|
Disclaimer: I wasn't sure if i should tag this thread as Q or D but ultimately decided on Q because i have a specific question id like answered.
I'm very new to this wonderful game and i had a few questions on the lower tier of play. As i watch a lot of pro games i see 3 or 4 strategy's for each race fairly consistently. So what im wondering is:
As a newer player should i be restricting my play to focusing on well constructed build orders and macro play based on what i see at the pro level (albeit with far less mirco i'm a scrub) or should i be experimenting around with the game and different units to find my own style? Ex: I love the idea of Bio ball death push with ravens instead of medevacs.
Tl;Dr as a new player should i focus on learning a pro build order or should i screw around and figure out something weird.
Thank you for your input in advance if there is anything that i did wrong with my thread please tell me so my posts are less flawed in the future.
|
Hey. I think this is both a great question and a good discussion topic!
As someone who is mildly involved in coaching, I tend to not prescribe builds, but rather stress fundamentals. Builds are great tools to further your understanding about the game and your race, as it will more rapidly put you in situations that are only possible with polished builds and good macro. These are the kind of situations you should ideally be most familiar with. It is popular to refer new players to builds as it is one of the quicker ways to get the player up-to-date or up-to-skill. You also end up with less things to think about when you are following a build blindly.
On the other hand, it is possible to be more experimental, and still be able to craft a good build over a longer period of time. It is easier for a better player to be experimental as he is able to deduce the important elements of the build more easily. The build needs to have a certain game plan, what do my units do for me at the different stages of the game, when to attack, when to defend, what are the dangerous counters my opponent could go, how do I scout. Most importantly is how do my resources line up, when to add supply depots efficiently, and how is my build as conducive to my game plan as it can be. It is possible to figure out these things over time. It is also common to use a preexisting build as a blueprint, and fork it into your unique style.
What I think is important for new players is to have an appropriate amount of rigor with an appropriate amount of freedom to have fun. Fundamentals (Probes & Pylons, in my case) are important. Some coaches will insist on following builds. But in my opinion, it is fine to experiment, but you need to include some elements. For me it is fundamentals and aggression. Don't cut probes in the build-up phase. And don't be afraid to go kill your opponent. Secondary elements are, get familiar with your units. A protoss should be familiar with using sentries and templars, a Terran should be familiar with using ghosts and ravens at some point, etc.
From your post, I think it would be totally fine to do a bio death push with ravens instead of medivacs. It's good that your gameplan is based around some form of aggression. This is very important, and much better than players who want to experiment, but then try to macro and sit very long on a weird composition. The most important thing is to constantly iterate parts of your build while you improve your fundamentals.
Another thing that is important is to stay and nurture only a handful of builds (ideally one per matchup at a time), rather than 'winging' it and playing a different strategy every game. The reason is that the more of the build you automate, the more cognitive resources you have left over to focus on your deficiencies during the game. If you switch up too much, all you will be thinking about is strategic stuff and your mechanical and fundamental improvement will stagnate.
TL:DR: Experimenting is fine, but focus on improving fundamentals.
|
I think its best to look at the races and identify something to abuse and start with that.
For example if you are terran you can get to tech faster than the other races, so I'd work on a build that get out 2 liberators as fast as possible. With a follow up of stim and +2 attacks since the dps on +2 stimmed marines is extremyl high for the cost.
As zerg you can spam out a lot of larvae at once. So I'd try to do like 2 spawn waves of injects and time it out as close as possible. Off 2 hatcheries, that's 4/inject and 2 more between injects so 10 larvae off 2 hatcheries, 20 roaches. Try and maximize the build order to time that out as best as possible with roach speed.
As protoss you might try to hide tech with a probe, or try to have a very strong adept timing to test.
I think the simpler the better early on, remove the select all army hotkey, and focus a little more on controlling the units and less on scouting and winning games. Once you understand how to control the different types of army, then I'd work on perfecting a macro build with your improved mechanics. Its better to not push yourself to far or work on too many things at once. Choose 1 simple thing and practice it. The game isn't actually as fun at a higher level because there is less you can do to win and more stress at doing everything perfectly. Its less frustrating to play at silver league and you'll actually be able to enjoy the best part of starcraft microing the army.
|
This is a genuinely very interesting question.
You should be aware of the fact that if you back it up with good mechanics, you can win with more or less anything remotely sensible up to mid GM. RuFF is a good proof of this. His play is very unorthodox, yet it makes sense and throws his opponents off, so that he's able to even compete at a very high level in the NA scene.
