[memo619]

Hello, I am currently a high diamond player in sc2. I've faced plenty of masters in customs/ladder/obs maps and it feels as if I lose the majority of the time.
Currently my weaknesses are with my OL routes/placement(feels like I lose too many ol's), drops (I suck at only sending a few units to the drops because I usually send all my army there), and pronged attacks. Any kind of tips on how to deal with these problems will be appreciated

[SLCN.Kez]

Lucky for you im bored at 2 am!
Ok, so the difference between diamond and masters is refining all your builds, your macro, and your multitasking. You're getting to the level where 10-15 seconds in builds can put you infinitely behind and missing timings become a pretty big deal. Look over your build again, do you get supply blocked once or twice? are there times you have money for buildings but you dont put them down for another ~5 seconds or so? are there times when you have larve and money sitting there but youre not playing fast enough to spend them? if you answered yes then your build isnt refined!! this is also comes under macro sort of as well.

The next part is your decision making will need to change slightly as your builds get more and more refined as the game actually changes quite a bit once you get used to knowing what things hold what after seeing what your opponent has made at a certain time. Good and when to counter attack should become a pretty big part of your play at this level.

Since u said ur problem is ovie placement/route and drops then ur probably just not playing fast enough. Get used to watching ur mini map more than your screen, get used to hotkeying a few different control groups to move units around, and just play faster for the **** of playing faster. You'll start of losing a few matches for a month or so because youll do stupid shit and probably macro worse since youre concentrating on macroing faster, but eventually you'll get used to it and play much better.

Lastly, refine your builds! I know I said it before but seriously not enough people do this, and the game changes a shit tonne once you have everything done to the second game in game out. Then macro perfectly after it! And if you think youre macroing well and have a good refine build then watch a replay a few times in slowest speed and watch things like ur injects, how quickly u spend ur larvae and how much you get supply blocked and itll really open your eyes

Quick Comments

	neKo:	So arrogant..
	QEDMinotaur:	He is arrogant for giving good advice? Righto...

[memo619]

As you've stated I do at times get supply blocked a bit during the early, mainly in zvp when I take 3 hatcheries and the amount of income is high and when only making 1 ol doesn't cover for all the larve I have as well as having too much larve and not enough cash, thus wondering when my 3rd queen pops in my 3rd hatcheries should I just put up a creep tumor instead?
Usually I don't get supply blocked, taken into account that no overlord dies.
As for control groups and making a small army in a control group would be ideal to deal with drops, in my opinion but I can be wrong.
It feels as if my control group for queens sometimes gets in the way of my army since I like using 1-4 for my army, and 5 for my hatcheries, should I just put the queens on 6?
Thank you for the tips on refining my builds, but I lack a lot of builds which is what I need to work on

[SLCN.Kez]

ok so for zvp, with ur 2nd queen at ur nat hatchery place a creep tumour with the first energy it has, this means u can afford all ur larvae and overlords and 3rd queen at 3rd hatch no problems and gives ur creep to. Even Usually not getting supply blocked hurts you if u NEED to make units at a certain stage and u dont, then u die because u were that 3-4 roaches down, and it happens, the amount of games i lose because of something like that is ridiculous.

Umm i use ****** retarded hotkeys but they work for ME. I have big hands so i use keys up to 8 on the keyboard for little groups, but eh, everyone is different, just find something that is comfortable and natural for you to use. A lot of this is practice, practice using a certain control group for a certain type of unit in a certain situation, ill give you an example: So, for my main hatch i use 1, for other hatches i use 2, for main army its 3, for mutas or infestors its 4, but in the early game defense my queens are 4, then in early./mid game 5 is for counter attacks, but when i get out broods/other air units 5 becomes them and counter attacks/drop defender units go to 6, when i need to pull drones for drops/defending i use 7, but if i have 2 counter attack options ill use 8 for drones and 6-7 for counter attacking, so it changes a lot.

but yeh a lot of those things are just practice based and as you get better, play faster and improve your multi tasking they'll get better too

Also, if youre like any zerg ur usual motto is "make tonne of drones then barely defend" whilst this is a great mentality to have for generally improving, don;t underestimate the skills you get from being aggressive, and even practicing all-ins. I did for aaaaggeeess and I really think its what took me from master to GM, since being aggressive typically gives you all the info you'll ever need, and also gives him a check that if he has cut any corners he'll take a tonne of dmg from it.

[memo619]

Yeah I was wondering about subtle things like that that I don't grasp, I've tried looking up things like that but I can't seem to find things like that. For example, in zvp when your ol sees 2 gases in the natural you can assume he is teching up and an attack is less than likely gonna happen because of this. Subtle things like that which are hard to find really help.
Haha yeah my hotkeys dont go past 5 usually because I have really small hands and my hand cant really reach those keys without it being uncomfortable or misclick.
I use 1)main army 2)air units/ banes 3)infestors/queens 4) infestors queens(I change it up, trying new things) 5) hatcheries
Hmm I like the idea of having different groups for different parts of the game, I will try that out seeing how I use the same hotkeys throughout the whole game and it feels a bit awkward at times
True that being agressive is ideal BUT for now I want to get better by just defending for now, seeing how a friend told me that defending is harder than attacking, I will try all-ins eventually but I do appreciate being under attack and seeing how I can deal with harass/all-ins/ etc by just defending while macroing up
And when he retreats I like going in to his newest expansion and doing damage there while keeping them contained, BUT in response to this people go nydus/ warp prism/drop/ etc which makes me run all the way back while they take an expansion admist this. Is there a tip on how to deal with that? Other than spine/spore since there's always gaps where you can get into

[ToRDolo]

Spines/spores would be the only way to deal with drops unless you want to leave a small portion of your army behind to deal with counter aggression as you push. The spines and spores generally give you enough time to send back a group of units to defend though!

