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2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Gents,

So with the beginning of season 3 came a slight surprise to me, I was promoted to plat! I figured the land of milk and honey awaited. However, something felt amiss. I had lost my placement game, and the loss didnt hurt as much as the manner in which i lost.

It was a (failed) cannon rush into one base two stargate + zealot. I had crushed the cannon rush and killed 7 pylons + cannons. But then suddenly there was this other threat in the shape of VR pheonix- and i was unable to shoot up. So despite getting a third, i was unale to win that game. 22 minute game, my protoss opponent on 1 base cruises to an easy victory after sacrificing about 1k minerals to a failed cannon rush. I should have known this was only a warning of things to come.

Season 3 has been the season of cheese for me. While I think I am just facing a disproportionate amount of cheesers, it is very frustrating. Like most players, my desire to play lessens when I am:-
1) playing poorly; or
2) losing to cheese.

Now winning isnt the only goal for me with starcraft. I honestly enjoy it when i go toe to toe with another player. It really is enjoyable when two players trading blow for blow in an evenly matched game where one player eventually gets up through skill. But that is not how season 3 is going thus far.

My problems are that I work a lot. I can play like 1 ladder game a week if i am in a bad mindset, working a lot and losing. And when I am not playing as much, my scouting slips, as does my macro. with a win rate of 33% this season, and cheese galore, my desire to play is severely hampered.

I hate to sound like a whinging zerg player (where was that thread again?), but i feel that zerg is starting to feel like an effort. I lose to random 1 base attacks and the opponent always says the same thing (whether that is "learn to scout noob" or "you lost you suck"). But you miss one thing as zerg, or have your units in the wrong place, or a bunker gets up and it is always gg.

What do you guys do to deal with this? I am feelign like my scouting is so very poor, but i dont play enough to truly work on it. But then i guess and usually guess wrong? am i just having a tough run and meeting a lot of cheesers?

I came to zerg as a terran player that wanted to play greedy. And i have played so greedy, but i understand that those greedy plays have risks and require 300x more scouting (and guessing) than other races. That isnt a whinge - i think anyone who says zerg scouting is the same as other races is deluding themselves. so the only question is therefore: terran or protoss?

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

It's all in the scouting.
Just remember to leave lings near their base, get up that safety spine etc.
Also when i was busy, i used to do just one ladder game a day, and quit after that whether i won or lost.
Sometimes you just need to play more safe than greedy.

lastly terran^^

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Hmm lots of blogs from zergs talking about how tough their race is. The way I see it, you just need to get out of this bad mindset.

First thing that struck me: You don't consider losing to cheese as playing poorly? Granted, you may not have much practice against it, but it should almost be easier to stop than standard play if scouted (putting aside builds like the scv-marine-banshee-raven-tank).

Identify the reason you lost. You say you were cannon rushed. As I understand it, that is only a threat to zergs who hatch-first. It seems you allowed your opponent to disrupt your build quite a bit, to the point where you didn't scout his stargate (early enough or at all). How many queens did you have to defend? I see pro players build 1.5-2 or even 3 per hatch and put down a spore or two if their opponent is using a very mineral heavy composition (cannons, zealots, very few sentries).

Did you learn anything from the game? I'm sure uploading the replay will get you some good advice in general. Until you get very very good, don't ignore any possible errors in your play by blaming cheese or all-ins and never looking at the replay again.

If you don't like anything I just said then go Terran and punish all of your opponents with hilarious one-base timings.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Yo, hit me up on skype @ tgun.143 and I'll try and help you out

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

It looks to me likeFirstly - your getting terrible luck with some douchebag opponents, (then again, they might be just having fun doing what they do)
just keep practising when you have the chance dude (even if its only that one game a week), Zerg isnt the "Hardest" race, i'd say personally that its the most pro-active, you've gotta constantly be poking their base to see whats going on, or get an overseer and changeling-scout where possible.

Then again, i'm a bit of a scrub.

(Ps, switch to toss, and feel the looooooove!)

