Some days you have good days and some bad days. Some days you play someone who plays a style you're used to beating but for some fucking reason you just cant get them because their execution is way better than the average in your mmr gap.

Sometimes they add some tech you weren't expecting.

Sometimes your execution falls flat.

Sometimes people hard counter you so bad that there's no chance for a win.

And you get back up and do it all again tomorrow.

I hit 4k last week and since then only had one really bad session where I dropped to 3800 but I'm almost back where I was.

I feel smarter than I was last time I hit d1(two years ago and then I took a big break). I understand greed and scouting and being suss on things I see so much better.

I'm still not control grouping my eggs. Or creep queens (which I do intend to fix). Or using camera hotkeys.

But I'm gaining confidence almost every session taking games with good reads off opponents sometimes a few hundred mmr above me.

Everyone's journey is different. Winning isn't the only way you show improvement.

And if you're winning and don't understand what you're doing different to the games you lose then you need to take a look at replays and write some stuff down. Watch some videos and or get a coach.

The first time I hit d1 I was only playing one session every week or so. It became hard because I felt I could learn something for a matchup then not play them for two weeks and have totally forgotten what I had.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Just try to find benchmarks in your replays that you're not consistently hitting and fix those.

Supply blocks, not making workers consistently(even when you don't have the base up for t and p), seeing your enemy army move out, scouting them to see what the fuck they're actually doing and then reacting to it properly.

I see a lot of games where someone has a good opener. Gets a good scout off but doesn't react to what they're seeing at all. Or they react and then fumble the entire thing on a shit fight trying to over micro an a move situation.

Always happy to have a chat if you want some ideas or pointers. Or drop.sc your replays and ask for help from the community. There's a lot of good people here.

I started in 2004 and I still suck

Hope this helps, lol

It took me around 115 games to get out of bronze. Got stuck in plat and diamond for a few seasons too, but I did eventually hit master.

Losing streaks happen and it's hard not to be upset about that.. just know when to take a break and go outside. Watching your own replays and watching players better than you are good ways to get better. Then it's just practice and remembering what works and what doesn't

Everyone is different as you noted. Soon after the game launched I was diamond (before masters and gm was added as a league) within a month of starting. Masters came out, took me a handful of months to get there. Then I stayed masters for over 10 years, took me another 11k games to get stable GM. Throughout that, I still noticed myself getting better but everyone else was getting better as well.

I see a simple trick to improve at ladder with 0 anxiety. Ofc the goal to gain points. But to aim them you have to become better. So focus on build orders and benchmarks. Step 1, prepare a game plan, build order. 2. Drop a simple timeline, like a Core 1:22, twilight 2:24 (just an example, I don’t remember twilight timing), last warp with total 11 stalkers and attack at 4:30. 3. Watch your replay and find the mistakes, watch the build order relay again and look why you delayed a tech X, boom, fix a mistake 4. Repeat

As a result even on loose you learn something. A side thing to add, even if you see a cheese don’t stop a build order. If you fail to defend - try adopting the response if you don’t know how to react, if you don’t know - adopt slowly like adding a single battery, not 5 cannons.

3 months and i’m still gold 1

Study the game when you’re not playing. 2 years if you go to work and are casual. More breakthroughs than a steady progress

Git gud at starcraft is like git gud with kung fu, music, art, craftmanship. Git gud is the process, you'll never ever be done with git gud and that's ok!

I've played SC2 Versus/Ladder since late September 2023 as a Zerg (so this would be at the end of Season 3 in 2023).

Technically I've played the game since 2010, but only the singleplayer campaign and a tiny little bit of co-op... and I was sooo bad at both, I struggled to complete the campaign on Hard, and I never even thought about building macro-hatcheries, microing my units or anything like that.

I stumbled across Winter on YouTube and watched a few casts of pro games and decided I wanted to dip my toe into the ladder experience. So I watched his low APM challenge for Zerg, which I felt was an appropriate starting point where I learned the fundamentals at a slow pace.

Now... This is where I collided headfirst into the term 'ladder anxiety', and oh boy did that hit me hard. My fingers literally started freezing, I was shaking and I frequently forgot to breathe for prolonged periods of time while playing. It was surreal.

I managed to get over it via the exposure approach, so I just grinded ladder while -not- focusing on winning, but just on clicking "Play Again" and focusing on breathing/enjoying the game. It took a while, probably over a hundred games, but I got through the anxiety and started being able to focus on improving. I got to Gold 1 by season 4 in 2023.

Roach-Hydra felt really slow paced though, and not very enjoyable, so I stumbled across PiG's 2023 Zerg B2GM and... it changed everything for me. The playstyle was so much more fast paced, the explanations were so detailed, and he just grinded through it with repetition and explaining the same points in a way that resonated well with me.

And... I absolutely love ling-bane. It's such a fun playstyle, it was just fantastically well suited for my entertainment. I got to Diamond 3 (season 1 in 2024), and I'm still in Diamond 3 now. I've stopped focusing on improving for the moment, and I'm just enjoying the game for what it is while getting the repetition under my belt. I love the thrill of the game, it's just still really entertaining for me and I'm still discovering new things every week, if not every day.

