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.

Rage Queuing

Yesterday, I've queued into 19 games in a row. That I lose to extremely ridiculous things is the only reason I hit the queue button so quickly. Losses are mostly due to seeing 1 base play and not not being as defensive as I should be as I expand. DT rush/drop, reaver drop, hidden gateways, wraiths, 2 factory.  Even a zerg going hydras catches me off guard every now and then. Definitely feels I could do better against such things. DT drops are especially annoying because turrets seem so easy destroy or avoid. Scans don't last. It's easier to queue up when you KNOW you lost due to ignorance.
Worst of all is being unable to even scout out whether the opponent has expanded. It feels like such a shame to send two scvs to figure it out.

Nonetheless, Brood War is now the easiest it's ever been to play. Custom hotkeys and the keyboard input fix make the game much more approachable. Opponents are mostly around the same skill level. The maps on the other hand... whew a few are pretty bizarre. 

Blockchain

I can poke into B rank every now and then, but the requirement into being a steady B rank will require more experience. This new season will be a beauty.

Hitting B

The battle.net ladder has decided to give me B rank for some reason. I'm happy about it but still feel a bit dissatisfied. Seems I can only get there beating D and C ranked players. B ranked players themselves I hardly ever beat, but then again if I could beat them I'd be a lot closer to A rank. For now I will settle for my true rank to be C+.

I wish I could know how the battle.net ladder scales to the old iCCup because I have never been able to reach C- rank on it. The answer to that may be lost forever, so I'll put the thought to rest. The game is better now and looking back on my skill doesn't help me.

Only thing that hasn't changed is how stressed I still get from playing. Two or three games at a time is all I can do. Still, I feel as if I've gotten better.

1pq Remastered

Brood War will be receiving an influx of fresh new players soon. It's time to get excited! Already pre-ordered so now all there is to do is to sit and wait for my glorious hotkeys and fair ladder (the new graphics will be nice too I guess).

I've been prepping myself a bit by playing on the fish server. I must say the experience was nice, though still frustrating. There are a shit load of Koreans around my skill level and things can get heated. The most frustrating of all is still TvP. I've learned how to sim city my base in order to  maneuver marines between buildings so I can more easily take care of early zealots... LIKE THE PROS, but I've yet to handle them well. Results left me to believe that it's not MY fault, but my mouse's. With google fu I've found out about DPI and how 400-800 is probably best for good micro management. My mouse was set to 1600 DPI thinking I could be accurate enough with a quickness bonus. I don't think it helped me as much as I thought looking back. I couldn't even split my first few workers well at the start of the game. I lowered my DPI to 800 and I can split MUCH better now. Hopefully I can do a bit better against early zealot aggression with this setting.

Also a more precise mouse click will help a lot with clicking the minimap. You've really got to work well with the minimap to win games.

A downside to lowering my DPI to 800 is screen scrolling being a touch more difficult. It will take some getting used to but I can manage. I can't lower it any more because I don't have enough space on my desk to place a big mousepad.

Gameplay-wise, I'm trying to shift my goal from always aggression to area control. This mentality has helped calm my impatient nerves wanting to finish the game quick.

TvZ is still fun. Making a smooth mech switch into the late game remains a fantasy of mine. Reading 2 base hatchery and properly defending the earlier lurkers and mutas is still something I need to work on. Just have to keep in mind that my economy will be ahead if I fend it off properly.

TvT is a cluster fuck as always. Slowly learning more and more about it with area control and counters. If you fuck up getting sufficient map control in the early game you're pretty fucked.

TvP 2 base pushes are ugly. It's hard to determine when the best moment is to siege. Experience will help.

                     † May we worker split with grace †

Season 39 and Starbow - hello twitch.tv

Season 39 on iccup has begun. Things are different player base wise. There seems to be more C- level players than D in light of the 60 games I've played. Despite that, I can get some exciting games.

Still, brood war pushes one into having tunnel vision and one can end up losing as a result. Some things one needs to do quickly, precisely and very periodically, like cycling through production, and the rest I've decided I should slow down and be more steady. Reading the opponent and doing the right things still require some thinking. I've not been focusing on one race matchup so it's doubly important to steadily/carefully keep an eye on my position and what I'm doing. Forcing myself to go any faster is just going to lead to bad plays.

Changes is my Gameplay

In the early game, I think it's wise to hotkey my CCs to 3 and 4 until my two base economy is doing well enough that I have three control groups worth of an army. 5 and 6 will still go to factory/barracks and f3 will still be camera location over army production. I think I'm doing okay with using the camera location when I have more than two army production buildings.

TvT is sloppy. If the game goes far enough I only use my hotkeys for wraiths. This truly is a game of positioning and I've not quite yet worked out which units I should be hotkeying in the later stages of the game. It feels almost better to select attack/move at times. Also, being aggressive at the right times is challenging, but fun.

 

TvP I've been playing mostly standard factory expand. Every now and then I do the one base vulture drop. It once worked well but my follow up was lackluster so I still lost. 

Streaming on twitch.tv

https://www.twitch.tv/onepq

Seems my computer is good enough for streaming now. Finally I can show off my skills! I'm sure funny things will be happening. For now, it's Starbow and Brood War.

My overall goal right now is to just see funny things happen.

Low level play

Starbow is definitely what I wanted from starcraft 2. The unit interaction is top notch! Skill plays a part as the lurkers, dragoons, defilers, reavers, science vessel have returned with a few new abilities.

A revamped starcraft have finally arrived, being just as I wished. Starbow takes the best from brood war and sc2 to a masterpiece. I'm thinking this could be big

Starbow

There is a nice Starcraft 2 mod that's out. It shows promise. Can this be the future of starcraft?