Is this normal Platinum level?

General Discussion
1

For 1-2 weeks I noticed there is more and more unusually good players on EU server at the platinum league im in. I think 60 % of my matches are players with 150-300 apm and who really make a decent use of that apm. I wonder if its a smurf season or if there is a lot of returning poeple who rank up or something.Hey I dont mind loosing a lot , if they are better then me, but at Platinum league these matches are weird. Im pretty sure around 1 year ago in Diamond the avg. player was worse then these…

Some examples:

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/20935659
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/20935681
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/20935671
https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/20935664
2

The first replay looks like a off-race / returning player or someone from Korea (a ton of micro, very fast reaction but bad macro).
Overall it looks like a fair match. (because the terran macro is so bad - else it would be at least high diamond but rather not master 1 or 2 because the attacks don’t look abusive enough)

3

Ok then, i see its gonna take quite some effort to get back to diamond for me:)

4

I watched the first replay, and for me I have no doubts this is not a smurf :

  • Unsteady macro (SCV production in particular, but also little muling)
  • PF as a third base = 95% warrantee of being used to play at a low level. This because of the above (infrequent Mules and poor SCV production = lower army value compared to what it should, thus he needs a PF to defend the usual pressures on his third
  • Low army value due to him not macroing a lot when microing, with even some buildings kept floating for a while. Understandable but this is one of the points where the level shows the most.

The reaper micro at the start was good, and the build as well ; yet :

  • He sacrificed an SCV on a pylon in order to get your attention. This isn’t a good trade (terrans have lower worker count than the other races until 8-10’, so losing an SCV for one more probe kill isn’t worth) and won’t be made at high level
  • It was rather your first unit choice and micro that were bad than his micro being good. Going for a stalker would’ve shut the reaper down as they can’t get kited by them. You didn’t shade on him right away. When he crossed your mineral line, you didn’t block him with your probes. And lastly he then came back in the sim city’s dead end (which was a clever positioning, however) despite knowing it was a dead end and too far from the mineral line to make damage. Same with the 2nd bio drop in the end. Typical rash actions from intermediate level terrans.
  • He harassed without map control, nor fast reaction time. And thus lost 2/3 of his harass tools right away without inflicting real economic damaged. Typical intermediate terran again (with some on the contrary spamming scans without even muling).
  • His mine drop wasn’t performed with the mines being dropped with the medivac still moving (not even boosted btw), and thus executed extremely poorly. I would expect a diamond terran to know how to execute a mine drop properly.

Now his reaper micro was good, but bio terrans players tend to have better micro than protoss players, specially at this level (while it tends to be the exact opposite in the macro department I’d say). But in the end, this was allowed by weaknesses in your opener and decision making :
— Would you have opened with a stalker instead, he wouldn’t have made two probes kills with his reaper.
— Would you have backed when seeing the PF tanks and mines defended on the third, then pushed on his natural instead, you would’ve won the game easily.

And if you look at the amount of games of his account (> 6k games), then it becomes even even clearer this is his main account. :slight_smile:

Now, and to conclude, yes there are a lot of smurfs nowadays. Yet the consequence is that the average level of play by MMR point is rising, as regular players are getting used to get stronger opponents. I sometimes beat players with an 100% non cheesy opener only to discover they were in fact freelosing smurfs. So if you want to maintain your MMR with time, you’ll have to improve as well. :mag_right:

5

Just checked the replays:

First:

Probably that, although not sure about the very fast reaction, the dude was slow and did some really strange attacks with no reaction at all. It looked like someone’s offrace, trying to make things, throwing random things at the enemy, there was no build, no base layout no addons no proper placements, no metagame knowledge ,no medivacs,fast raven with upgrade,many mines and weird biomech composition with a BC at minute 12. You had the game, and threw, instead of attacking a PF with tanks, go over it, attack the undefended nat and force a movement from T, or you could use your iddle phoenix to lift the tanks that were killing you.

2nd game, no smurf, again, weird build and too many banked minerals at the early stages of the game. You had that game, but didn’t look at your army at all, you also had disruptors and you barely used them vs the lurkers, when you have them, you must shot all your shots at every chance you have, if you see the lurkers there, blow them, do not just send a couple of shots and run away if you have 4-5 disruptors, the same when you don’t have detection, see where the spikes are, and then shot, you can kill the lurkers without detecting them.

3rd game, nothing strange, you both were pretty similar,none of you did the best build but in the end you won because the Z macro was not really good and took a bad fight.

4th game was enemy playing passive, and outmacroing you, he had around 400mmr more (it can happen sometimes depending on the hour/ranked/unranked) than you so probably was that, be passive, let the Z reach 85 drones and he will kill you with roach hydra, specially if you have no reliable aoe.

2 Likes
6

Yeah i know I honored the “assault the planetary or die” tradition , of which we Protoss are so proud of. I just tought i could break it … like usually lol.

I know i made alot of mistakes, I was just susprised at how good he seemed to me at platinum

1 Like
7

Thanks for the analysis, I agree with everything. The disruptors are still a new addition for me, I only recently got to a point that they seem to finally do more harm to the enemy then me, still learning to use them

8

With P, doing harass is pretty simple because just 4-5 chargelots can deal a lot of damage and make the T move, you can send them by foot, or get a prism, fly it to the base, and warp there, once the T moves out, you attack with your main army and it is done. Usually you don’t want to fight a sieged T, when they are attacking you, you counterattack, when you are attacking them, you do multiple harass to force a move.

1 Like
9

At your level they are way better than storms as long as you don’t blow up your own units, if you are not sure, make more stalkers than zealots, stalkers are ranged so you can minimize the amount of self killed zealots.Once you have 4-5 disruptors you can kill a lot of things on the ground, specially clumped roaches hydras and lurkers. Against T storms are still nice, although I prefer disruptors as they can tilt players better, its a phisical and psychological weapon, same as battlemech against Z.

