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My ladder anxiety
 

I suck at writing, but I wanted to put this down to be read somewhere. Where else but the best Starcraft community around?

As much as ladder is important to becoming recognised in starcraft, it scares me. It isn't that I hate losing, I understand that losing makes you a better player if you have the right mindset. The reason I hate ladder is that I feel that I may not be up to the standard that I hold myself at.

I have been playing Starcraft2 since season 2; although my dedication to ladder has been somewhat lacklustre. I first qualified for and was laddering like crazy. I found this really cool build called the 4 gate and used it verse everyone! Zerg, Terran and Protoss fell at the 9 minute mark to my perfectly executed 4 gate!

Then I got to league and my pathetic excuse for a build no longer worked. I started to get into watching replays (Husky got me started, now I love Day9 and Tastosis more than anything) and just from watching high level play, my play improved. My practice partners had decreased from 2 to 1 as LoL became an increasing source of entertainment. I lost interest in the Starcraft scene for a while as school and sport became absorbing all my time.

I recently came back and had a big ladder burst. I finally made it to this season. I started to watch people like Mafia and PiG dominate everyone in local tournaments and used them as my motivation to become better. I started practicing with my practice partner again , and though there is a large gap in our skill level (I'm only a while he is a ) he is helping me get back to the level I believe I can get to.

The snag I have hit in the past week is that I log onto Starcraft and feel like only practicing vs PhoenixA (my awesome prac partner) or bots on the highest difficulty. I feel like my mechanics are fine, but when I verse people on ladder I make silly mistakes that I don't do elsewhere e.g. lack of scouting, silly tech paths(actually going air units as protoss!) and other things that I don't normally do. Also as a result of only versing in practice, my play against that race is very strong, but I struggle heavily in my previous strengths of vs or .

I think that the set AI for bots is a thing that actually works against me for ladder, but my anxiety is stopping me from making any progress whatsoever. When I can finally progress through this I hope to join the weekly BSG and see how I go there. We'll see.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

9 minute mark 4 gate?...

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

Hey mate, I know exactly what you mean... all my practice partners are Zerg (too many in the SEA)! So I'm confident with that match up as well but Terran and Protoss are scarier opponents. If you want I'm more than happy to practice some PvP with you when I'm online. I'm usually hanging around the ToR channels when I'm online

I think he means that's when they GG'ed out not necessarily when the 4gate actually hit. Unless of course "perfectly executed 4gate" was used in sarcasm.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

You need human players AI is a waste of time expect for very general build order practise with no hassle from an opponent, the easiest way to get human opponents is on ladder. The easiest way to practice if you wanna get good quickly is grab a really tight build order from a pro replay for EACH MATCHUP and practice the hell out of them. YOU MUST HAVE A PRO BUILD, THE BUILD YOU MAKE UP WILL NOT WORK EFFICIENTLY. The build you choose can be a macro build or aggressive, whatever the build is it needs a goal, for example I want to kill him at X time, or safely establish a third base and go into lategame

When you have a build you like use custom games with people better than you or at least same level to work out SPECIFIC parts of your build you struggle with.

For example ''I die to X at Y time every game.'' In customs you can get your mate to do ''X at Y time'' to you 5 games in a row. When you cant think of any more X's or Y's go on ladder, people do such random stuff on ladder you're sure to find more X's and Y's in your build to practice.

That kind of focused training is what gets you places quickly. I just derped around in diamond for 3 seasons and eventually got better. I had fun but it was a waste of training time.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

Good thing to keep in mind re. ladder:

Nobody gives more fucks about your ladder points than you do.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I had some serious ladder anxiety for a long time. I found I could ladder on NA and KR ok because I regarded them as practice servers, but I just couldn't bring myself to ladder on SEA. And it was really dumb - I was in gold league on SEA, I was on the verge of diamond NA and gold on KR, and had a very favourable win rate on SEA vs platinum players. It only would have taken a small investment to get promoted. But the anxiety remained.

What it takes is an attitude shift. For me, I took a 2 month break from the game (forced to, thanks to uni) but there are definitely other ways to do this. You need to get out of the mindset of "I need to win" and into the mindset of "I need to improve" - and also, to consider losing as a vital component of improving. You say you do silly things when you ladder - do them! Then watch the replay and go "oh god how could I not scout that, I am so dumb" and for the next 10 games, put a lot of effort into making sure you scout that one thing.

People have often reminded me that no pro player wins all their games. In fact, they usually have ~50% win rates - the same as you or I.

SlowHands has some awesome advice right there. If you want a practice match or several, hit me up. I'll do my best to encourage you to take strong performances to the ladder at the same time

Perfect by standards, clearly.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

something which helped me when i first approached RTS games was to block out everything and anything which had to do with 'talent.' i didn't want to hear that people were born talented and i chose not to believe in anything related to it. most of us approach things thinking we're this special white snowflake that's going to stand out and get good with no work ethic what so ever. this is what holds us back in the end.

you must truly make yourself believe that the only thing which will get you anywhere is work ethic. you might understand this in psychical sports but mentally you believe you're a higher tier than everyone else in teh longrun.. which is false.

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your ******* khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. -Tyler Durden"

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

4 Gate should hit at ~5:40min, possibly earlier. (PvP Only really, never use for other matchups)

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I can usually hit it by about 6:30, I'm still quite poor with mechanics. I was being sarcastic about the 9 minute mark, as I used to think that was good when I was in Bronze.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I feel your pain VoiD. Although my reasons are slightly different. I seem to find team games much more enjoyable. i get bored/lonely playing 1v1.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I'm terran, plat. Happy to practice with you. Find me on 'Clan Fade' in game otherwise send us a message. I'm fairly active

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I'm FaDeVISION btw

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I find laddering much more enjoyable when I'm on skype with mates who are also laddering or if I've got some streams open. 1v1 SC2 just feels super lonely to me (came from CS:S and Quake CTF/TDM which were both team games so yeah x_x)

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

I find with ladder you need to have structure, like safe styles against certain races and try not to vary off the path of your plan much unless you scout that you have to. If you are ever looking for a protoss practice partner I'd be happy to help just PM me ^_^.

Re: My ladder anxiety
 

Ladder anxiety is a real thing that affects lots and lots of people, good on you for writing about it.

The main difference, in my opinion, is that Battle.net is geared up to be a foreveralone type of place. The introduction of chat channels alleviated that a little, but it's still nowhere near what it was like in BW/War3. In those games, even being dumped in the default Australia-1 or USA-5 channel was something, people talked to each other.

My theory is that because actually playing a ladder game is the only real social experience on bnet (apart from customs and team ladder, which don't have the prestige and don't 'count' in the way things are seen) people get into a state about playing.

I've experienced ladder anxiety before, and I never did in brood war/warcraft 3. By and large you get over it by just playing and slowly chipping away at your goals. Even doing simple things that you know you *should* do but often won't, such as making yourself watch a replay where you just lost and looking for things you did wrong, will help your mindset go from 'this sux' to 'hmm, that's interesting' when you lose.