[bald_eagle]

So this has been a problem that has been plaguing me ever since I decided to pick up competitive gaming from quake to counter-strike to what I play now starcraft.

Now I know people go through "phases" but for me it seems that I can go from godly decision making and macro to terrible micro, macro slips, ill informed decisions etc in a space of about 15 minutes. I will beat masters players and then I will start losing to gold players, I am all over the shot, last week I won 20 games in a row this week I'm losing 15 in a row and this is a brand new week.

People would say take a break but it doesn't seem to be working since I have had about 2 or 3 week breaks this month when I get incredibly frustrated.

I am asking if there is simple advice on improvement, something I actually want to try is meditation but I have no clue where to start and me usually being a hyper-active somewhat ADHD personality. I think meditation would be a good start, I'm sure some higher ranked players do it and would love to hear advice.

Also any other tips that may help, environment, state of mind etc.

Would love to hear some replies as I am feeling a bit lost

Quick Comments

	syfChase:	buld igal pls
	TCPLemminks:	Play less

[Akilos]

chill out, get off the computer for a bit, grab your favorite beverage and chinese takeout and proceed to watch your favorite television series.

[Meatex]

If you are as you say: playing godly one game then the next game playing terrible then I don't think its a matter of being inconsistent as much as getting lucky when you feel like you play godly.
You have to look at those games where you think you were playing better than your best and figure out what you were doing that made it so and ask yourself why did you decide to do x? Was it because you scouted and reacted properly or it was just your timing etc?
Then look at the games you sucked at and see what you didn't do that you did on your games that you felt untouchable.

As for day to day ups and downs i find the most important things are good sleep pattern and healthy lifestyle including exercise and good food. Whenever I got lazy and didn't go to gym and got pizza for dinner I would play worse. When I didn't go to bed early and wake up early I played worse.

[bald_eagle]

Originally Posted by Meatex

As for day to day ups and downs i find the most important things are good sleep pattern and healthy lifestyle including exercise and good food. Whenever I got lazy and didn't go to gym and got pizza for dinner I would play worse. When I didn't go to bed early and wake up early I played worse.

I do have a pretty healthy lifestyle, I go to the gym 4 days a week and I ride 18 kms a day. Also I do have a very good standard of food, most commonly poultry veges and red meat. So that is ruled out.

However I will take your advice on what you said above, I will make sure to look out on those finer details in my replays.

Originally Posted by Whiplash

chill out, get off the computer for a bit, grab your favorite beverage and chinese takeout and proceed to watch your favorite television series.

I'm not on the computer that much, probs about 1 hour doing HW and about 2 playing sc2. I have taken alot of breaks from Sc2, they don't seem to be helping

[KillerInstinct]

Originally Posted by bald_eagle

I do have a pretty healthy lifestyle, I go to the gym 4 days a week and I ride 18 kms a day. Also I do have a very good standard of food, most commonly poultry veges and red meat. So that is ruled out.

However I will take your advice on what you said above, I will make sure to look out on those finer details in my replays.



I'm not on the computer that much, probs about 1 hour doing HW and about 2 playing sc2. I have taken alot of breaks from Sc2, they don't seem to be helping

I have some groundbreaking, build-shattering, paradigm shifting, mind-blowing advice for you. Whenever vexed with a particularly difficult problem with no apparent solution remember Einsteins' famous quote:

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them."

We focus so much on health/diet, mindset, mental preparation etc etc, we don't put any effort into changing how we perceive the game. Think outside the box i.e. I realized at one point I really enjoyed opening pure bio against Terran and I hadn't done it for some time. Then it hit me how strong and mobile this is in early game and with some clever maneuvering you can frustrate siege tanks, dodge mines, and be all over the map at once and be very aggressive. So I basically shifted my perspective on the matchup and played a positional war rather than "have more shit then you" war. And it worked out really well.

Also as Terran playing pure bio feels like a "blank canvas" which you can add to e.g. comfortably add tanks or mines later or even air as the match progresses. Point is, play in your comfort zone, do fun stuff even if it's considered bad; do what feels right, the rest comes naturally. Me personally, this is my focus pre-masters. When I get to masters and I feel my one solid build is just not cutting it anymore, I'll really put energy into learning different openers and builds and develop my strategy portfolio.

