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This afternoon a thread was posted about how to improve.. Its a question that comes up regularly so I thought I would type up a small thing that helped me get from low silver to upper plat / diamond (by the end of beta phase 2) .. Its pretty lengthy, so I'll put it in reply.. but if you have any tips, lets hear it! Anything and everything will help ;)
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First things first:
Bucklesworth 3 part guide to Starcraft 2 improvement: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=23006609
Bronze players
There are 3 things that should be done to improve.. these were taken from Day9 and are really worth doing to improve. First thing is first though, find out what a build order is if it works for you.. Once you have a build order to practice, keep the following in mind:
- Never stop making workers: Keep making workers at all times. Hotkey your nexus / command center / hatch and keep making workers (or for zerg, keep the queens energy low)
- Never let your food get capped: There are times when you are about to get a huge influx of units.. such as when your warp gate tech finishes. You'll jump 6 to 8 food in a few seconds time.. prepare for it! You should always keep looking in your upper right corner and making sure you're not going to get capped.
- Always keep your money low: If your money is getting high, make sure to build more stuff.. if you can't, throw down some more production buildings.. if you STILL can't, make sure you're getting all the upgrades you can!
Once you master these things and start getting into a gameplan, and start learning build orders, things will go smoother and you'll start making progress towards silver and gold. I'm going to use protoss as an example because I went from low silver (in phase 1) to diamond (phase 2) by learning, tweaking, and adjusting my strategies.
- Start with a build order
I learned several build orders and did NOTHING BUT THOSE for the first X amount of games until I knew the timing. I know some people do 10 pylon, 10 gateway, zealot harass into a mid-game, but that never worked for me because you need to understand how to micro your zealots.. So pick a build order that you can just do, focus on your macro game, and don't worry about "what happens if they cheese me" or "what happens if they go bio instead of mech" or whatever.
For me, my build order was:
9 pylon -> send this probe back to mineral line
12 gateway -> send this probe to scout
14 gas
16 (or whenever gateway finishes) Cybernetics Core
(note: i do the rest by feel, not by numbers)
2nd gas
robo bay -> fast observer
2nd gateway
3rd gateway
With this build, off one base.. I have 3 gateways and a robo bay. I can pretty much do whatever I need to do, and the '2nd immo timing push' used to be pretty hard to stop.. dunno how it is i n the lower levels but plat and diamond players know what to do now ;)
Once you're comfortable with a build
Once you have a build order down, you can learn transitioning to "what if..." stuff. A good example of the above, what if they're going ghost to EMP, with bio-ball (marine marauder)? You already have the tools you need, but you'll need to transtition to something else.. this is wehre you learn the counters and how to move along. I'd advise you to only start doing this if you're in gold because this is where things start to get tricky, because now its more about your decisions in game and they have to be made fast. The above situation, EMP will render your immos useless, so your decisions are either to transition to chargelots and eventually into HT's (feedback and storm), or continue with immo's and hit them before they have a few ghosts (timing push) ... This is when you'll be learning the "why do i do this vs that" and its where the game gets more interesting, albeit more frustrating. :)
Once you've done those and are now learning the "why"
Now you can learn to micro your units in battle. At this time, your army is always big and your money is never stockpiling up past a few hundred (my games, sometimes it slips and i get 500 minerals but it quickly goes down again) So now you can start learning how to really up your APM and micro your units while your'e doing everything you've already learned.
- Zealot battle, 3 v 3? have 2 zealots attack one of his, and move your zealots out of the way. If you notice he's doing the same, kite his zealots around with the one being attacked and let the others whale on his army. Scoot and shoot stalkers.. good force shields.. making Immo's attack marauders and not marines, while your zealots rip up the marines.. etc etc
Depending where you are in the game, all of the above can be useful. If you're a plat player, moving into diamond, you'll start realizing that the "counters" that the game tells you doesn't always apply. A great example of this is last night, BigT commented on "This unit is weak to mutalisk, why would you make it?" and Chill snapped back saying that you want air control in that situation and while 1v1, vikings do lose to mutas.. it helps you get air control and was a good move. Remember both of these players are diamond, but it shows you on what level they're thinking at.. and why BigT probably won't ever be a top level diamond player, and chill would.
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