Learning through loss

One of the things I think I notice when I look back at when I slumped was that it was a period where I was heavily trying to learn new things. I know I messed up a lot of games with my 3gate timings or my 1GFE. Or even when the build didn't lose me the game, just the act of doing something off my normal autopilot caused me to mess up other things. I'd like to hope that I came out ahead of where I was even though I had to lose a lot of ranking in the process. At the time I know I felt like really buckling down and trying to actively learn to play better would be more immediately noticeable. But I guess that was naive.

Ok finally

Back in diamond after almost a month... Don't know why it took that long, but maybe it was a good thing. I look at my post from when I got demoted and cheese was still my biggest concern. That's not the case any longer. I'm holding off 6-pools, bunker contains, and 4-gates (sometimes). I under-reacted a couple times to 10 or 11 gate type 4gate rushes, forgetting to add sentries to hold my ramp. So obvious I know, but I've just got into the habit of not needing that early sentry. The things I worry about now are usually more subtle mistakes in timings and scouting. I still make a lot of stupid mistakes though.

Tonite I beat a zerg in a macro game with warp prism play. I think. The warp prism didn't actually do much. It just threatened the whole game to drop his mineral line and he kept about 8 roaches near by in case. Then when I launched my main attack, I warped in from the back and plowed through the front at the same time. It wasn't amazingly effective but I think the constant threat just meant I wasn't dealing with a full out offensive earlier in the game when I wasn't ready for it. And that's really the point I suppose. I'm going to try and get better with that.

Terran continues to prove much easier. I haven't lost to a terran in a while, still favouring my personal 1-gate FFE into 3-gate collosi.

Slowly improving

Right after the last post I went on a really bad run one nite that knocked me down off the top plat spot. Since then I've been slowly, steadily working up higher and higher. I'm currently way in front of plat, sitting in the top .5% of platinum players based on rating. Every game I lose now I think to myself that I would probably have been promoted if I won. It's a little frustrating having such a clear ceiling that you feel like you can't break. I'm still sure I'll break it, but it's taken way longer than I would've expected.

I can blame balance a little bit. Protoss has been in a bad spot lately. Patch 1.4 just hit a couple days ago and I've been having a little bit more success since then. Early terran is not quite as scary as it was it feels like. I've only had one PvZ that went long enough to have a lot of infestors and I won that, coming away feeling like the infestors were not as scary. Not sure how much of this is due to the patch changes. Ironically PvP is what's confusing me now. I think protoss is less fearful of the 4gate now with the patch changes making it so much easier to defend the ramp with sentries so protoss is a lot safer getting an early robo. At first I thought my 3 gate into robo was still a safe bet but now I'm wondering if it's not going to work just because so many of my PvP opponents will be going 2gate robo and have a heavier immortal/collosi count.

I might like to try a 3gate robo timing push with one warp prism to give vision and high warp-ins. If I have only 4 zealots in the army I can elevator them up then warp in. It might be better to contain and drop in the mineral line on maps where the ramp is far from the minerals though. Still thinking about it. Either way, I should definitely get in more practice with prism play since this is a weak point for me and I know it's becoming a critical part of protoss play.

For terrans, I've refined a 1 gate expand that squeezes out zealot-stalker-stalker-stalker before warpgate and works really well against early pressure that seems to be the common response to a 1 gate expand. Also puts me in a good position vs some of the stupid 1 base all-ins that are almost a certainty in any PvT. Holding off the wide variety of terran all-ins is still something I have trouble with though.

Zerg is still the thing except I've been trying a normal FFE on Shakura's or other maps that are really strong for it. Having some success with that as long as I can time my gateways well enough to get my pressure out early. Still need to practice this.

Old demons

I'm gradually getting back to the diamond league, after sitting on top of Plat for a few days now. And facing diamond-level players, I run into the same things again that I can't beat. Harass and cheese. I actually had 2 6/7-pools in a row one night and finally beat the second one. It did not seem easy since I lost my entire forge-gateway wall-in before finally holding it off. But I did it.

But now I'm facing my absolutely most frustrating type of loss: well executed harass. Three games in a row just now I had to deal with this and lost each. Two from zergs that rushed lings by any opening I left and one from a drop-happy terran. He had 3 dropships poking in on me from 3 different angles. I can keep up after a few harass attempts but I always just get worn down eventually. I don't know how to deal with it. I can't put pressure back on him because his base will always be locked down even though he won't have a standing army of consequence. I can't just leave units to defend or he will mass up and bust my front. Especially against zerg, I feel like it's an auto-lose if I sit in my base defending. All 3 times, I hold off a few attempts, start to lose more and more workers each time, till I know I'm way behind on eco, and I abandon all my bases and try to trade, to no avail.

