making it to masters is very tough as pure random...learning the other 2 races is always difficult for me. certain situations (8 gate all ins vs. protoss when i'm zerg or late game deathballs v. protoss as terran) are really hard for me to learn, given i don't main zerg or terran. i'm trying to make it to masters on another account as random (auto leaving tvt and zvz don't help lol).

i think if you want to hit masters, you should probably focus on just 1 race. there's no real way to get the sheer mechanics down until you just choose 1 race for a while and learn it.

Yeah I know. Lol legally btw, ppl buy windows?

I don't need to play it on ultra at 100fps or anything. For example my old PC that I played it on low settings at home quite happily and at a perfectly playable frame rate, I got for £50 second hand. Given the relative increase in budget I am thinking I should be able to get something a bit of an upgrade on that but I am just not sure what sort of hardware I am looking at vs performance. Again no need for a £1500 liquid cooled, super computer. Just something that will play SC2 comfortably at a decent frame rate, preferably on medium to higher graphics settings as well. Like is 2GB of ram really enough or will I experience slowdown? With parallel processors it's not clear to me the difference in processors performance either.

was watching ret practicing with cloud yesterday and he had ~300 watching, kind of sad when 15k were watching a tlo/grubby showmatch

Getting to masters is way harder than most people in this thread make it out to be I think, especially when $500 isn't going to motivate him and Diablo 3 is coming out. Most people saying masters is easy probably weren't stuck in silver or gold after playing a few months either.

He could practice super hard and then start a new account? Or is that not allowed in the bet.

If they only played 4v4 with their friends for those few months I don't see how they couldn't be stuck in the low divisions (in 1v1)!

Yeah, I was in platinum for like 4 seasons and only recently got to diamond. This is also my first RTS so I think this is a contributing factor.

I imagine if you played one race with 5-6 games a night while studying your replays, , you could jump to masters by the end of summer.

It probably isn't as easy as we make it sound, but it's definitely not what I would call "hard" either. Especially when you have almost a year to do it. Does it require a commitment? Probably. A big one? Certainly not.

There's a $150 buyout offer on the table. HMMMMM

I would take the buy out if I were you, he's almost certainly >30% to do it.

You don't even need to really learn different builds/matchups, IMO. If your only goal is to get to Masters, just doing some very aggressive cheese strat (as long as you get better at it) should be enough. Something like an 11/11 marine all in or 4gating should work a high % enough to make it to masters assuming you can get the timings crisp (which after like 5 games/day for 1 year should be easy). Hardest part is just grinding out games, which should be easy if there is money on the line.

No, 4gating alone will not get you to masters unless you are mc or have similar micro. I did this for fun on another account to where I had the timings down perfectly and I plateaud around low diamond. Unless I have the woat micro, people are actually getting better at the game to where cheesy all ins don't really work often.

lol. It won't get you to masters unless you are MC, but it will get bsball8806 to one division below masters?

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=283755
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=223517

I've done it from a blank account twice. Even now it's definitely still doable.

Well, there is (imo) an enormous difference between diamond and masters. Plus MC could possibly still be a borderline GSL code A player if he 4gated a disproportionate amount, which is even more of a jump.

Mostly it annoys me a bit when higher level people (I assume ak13 is masters+) group all other divisions together as having the same problems (aka macroing and build orders).

Sure, I suck- but I want to actually know why I suck, not some generic answer...and that's why I think having a coach would benefit me a ton.

okay okay i accepted the buyout, me and my big mouth

Maybe I have bad micro, then. Or maybe I haven't played enough games. Idk I wish I knew why I sucked...I watch a ton of GSL and I feel like I understand stuff that I know many masters people I've talked to don't and yet I am sort of in a rut

Just mimic build orders as tight as you can. Get a build order tester and just run through it over and over until you are within a few seconds of optimal. This is the best way to get better fast imo.

The thing is, it's not just a generic answer. If you didn't suck at macro/BOs, you wouldn't have only just gotten into Diamond. Tbh, I think people get more annoyed at the fact that they don't know what to do to improve that stuff, rather than being told "it's your macro" over and over.

Do you watch your replays? I mean you're definitely way better than me but every time I watch my replays I can see big areas where I can improve. Even though I have more holes to spot in my game, you oughta have more hole spotting skills, so it should balance out a bit.

just post your replays here...people are more than willing to look over your stuff if you post. you can get into practice groups/etc on TL if you'd like as well. i feel like anyone who is willing to mildly work towards getting masters can get it (play like 5 games a day+/watch the replays/etc).

I really couldn't disagree more. I'm one of those players that started all the way down in silver season 1. I didn't immediately jump to diamond (and then to masters when master league was created) like I imagine many of you did. I had to work at this for a really damn long time. When I was back in those lower leagues, I fully understood why I was bad and why I didn't improve- I didn't understand the game at all, didn't spend my money, didn't constantly make harvesters, and didn't have builds. Not to say that I'm good now, but those things really aren't true any more, especially not when it comes to rush builds like you're talking about executing.

I'd agree with you if this was just my zerg play- sometimes I float minerals...don't have perfect build orders, whatever. But I see it in my other TvX and PvX builds- I have very close to an "optimal" 4gate. I have very close to an "optimal" 111 against protoss (both solely as far as macro and build orders go). I know this because I've watched my replays and I never float minerals and am always producing the correct units.