[Matt93]

Do you know why you are winning games? Do you know why you are losing games?

Figure those things out and continue/discontinue them. Is your scouting good? do you miss production cycles? Do you get supply blocked for a long time? Do you miss things on the minimap? Do you figure out what they could/could not be doing based on gas/chrono/units that you see?

If you do all that every game consistency will come.

It might not be the need to take a break, rather that when you play you aren't learning anything important so as said before, you may be getting lucky due to weaker opponents or whatever.

[cure]

It happens to me too. This is the reasoning i feel behind it.

When I play a game, where the opening is done perfectly by me, and the game goes as I planned, I get a certain tempo going. When I play Zerg, my creep would be just on the ball, same with my injects. For 15-20 minutes I wouldn't miss an inject and creep tumor spawn and just take the game. However, when someone opens reapers, gets a few drone kills, or I screw my opening a little, i just tilt a little, and then start making mistakes. What I recommend would be finding people that do that style that just simply makes you tilt, then playing against that style till you stop tilting from it. I don't believe in taking breaks. When I lose to something, I play till i win it. If keep playing till the other guy refuses to play with me anymore, then I find someone else to do it to me.

Probably not the best thing to do, but to force myself, if I don't get what I wanna do right, I don't eat or sleep either. Gone a day without food and 4 days without sleeping because of this :/

[RicocheT]

Never force games. Play at your own rate, in your own time. Keep an excellent mindset always. When I transitioned the opposite from you, I went from Starcraft 2 to Counter Strike, but the same applies to me. And I've had HUGE consistency problems in CS, but not so much now.

I recommend a few things.
1. Always keep calm and in a good mindset. Never panic in bad/tough situations.

2. Practice practice practice. You will ALWAYS have bad games and good games. What you need to do is to make that gap as small as possible, so that although you might be playing badly, you still have a chance to win due to your skill level. Learn the things that will help you win (such as mechanics, macro etc.). Even if you're playing crap, missing injects, whatever it is give yourself that chance to win. I feel a lot of consistency problems can be solved with practice. Of course if you are at a ridiculously high skill level, that range when you play badly to when you play like Flash will always be massive, but make that effort to reduce that range as much as possible. This is what I concentrated on when I made the switch, that although I was improving in skill in CS, I still able to become more consistent through lowering that range of when I played bad, it still was somewhat manageable and not a complete loss.

3. Take breaks after 3~ straight games. Go out, stretch, relax, chill for like 5-10 mins. Then you're refreshed, your brain is a bit more clearer and you're ready to go.

GL!

[Malice]

Just play when you enjoy playing. There's no point playing if you don't enjoy the game.

[Reere]

Keep playing regularly. Even if it's 1 game a day. It's the only way to build consistency.

[Typhoon]

Im sure everyone in ETL has heard me QQ about my lack of consistency. Lately it has been less of a problem though. I think it comes down to tilting, mind set. How well you take losses. The more you play, the more you get used to losing and not losing your shit after a close game. There is no "magic cure" so maybe you should take a close look at your own mind set and/or just play a metric fuckton and get over yah self.

[SLCN.Kez]

if you're only playing 1-2 hours a day, taking week long breaks in between, sorry to say, you're just not playing enough to be consistent in the first place. Starcraft is about experience thousands of different possible situations and knowing how to react, and when you don't play very many games you're never going to know how to react in certain situations, which leads to a feeling of randomness in your play.

How many builds do you have per m/u? If you're not in Very high masters or GM on NA and you're answer is more than 1 or possibly 2 then you have to many builds.

How often are you practicing certain things? A thousand shots in the dark aren't going to help you aim better.

Also don't forget that Blizzards match making system is actually pretty ****** good, and if you win 20 games in a row yo'u'll be playing a lot better players and thus you'll look much worse.

