Season 8 - Stats, Strats, and more...

It's finally over, and the results are in! This was my first season being promoted to Gold league, and I'd say I did pretty damn well. Adjusting from Silver wasn't all that difficult because there isn't too much of a skill gap between and anyone in silver and anyone outside of, I'd say, Top 25 Gold. This season really was a roller coaster for me in terms of rank. I broke into the top 8, moving into 6th place, briefly by going on a total rampage against Protoss and Terran for about a weeks worth of play. There is definitely a noticeable difference in skill within the Top 8 because these people are knocking of the door of Platinum, or just got kicked out that same door and are trying to fight their way back in. I played some pretty tough people, and was slowly squeezed back out of Top 8.
When the season finally ended, I secured a 19th place finish. I'm both proud of this, but it leaves SO much more room for improvement. I'm not sure if I mentioned it in a previous post, but I've been keeping an excel sheet of all of my games so that I can track my win/loss record because Blizzard won't give us any help on this one.

For the next part I'll be doing what I always do, and that is break down, race by race, the current builds that I am using that have shown me success. BUT, on top of the builds I am now pleased to say that I will be able to run the numbers and analyze just how effective my current builds are! This is the part I've been the most excited to write about since I started keeping a W/L record!

I tried to record every game I played, but I’m sure a couple slipped through the cracks. I played a total of 223 games and had an overall win rate of 51.5%. Even though I had to collect the stats, it’s pretty neat to see Blizzard’s system at work; matching you against stronger and weaker players dependent on how you do, with the eventual goal of finding a place in the ladder system where you will maintain a 50% win-rate. Once you got too far below or above this number you will be promoted/demoted. I’ll take that extra 1.5%, and we’ll call it progressing towards Platinum haha.

I’ll go from best matchup to worst in terms of win %.

*drumroll*

Protoss W/L – 42-24 – 63%

Can you believe it?! I’m crushing this matchup! It may be arrogant of me to think, but when I see this matchup pop up on the loading screen I am overcome with joy. I have a lot of confidence in this build, and I haven’t really used much else since I learned of it.

Build: 2 Rax poke into 2-1-1 all-in

Now, I know this sounds cheesy, and that’s because it really is. It’s a big wheel of cheese rolling right at the Protoss, and it is hard for them to see it coming. I know there isn’t much behind this promise due to my lack of recording, but to explain this and do it justice I need to put some gameplay to it. Now, I’ve already made a video of the 2-1-1 all-in but that did not include the 2-rax poke and how to use it.

Here the opening build order:

10 supply

12 rax 1 marine then reactor @50 gas

14 gas

15 OC

16 rax tech lab immediately, then start concussive shells

17 supply

- Constant marines + marauders, push with the first ~4 marines and 1 marauder.

-If you do it right, you should have a 1000 dollar army, combat shields on the way, and 24 workers at 6 minutes. It takes some practice, but the glory of this poke is that it doesn’t cut economy, while allowing you to put some pressure on your opponent.

-I will tie the two pieces of this build together in a video.

Terran W/L – 33-30 – 52.3%

The TvT match-up is a giant chess match, more so than either of the other match-ups. Due to the fact that there was nothing outstanding really with the build order I WAS using, I want to talk about a build that I adopted after being crushed by it one match. It requires the ability to micro with your harass, and macro back home otherwise you aren’t gaining an advantage from it. I practiced it for a while, and through my first ten games versus Terran I’ve won eight of them! The amount of things going on in this build would be hard to summarize in words, but please don’t let that scare you. I’m in Gold league remember?

The opening is a 1-1-1 hellion drop -> expand -> into cloaked banshees -> marine/tank/medivac

It goes something like this:

10 supply

12 gas

13 rax

17 supply

18 factory - @50 gas put reactor on rax, switch when it finishes and make 4 hellions.

19 OC

- Starport + 2^nd gas –make a medivac, load up hellions, and drop his mineral line. Tech lab once the medivac finishes

~32 CC

-From here you move into cloaked banshees to continue the harass

- Macro, macro, macro. Put the rax on the reactor, and make a tech lab on the naked factory.

- If he survived this and you did damage, he’s in bad shape. You’ve got a full 2 base income and now it is a matter of just building up a big enough army with this advantage and walking across the map and crushing him with it.

This build is fun to pull off because you don’t have to wait until the 10-minute mark to find out whose army is bigger. You can now do damage from 7-10 minutes to assure that you will have a bigger army.

Lastly, with the current meta-game who in their right mind is going to pin you on a hellion drop at 7-8 minutes?? Not many, and that is why people never see it coming. I will also make a video breaking this build down.

Zerg W/L – 35-49 – 39.3%

I will ask again, “HELP ME PLEASE”. This match-up still continues to frustrate me. I don’t have a solid build order yet, so I won’t be talking about one. After I saw what my final win % was I instantly threw out what I was using. I began to think why I can’t compete with good Zergs, and it’s because of their ability to have such a sick economy in the early-mid game. A Terran’s economy doesn’t begin to flourish until around the 9-10 minute mark, giving Zergs all the time they need to harass, or outright win with a bane bust or influx of lings.

So you know what I’ve begun to do? I’m just as greedy as the Zerg by using a variation of the now popular 3OC build – I go CC first! That’s right, three fuckin' Command Centers feeding my main and natural. While it’s a struggle to deal with harass in the beginning, your economy literally EXPLODES by 7-8 minutes in. I’ve never been able to be that active that early in the game before.

I’ll end here and promise a video for this build as well.

Overall, I would say that Season 8…er…3, was a success for me because I was able to compete with those at the top of my league, and even beyond! I beat 6 platinum players, and that gives me hope that I can keeping growing. I haven’t maxed out my skill yet.

So, after all of this reading how are your eyes feeling? I hope you found something interesting/useful in this post. My next three posts are going to address each race and the builds that I am using in more detail.

Good luck in season 4 everybody!!