I think you should be having fun. If you find it fun to craft creative and strange builds that are not necessarily deemed as good meta wise, then go on ! Personally I like to have 1-2 staple builds (in fact atm I have a grand 1 per mu) that I generally steal from pros. Still for instance I only play colossi based in PvT because I'm not comfortable playing with adepts and prisms, which is something barely any good player does. You should really experiment, have fun and find what you're the most comfortable with, which will be 95% of the time what you're having the most fun with.
|
United Kingdom20154 Posts
You should be aware of the fact that if you back it up with good mechanics, you can win with more or less anything remotely sensible up to mid GM
The catch is that you need to be good to properly understand what "remotely sensible" is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
|
Yeah, I remember when I first started playing I had little idea of unit synergies and a game plan, but the game was rather new back then, so "decent" macro mechanics weren't as well established as they are today. It was a lot of fun to just try stuff out, but it was too rough for me to improve just by observing and learning everything by myself, so I stuck to a very simple build with a clear game plan, it was basically hit and miss (3 rax) before transitioning to a more stable and flexible build (1/1/1), still hit and miss, but with a slightly wider variety of units and buildings to control, literally expanding the knowledge.
After improving by a good margin I had a good enough understanding of unit interactions and what other races could throw at me, but still lacked mechanics and a "feel" for economy, expanding, production/expansion relations and scouting. That's when I started to just play macro games by fast expanding (Filter's 1 rax expand) and I really feel that's were improvement really got going again, learning how to deal with early aggression while being short on units, building placement, timings, all that stuff you absolutely can't make mistakes when playing greedier than your opponent.
Having builds from better players available can be really, really helpful to improve your play and understanding of the game in general, but I'd be careful with pro builds in the beginning, as they often are meticulously planned out and can be very stressful and hard for new players to replicate, having to take care of many small things to optimize timings when timings aren't important, at all at this level. But in the end it's about you having fun, if you have the most fun finding stuff out and playing with odd compositions, then just do that, however, if your fun comes from knowing stuff and wanting to perfectionate on your mechanical ability, I'd recommend you fetch an easy-to-execute build from a higher level player (not necessarily a pro), maybe some stuff for newcomers like yourself, set up some benchmark (e.g. at 5:00 game time you want 50 supply or sth like that) and try to learn it until you have it down almost with your eyes closed. After that you could learn 1 build per match-up and by the time you have a variety of build orders down, you'll have pretty good understanding of most stuff the game has to offer, so you naturally will be able to react better to what your opponent is doing while "freestyling" way more efficiently due to your then well-trained mechanics.
|
Italy12246 Posts
This discussion has gone on forever. The common advice has always been to stick to learning one standard macro build for each matchup, as that is supposed to be what teaches you best how to play the game. It's pretty obvious that standard, longer games involve more decisions to be made and therefore the better player stands a better chance of winning. That is pretty much how i learnt.
I think that's utterly wrong advice. I've always recommended to start with very simple (generally all-in builds), and add complexity as time goes on. This way 1) for your all-in to work you have to hit a certain timing; you practice macro well no matter what, but you start off with simpler tasks, 2) games being simpler allow you to practice and learn the basic interactions in the game (say, do i have enough stalkers to blink on top of his army and finish it?), and more importantly 3) i think playing aggressively makes the game more fun, so you will automatically practice more and be less frustrated when you lose. As time goes on you can change your builds and go into more passive macro games; your macro will already be decent at least but you'll have decent micro to back it up; you should also have better decision making in engagements than someone who is used to just turtling to 200/200 before doing anything. A ton of top Korean pros actually learnt this way and started off as very cheesy and gimmicky players; to name two, Maru in sc2 and Flash in BW.
Regarding creativity that's a bit of a slippery slope; i guarantee that no matter what builds you come up with at first, they definitely will suck compared to the ones used by pros; referring to your example, medivacs make a bio ball infinitely more powerful and effective than ravens ever could. At the same time at most levels (including GM) it's perfectly reasonable to win with completely ass builds that you come up with yourself, as long as your execution is good. You shouldn't think that you are re inventing the wheel and coming up with an amazing new style that none can beat, but if it makes you have more fun why not?
|
As new player, don't learn pro build, simply because there are dozens of details and small decision that you can't even imagine yet and most of them require impeccable macro and micro to be efficient.
For instance, for terrans the reaper expand opening is the most used build in every match up at pro level, but if you're new, don't even bother trying it cause cause you won't be able to micro your reaper to scout and try and kill workers while keeping macroing at your base.
In short : if you have killed 1 worker with your reaper but have cut 3 scv meanwhile, you're at a deficit of 2 workers in the end.
Therefore just choose from 3 routes :
- understanding and learning basic mechanics, as in the staircase method for example. the goal is to learn to macro and build stuff link to staircase method
- or getting a simple basic build that kill your opponent on a particular timing, for example a 2 base roach ravager if you're zerg, the purpose is to learn how to fight and win games
- or playing around with a certain unit/comp for fun even if you know it probably won't help you to get master (example : mass battel cruiser) the goal here is to have some good laughs.
Ofc course you can switch from one to another depending on your mood.
When you feel comfortable in all 3 routes, you can start learning the pro builds.
|
If you want to get as good as possible on the game as quickly as possible, Don't bother much with bio-raven combos.
If you are playing to have fun, which is what you should be doing when you start the game, then do whatever you feel like.
|
|
|
|