SC2SEA.com - Starcraft 2 SEA eSports Community Site

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.