After a long(read: a few days), grueling(actually it was quite fun) process, I find myself finally at the top of my division. So, now what?
While I wait for Blizzard to acknowledge my relative awesomeness, I wanted to talk about a few things I noticed from my trip up the ladder. Primarily, the difference in opponents as you get higher in the ladder and the necessity of adapting your play to your new environment.
First off, I am well aware I am still in the Bronze division. While the competition does change from bottom of the ladder to the top, it's not so overwhelming that you get discouraged. Just by making the decision to push into Silver, I managed to move up thirty some-odd places in a few days; it just takes determination and practice.
When I first started, the majority of players I faced would follow some pretty simple, yet effective strategies. Terran would make a big bio ball and run me over. Protoss would run me over with Zealots, or make Zealots and Stalkers and then run me over, or I might see the odd Voidray rush that would run me over. Notice the theme here. It was demoralizing at first, but once I started noticing the pattern, I started to adapt my play.
Bio ball? Fine, I'll go zerglings/banelings and hold them off until I get mutalisks. Zealots, Stalkers, Voidrays? Roaches and hydralisks and hold them off until I get mutalisks. Once again, some of you might be noticing a trend. Mutalisks are amazing when your opponent only has one strategy and is devoting all of his energy to that.
Mutalisks got me all the way to the top five or so on the ladder. Then, as I mentioned in a prior post, Blizzard decided to start throwing Silver and Gold-level players at me. Apparently, I'm not the first Zerg to discover that Mutalisks are awesome if unopposed. Go figure.These players actually reacted to my bird-lizards of domination. I started encountering turrets, stalkers huddled around mineral lines, or photon cannons at critical areas.
Now, instead of looking at the mutalisks as my end-game as I had been doing, I was forced to plan one step further. What would I do if they countered my mutalisks? After all, mutalisks are expensive units to just suicide blindly. I decided that I would make a set number of mutalisks and then simply stop. No need to upgrade them, no need to worry about replenishing their numbers, they were only a method of giving me a lead in economy by harassing mineral lines and picking off unprotected assets.
By using them as part of a larger plan instead of them being "the plan", I believe I was able to push up to #1 as effectively as I did.
Now the question is, where do I go from here?
Think of it this way, if ur forcing ur opponent to build turrets, cannons, spore thingies for defense, or vikings, phoneix's, then ur actually doing good, your in control, to some extent, of what ur opponent is doing. by forcing your opponent to switch what he is building, and if you see it in time, you can start building the units that are excellent against those anti air. and crush that "big ball o units"
ReplyDeleteI cant tell you how many games i lost because i was forcing my opponent to build defenses and not taking advantage of it.
I completely noticed the difference in my last game. Kept mutas up enough to have the terran go over board on the turrets and then sent in 10 super-commando ultralisks. It's very hard to concentrate on reacting when there's a herd of thundering terror-elephants coming through your base.
ReplyDeleteAwesome advice, thanks.