[ToRMaverick]

I would like some confirmation on my playstyle and perhaps my downfalls as to why I am destined to be Silver for Life! I feel that my mechanics / macro are good (always room for improvement but I do belive it is higher than silver). I am constantly loosing matches that I am generally ahead in and I look back on my replays and wonder how did I loose that?

I believe my weakness lies in my reactive scouting / unit comp and my engagements. This is were I really need some work so I will lay out my thought process below and see if anyone can pick up some obvious shortfalls.

My general approach to my games:

Scouting:

Vs Zerg - Look for spawning pool timing / gas

6-10 Pool (Rush, if early Gas then prob speedlings)
11-13 Pool (1 Base Build, 1 Gas Cont. Roach, 2 Gas prob Muta)
14+ (Fast Expo Build, need to pressure)

Vs Terran - Scout building / gas

Early Gas (tech rush, banshee)
Barracks (Infantry: Marines, Marauders, or Reapers )
If second building is:
Barracks (Infantry Rush: Marines, Marauders, or Reapers )
Factory (Not a rush: 1/1/1?)
If third building is:
Starport (1/1/1)
Factory (Mech Play)

Vs Protoss - This is a stupid MU but generally just scout for rushes and try to react to any of the following

Proxy Gates
4 Gates
3 Gate Robo

This is generally what I look for and try to react accordingly. Discouting cheese I then try to macro up, grab expo safely and out macro my opponent. When I have either a few immortals or collosus I generally move out.

TvP is my worst MU atm so here are my most recent ladder matches for them (I can also say I am confident in my FF use althought these two replays dont show it which may have been the very reason I lost the game):

PvT Replay 1
PvT Replay 2

I am in a slump atm with the game as I have been playing for sooooo long but have yet to progress past silver. I did get gold in NA the other day but unless I can identify my problems I doubt I will ever progress past my current league.

You advise would be appreciated... even if you just tell me im a NOOB and need to work on my micro

[EveMassacrisM]

Not sure about you, but most lower leagued Protoss I know tend to have these mistakes:
- They do not stick to builds tight enough. Timings of Protoss opening IMO are very important and you need to be as exact as possible. Differences in timings of warp gate matter a lot, especially in PvP.
- They are unable to gauge the strength of their army. I've seen lots of toss die simply because they can't land good forcefields or run away even though they have a good chance of winning engagements.
- Timing of 3rd for lower leagued players are either non-existent or incredibly late. This is all about the ability to read the game as a player and should get better as you have more experience. Just remember to take a 3rd if you don't feel like you can end the game. If you get denied, work out a better timing for yourself in future games.

Other than that, I think it's all about macro and micro. These, again, I think should improve as you play more.

[Zanderax]

I'm a Silver Zerg so I can't help you with your self-improvement but I can tell you that if you are Silver in SEA then you need 740 ladder points by the end of the season (20th of December) to almost guarantee you a promotion to Gold.

Source http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/3312365

[ToRSpartaz]

Mav, I can analyse your play and coach you when I get my laptop back. Ive known how to coach protoss decently ^^ I coached Jae from to

Thinking to get into proper coaching to bring in dem moneys. Me and DanO and respectively.

[ToRMaverick]

Any help would be great. Snod is also looking at some of my replays but would love to know what everyones thoughts are on the 2 above replays.

They are quite typical of a majority of my losses... having strong eco and loosing.

[ToRSpartaz]

Originally Posted by Conundrum

Any help would be great. Snod is also looking at some of my replays but would love to know what everyones thoughts are on the 2 above replays.

They are quite typical of a majority of my losses... having strong eco and loosing.

Ez pz brohan, you can get your MMR up before the next season begins ^^

[lolwut]

Tip time This is the one on Antiga PvT

. Your macro kind of slips around the 10 minute mark. You can fix this by expo'ing and adding a couple more gates.

. No harrassing of their 3rd base. You would have spotted it with a zealot at the xel naga. really try hold these towers because they give you soo much map control

Try focus more on zealot/collusus if they have tanks. Stalkers usually get ripped apart from them unless they have blink

. When you engage try have zealots in front and stalkers in behind

. Really late 3rd

. poor army management

Positives ^^

.Collusus are good vs MM well done getting the correct counter.

.Nice forcefields

.good macro up to the 10 minute mark

.upgrades

Quick Comments

ToRMaverick:

Thanks for the help and your time to look at it.

[Starcyph3r]

I am a diamond toss on the na server so I should be able to help a bit. I'll analyse the second game on metalopolis.

-Early game everything seemed fine although you might want to get your probes in gas as soon as it finishes. If you want gas a little later its better to just make your geyser a little later.

-You built your second and third gateways at 22 food. Imo you should spend a little more time making probes and build your second and third gateways at 26 food.

-You expanded shortly after that but I would suggest sending a probe or a stalker to poke up the terrans ramp everynow and then as it would have made you aware of his concussive shell timing. Although you held it off nicely regardless.

-Also get your second gas much faster as you will need the extra gas for a higher sentry count. It also helps if your going immortal to get alot more.

-When the terran factory scouts your base theres no point dragging your whole army, it has alot of hp and will probably scout your base before its destroyed if he chooses to. You lost a valuble upgrade because of that and if finished would have made your attack more effective.

-Again your third and fourth gas geysers need to be much faster for high sentry and robo count as well as for upgrades. Terran mmm is strong and gateway units are very weak in some situations. Not having those forcefields and guardian shield ready are one of those situations, GET MORE SENTRIES.

