I decided it was about time I got all brutal done lol it has been bugging me all these years that I still hadn't gotten around to finishing it. I spent the last week replaying every campaign at least once or twice or even thrice in the case of the Liberty campaign. Now I actually also know what's up with the storyline lol.
Fyi ignore the bronze league lol I put myself there when I started playing again to get in shape(better than boring practice vs AI). I'm 37-1 though so I reckon I can promote



My final achievement was to complete it in under 8 hours ( wasn't even sure if I still wanted to do this) But I could not bare the 99% lol.



It looks very satisfying does it not ?



If anyone ever needs any tips on doing this stuff, I should probably be able to help haha.

This post was edited by Juvator on Jul 27 2018 06:19am

i'd be more bugged about that bronze 2 if i was you

haha I would be as well if I hadn't placed myself there on purpose =)

post another celebratory screenshot with your league promotions

haha will do I got myself reaaally low on mmr though haha had to start on <900 lol. even 37 to 1 was not enough to get out of bronze 2 yet I'm getting close though lol.
At the moment I am hooked on Pokeone though I was planning to go fullon laddering again after this campaign grind but then someone told me about this new pokemon online game and damn it's good!

I look forward to it, and fyi: playing against bad opponents doesn't get you into shape, it just creates bad habits. If you want to improve, play against players better than you are, not the other way around.

I actually don't fully agree with that.

Practicing your builds vs AI is better than doing half assed builds because you are simply getting rolled over, then there is nothing to practice either.
When I play against much better players that is when I create very bad habits.
Because you start to skip out on things because you are under so much pressure and you forget this and that and that is really when I develop bad habits.
When I play against worse players I am actually fully focussed on my technical play improving my macro build and getting faster and faster to 200/200.
I get my creepspread and overlord spread/queen injections routines into my muscle memory.

When I'm scrambling around because a better opponent is simply toying with me then I suddenly stop doing everything I need to be doing.

So personally it has helped me get in shape very very well because when I first started again I wasn't sure what order to do my cycles anymore.. and what to do when and now my macro builds are more polished and the timings are faster and better.. that would not have happened if I was constantly being pressured.

When playing zerg it's very helpful to be able to get your cycles down properly and I'm not the kind of player to let bad habit creep in just because I am not opposed.

I'm now at the point where my macro is getting to be on point again and that's when I can start playing against better players again yes because ofc I won't improve further than I am now if I keep playing against such shitty players.

But there's definitely a good reason to play against AI or bad opponents just to practice your builds. you gotta take it 1 step at a time in sc2 or you just get overwhelmed with all the information you must progress, and if you don't have to think about your builds anymore then you have time to think about scouting/strategies/map control/micro all those things.

This post was edited by Juvator on Jul 29 2018 09:44am

The hard truth is you have to be able to do both of those things you mentioned: strong macro (at least keeping pace with opponent) and strong defense against pressure (good scouting and larva management). You can practice the build orders and macro against an AI; a low skilled player on the other side of the map is just there to make you feel like the work was an accomplishment. If your build can't handle pressure then it's not a good build. Improving is all about filling in those holes in your play and low skilled opponents won't help you with that. You say you won't allow yourself to develop bad habits, but what happens when you play against an opponent who does pressure you? You'll find that your build needs to enable you to gather information more readily with things like overlords and speedlings and if your opponents suck, you won't know when to do those things. Starcraft is a tug of war, you can't just blindly follow a build order and expect it work out with practice. It's much more important what your opponent does than what you do when it comes to things like macro, tech timings, etc, especially with Zerg. There are opportunities to do those things and get ahead but you won't know when to do them if your opponents aren't challenging you and you aren't scouting them.

I'm not saying you can't improve with your method but it will be much slower, I promise. Because if your goal is master league or grandmaster league, you will run into these issues eventually and all the Bronze league stompfest hours in the world won't help you.

Ah yeah I completely agree with everything you are saying.
And I've played against and with master players so I know what I'm going to be facing.
But again I say that if you are technically flawed in your mechanics then you won't be able to beat master either.

Ofc I'm pretty crap against lots of pressure right now and I barely know what to scout for or what things to do in certain situations, nor do I know any of the timings.
But the way I see it that's what I'm learning next.

I could go into the specifics like my build can gather information with speedlings and overlords/overzeers and that I know all these things.
I've played since 2011 with a couple of the best players back then.

And when I say build order, it's more like a general thing like the way I play it now I can move into anything I want, I more meant to say that mechanically I needed time to practice and prepare.
I'm actually not that bad against some pressure either it's something as a zerg especially you learn to deal with because good players will constantly be pressuring you.

But yeah indeed once I reach higher ratings then I will be finding out where the holes are and will indeed be filling them but I needed that to come from a strong mechanical point where at the very least I know what I'm doing macro wise.
Muscle memory is an important part of that, I want my actions to be automatic in the sense that while I'm attacking or defending I can still manage to keep my cycles going as best I can.
The proper way of using hotkeys,switching between bases,control groups all those things needed refreshing and I know from experience if I were to jump back into my old ranking which was high platinum/diamond I was just going to get rolled over and the only thing I would learn is that my mechanical skills would be so bad that that was the reason I lost. Simply because I got outmacro'd didnt expand enough, forgot map control forgot injections forgot upgrades.

I'm fully aware that it's much more important what my opponent does again especially as zerg indeed you need to play reactive and I can only do that if I have constant info about his whereabouts and tech choices, because I only want to defend as much as I need to. That's what I love about zerg.

But yeah that's why I'm now at the point where I need to get out of this bronze league because I will not learn when to get ahead or when to do this or when I should have build a spore or how many spines I should have gotten. Or maybe a few extra queens or this or that. I know that is going to be the actual hard part hehe. That point where if you just had made that 1 extra queen or if you had just had a ling like a few yards in front of your base to warn you of the incoming attack. As zerg I need as much time to prepare for incoming harass or attacks as I can to min/max my economy vs army and get the right counters pushing out. And this is all easier said than done.

This post was edited by Juvator on Jul 29 2018 11:02am

watching x5_pig helps a lot, especially when to expand and when to build an army.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/289571063

oh you were diamond in 1v1 before.. lol

This post was edited by QQL on Jul 29 2018 11:24am