Actually playing Starcraft 2

Howdidiwin.SC2Replay

Going to post a replay, if anyone wants to comment on good/bad.

Let me preface it by saying that I won, but I feel if the Protoss was more aggressive I would've lost. If not early, I would've lost if he pushed with his army at the end.

Some things I immediately notice: I sat on completely mined/gassed out bases or far too long. I should've expanded even more at that point. He was locking down a few expansions of mine while I didn't really harass him. I should've done a lot more early aggression rather than macro'ing up so hard. I should have transitioned to Brood Lords as soon as I saw his composition, rather than wasting so much on Mutas at that point.

Obviously I'm Bronze, got demoted lol. Pretty terrible player overall, but genuinely looking to improve. My micro is awful. I got a little flustered at the end of the game and wasn't sure what to do. I feel like I'm also not building enough army units early on as I am focusing too much on macro. My scouting was nearly non-existent minus the beginning. This was a placement match for this dude, so I'm not sure what league he's actually in.

Be gentle.

Good advice, I will watch some of his stuff. I think the reason my opening sucked was for a few different reasons. I tend to play by the seat of my pants rather than copying builds; clearly evident in my replay. The problem with this is sometimes my opening is great and others is like this. Also I'm still in bronze so a lot of times the challenge isn't there to push me. I am pretty sure in a few games ill be up back into silver.

Good advice on the openers though, it's time for me to nail a few down so I can remove that from the equation. I think my macro game isn't too bad, but there's a lot of room for improvement. I think I could've won it earlier if I brought out a bunch of roaches hydras and infestors before he brought out colos.

Thanks for looking at it, I will check out Ret. trying not to post garbage in this thread anymore and actually putting up replays. Besides its interesting to get the advice of Terran or Protoss

Sorry, meant usually haha. That game was weird for me

TvP build stolen from Demuslim's replay analysis last night. Its pretty good.

10 Depot
12 Rax
12 Gas
--> Reaper
--> Reactor
--> CC [consider high ground]
~18 depot
Ebay -> +1
Bunker @ natural
Rax -> Tech -> Stim -> CB shields
Factory -> Reactor
Gas
Port
Gas
Port <=> Factory
+1 Armor
Map control @ 2 medivacs + stim; take 3rd
4th Gas
Armory + Ebay
Add raxes

Gets you really fast +2/+2 and a fairly safe 3rd.

Had a couple of good games against some tough (to me) players. I think it's making me step up my game and be a bit more reactive. My first several games of this season were against low bronze one-base players so I wasn't really having to improve. A lot of my counters are shitty and not working out, going to have to research a bit what hard-counters each build. I got stomped by a mass bio Terran player, even with my banelings it was really hard. I can accept a defeat like that though.

Just got this. Is there any rhyme or reason to how ranking to a new league works? For instance, I figured when I hit Silver I would be at low Silver, but as you can see I went to rank 10. Does it take your previous points and just place you with those points?

Watching the Ret replays.. he uses a pretty standard opener usually unless he spots something weird. Going to try it out. At 15 he's expanding whereas at 15 I'm going Pool->Gas. I think it has to do with him being much more confident whereas the entire game I'm shitting my pants expecting some mass aggression.

I still haven't decided if I want to play Terran or Zerg in HotS. I'm Masters Terran on EU and Diamond Z on NA (I only started playing Z a couple weeks ago, tanked my MMR down to Bronze and worked my way back, ended up being like 130-20 when I got promoted back to Diamond). Looks like Terran got a lot of gay shit this expo that I'm not sure I want to deal with as Zerg. And FUCK ZvP, got DAMN I hate that match-up, there's just so many fucking all-ins and bullshit cannon rushes. Easily my worst match-up, ZvT is a fucking joke (I guess cause I understand Terran), and ZvZ can be really fun sometimes... but ZvP... fuck you Protoss, seriously.

Zaphid_sl said:

I think my winrates have been 80%+ in PvP, 60+ % PvT and 30% PvZ since forever

So, yeah, fuck PvZ

The MU is really fragile and compared to PvT, you can't turtle your way to 3 bases and lategame, because if the zerg gets 5+ bases you will get overrun with ultras, broods or mutas. Nani's 4gate seems to be doing wonders for me though.

If you ever need protoss to play against on EU, Zaphid.795

Click to expand...

I guess I just need to stop them from getting a third, but I usually get immortal + sentry all in. Which is just so fucking annoying to deal with. I just don't really understand the match-up which leads to me just blindly making units trying to deal with shit like colossus or archons.

I've gone mutas before and even with 40 mutas I just couldn't take out his army and eventually lost. I always go muta in ZvT, but ZvP it doesn't seme as good, maybe I'm doing it wrong.

Here is a replay of me executing the Demuslim build decently well. Was getting supply blocked a bunch here and there. Not sure why my opponent said he was afk or something since his apm never drops to zero lol. Only issue is that first zealot I believe threw off my stim timing which seemed late. I believe you should push with stim, +1, CB shields but I really just pushed with Stim and +1.

Here is a new TvZ build I'm working on. Basically I find myself not getting enough value out of the reactor hellion opening lately. Roaches are very, very common in the current meta so they easily get pushed away. I don't have any hard-set numbers but it is somewhat similar to Demulsim's build in TvP or at least inspired by it.

12/12 Reaper
15 Depot
15 Reactor
CC @ low ground
Ebay -> +1
Bunker @ natural (tuck it away for good defense)
Rax -> Tech -> Stim -> CB shields
Rax
Fact -> Reactor
Gas
Port
Gas
Fact <=> Port
+1 armor
*Push*
Add 3rd CC / 2nd Ebay / Armory / Raxes / Reactor Fact -> Mines

Push @ +1/Stim/shields. Depending on what he has depends on what you do. But in general you want a dropship to hit his main while pushing his third. Often times though I find if he goes Roaches to just attack in one clump since low numbers of roaches are good against low numbers of bio so drops are worse.

I should note this is a build that sets you up similar to how I set up in WoL. Where you rush +3/+3 bio while constantly, constantly dropping. But I feel it is a better build in HOTS. Mines replace tanks at a lesser cost, don't require siege and don't require +1 factory weapons to keep up with +Carapace lings. I also like the reaper -> reactor opener. In this replay I lost my reaper like a dumbass. Ideally you do not want to do this at all. You need that reaper to know if a Roach/Bane all-in is occuring.

I've only played that map a handful of times. To be completely honest with you I didn't know there were watchtowers on it until this game when I killed his probe controlling the one >< I didn't really analyze my opponent's build/play since I was more focused on working the kinks out of my own. I just assumed he went the annoying 1 Colossus build that I hate since I never know how they're going to transition from it but just went straight into Templar from there. I think me bouncing his army between his main/3rd probably affected his overall play. The guy was actually top25 Master.

I still have the world's worst Ghost timing. No clue what prevents my brain from remembering "When you put down your 3rd CC you're supposed to put down your Ghost building."

*Shrug* makes you better than top8 Diamond. It's all relative.