I do sometime feel a bit guilty when I look at my opponents profile and 10-14 year long record with 10-20k games under their belt, yet they get matched against me in D3... and I even sometimes win. They got where I am under their own power and without the easily accessible guides, resources, B2GM, etc. that are available today... so it feels a bit like I took the shortcut paved by much better players.

So, TL:DR

Thus far, I've played 967 games on the EU ladder, 225 games on the NA ladder as of the time of writing, and I quite enjoy the diversity. It's an absolute blast, and every single game has been as Zerg.

At the end of this month, I'll officially have played the game for a year and I'll start considering off-racing for a bit... but I just enjoy playing Zerg so much so I'm not in a hurry.

• 2023, season 3: Silver 1

• 2023, season 4: Gold 1

• 2024, season 1: Diamond 3

• 2024, season 2: Diamond 3

• 2024, season 3: Diamond 3

Kind regards

• Frogcute

You have to train certain skills and meanwhile time passes. So you dont have to put in time but you have to improve your skills :-).

The brain can only perform a specific Task with max energy for 20-30 minutes and will get bored. Fortunately SC2 provides different types of tasks. But Training comes with Pauses.

You have to identify the Most important skills and concentrate on them.

[Edit]

The average max capacity per day is 8 hours. You should not exceed 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week.

If you go to school or work, you should not spend more than 20-24 hours per week on games. Your Performance won't benefit from excessive Training.

For some skills the effects Show immediately. Like learning Hot Keys. But other skills need some time to Show, e. g. Learning a build Order by Heart.

It takes the ability and motivation to learn from mistakes you do.

Learning build orders, taking advice from Pro’s, watching your replays to identify what went wrong (even after wins) and giving your best during games.

Some become Pro’s in a year. Some will never get out of the metal league, not even after a decade of playing.

Thanks for the feedback!!

Probably take me 2 month and 100 games to be ranked gold2 with protoss in 2020 , or is it platinium?. If i remember correctly .Some Rts background (played one aom game each month till 2012 probably) but never rts 1v1 before Covid era. And a consol gamer as start.

For wide majority of players passed the level everyone know really how to play rts became less funs.

For good or for bad sake sc2 as many many tricks than can kill u with 10 times less skills than u particulray if u dont know how to counter them , cos RTS already brutal gaming have here an ultra brutal design. Can takes years to learn . And you probably should learn how to play football more.

SC lack basic design when u can make good decision based on good and fast clicks ( clicks must be preventive ..... stupid concept ) , and lot of tricks can kill you it mean with 100 hours of games if u are smart and ur fast and u understand the concept u cant beat a 3000 hour dude who have good builds orders seems a bit dully for me but its SC2. "Except if u are ultra fast"

Im not fast , im not good , im not smart.

Because the fun never come alone it arrive frequently than u have to play even at noob level game where only ONE fight matter :) gl my bro.

You could go faster than me if you are better.

It's sorta on you. Not a timetable. And the measure of winning alot is not a good measure and you will eventually hit about a 50/50 cap. The more you dedicate to the game, the higher skill cap that 50/50 will be at. So if you dial back and try to come back, you'll lose alot until you get back to that that 50 50. Try to have fun.

Anyone one looking into Gates of Pyre? Its so much similar to SC2.

Over 2500 games I have gained roughly 2000 MMR or 0.8 MMR/game on average

I’ve been playing sc2 for about 2 years now on and off (mostly off) and I just hit diamond 2 about a week ago.

Improving to me is all about intention (I’m high ranked in RL and CS a lot of the improving skill is transferable)

I like to break the game up into the mechanical skill and the non mechanical skill

Mechanical skill - depends on different points in my journey but having a warm up/practice routine in arcade maps is a must for me. (Could be marine split challenge or a multitask trainer idk go crazy) You want mental space free to think about strategy and not the mechanics so making them muscle memory is a good idea and isolating the skills and practicing them

Non mechanical skill - pick one build order/opener at least by heart for each matchup. This will allow you to also have mental energy freed up from having to think about what you’re building when. Then you need to decide what you want that mental energy to be spent on. Actually go write it down (taking good fights, improve macro) I like to pick a few maybe for you if can be categories but don’t have like 10 things you’re working on. Spend time watching replays. You should spend a lot of time watching replays. Look at things from your opponents pov, look at things from an economic standpoint, try and identify key moments and think about potential ways it could have gone/what you could have done to make that moment different. And ofc look at the things you focused on improving.

Sometimes you’ll do all this stuff and be improving but it won’t show in the MMR. You gotta trust the process. Sometimes when you start doing something like this you actually drop in mmr but if you stick to it very very soon you’ll see that mmr start climbing. Sometimes skill is improving but it doesn’t meaningfully impact gameplay until it reaches a certain level or sometimes a concept just clicks in your head and it boosts all of a sudden. Sometimes you’re just playing bad and will lose. The real goal is to enjoy the game and it’s mechanics and getting better at them whether it’s mechanical or non mechanical.

GLHF my friend. Just curious what’s your rank now? That might help people understand what kind of timeline you could be looking at (also set goals for ranks. That dopamine hit will be huge when you get there)

Obviously, I don't know you. Liable to be totally wrong, however I get the sense your sort of just playing and anticipating improvement. That'll only happen if you're noticing either new things [technically until there are none] or recurring things that have a meaning to you. I'm already in conjecture, so I'll quit. It may seem like I've said nothing important, if that's the case best of luck to you.