[SkyBreaker]

En Taro Tassadar,

A little bit of a background on myself... when I first started playing SCII I had literally no previous SC experience and only a small amount of previous RTS experience (through WC3) so I was pretty much fresh to the scene with no experience and everything to learn. So after immediately jumping into my placement matches and going 1-4 (W/L) I placed in the muddy depths of the bronze league. Since then I have played as often as possible and from what I have seen and have been told; have constantly been improving my game-play and refining my mechanics and I have made it into the gold league thus far and am currently facing platinum opponents.

So I thought I would share my own thoughts, tips and useful VoDs with the Brotoss community that I believe were the fundamental things which allowed me to improve and subsequently get that promotion into the next league. I've written up bronze to silver and am in the process of writing up a guide for silver to gold; and so intend to update it yet again when I receive my promotion into platinum, diamond and if all goes well, master's.

Anyhow, onto the guide, enjoy and hopefully you take something from it...

Bronze to Silver: Learn the basics of SCII...

+ [Bronze to Silver] +

Know the basic counters!
I now know that hard-counters aren't very important however in the early stages of your game-play; you should familiarize yourself with "what beats what". Open up the help menu (F12) in-game and have a look at the strengths and weaknesses of each unit. I would often refer to this when I used to have trouble with a certain unit in a certain match-up and would then make the mental connection, "ah, so stalkers are weak against marauders". These small mental links helped me in all my following games.


A zealot wall-off is very effective against early zerglings.

Have a plan!
Have an idea of what you want to do in the game. Protoss' base can support ~4 unit producing structures on it; so keep that in mind when forming your plan for the match-up and don't try anything silly like having 5 warp-gates, a robo, while teching into colossi and high-templars... simply put; because you will get killed. An example of a plan is "I'm going to build 3 gateways and a robo and keep my macro up and push out at 50 supply".


An example of planning to have 3 warp-gates and a robotics bay.

Macro!
Probably the most fundamental thing which was imperative in my promotion from bronze to silver. Macro, for those lower league players that are unsure of it's meaning is practically looking at the bigger picture. You constantly need to be building workers out of your nexuses, constantly keeping your warp-gates on cool-down (i.e. always using them), constantly producing out of any other tech structure you may have and most importantly at this level of game-play - building additional pylons. In essence this seems easy, but it's easy to forget when your focus has been diverted to some pressure at your ramp.

Hot-Keys!
Get used to using your hot-keys. These hot-keys will go hand in hand with the above point, macro. Try using 4 for as your nexus(es), 5 as your warp-gates and 6 as alternative tech structure. I'm aware the warp-gates are assigned to 'W' but by having your three 'macro orientated' buildings as 4-6 you can constantly spam 4, 5, 6 and check the progress of everything and to remind yourself if you're letting your macro slip. Also part of improving is using your hot-keys to the best of your ability so ensure you learn each and every hot-key for our race and never, ever manually click a hot-key - even if you're unsure of it, mouse-over it and press the associated key (it's good for your future memory).


Basic Protoss hot-key layout.

Build Pylons!
You must construct additional pylons. You must construct additional pylons. You must construct additional pylons. You must construct additional pylons. Always build pylons; the less time you spend supply-capped the less you hurt your macro, the less you hurt your macro the more units and bases you will have.


Not this many of course! But you get the idea!

Scout at 9 supply!
At the bronze level of game-play; you probably aren't 100% sure of what to look for when scouting but some may do it; and some may not. But I strongly suggest scouting at 9 supply, directly after your first pylon. The reason being you will be able to realise when someone is cheesing you and can act (and deal) with it accordingly.


This is generally what a 6-pool looks like. React accordingly. N.B. I set this photo up with Seagal, he doesn't 6-pool :P

Wall-off against Zerg!
Against Zerg you should always wall off; using a gateway, cybernetics core and zealot (on hold position) to prevent zerglings running into your base. You don't have to worry about banelings as by which time you should have enough sentries up to use FF to your advantage. The photo I took and used for my example of knowing the basic counters is a solid way to wall off against Zerg opponents.