Maybe I should mix in some air to give myself more mobility. Or over-produce gateways more, something I always avoid.

Back in plat

Don't know if it's laziness, or lack of practice, or if the leagues get better as players get better, but I got demoted. I find it hard to accept that I'm actively getting worse. So that's quite discouraging. Platinum is always the same. I win every game except for cheese, which is like half the games. I can't hold cheese yet to save my life. Any well coordinated early attack, really. I lack the control to get my units perfectly positioned...

Holding the 4gate

Been in the middle of a move so I've been exhausted and haven't played much, which has really hurt my game. Played a little after I got settled and lost a lot. It's ok tho. I feel like I'm learning from my losses. I wish I'd get more PvP though, because I really want to work on the 3gate defense. I found that I had to really rethink my defense since a well-executed 4gate was still giving me a lot of trouble. The 3gate defense is so finicky that there's little room for error. One missed pylon or one late warp-in and you fall irrecoverably behind, which means gg about 15 seconds later.

One thing I've seen is building a zerg-style wall-in to make it really hard for attacking 4gate to get a good zealot surround and increasing the effectiveness of a stalker-heavy defense. Then if it's a full on 4gate, you can even just complete the wall-in with a 4th gate that you may or may not cancel. If your building placement is good, the attacking player should never be able to get enough vision to snipe buildings without you sniping his vision. You want to block the ramp itself but leave the edges open for your stalkers to get a good surround on the bottom of the ramp. If he does want to warp zealots on the high ground, you can just back off and let his stalkers beat on buildings while you dispatch with them. Best wall-in uses 2 gateways with the core protected back at base. It's something I want to try incorporating into my 3gate build.

Terran, I've just started playing on a 1gate FE which seems quite decent. You can squeeze out 3 stalkers with a very fast nexus before a normal 3 warpgate timing. So I'm essentially trading one zealot, 2 stalkers and a few probes for an expansion. I'm afraid it's weak vs a very quick 2gate push so I'll need to practice that.

Another big thing I want to work on having watched other streams is relying less on unit hotkeys. Until I'm actually pushing with my units, hotkeys are basically unnecessary. I have a bad habit of never selecting units by hand, like if they aren't hotkeyed they don't exist. That's partly why my multitasking and spreading are so bad. I just need to not hotkey so much and break that habit.

Frustration with army splitting

A long and frustrating night on the ladder. Looks like I went 5-16! I lost to all varieties of cheese: zealot rush, ling rush, cannon rush. Twice I played the same guy twice in a row. Once was a 4-gating protoss who I lost the first to due to a bad supply block but beat handily the next game with 3-gate into blink. The other time was a drop-happy terran. I beat him the first game with good map awareness to shut down his drops but then lost the second even though he did the exact same thing and I was ready for it, shutting down his first few drops and getting a big supply lead. Eventually he just wore away at me with endless dropping and forced me into bad confrontations.

The most memorable loss was a PvZ though. I started my 3gate but scouted an early 10-pool and stayed defensive. It was a big roach/ling rush at about the 5min mark. I held it off and expanded, trying hard to set up walls connecting my expansion. My scouting revealed a huge pack of speedlings roaming around so I stayed tight to my base. The game turned into collosi vs burrowed infestors, followed by brood lords on 4 and 5 bases each. He wore me away with better eco. But afterwards he messaged me and informed me that I had the game earlier if I just attacked. Watching the reply I held an enormous worker lead after the roach push: 32 to 14! But the speedlings kept me locked in my base and I never felt safe to move out, just letting him drone hard to catch up. I should have put down a cannon or two and left a few zealots guard and kept pushing.

I was raging a little bit by the end, having stayed up later than I should have and getting tired. I don't feel like I learned much. I just ran up against my diamond-level demons, losing to the things I know I lose to: cheese, multi-pronged attacks or threats of multi-pronged attacks (i.e. speedlings). Some of the games I lost to mistakes that I shouldn't be making. Those games I get much less frustrated with actually because I know what to improve and know that I can. The ones that frustrate me I feel like I have no idea what I can do to improve. Because I come out of them needing to do the same things I've been needing to do since day 1 and just can't seem to: split up my army and micro.

I felt terrible when I logged off but the now the next day, I'm not as hard on myself. I only barely failed to hold some of the cheese attacks and knew what to do but just executed a little late or sloppily. I can fix that. Some games I lost to build orders that I just have no answer for right now (one-base collosi all-in and one-base polt all-in) and I think I need to expect that in some cases till I refine my own builds.

So I'm left with the army-splitting problem primarily. How do I train myself to do that?