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

In all honesty I feel it has absolutely nothing to do with poor scouting or letting your macro slip. I am a platinum zerg player too and having the exact same problem. The only piece of advice I can give you is to just keep playing. 1 game a week tells you everything you need to know. You can't go back into the game knowing how to scout when you have completely forgotten how to macro efficiently. You just gotta keep playing, I've asked masters and grandmasters as well, they all say the same thing. If we keep playing we gain more knowledge, you encounter the same thing over and over and eventually you learn how to counter it. Through practice. So just keep playing and it will all be ok. You gotta set aside your winrate and losing points., because I assure you, if you don't start playing, your not going to improve.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Everyone appears to be saying "get back on that horse". I suppose it's the right response if you wanted help with these problems, you just need to play alot and keep improving your play and mindset.

Then again, you don't really have time for that do you? I know you're extremely busy at work and to be honest while I don't think zerg is underpowered, I do believe that you will die to aggression (yep, cheese is included under this title :P) alot more. The reason for this is zergs explosive economy means your opponents need to keep you in check. The problem is that in this high-paced game defending is always harder then attacking! (the only exception being when the defender knows whats coming or is blindly prepared). So as your opponents always attack you to make sure you aren't greedy, small slip-ups mean you die.

To address the issue of "one slip up and zerg die" I actually agree. But it isn't because zerg takes more apm or anything like that. It's because zergs tend to play defensively and you need to macro and scout well to do this properly. this is very hard to do and takes alot of time and practice. You have to balance your own build to adapt to their build, which (especially at lower levels) can simply be a pre-determined and perfected build they use every game, and is very hard to stop.

So where am I going with this?

Basically I just want to say if you're finding you're too busy with work to play enough to support your zergy instincts then definitely take a break! When I was busier with uni earlier this year I played Protoss for a few weeks because I found I could get away with lower apm (was using a non-mech keyboard so this was actually a pretty big relief). Also I was often the aggressor as protoss and found defending with FF much simpler! No more managing my econ instead I just did whatever build I liked and focused on just making smart and creative attacks to win my games. It didn't always work but it was definitely fun and because it wasn't my main I didn't feel bad when I lost.

I was seriously considering making the swap to Protoss when I started playing more people at a higher level. Despite winning lots of PvTs against fantastic players I found PvP (took a custom off light once!... I don't think he was trying too hard lol...) and PvZ extremely hard and soon realised that once I hit my equal skill level I was dieing to slightly imperfect FF or one tiny mistake in my build order meant I couldn't hold my expo against roach-ling allins or heavy bio pressure.

Slowly the dissatisfaction crept back into my play and I realised that now that Protoss was my main it was just as upsetting to lose as it was to lose as Zerg . I started playing zerg again and it actually took me ages to relearn despite the break not being that long. I think I came back with a wider understanding of the game and more of a strength to losing and so at first dieing to lots of cheese didn't bother me while I re-perfected all my basics. I feel the temporary raceswap improved me as a player and brought back some fun into the game rather then everything relying on winning or losing.

Again recently I swapped to Terran for about a week and had fun with the free-reign aggressive styles and destroyed alot of top players. Unfortunately I realised I wasn't being safe after getting roach rushed and ling run-bys 5 games in a row and that T only really seemed OP cos my opponents previously hadn't been scouting. I'd been metagaming hard .

I realised zerg was the race for me and that ultimately playing sc2 competitively I would always be dissatisfied if I didn't practice enough and could see mistakes I was making leading to losses but not being well-practiced enough to change it. So yeah, take a break, but I hope you're not gone from The Swarm forever!

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Reputation points should work with posts here. D: Pig's post is the best post out of all! It's the most intelligent response that I've read from a high ranked zerg and I am sad that I am unable to give him an additional rep. BMing would stop if players did what PiG did but because as PiG also mentioned, practice is necessary, they wouldn't do the race swap for a sufficiently long period.

Players like IdrA would have less reason to rage but I suspect that the top players know this already and are just QQing because that's what made them famous. Imagine a quiet IdrA. He'll just be like another good zerg player. I watch him for the entertainment. His rage quits are funny. I think their sponsors took them on for this purpose as well. I mean, do you seriously think IdrA's sponsor would actually tolerate him doing those stupid leaves? Those leaves of his generate more entertainment and gives him a bigger audience base despite it being for the wrong reasons.

