Ladder Reconfiguration

Blizzard changed how the global ladder works so now it has become harder to rank up. They secretly made the changes to the ladder, so later when they admit to it, I look back to how my games went for that day, I lost every single one. My MMR dropped down faster than Remastered's popularity. I wish blizz didn't keep it a secret because it partially led to me taking a fairly long break out of frustration.

This season, season 5, I've played 142 games so far. Almost hard to believe. I'm not sure I can describe my experience as distinctly remembering any of my first 100 games feels impossible, so I'll talk of my current issues.

Each session heats me up. That players can keep their cool at higher levels is testament to their mental fortitude. Maybe it's a personal trait, but my thoughts linger on games for quite a while after they're over. Playing before bedtime makes falling asleep a struggle as I have to keep catching myself thinking about what I should have done during a game. Googling some methods of calming down and relaxing has somewhat helped.

Now to the juice. I've started some builds that I don't normally do. In TvP, I've decided to fast expand every game. It's very common in pro games and I feel it's an important strat. There are a lot of maps and a lot of map positions. I plan to figure out the positions during games and hope it's the right. So far so good. No protoss players are aggressive with quick zealots lately so I haven't felt the most difficult part yet. Sending 2 scvs for each zealot and reading what the protoss is producing is key. The maps determine what opponents are likely to do. Two player maps seem to produce the most aggressive players. What seems true as far as I can tell is players that do quick drops or try to back door are often not ready for when the opponent does it back two minutes later.

Effectively using vultures while simultaneously macroing is definitely a challenge. In TvT my normal build is to fact expand into vultures except for an occasional fast expand (into 2 port wraiths). Games feel pretty erratic. The same opponent strats don't occur often. Only one game had a guy make lots of  factories pumping vultures to overwhelm me.

TvZ has the most all ins. Especially at D rank. If I can scout it, I can defend. Due to lack of macro games, my mech transition is still weak. I usually don't have enough mines out to transition more smoothly. Maybe more research is needed for this.

You may occasionally catch me live streaming. I play as best as I possibly can. It's hard to win in ways that I want. Pro players are amazing when it comes to timings, but I either forget them or fail execution. Blows my mind watching VODs of Flash doing his magic.