I remember starting out and playing my first five 1 v 1 placement matches. I played SC:BW, but being completely new to SC 2, I of course didn't place very high, in fact I was placed in low silver rankings. Over the next several weeks I wasted my time pulling off "cutesy" strategies that I thought would destroy my enemies. They would work sometimes but fail close to 80% of the time. Either way, the end result is that my skill level did not improve. So I did some research on various forums and found out how to go from any level to low diamonds in just a few days. I promise these strategies will work for you too and save you a bunch of hours wondering why you won't rank up.
How I went from low silver to Diamond League: I split my plan into the 5 main points that you must follow directly. I don't care how others do it, this is how I did it and I'm mediocre at best.
A few side notes before I begin:
-You cannot place into Diamond. What I mean by that is that, according to Blizzard ladder ranking system. You MUST LOSE at least 8 games before you are even considered to be eligible for Diamond league.
-Blizzard sets up their match finding system so that you are expected to win 55% (long term) of all your games. So play games! Don't be afraid to lose because you're guaranteed a positive win rate!
-Turn on your health bars (in menus), it will help you immensely. I don't care what anyone else says, health bars will help you macro, micro, amongst other things.
Okay. So lets get down to it.
1) What Race to pick: Some people say that this, that or the other race is overpowered. While there are some truths to that, it doesn't matter at your skill level. In fact you can pick any race and get into diamond from a lower league with minimal skill and actions per minute. However, I must say that the most flexible race is Terran even though Protoss is the easiest to macro (macro is the ability to keep producing units, thus spending minerals and gas, while paying attention to your army and expanding). I got into diamond using Terran and I suggest you pick this particular race as a starting point to learning various skillsets in SC2.
So why pick Terran? Terran has, hands down, the best ground unit in the entire game, and often you'll see other opponents crying about it after they've lost - Marauders. This beast of a unit has high health, high damage, and a slow effect for an upgrade of just 50m/50g. The added bonus is that you can learn the basics of micro-ing (army control aspect) with this unit.
Terran army retention rate is godly with medivacs. That's right, it's the only race that has a dedicated heal you unit. What does this mean for you? It means you can build a ton of cheap units marines and rauders, and have them become strong with just 2-3 medivacs. This army composition is called m-m-m and we'll get into the specifics of this unit later.
Terran race has the best bonuses - Mules and Satcom. Mules gives boost to your economy which is important for obtaining an early big army size and sitcom gives you intelligence information instantly, how great is that. These two skills are essential in higher level play, so learn how to utilize them now.
2) "Early game" Scouting and why it's important: Top players all agree that the early game (first 5-7 minute) decides whether you will win or lose. It might sound strange, but it's true, especially at your skill level. So what kind of strategy should you adopt if you want to have an early advantage? Be paranoid! What I mean by that is that at bronze to gold skill level and even higher, opponents will definitely cheese you (cheese is a term that means to do an unexpected strategy that has a high percentage of paying off if your opponent is not aware of it). So what can you do? Scout. You must send a worker to explore your own base at 8 supply. That's right, even before you build your first supply depo, you must send a scout. Have the worker explore your base for cannons, proxy buildings, and ultimately have him explore your opponent's base. You want to scout throughout the game even if it costs you that worker. Because that 50 mineral can decide whether you win or lose. Why's that? Because SC2 is such a dynamic game, you have to know what your opponent is doing to counter his build or when and where he is attacking to position your troops correctly. Xel Naga towers are important too but I'll talk about that in another article that discusses high-level strategies.
