How to Improve in Starcraft 2 – Part 1- Introduction

How to Improve in Starcraft 2 – Part 1- Introduction

This is the beginning of a new series focusing mainly on how you improve yourself as either a casual gamer or planning to be a serious competitor. Gamers always wonder how to improve themselves whether in the macro sense of fully optimized build where perfectly execution of strategies in their games or microing units during engagement without losing any macro. A truly grandmaster of Starcraft 2 or every other game will understand the matchup perfectly.

Starcraft 2 is still considered an infant as the game has only been officially released for less than six months. SC2 will take years before being fully figured out or never will be. New hidden strategies and tactics are being discovered everyday by innovative players through countless thoughts, imagination and tinkering. During the early phase release of Starcraft 2, a one basing strategy from Protoss and Terran are very often seen and the most utilized strategy. The four gates and three Barracks from Terran are the common norm for the matchups whether they are facing a Protoss, Terran or Zerg.

After nearly six months, players are seen heavily towards macroing and getting expansions. In generally people has gained more insight of different matches and understand the need to gain advantage on macro. For instance, no Protoss player dare to do a fast expansion Nexus at 18 food against a 15 hatch Zerg before. This is followed by a full wall at the front of his expansion and throwing down two Stargates for Void Rays. Do take note this is before the patch. He even took into consideration upon the advice of Fruitdealer our GSL 1 champion of the danger facing Nydus Wurms. Thus, with this knowledge equipped during his GSL match, he countered the Nydus Wurm rush from his opponent perfectly by ‘Patrolling his Probes around the edge of his base’. For your information if you scout the Nydus Wurm when it’s just starting to build at your base, the best counter is to pull your Probes to kill it. After seeing GeniuPig’s impressive performance from the GSL, Protoss players around the world are starting to apply the same build against the Zerg swarm. Zerg players start to fall one by one until; they fully understand how to counter the same strategy through practice and learning process.

Starcraft 1 has always been a very special place for a lot of us. If you are a Starcraft 1 player, you will be very familiar with the name Slayers Boxer, or often known as the ‘Emperor’ himself, the most famous proGamer of all time. He has has won countless pro matches himself and shown Starcraft 2 fans around the world how to play a perfect games. During his era, his games are near perfect and make his race ‘Terran’ being seen as the best and often called imbalance race. The ‘Emperor’ is still a very humble and down to earth man. He gains his recognition from his genius calculations and pulling off never been seen before perfect strategies which always been turn into the mostly used tactics. This man himself has gained fame and nearly a million of fans around the world.

I personally feel that Boxer has in the most indepth knowledge in his matchups for Starcraft 1 during his time. Take for example, his Terran vs Terran which is his best matchup. He could tell how many units his Terran opponent will generally has at certain stage of the game by observing his strategy. This type of knowledge doesn’t come to you or me and required countless practice and testing against the same strategy over and over again to truly understand against ‘ONE’ strategy. This is deemed near impossible for even a lot of ProGamers, but SlayersBoxer shows us how. He is the man that makes eSports possible. Without him, there will not be any GSL or MSL, Korean Starcraft 1 and 2 tournaments or even ESports tournament. Fans around the world cheered when the Emperor returns to the Starcraft 2 scene.

Starcraft 1 takes around ten years to be fully balanced. This is a long and tedious process to fully balance a game. The Blizzard team is currently doing a very good job in balancing the game so far by tweaking small aspects of the game one at a time and keeping an eye of the outcome.

I will try my best to give you as much guide as possible to being a truly good gamer as I am not qualified enough to even write this series of ‘How to improve in SC2’ which will serve as a good Starcraft 2 strategy guide. I hope that you guys will like this series and thus being a better gamer of yourself and not being ever called a ‘NOOB’ again.

Cheers.