MC's early game theatrics play on the fact that a lot of players think that protoss is OP. Being a protoss user, it makes his actions even funnier and relevant. Then you get his early aggro/cheese just to rub it into some raging pro's face. The masters-bronze players and in some cases GMs, would see the actions of these 2 individuals as more reasons to QQ about races being OP. It actually helps starcraft 2 more with so many discussions on this topic of OPness. Bad publicity is better than no publicity.

Again, a MASSIVE thumbs up to PiG for making that post.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

I feel ya, I faced more cheese in s3 than ever. I think it has something to do with people rushing to get ahead in points, or fulfill their unsatisfied promotion goals from s2 quickly.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Scout, scout, scout. And make sure you know what you're looking at. I'm in Plat as well, and I'd say most of my losses I can put down to not scouting properly or enough, so if it's an issue at all in your play (which it sounds like it) concentrate on getting better at it.

As for feeling like it's an instant loss if you make a stuff up with zerg, well, the other races are exactly the same (apart from terran. .. jk). It's just part of the game that mistakes are punished more as the level of play goes up. It's kind of like motor-racing, the faster you go, the more a mistake will hurt.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Like many of us, you place too much importance on your league as people classify us according to them. That's very natural and common but that automatically leads you to fear being downgraded and as soon as you hit a ceiling, you will have more displeasure than fun and you will stop playing.

The solution for you is not changing race (count 1 or 2 leagues downgrades when you do at the begining, whatever race change you do), but changing your mindset about your league : Whatever your league, just play and have fun. Learn to act with others (on forums, with your friends) as you were Grand Master and Bronze, confident in what you know and your skill but humble about your flaws and what you ignore.

You can make some team play too if you're too tired after work to play focused 1c1.

Cannon rush in PvZ (and not [s]PvT[/s] as I write before) is not really a cheese, it's a very efficient strategy even in Grand Master, just learn to defend it and don't assume it's an automatic win after that. Stargate play is very classic and valid after that too, just learn to defend it.

TL;DR : Have fun when playing, that's the only goal if you want to continue to play.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Um.... Nemo. Do you really mean PvT not PvZ? I don't see many cannon rushes in PvTs if any and the OP is a Z. Pretty sure it's a typo.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

Thanks to everyone that has read my blog and responded. Zerg feels like a race that when you are playing well, you are an unstoppable omniscient machine. But when you are playing poorly, you are guessing, and swearing, a lot. Knowing what you should be doing is different to executing it, and it is execution that is failing me at the moment. The solution to execution is playing a lot more, but for those that read my original post, I dont really have the time to play more than two games a day (max).

I was expecting good things when i came into Plat not because I had been promoted, but because I have been executing well for the last few weeks leading up the promotion. I had been putting in the time and working on every aspect of my game. Then all of a sudden I get busy at work, and it all starts going wrong. I wish my job was where you just did the 8:30-5, but it is not.

After discussing it more with PiG, I think I will have a break from zerg for a while, play some team games until I come back from overseas and work slows down, and if I feel it in the future, come back to zerg. The thing is though, I was playing a team game as zerg the other day, and i started thinking "i would much rather play these games as terran". so i am. It isnt like i will ever be in the GSL, so to really be concerned about my rank/play should be secondary to me wanting to play. I have been doing some 4's with mates for the last few days on skype, and it is good as we share our wins and losses.

Thanks for the advice crew, i hope to keep writing this blog about my experiences in sc2, as I set out to write primarily.

Oh, and nemo, a cannon rush is definitely cheese. The fact that it is effective doesnt mean it isnt

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

You're perfectly right, it was an obvious typo. I meant Canon rush is made for punishing a hatch first in ZvP. I've seen conversation about it between Root members on Catz Stream. They were saying that Hatch first was not viable in ZvP because canon rush drove to automatic defeat. I've seen Destiny and Cats struggle against perfectly scouted canon rushs in the natural even with no Hatch first (and even no hatch try at all).

In PvT I've never saw it at high level I think. I's more often the inbase 2 Gate zealot rush, but it's more cheesy even if it's not an automatic loss for Protoss if scouted.

My first ladder game was lost to canon rush (TvP) but I begun in Bronze.

Re: 2 weeks in Plat, or, why I am ready to quit zerg
 

hey tgun could you help me out id be incredibley greatfull and be your biggest fan i cant afford coaching and amm struggling against terran 1 base plays and my queen hotkeys, your help would be much appreciated Infetrix.568