3) Avoid the "Cheese": Low skill level players will often do cutesy builds like proxy cannons, rush void rays, fast reapers, fast zerglings, because they think it has never been done before or surprise you and eventually win. Wrong. You can destroy all their builds with just 1 simple build. You want to block the entrance to your base. That often means walling off your base with a barrack and 2 supply depos. This is critical because it eliminates early zealots, zerglings, cannons that players tend to pull on you. Second, you have to scout their base to see if they have an early offensive unit-producing structure up early. The three early cheese for each race and counter for them are:
a) Terran - early reaper. Once you suspect they are going reaper - the signs are that they have barracks up before you do AND has a gas refinery already, suspect reaper. The counter is to immediately put up a second barracks and put up a bunker at your mineral line, produce and send marines to those bunkers. Continue with the strategy that I will discuss in the next step.
b) Zerg - fast zerglings/ speedlings this is easy, if you see that they have a pool almost done building by the time u scout them. Put up a wall. Usually zerg will not do this since they assume you will wall against them. In that case suspect baneling busts. To counter baneling bust, just put another "layer " of buildings behind your front wall. They'll put so much resources into busting your wall (and failing) that you'll have the advantage.
c) Protoss - the proxy void rays. - Yes even at high levels this strategy is viable. The way to spot this is that if they go 1 gate 1 cybernetics core and they've taken both their gases early. If you suspect void rays, explore the map. However, with my unit build which I'll discuss next, you can destroy voids rays regardless if they proxy.
4. Unit Composition and build - the 3-rax build:
You can get straight to high diamonds on this build alone. Don't be thrown off if you start winning with this build then be destroyed by certain players. This is because blizzard's ranking is matching you up with high level players because you are winning so much! Don't fret, just keep repeating the strategy. This build alone, if you become efficient with it, can get you as far at top 10 Diamond on your ladder. I'm not going to tell you how to do the 3 rax build. YouTube videos on this build will do a much better job. I'm instead going to tell you what to do with this build. Following the 3rax build, when you have 50 supplies, you must move out with your army, regardless if he has walled off or not. If you executed this build correctly you SHOULD have a bigger army. When you get to his base, you must SCAN before going in to attack to avoid an ambush. If you see that you can definitely destroy his army then move in. If not, then back off and expand, put down another 3 rax and upgrade to starport and have another 1 or 2 dedicated worker building supplies. Build to 100 supply army, add a few medivacs and attack again. This time, you'll have air unit vision so you don't have to scan. Just stim up and push in. It's an easy win.
5. Finally, Constant Macro:
The last step is perhaps the hardest to master but if you conquer this skill set you will make it to Diamond easy. First of all- actions per minute matters, but only to a certain point. Most top players have around 80-120 apm. For your skill set, aim for 65 apm. This does not include early spamming (useless clickcs and selecting of workers). If you early spam then add 10 apm to that, so aim for 75 apm if you spam. The concept of Macro is easy to understand: ALWAYS BE PRODUCING UNITS. That means always creating scvs, don't stop, don't even stop when you have 50 just keep making them. It will force you into a good habit of oversaturating your workers and building more bases. That also means you will be constantly pumping units out of your racks. You can afford it when you have a huge amount of workers. You should keep your mineral levels BELOW 400, that means, unless u are expanding, you have to spend your minerals. If you can't spend fast enough, build more unit producing structures like barracks, factories, upgrade your units, take another expansion. Whatever it is that you have to do, spend the mineral. However, one thing to avoid is queuing up too many units at one structure. Those queued units are minerals you could use to be building something else. The max you should have queue is 2 units at one building. It's a widely unknown fact, but at bronze to gold skill level, games aren't won by brilliant strategies or perfect unit composition, but who can keep up with their macro the best. That means whoever can produce the larger army, maintain that army, and reinforce that army will win 99% of the time.
So there you have it. The 5 facts you need to know to get into diamond League - 1)Sticking to 1 race (Terran) for now, 2)Scouting, 3)how to spot and overcome early cheese, 4)practicing and mastering the 3-rax build and last but not least 5)maintaining macro supremacy. There are many resources available to you such as TL.net. Or check back here for more tips on how to become a great SC2 player.
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Billy is a high rank diamond player who has been playing SC2 since beta. If you are hungry after those long, intense or frustrating SC2 sessions, check out his new site about Soup recipes [http://souprecipestop.com] on how to make easy chicken noodle soup and other nourishing soups so you'll be ready for the next battle.
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