So my advice?
Get 1 build per m/u, practice it a **** tonne, copy pro players EXACTLY to the second, and practice it over and over again. There is something to be said taking a break when you're frustrated with a game, but not when you rarely play the game in the first place. And yes an hour a day is rare I would say, if you actually want to get very good and improve at this game

To expand on mentality, If you KNOW you have exactly 1 build per m.u to practice, then even when you're pissed off you'll know you shouldn't be doing a 9p or proxy 2gate (i have no idea what race you play) when you get frustrated, which is usually the pitfall of 'tilting' is that you do stupid builds because you're angry and want a free win, often leading to more losses because you don't practice these builds.

I know it can be hard and frustrating, and I have broken many keyboards, desks, mice, headphones in the process, but at the end of the day in my heart of hearts I knew I wanted to get better at this game, so I still practiced 6-8 hours a day for months on end to achieve it. How bad do you want it?

Quick Comments

x5.Stormz:

Well said

[KillerInstinct]

Originally Posted by SLCN.Kez

if you're only playing 1-2 hours a day, taking week long breaks in between, sorry to say, you're just not playing enough to be consistent in the first place. Starcraft is about experience thousands of different possible situations and knowing how to react, and when you don't play very many games you're never going to know how to react in certain situations, which leads to a feeling of randomness in your play.

How many builds do you have per m/u? If you're not in Very high masters or GM on NA and you're answer is more than 1 or possibly 2 then you have to many builds.

How often are you practicing certain things? A thousand shots in the dark aren't going to help you aim better.

Also don't forget that Blizzards match making system is actually pretty ****** good, and if you win 20 games in a row yo'u'll be playing a lot better players and thus you'll look much worse.

So my advice?
Get 1 build per m/u, practice it a **** tonne, copy pro players EXACTLY to the second, and practice it over and over again. There is something to be said taking a break when you're frustrated with a game, but not when you rarely play the game in the first place. And yes an hour a day is rare I would say, if you actually want to get very good and improve at this game

To expand on mentality, If you KNOW you have exactly 1 build per m.u to practice, then even when you're pissed off you'll know you shouldn't be doing a 9p or proxy 2gate (i have no idea what race you play) when you get frustrated, which is usually the pitfall of 'tilting' is that you do stupid builds because you're angry and want a free win, often leading to more losses because you don't practice these builds.

I know it can be hard and frustrating, and I have broken many keyboards, desks, mice, headphones in the process, but at the end of the day in my heart of hearts I knew I wanted to get better at this game, so I still practiced 6-8 hours a day for months on end to achieve it. How bad do you want it?

This post hit the heart of the issue for me in diamond league at the moment. I am varying my build slightly each matchup, or I miss a timing, or forget critical infrastructure under early pressure etc etc. After a while I'm like already started a new game, and I'm unsure of what I'm doing.

A thousand shots in the dark aren't going to help you aim better.
I liked this a lot. I am losing in diamond league a fair bit recently, and it's because I'm just adding shit on the fly thinking it will be good, making my macro and general efficiency slip, which then loses to a diamond player who has crisp timing attacks, strong macro and a solid army composition.

[ZanC]

Remember that practice is not about winning or losing, but learning and improving every single game.

[SLCNPezz]

WATCH ANIME!! Anime is the best.

When you see a character power up you will also get powered up, then you play and win 20 in a row.

After seeing Goku turn super saiyan 3 I won 35 games in a row.

[faithHunter]

Starcraft 2 is a game. Games are made for the purpose of having fun. So if you're not having fun, don't play. Don't go ahead and force yourself to play when you're not in the mood, because forcing yourself to play will just strain yourself and your focus.

I don't know how the mentality of a progamer works though, but in the case of a "casual" gamer you should only play when you're in the mood to.

[Bav]

I had the same problem as you last season. The thing that helped me the most was starting another account on a different region (NA/KR/EU) and warming up on that before you play on your main account. Usually people play at their best after some warming up. This also means that you can keep playing and practising without getting a bad W/L ratio on your main account or falling far down the ladder.

[Ice714]

What helps me the most is watching more than playing.

If I start to play badly or start losing a few I just quit grab a drink and some food and load up some streams and watch

[SnX.weT_Towel]

I've found I play most inconsistently when I still don't fully understand a matchup. What helps me the most at this point was watching replays from the player perspective and doing a methodical play by play analysis and critique.