-Your macro was very good until you were attacked and geared up to attack yourself. Always keep your finger over your nexus hotkey to make those probes. Maybe you were planning for an all in but still the terran had more workers than you, which he shouldnt since you have chronoboost, he also has mules. He had that worker advantage for too long for your attack to catch him too offguard. Also if money is building up no reason not to expand unless you were going for an all in

-Another issue with your unit comp was that there was a very heavy stalker count. Stalkers alone are not very good against mmm especially with alot of marauders. If you want to go very stalker heavy might as well get blink, It's better to have alot more zealots in pvt and sentries in just about every matchup besides pvp in some situations

Quick Comments

ToRMaverick:

Thanks for your time... It does sound all very resonable but in game this things tend to go out the window for me! Im making notes of some of you major points to help when in game. :)

[TCPKiaSu]

your a noob and you need to improve you micro ... don't worry man u'll reach there. I recomend asking a higher ranked protoss in your clan for help? I got from bronze to gold, u can do it too saw ur replays btw.. work on keeping constant probe production and army engagements and scouting that should be all it takes for you to get out of silver

Quick Comments

	ToRMaverick:	I see your a glass half full sort of guy.... I hope this is all it takes.
	ToRSpartaz:	Hit me up for some practice brah, im decent when im not in the trollololol mood ^^

[FaDeNotoriouS]

add me NotoriouS.901 I would love to help

Quick Comments

ToRMaverick:

Done... will hit you up when I see you online!

[syfChadMann]

Poo build?..

[ToRMaverick]

Originally Posted by ChadMann

Poo build?..

Any chance on elaborating on this....? Or just straight up "poo build".

[ToRMaverick]

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to reply... some points I am already implimenting and others I am working on. If you see me online.... dont be shy!

[syfChadMann]

Originally Posted by ToRMaverick

Any chance on elaborating on this....? Or just straight up "poo build".

Its a build..
basically, its a zealot/archon style... with a mothership to vortex large chunks of their army...
good PvZ

[RicocheT]

There's a channel called PRACBUD also.
Don't be afraid to hop in and ask for a game, I personally like to talk to players after I face them and discuss the game, and I'm sure some of the higher ranked guys there will be willing to help you out.

[AxSGRiM]

PvZ:

11-13 pools aren't always 1 base allins, and muta on 1 base is just plain retarded, despite Sen pulling it off a couple months ago. You should be FFEing so that you keep up with the Zerg economy and aim to produce a strong Collosus Stalker Sentry combo before Broodlords are made. Beware of muta tech switches mid game, so use hallucinations to scout zerg army and tech.

PvT:

Depending on the style your opponent is going, I'd always open either 3 gate, 1 gate or 1 gate robo (to get the fast obs). I normally go for 3 collosus zealot archon play with HT and double forge upgrades. Try using hts in warp prisms to kill scvs and oversaturated mineral lines and warping in units at terran expo's while you're in battle with them. 1/1/1 is held with Pheonix rush, Blink stalker DT or just a strong immortal gateway composition, although if they pull a lot of SCV's you'll normally lose by just having the last combo. With the Stalker DT style, always try to blink into their main as they're just about to push out. If thye get raven, just snipe it with correct blink micro and keep on sending a dt at a time.

PvP:
In the KR server, strong styles like Blink stalker immortal or zealot archon are being used before massing collosus will work. (because collosus are weak in small numbers since 6+ is the magic number in PvP later game. Just make sure you control the stalkers well, and the blink stalkers will probably get a couple free unit producing structures and unpower them too. Zealot archon is really good, but always try to engage in 2 directions so that collosus splash isn't that effective. Blinking into collosus is good as it ruins collosus splash.

Quick Comments

	ZC.EvilSWAT:	I like his detailed explanation! Thanks!
	ToRMaverick:	Thanks GRiM... some good advice here for me to impliment.

[TCPKiaSu]

Make ah biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig armie!

[breadfan]

I'm in a very similar position mate, but what I'll offer is - there's a big difference between having good macro in the early game and in the late game. In the early build order stage of a match, it's so easy to look at how perfectly you execute it and say "yep, solid macro". Both of these games are fairly short so I'm going to suggest that judging your overall macro because of how well you go on 2 bases isn't a good indicator overall.

Just the other day I played an 80 minute match that really highlighted a lot of issues with macro that I had naively thought I had overcome. I looked at your matches (I'm only going to mention the Metalopolis game because I found a lot to say and the post might get too long, and I think there are more micro issues in the Antiga game)

I did notice some messy chronoboosting on the Metalopolis game (you went up to 100 energy on your nexus for a while and then double-chrono'd your one nexus - I'm not certain exactly how bad this is, but I understand it's definitely not ideal

You completely stopped producing units during your attack, and you ended up with a ton of minerals in the bank and not many units to defend the counter push. This is maybe my biggest challenge too, and I'm working on ways to improve here. But it's easy to identify when watching someone else.

Also you didn't rebuild your forge when you lost it. Not saying this is the worst thing in the world, but did you decide you didn't need the upgrades? Or was this a situation where you were focused on an attack too much and didn't think about structures?

Beyond that, I would start to look into your decision making - was it the right choice to push out with a big counter after he took out your forge? Perhaps you had other harrassment options available? You only lost one forge, and no probes, so it's not like you necessarily had to quickly hit him back to re-balance the economy game. I feel, having seen his large bio army, tech to colossi for a nice timing attack while taking a 3rd would have given you a huge advantage, especially if you could keep him on 2 base with some handy harrassment

If you ever need a practice partner, give me a shout!