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Forums \ Strategic forum \ The Way of the Newbie - Improve

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1 year ago

Lord_of_Chaos

(Forum moderator)

The Way of the Newbie - Improve (32767 reads, 139 replies)

There has been a lot of these threads lately "I suck, I need to improve, what should I do" etc. Well, the quick answer is: Be patient and don't give up and it'll come to you. I'll try to give a longer answer here.

Edit: For all beginners! Continue reading this thread even if it's long. There is a lot of other advice hidden in it here and there that you will find useful. Read it to the very last page.

Starting out
So, you're a complete beginner and basicly just beat the computer. You felt confident and took your game online and now you've lost horribly the latest month(s). What are you going to do?

First of all, don't panic. This is what happens to everyone and it's just a phase you have to get through. The fact is, the skill level on battle.net is extremely high compared to the public games for other games, and it takes a lot longer time to raech the level where you can play even vs the average online players in BW than in other games, for example CS.

Now, first of all, you're homemade anti-computer strategies won't do it. Discard them, at least realise that they are not enough. Make sure you learn the basic standard play, the basic opening build orders. To do this, watch replays from players of the specific race you play with (I recommend using one race ONLY from the beginning to learn the basics. You can choose random later on). Note that style of play and opening build orders will differ depending on what race you are playing against. Keep that in mind when watching replays so you don't start practising with build orders (henceforth called BOs) fit for playing vs a zerg when you are in fact playing vs a terran.

Study and copy this standard play. Try to CONSTANTLY produce workers in the beginning, and honestly you should do so during the entire match. Never let your workers stand idle, and always build what you need EXACTLY when you got enough minerals for it. When you have learned to do this without mistakes copying the BOs of better players will start to make good sense. Now you just have to practise these a lot so you are very familiar with them.

Congrats, you have just cleared level 1! But you are still going to lose. A lot. You can expect loss after loss after loss on b.net. Losing is not really bad, and you actually learn quite a lot from it, but in the end it gets tiresome and boring and will make you lose motivation. Try to join or create games like "1v1 LT big noob" etc. Even then you will most likely lose a lot. But as I said before, this is a phase everyone has to go through and lots of losses are inevitable. Your own motivation is your worst enemy at this stage.

You got the basics, now what?
Now you need to practise. At this stage there are no shortcuts. There are basicly two things you have to do here: Play and watch replays. Replays to see what others do and to still learn more ideas and strategies, and playing is of course for practising. Just play normal games, don't fiddle around with Use Map Setting games or fastest. Some people believe that they will improve some aspect of normal gaming but it's not true. It's just naive belief that there are short cuts, but there aren't. It's about playing. A third thing that can help is reading strategy guides, but it depends a lot on the actual guide and what level of play it focuses on.

Since you are still below the level of an average gamer I recommend that you stick to "1v1 LT noob" games until you actually win like 30% of these. More if you are the type that really hates losing.

Finding a trainer or some form of coach. Perhaps a friend that is better than you is always a good idea. Play with him as often as you can and make sure to pick up the advice he gives. He'll probably beat you over and over again, but thsi is not competition, it's teaching. So don't care about winning.

Next, don't overdo it. Don't force yourself to play a lot more than you feel like it. Once again, you need to keep your motivation up. Forcing yourself to play 20 games a day because you believe it will make you better, not because you actually enjoy it, will actually make it harder to improve. You will end up playing 20 games that doesn't matter at all and where you have no focus what so ever and you won't learn anything. Better to play just a few games where you give it your everything. I had a rule myself, I played until I won at least one game. If I was on a losing streak I would keep playing til I broke it. If it seemed hopeless I would just turn of the computer and not play for a couple of days until I REALLY felt the urge to play, and then I would go on a nice winning streak instead :)

Specific advice
Never play money maps like BGH or Fastest. It is wasted time and you will learn scarecely nothing of games on normal maps.

Try to stick to maps like Lost Temple or Luna, as these are considered the most standard and popular maps. Lost Temple is by far the most common map, and knowing it well is a very good start.

Don't fall in to traps like believing that you can improve faster by playing Use Map Setting games like micro training maps. It won't work. The best way to improve is to have it all at one time in a normal game.

Don't bother about APM (actions per minute, a program called bwchar can calculate this. It's a measure of your speed in the game). As you get better this will increase with your skill. Don't try to foce your APM up. You get high APM when you get high skill, you don't get high skill when you get high APM. Personally I used APM to keep a track of my skill increase. When my APM increased (in normal games) I knew I had become faster and better. That was all.

Don't try ladder. Ladders are for competitive gaming and the level there is even higher than on the usual battle.net games. It's about competition and winning, and you will be way out of your leauge.

AND MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: HAVE FUN! Without fun you are going to waste it all. It will be tough sometimes, but as long as you have fun playing, even if some games really suck, you are going to improve.

This post was edited by a forum moderator @ 6 months ago