5 Tips To Improve Your Game

StarCraft II is unforgiving. At the highest level of play, one small mistake can lead to a victory for your opponent. Paired with the speed required to play, every small decision builds up to eventual victory, or defeat. The smallest decisions are what separate the good from the great.

To succeed in a game as complex as StarCraft, one can not just improve on their mechanics, but also requires study of strategy and memorization of information. The mingling of mechanics and strategic decision making is what makes this game so amazing. Improving either one will go miles, but for the sake of this article, were gona stick with smaller decisions that you might not be thinking about in the heat of battle. Lets dive in.

Protoss

Arguably the strongest opener protoss’s posses to combat the zerg is a forge fast expansion. The safe and macro style suites the alien race because of the strength of the protoss when on two bases. The current metagame is a “cold war” arms race of macro. Zerg opts for three bases, an amazing economy, and any technology they desire. To prevent the zerg from droning straight to 75, protoss must be aggressive somehow, or risk falling behind in the macro race.

The following aggression can come in many forms, but the stargate has seen some action, in the forms of phoenix and voidrays.  Phoenixs are extremly fast which give map control and utility to the protoss army. Use them to kill queens and drones, while using the abundance of scouting information to make the critical decision to continue your attack, or to continue macroing, carving some sort of advantage using the phoenix.

The bottom line, use stargate openers to capatilize on the zerg's weaken eceonomy and production, and the map control and utility to take the third.

  

Four phoenix kill a queen with one lift.

With four phoenixes, a protoss can effectively hinder zerg production. This lack of production throws zerg's build off. To take advantage of the zerg's lack of economy, there are two strong follow ups to a phoenix opener. The first one, and the one in which I personally recommend, is a quick third.After making four initial phoenix, transistion into a sentry heavy composition (You can choose to add either blink stalkers or immortals to).

This composition is meant to counter a zerg who tries to maximize his supply using manly roaches. Your early third, plus the damage done with your stargate, should at least even out the macro playing field. Once on three basses, protoss becomes extremely powerful. This opens many timings to attack before the zerg gets his hive. Tt is also possible to add additional gateways, totally 6 or 7, and playing extremely aggresive. When protoss opts to go all in with this sort of aggresion, it usually revolves around some type of forge upgrade.

Forge upgrades effect all protoss ground units, which makes the timings so effective against zerg. Evolution chamber upgrades available to the zerg only effect all the units if carapace is chosen. Which means when these timings hit, protoss has some sort of upgrade advantage over their opponent. Protoss pushes this advantage to lead them to victory. A plethora of builds have surfaced using forge upgrade attack timings.

One of the most prominent ones involves  using voidrays and zealots with +1. Zealots can tank enough damage, allowing the voidrays to charge and deal as maximum amount of damage as possible. Zerglings are utterly usless against +1 zealots, and queens die quickly to multiple charged voidrays unless they have a health supply of energy. This attack should be in everyones' playbook, especially when playing in a series. Maps with ledges, such as Shakuras Plateau, can be abused using this build. Use the voidrays to gain vision of the high ground, and warp in zealots onto the high ground using a low ground pylon near the edge. 

Zerg 

The center piece to the zerg arsenal is the infestor. The most powerful compositions a zerg can muster includes this slow and bulky unit, but its aggressive potential has not yet been completely utilized. If burrow is researched, it does not only vastly improve the survivability of roaches, but also turns the infestor into a potent aggressive unit.

   One fungal growth and one shot from an infested terran will kill a worker.

One infestor can successfully shut down an opponents mining operations at a base. An infestor with full energy has the ability to fungal once, and spawn 5 infested terrans. This can devastate a worker line, with relatively low risk. This is one of the strongest forms of harassment, not necessarily because of the direct damage it does, but because of the time it buys zerg to get hive technology onto the map.

Infestor-Zergling compositions are extremely effective in the midgame because of its cost efficiency. But when the game transitions into lategame, infestor-zergling falls apart. A high siege tank count, or colossi will wreck havoc on zerlings, leaving the infestors naked. Infestors are supportive spell casting units, and fall apart in engagements unless supported. This is why its extremely important to harass with infestors. It will slow down the eventual pushes that you commonly see in today’s metagame to kill the zerg as he’s transitioning into hive technology, such as the terran 2-2 timing.

Infestors cushion the zerg when it is weak, during this transitional period. Simply put, stay active with your infestors!

Terran

The terran is a durable race. This is reflected in the various upgrades and units meant to prolong the life of their units. Bunkers, medivacs, building armor, and neosteel frame are all designed to improve the longevity of the terran bio. Because of this, terran bio is very cost efficient in each stage of the game. But one of the most important upgrades terran posses, stimpack, can hinder this advantage if over utilized.

 If a marine has combat shield, and stims once, it takes two banelings to kill it. If the marine stims twice, it takes only one baneling to kill it.

Using stim is essential for two purposes: first, because terran bio is slow, and the speed upgrade is required to get marines and maurders into a position, or a concave. Second, because the damage output is enough to turn an engagement into the human’s favor. When stimpact is over used, the benefits will be shadowed by the lack of health points. Medivac energy is incredibly important to save for engagements, if playing a biostyle.

This is not the first time you have heard this. The raven is the most under used units in the game. Not only is the raven a detector, it can also fit snugly in most unit compositions. Eventually, the raven will be a must have asset when going mech with the buffs that this unit will receive in the upcoming patch. First, it is much simpler to transition into mech when opening with banshees, which gives you the ability to make a raven to.

The abilities the raven has when going mech is monumental. Mech is a slow, and bulky. Terran's most cost efficient composition is amazing when it comes to abusing terrian and in large engagements, but is helplessly immobile. This is why mech because exponentially better with few ravens mixed in. The raven is a potent defensive and mobile unit when upgraded with durable materials. 

Point defense drones with durable materials can be replaced faster than the energy will run out.

Pair this with seeker missles, it is a must have unit to combat  tier 3 compositions that terran have been having problems with. Broodlords and corrupter armies clump, and one good shot with a seeker missle can turn the tide of a battle. A few mixed in with vikings can protect them against stalker fire, and make collisi much easier to deal with. Start spending excess gas on ravens, and it will give your army extreme utility. 

Use these tips to better your game!

-DH