[bald_eagle]

Hi, I am coming to you people today with something that is heavily troubling me, you see I have gone from what I was once top plat and possibly going diamond, and in less than a week I have become a low/mid gold standard player. I got demoted on the Korean ladder from gold to silver, and I also started losing to bronze leaguers which was something that was truly enraging to find out that I have just been defeated by a ******* bronze leaguer.

So I would like to explore a few possibilities on what may be causing to play at such a shit calibur atm

First off: From what I would think would clear my mind alot more, was going to the gym and doing intensive workout and I have been doing that for almost 2 weeks since I just started however I do other forms of exercise in my spare time aswell. I'm not too certain if only aching arms and body would actually effect my ability to play.

Mind state: I have a mindset to try and become better quickly and I try and do that by watching replays and analysing etc. I know rage isn't a good thing to be dealing with when trying to get better but I wouldn't think it would affect me THAT bad.

I have been shuffling between protoss and zerg since I dont know which one is the best for me and I am becoming closer and closer to protoss the more I play, I wouldn't know if this disrupts my mechanics across races, my timings etc, does anyone else get this?

So I hope I have given you a broad understanding of what is troubling me, if there is anything you need me to elaborate on, please post it ITT. I would really like to hear some advice, I have been given some from my clan mates in TCP, but would like to go a bit broader.

Please, if you post "play it to have fun" I will disregard you and your advice completely, because let's face it, why else would I play it? Anyway thank you for reading and I am hoping for some feedback

BaldEagle

[Omny]

Im too tired atm or i'd probably write a whole wall of text but in a nutshell i have a few points to make and while only being plat league myself the theory is fundamental to learning/life. Firstly you need to recognise that just because somebody's account is in X league it doesnt mean the person sitting at the computer has a skill level that represents said league. Therefore losing to a bronze leaguer shouldnt get you as enraged as you say, or this should at least stem it somewhat. At the stage in progression you are talking it is important to start to lock your game down properly, im sure you can imagine the benefits of choosing one race to devote your attention to. You will likely get alot of people suggesting you choose one race. It can be good to play another race for perspective, but that comes later as far as i can tell. Other than that i would definitely suggest you either start playing 1v1 obs, get some practice partners or use your NA account as a practice account. I would suggest at this stage nuking that account down two leagues and using it as a more stress free level of play, something you can use to keep your skills tight without constantly pushing you to improve or be demoted. It can also be good for warming up for when you arent at peak performance. Also, while going to the gym will help your general fitness and motivation being tired will definitely effect your play in some manner (the practice account can help this). Id advise going only so hard as to give you a decent workout without negatively impacting your skill level or time spent practicing sc2 by more than a small degree. If you are training speed and fitness rather than muscle and strength (which is advisable) you should be doing a larger amount of reps with smaller weight than is the average for you, this lends itself towards being able to cut off your workout at a good time to prevent excessive exhaustion. Cardio is cardio however you should find an activity that raises your heart rate as fast as possible with the least strain on your muscles, this is efficient and especially important for somebody who requires fitness improvement while maintaining gaming capability afterwards. The only other suggestion i can think of off the top of my head is to maybe divide your time practicing into segments and divide them between different activities you want to get done. Think or even write down why doing them is important and the way you should view the time spent, every loss is a chance to improve while every win is an excuse to become more complacent. Try to start small and just stick to it at first, and find a better way to measure your progress than Blizzards League system, its really pretty poor. I'd look to benchmarking against pro players with your build at first, measure how many probes you lose each match and continue to work on it. (Use the same build in each matchup so the data is relevant and can be used properly). This is how you actually measure your progression, once you can macro flawlessly and micro decently the league promotions will earn themselves. You cant use your progression as inspiration and motivation unless you measure it properly, its like when you go to install windows and the progress bar hangs at 1% for like 20 minutes - doesnt give you much faith that you are going to get anywhere but in actual fact the bar isnt an accurate representation of the progress.

Hope some of this helps. Have a good one mate, and get that swagger back

Edit: Add me on SEA Omny.250, we can play some stress free practice games if you want. I could actually use another practice partner myself, and have had my own fair share of ladder anxiety in the past.

Quick Comments

	mirth:	i'd to see your text wall when ur not tried XD
	ToRLuneth:	exactly what I was thinking lol

[TACeeSerps]

HOLY WALL OF TEXT!
tldr

@BaldEagle
Best thing to do is grab maybe 3 or 4 games where you don't fully understand how you could of won/how you lost and post them in the Replay Feedback thread. You can upload your replays here or use Drop.sc or something similar.