So they were my own points from my own personal experience from bronze to silver; however here are some videos which will be extremely helpful and resourceful to those trying to progress out of the bronze league:

D9D#184 - Newbie Tuesday #1
D9D#164 - In-Game Decision Making

The above should be enough for a player in the bronze league to earn that promotion into silver; and everything I outlined are crucial skills to have in SCII and will be relevant for your entire gaming career.

Silver to Gold: Expanding your knowledge...

+ [Silver to Gold] +

Coming soon...

[Jupiterstorm]

Why not just go 4 gate everygame, coz apparently it can not only get you out of BSG, it can get you into masters

[SkyBreaker]

Originally Posted by Jupiterstorm

Why not just go 4 gate everygame, coz apparently it can not only get you out of BSG, it can get you into masters

The guide is aimed at helping people in the bronze league who want to improve their game-play overall. I personally see the 4-Gate strategy as detrimental to newer players; as they'll associate "wins" with "improving" but in reality their skill improvement is minimal whilst their "win" came from their opponents lack of skill.

Alternatively attempting to keep your macro up and not getting supply capped for the duration of each and every game you play; is a much better approach to learning than "I can just 4-gate into diamond" because the latter always leads to the inevitable question; "then what?".

[Unstable]

Originally Posted by Jupiterstorm

Why not just go 4 gate everygame, coz apparently it can not only get you out of BSG, it can get you into masters

it sure can get you to about there, and then BAM you hit the people who know how to stop 4gate and your back to losing ev erygame from there and you get frustrated about losing everygame tahts not 4gate

[lomielisk]

For balance just like this. 1Nexus 3 GW 2Nx 6Gw

for the Miniral Balance bar.

[mGGSouth]

To get out of bronze I also think you need to learn how to deal with basic cheese, cannon rushes and 6 pools being the most prominent.

[user151]

Originally Posted by TheSouthLord

To get out of bronze I also think you need to learn how to deal with basic cheese, cannon rushes and 6 pools being the most prominent.

I haven't encounter them much lately. Yeah... I'm anchored in bronze but SkyBreaker's guide will help most of us even if not in short term. I'm stuck in bronze cos I don't have a clear game plan. I tried 3 rax 1 fact 2 ports from just one base and also tried 4 gate chargelots against a 3 gate stalker robo. My opponents units raped mine. Their stalker ball with 2 Immortals kite around and melt my chargelots.

[mGGSouth]

Originally Posted by user151

I haven't encounter them much lately. Yeah... I'm anchored in bronze but SkyBreaker's guide will help most of us even if not in short term. I'm stuck in bronze cos I don't have a clear game plan. I tried 3 rax 1 fact 2 ports from just one base and also tried 4 gate chargelots against a 3 gate stalker robo. My opponents units raped mine. Their stalker ball with 2 Immortals kite around and melt my chargelots.

Your right that all of things in SkyBreaker guide will help you in most of the games but even if you perfect all these things your still going to be losing quite a few games to cheese. I'm not saying that these things arn't important but learning basic build orders against cheese will be a significant help in getting out of bronze imo.

[nirvAnA]

Originally Posted by Unstable

it sure can get you to about there, and then BAM you hit the people who know how to stop 4gate and your back to losing ev erygame from there and you get frustrated about losing everygame tahts not 4gate

so true, you need to learn how to play the game properly. learning how to cheese helps in metagame but in terms of improvement it only gets u so far and you're just cheating yourself

[Jupiterstorm]

lol, tbh, all you need to get from bronze to gold is to be able to keep producing SCVs/probes every 15 seconds in game time. If you can do that through the course of a 30 min game, while taking expansions, its pretty hard to lose unless you arent spending your money at all. While I was in silver I won quite alot of games off macro, coming from behind ridiculous baneling blowouts or winning although my army has a weaker unit composition. No amount of fancy micro or decision making can make up for solid macro.

Great guide anw, I just thought that the no. learning point should always be SPAWN MORE PROBES