Do StarCraft Lessons Really Work?

Scams

Firstly, there are scams, people who lie about their skill level, steal your money and don’t even try to teach you. But before you commit to spending any money make sure the coach is as good as he/she says they are, checking their SC2 account, their live streams or reviews of their teaching. Getting lessons off well knowns players is the best way of making sure you won’t get scammed, pros represent their teams, and consequently have a reputation to maintain so if they attempt to rip off people in any way, they risk their job.

Avoiding scams is one thing, but do the lessons actually work?

Whether or not the lessons actually help you improve is another issue people have with eSports coaching. It’s true that most of these coaches don’t have much experience in teaching, they’re players first and coaches second. That being said, to get to pro level or even near to it, you have to learn an awful lot and be willing to learn and improve, these being qualities that lend themselves to teaching others from a first-hand account. After a few rough attempts the quality of education provided may be higher than you expect.

I’ve had lessons from a Grandmaster level player (www.imbacoaching.com) and I can honestly say that his lessons are incredibly helpful. He has a very good teaching structure and works on improving one match up at a time, teaching new builds, analysing your current builds and most importantly, showing you how to correctly react to a common situation, and why you do it. After each lesson my win rate in the matchup increases to about 70% and confidence in the whole game improves.

Will the lessons help you?

While the lesson will always be helpful (and not to mention fun!), some will benefit more than others. If you have bad mechanics in play, e.g. getting supply blocked a lot or, (one I particularly struggle with) keeping your money low, then learning a new build and reacting correctly won’t help when your opponent rolls up with twice your supply. A coach's ability to help with these aspects of the game will be limited somewhat, as improving mechanics is something that comes with practice.

We all know we shouldn’t be supply blocked, but being told we shouldn’t be getting supply blocked isn’t going to help (having said that, being aware of how much the supply blocks are costing us will help prioritise macro over other things). Personally, I would say the people who would benefit from coaching the most are people already at least a mid/high gold level, (which, seeing as Blizzard is constricting the higher leagues, is a better-than-average skill level) and have already identified that they have a problem with 1 particular match up (e.g. Ghosts vs High Templar was something I struggled with for a long time until I had a lesson in late game PvT). This way the coach can get straight down to analysing your play and not fill the entire lesson with learning to improve mechanics.

Knowing where you need to improve is an important step.

An example of the effect on my win rate.

Recommended Coaches

I’ve only personally experienced lessons from Imbacoaching, and I can wholeheartedly recommend him as a teacher for all 3 races. Another coach I have seen in practice (on his live stream) is Desrow. He’s an SC2 player currently in challenger league who exclusively teaches Protoss and does it very well. Ultimately you have to suit coaches to your play, not just your pocket. Get a coach who matches what you want to improve, whether it’s by race or by playstyle.