[inFeZa]

Originally Posted by Omny

Im too tired atm or i'd probably write a whole wall of text but

Originally Posted by Omny

in a nutshell i have a few points to make and while only being plat league myself the theory is fundamental to learning/life. Firstly you need to recognise that just because somebody's account is in X league it doesnt mean the person sitting at the computer has a skill level that represents said league. Therefore losing to a bronze leaguer shouldnt get you as enraged as you say, or this should at least stem it somewhat. At the stage in progression you are talking it is important to start to lock your game down properly, im sure you can imagine the benefits of choosing one race to devote your attention to. You will likely get alot of people suggesting you choose one race. It can be good to play another race for perspective, but that comes later as far as i can tell. Other than that i would definitely suggest you either start playing 1v1 obs, get some practice partners or use your NA account as a practice account. I would suggest at this stage nuking that account down two leagues and using it as a more stress free level of play, something you can use to keep your skills tight without constantly pushing you to improve or be demoted. It can also be good for warming up for when you arent at peak performance. Also, while going to the gym will help your general fitness and motivation being tired will definitely effect your play in some manner (the practice account can help this). Id advise going only so hard as to give you a decent workout without negatively impacting your skill level or time spent practicing sc2 by more than a small degree. If you are training speed and fitness rather than muscle and strength (which is advisable) you should be doing a larger amount of reps with smaller weight than is the average for you, this lends itself towards being able to cut off your workout at a good time to prevent excessive exhaustion. Cardio is cardio however you should find an activity that raises your heart rate as fast as possible with the least strain on your muscles, this is efficient and especially important for somebody who requires fitness improvement while maintaining gaming capability afterwards. The only other suggestion i can think of off the top of my head is to maybe divide your time practicing into segments and divide them between different activities you want to get done. Think or even write down why doing them is important and the way you should view the time spent, every loss is a chance to improve while every win is an excuse to become more complacent. Try to start small and just stick to it at first, and find a better way to measure your progress than Blizzards League system, its really pretty poor. I'd look to benchmarking against pro players with your build at first, measure how many probes you lose each match and continue to work on it. (Use the same build in each matchup so the data is relevant and can be used properly). This is how you actually measure your progression, once you can macro flawlessly and micro decently the league promotions will earn themselves. You cant use your progression as inspiration and motivation unless you measure it properly, its like when you go to install windows and the progress bar hangs at 1% for like 20 minutes - doesnt give you much faith that you are going to get anywhere but in actual fact the bar isnt an accurate representation of the progress.

Hope some of this helps. Have a good one mate, and get that swagger back

Edit: Add me on SEA Omny.250, we can play some stress free practice games if you want. I could actually use another practice partner myself, and have had my own fair share of ladder anxiety in the past.

Lol...
.
as for terms of ladder anxiety, just don't look at your rank, don't play ladder to rank up, nobody gives a shit about that. Play to practice so you improve your self so you do well at an event or tournament.

[Cordance]

Playing tired has a significant impact on skills. They did studies on driving to do with this the numbers showed being awake for 18 hours has a similar impact on reactions and decision making as being over .05 (drunk driving in Australia).

Your mind set is a big problem. Getting good quickly to put it simply just doesnt happen. It also leads to skipping things to get an edge at one level that fails you at higher level (aka 4 gate to masters whats macro problem). You will have fast and slow parts to the learning curve and "Revelation moments" when you make big jumps. I find one of the hardest things I focus on being a low "skill" player is I know what I should be doing I just cant manage it yet this leads to inefficient actions making it even harder to do what I know I should be doing. Sometimes its best just to go back to basics and play a simple game vs "gold fish" (gold fish is a old magic the gathering term where play your deck and ignore what the other person could do totally to see how a deck could play.)

Some advice I have thrown around other places on this note. When you look to improve be focused on what your trying to improve it will help you get your head around how things are going. For example focus on keeping warp gates on cool down vs Crono low. If you try to split your focus too much you will end up not well focused.

Switching race should not have a significant impact so long as you are ready to play the race. It will slow your learning down because you have more to learn but shouldnt reduce skill levels. However it does come to another possibility which you havent mentioned in "your skill drop". Ladder is relative not absolute. Many people say they are GM skilled player or a masters skilled player. If you look at season 1 of GSL, I put to you that any player playing as well as a season 1 GSL player would not even be in code A today. Keep in mind if other players are improving quicker than you are your quest up the ladder is like climbing a ladder that keeps getting higher.
Keep in mind popular meta game shifts. If you have a very limited number of build orders as most mid range players have their "good builds" they like to switch to when they are having a bad day. If the meta game has shifted so that those builds are being blind countered this could be the cause of your woes.

Judging your own play objectively is hard, very hard, many would actually say impossible. However here are a few things you can do to help out. When watching a replay watch the clock. Generally speaking time vs units/workers is a fairly constant thing. If your unit count is higher in one game vs a similar game is generally a good sign of improvement vs regression. Other things to look at is macro slips which come from time when your not macroing actively.
Macro failing is easy to miss because lots of people will focus on the wrong targets of macro. Money is an important part of macro keep your money low how ever keeping your money low is not always the correct thought. Keep your money spent but your income high is important. Zergs look at lava not spent but also should look at making sure lava is being made at the correct rate.

I guess Ill finish before my wall of text becomes a tower with a final note. Plan improvement step by step and dont feel bad if you have to take a step backwards because of an slip in one area due to another improvement you are making. You will want to master all the skills some skills will require more focus and cause you to slip in other areas which can be remastered once you start to master what you are focused on now.