What Kez said was pretty much what got me from diamond-masters too. Refining builds, improving macro further and for me learning strategy/the metagame more thoroughly were what got me from diamond-masters I feel.

And if you've found problem areas/know the holes in your play I think the best way to deal with them is to ask a friend/practice partner to play multiple games in a row doing the things you struggle against till you start to get the hang of splitting your army to deal with drops etc. Practice practice practice!

[memo619]

Thanks for the help, I have a pretty good idea on what I can refine and what can be done to overcome this gap
Yeah I guess I'll leave a couple of units behind for defense, seeing how i'd rather be safe than sorry

[Theend]

Originally Posted by memo619

[Z] Diamond to master gap

Hello, i am in the same situation in term of league.
Drop is a issue for me too... especially in multiple place.
What i do is scatter my unit all around with overlord vision.
I find that with the drop flying around.
It is hard for me to initiate any form of harassment or counterattack especially when i am without infestor.The terran then turtle up and mass cruisers tanks.. and are not cost effective for me trade.
Although,i know what i did was waiting for the loss. I do not see any more effective way of dealing with it.
maybe someone can enlighten us . No troll pls .

[ETL.Branno]

you can build spines/spore and have some units patrolling to stop drops. if they are dropping constantly at multiple places it should mean they dont have very much at their base and i just dont see the problem with it and i have also never seen mass cruisers and tanks, sounds like something that would only happen once.

[memo619]

Theend I believe the answer lies in what ignorance said with leaving a few units behind to deal with drops and going to harass with your main army.
I have yet to try this out but I believe that can work out, I usually don't like leaving units behind because when I attack/harass I like having my army as big as I can and it feels that leaving units behind might decrease my chances of winning a fight but I believe I'm wrong if I micro well I can win a fight regardless of 4 less roaches

[syfSoundwave]

Personally, I don't think I'm too much better as a Masters than I was as a Diamond, though I think I was always pretty good in Diamond.

[Meatex]

there is very little difference between diamond and masters and even low gm
I play gm's that are worse than low diamonds and diamonds that should be in gm
Basically leagues are meaningless and don't represent skill so best not to think about it

[DarKcS]

Confirmed ^ I sometimes lose to Diamonds as GM when I have my cat on the keyboard.
And no, one does not simply remove the cat.

[mushistar]

ITs sea league means nothing unless your top 100

[Benjammin]

Like you were saying, try new things. For example, I don't know of anyone else does it, but I've changed hotkey zero to be x, then put all creep tumours on that. That helps so much with creep spread. Another thing I've changed is hotkey 5 (queen key) is now z, and space is the button to change bases instead of backspace. It was he'll confusing at first, but it's created injects to be easier and for better creep spread. Not really relevant to your OP but eh.

I'm in the same position as you, however I've been having more success vs masters of late. As someone said above, the key is paying heavy attention to minimap, as well as good overlord spread where and when appropriate to spot drops. Try and find something you feel is your strongest point, for example, doing multi bane or ling drops, infester hit squads or burrowed roach micro to name a few and then depending on match ups use this to it's full potential. If you find your good at drawing his army out and nydus + fungalling his workers do that. This is my general idea; going from bronze to diamond is generally being able to macro well. Even though I'm not masters yet I think the difference is definatelu going to be to outsmart your opponent, thinkin what your opponent is thinking and counteracting that as well as beig able to macro like a boss behind it. Sorry for writing an essay haha

[RVLiveR]

I'm not exactly masters, but ever since I stopped getting impatient with games, and been more careful with broodlords and overlord placement, spent more time with sim city + creepspread etc. and spent less time multi-pronging and microing in general, I've been doing much better against all races, and I beat much more masters nowadays.

[ROCCAT_Savior]

In regards to drops; along with spine/spore as already has been mentioned, you could go mutas to discourage drops, or what I've seen other players do (notably EGSuppy) is go corrupters, this allows you to prevent drops and also worry the terran about bls sooner

Quick Comments

ETL.Branno:

who is EGSuppy

[DarKcS]

Oh yeah don't miss injects 0_O

[Raithen]

IMO The only way to bridge the gap is start looking for the rythm of the zvz match up. You need to push roaches forward, pull back with his chasing, push forward when he gets out numbered.
Everytime he pushes you with no consequence you've fallen behind a lot, every time you defend an attack with out chasing him back to his base he just makes drones behind it instead of units.
Watch the recent glade vs pig matches, you can see exactly how this goes on.
Once you get this down, the game kind of dictates itself and you'll start to get an edge on where you can cut corners, where you can micro a smaller army to win the skirmish and when to expand or go for a killing push.

Quick Comments

Obsta-:

This is actually such a great way to approach the match-up.

[Shieldz]

well i would say mostly mechanics and u will know more builds and how to read ur oppo better in masters