match-up, basic scenarios tend to re-emerge, e.g. They've got more units and I've got better tech; or They've got static D that is making it difficult to scout them; etc. Then I can simply confidently do whatever I've decided is a good response to that situation, and if it's a new situation then I decide after the game what I want to try for next time.

3 rax.. I don't know what to build to beat that, since nothing I do works.

Try 3-Gate Robo, it works surprisingly well. Just make Immortals (the bane of Marauders), and don't tech to Colossi until after you've got two bases up and running.

Banshee harass, I need 3-4 gate robo to hold it off to start, transitioning into phoenixes to end it longer term.

Yeah, Banshees still terrify me, along with Mutalisks and speedlings. That said, get Blink! It's such a good upgrade for the price, and it will be good in any fight, not just for killing Banshees.

Thor Rush: I don't know how to beat this due to the SCVs being impossible to kill. Immortal/collosi with a mix of stalkers and zs sometimes have some success, if the thors don't have barage cannons to take out the heavy hitters. If they do, wave goodbye to my base.

Yeah, I haven't had much success against that either, but the patch will make it easier for us, since we should be able to a-move our Zealots to kill the SCVs. I think the basic strategy is that you want enough Immortals and Stalkers that you can just focus the Thor and damage it faster than they can repair. You don't actually need all that many units to be able to do that, but if they rush it really fast, it can be hard to deal with.