10

And today its back to normal. I won i think 5-6 games in a row, not one loss. I played better, but the opponents were significantly easier as well.I really dont understand the ladder sometimes…

Anyway im quite happy with this game:

https://sc2replaystats.com/replay/20938207

I think I did a lot of thing ok, harass and the like. Of course my oponnent made it much easier by not building marauders against Collosus:)/

11

Career summary and how many times. If they are consistent masters and are in plat. They are smurfing or placed lower bcoz inactivity for seasons.

I watch how quickly they saturate bases and apm and are they able to both harass and macro.

After reaching a certain mmr the game punishes u by making u lose several times. Idk how they can predict that but after it you are given the 100-120 mmr lower. So you win and it goes back and forth until you can win enough more games to reach more mmr. That’s progressive gitting gud better

12

The main reason why you lost the game I was late-game macro.
Up until the 3rd base you played really solid but then you had like 10 idle workers for the rest of the game. If you hear that your minerals are getting depleted, you need to expand to stay at 2, 3 or 4 base economy.
Also think about a cannon and a shield battery in every base just so you can evacuate your workers at least or buy a few seconds (once you got like 3 base saturation).

In the early game it’s all about building placement, scouting and getting ready for the first attack while getting as many workers as possible.

1 Like
13

Yeah , i agree, i came to same conclusion rewatching, assaulting that planetary repeateadly and late game macro. The thing is I partly made those mistakes because he pushed me very hard with his speed, i hadnt time to breath, it was or a battlecruiser or a drop all the time.

14

Actually you are right bro.

I was stuck at 3000 - 3150 MMR for at least three months before i managed to get out. Indeed high plat level is literally infested with smurf accounts. I remember at some point i played like 5-6 people who were ex multiple diamond/master level and i had no chance of beating them (too high apm, too good decision making etc.). Now im at 3350-3450 MMR and my opponents are much more closely to my skill level.

All i can advise you - is too be consistent and eventually you should be able escape this “MMR prison”.

2 Likes
15

TvP is extremely random match-up. At least from Terran perspective. That’s why it is often called “roulette”.

Its problem boils down to that as a Terran you have to commit to a build before Protoss commits to his due to the nature of Terran/Protoss tech tree and thus you can have build order win or build order loss just from the start of the game.

Furthermore, due to numerous buffs to Protoss early game Terran options for harass are very limited. A lot of games are decided by whether WM kill a lot of probes by lucky shot or not - and it snowballs from there.

Another thing is 2 out of 3 Protoss play some sort of cheese so as a Terran you must be extremely paranoid and play anti-cheese build by default, or just play any build and accept that you will loose to cheesers quite often.

Its not as bad on top level but this is the state of affairs at Diamond - top Platinum and is the reason why I stopped playing this game.

1 Like
16

Thats funny because i get cheesed much more often by Terrans then Protoss. Most often its some sort of one base all in, which is for Protoss quite uncomfortable because you cant know wahts going on, apart thats its one base (the units/tech for scouting comes much later).I have from that one base had : marauders with concusive shells, tank+ liberator+ bio, a swarm of bio, , turting with ninja bases around the map and building up battlecruiser fleet… Apart from that ofc proxied raxes. And also in all the wild categories. For example I had one scouted a 1 proxied rax, i was sure it would be reapers as usual, but this time it was marauders with even more of marauders from main base.

Thats the only matchup i play with 2 probes scout, my own scouting invention, because with 1 scout I found out the hard way if i started with the “wrong” side of the map, I scouted proxied raxes to late to save me. (You can see it in my replays above).

17

Regarding buffs and nerfs :do you know how many buffs there was to Terrans and debuffs to Protoss in the last years?
The few biggest i remember:

Charge nerf (no more initial 8 dmg)
EMP upgrade (huge buff)
Widow mines invisibility with armory.
Thor buffs.

18

Apparently you have missed 2018 when protoss got grossly buffed after Nov 2017 and the posters here had no dignity to confess it ergo ppp. So next years it toss was toned down.

Marauder always had to be the way it is now.

If they want to buff a bit half of 2018 of ground toss and I don’t think carrier should be as it promotes low apm noob no skill a move, so ground could be fine maybe slight stalker buff but not dragoon stalker 2k18

19

You’re shooting yourself in the foot with a two probe scout. If you don’t see any buildings at his base he is proxying you. You don’t need that second probe to confirm it. You are losing one mineral per second with each probe that isn’t mining. Minerals are more way valuable early in the game than later so you are putting yourself behind economically by doing that. Even if you scout the proxy with that second probe you are going to have less minerals with which to react.

1 Like
20

i beat the proxy rax from that haterstalker guy easily even with my 2 probe scout harass. i always pull 2 probes at 0:00 just for fun and walk to the terran just to try to kill 1 or 2 scvs or just to delay the bo or just to force them to build a second depot. ppl with lower mmr tend to really lose 1-3 scvs vs that and higher mmr ppl dont expect that at all but they react well - BUT they often dont expect that you could just simply attack again after 10 secs or so. they simply continue to build the rax with the low hp scv and sometimes you will get it then.

Not scouting a rax at the main of the terran is nearly like scouting the proxy rax :smiley: i mean you get the information that something is really fishy especially if the terran doesnt get gas. then you can go for 2 gate just to be safe.
scouting gas and no rax could also mean its somewhere near the main just to mess with you + reaper timing is a little bit shorter for terran (like hiding rax at terrans third).

for reference. some good spicy chat - just like we are used to from our beloved terrans.