[TidaL]

Hi guys,

I'm only a and am looking to improve.
I have heard about people watching their replays after their games and have done so on some occasions. However, I'm not sure when to watch my replays and what to look for.
Should I watch the replay of ALL my games or just the losses? (When do you watch ur replays?)
What should I look for when watching my replays? (What do you look for?)

Thanks

[Malice]

I find when I ladder, I try to get as little downtime as possible, for effective use of my time. (Though I still dick around a lot inbetween games despite this, but I try!) So what I do is, regardless of loss or win, when the game finishes, I will immediately queue for another one. This ensures my mind is on the game, and not the points I gained or lost. I only ever check my replays if I lost, and I have no idea how I lost, I look for the first game changing mistake, I made, and then move on to the next game.

To be honest, when I was in plat, I just flat out played and enjoyed myself, I wasn't really seeking to improve, so regardless of what's in your replays, you can keep playing, and still improve quite fast, analysing replays and whatnot at this level can somewhat feel like a chore, and may bore you from playing. Just enjoy the game, and you'll improve along the way.

[ACX]

1. What is the problem?
Identify the problem. Ask yourself what you did wrong, what problems did you encounter and why? For example, if you got beaten by mass mutas, the problems might be because you didn't prepare or scout enough to see it coming. Also, a problem might also be engagements, positioning and composition. The great thing about replay analysis after your game or after a couple of minutes after your game, you can see everything with a clear mind without all the pressure in-game.

2. How do I solve it?
Once you've identified the problem, think on how you could've solved or mitigated it. For instance, your problem is mass mutas and the way to deal with it might be blink stalkers, HTs w/ storm, archons and cannons.

3. Apply it.
Now you know what the problem is and how to solve it. You just need to simply apply it by incorporating the solutions into your build. To further use our example with mass mutas, application might involve using your observer more efficiently to scout to see when mutas are coming, making an earlier twilight council to get an earlier storm upgrade, etc.

[mGGAequitas]

i recommend only watching your losses.

some general tips for replay analysis:

Click on your nexus and 8x the speed. note if there are any gaps in probe production, if there are; slow down the game and see if there is a good reason for the gap(s). Scouted all in? doing an all in? saving for a faster expansion? At max probes? etc. If there was no good reason, then you know that probe production is something you have to work on.
While going through look if your chrono energy gets too high.
Do the same for each expansion.

Look at income tab to see if you are about even in income throughout the game. if you don't do you have a tech advantage? army advantage? did you make use of this advantage by attacking/harassing?

At each engagement look at the army values, is your army smaller?, bigger? has an upgrade advantage? if your army is smaller, work out if it was because you are floating too many resources or if you didn't have constant production from warpgates or robo, didn't chrono enough?
before and after the engagement you also look at the units lost resources. Did you lose more stuff in the battle? if you had the tech/army advantage was it because you microed poorly? if you didn't have the army advantage and microed decently maybe you should have not engaged at that point?

yeh these things are pretty much what I look for in a replay.

you essentially have to look for where you fell behind ie. your army got crushed. Then you have to work out why.

[TidaL]

Thanks guys some really good tips so far!

[Next_rim]

Before you click the start replay button, ask yourself the following questions:

1) What was your build and what is the point of it? 99% of the time you should be able to say "I wanted to open 1-gate into 32 nexus, put pressure with 6 stalkers, force out bunkers and delay his third, and to have my own 3rd at 10 and 4x templars with storm at 11:30 to wtfroll my opponent".

2) What you think went wrong? You may say something like "He went 2 rax instead of gasless FE, and it made my build useless".

Then watch the replay and see if your answers to those question match what actually happened.

[FS.Kezz]

I remember watching a Day[9] Daily awhile ago where the main focus was watching replays to improve your game. Unfortunately I don't remember the number of the daily, other than it was somewhere in the 300's. The main point that he articulated throughout was that you should only really watch the replay to locate the first main mistake that you made. Once you find that, everything after it is irrelevant as you should only focus on changing one thing at a time. Best of luck!