Gold 2 noob terran here.
I’ve been playing and watching sc2 since wol but only got serious about it last year. I’ve started out as a silver player and quickly ranked out of it within a month, but I can’t seem to get past gold 2. I’ve heard that diamond is the hardest league to rank up from so I want to know what’s wrong with how I play o if I’m just being impatient. I’ve been playing unranked for the past few months to see if I could improve there but have gotten the same results if not worse than when I was playing ranked.
I have a basic build order and only do bio + tank with a few mines. I never do rush or proxy builds. I try to get up to 5 barracks, 2 factories, and 2-4 starports by mid or late game.
In TvP I use ghosts emp and in TvT I use Ravens to disable tanks. I’d use ghosts to snipe Ultras in TvZ but by the time i see them it’s to late for me to transition and they just crush my army.
For harass on all races I’ve tried Liberators more often than dropping in their mineral lines, both with little success.
I try to expand to my third at around the 7-10 minute mark depending on if my opponent rushes me. Fourth and fifth base timings vary but usually I get them within a few minutes of each other.
Here are a few things I’ve noticed:
Any rush/cheese build from any race has a near 100% chance of beating me and I do scout it out almost every time. I respond by turtling up in my main with a bunker and put what few marines I have in it. I usually hold off the first wave. But my natural expand is denied for too long and my opponent gains a huge economic lead and I lose from there.
Often times when I do my first attack my opponent is also doing theirs and jumps on top of my army before I can set up my tanks/mines and I get overrun. Every time I split my units up in a concave I never need it. Marine splitting vs banelings is almost nonexistent but I use stutter step against every race to kite enemies into my tank fire.
I rarely find time or resources for weapon/armor upgrades higher than 1/1 (stim shield and concussive are the only upgrades I get every game) and in the games I do they make little difference.
Also I know that APM isn’t everything, but I have yet to see any gold player or even platinum that surpass mine. My average APM is in the mid-180s and often times goes past 200. Meanwhile, opponents from any rank I’ve played against are lucky to break 120 and can even be as low as 50. I’ve seen a few that have gotten within 40 APM of mine but that’s rare. I know I spam a lot especially in early game but even in late game my APM is only a little less than early game.
Early to mid game TvT they either 3 rax proxy or doom drop my base where my army isn’t (often times as I try to move out) and many times it just kills me right there.
As the game progresses, I try to get more air superiority with mass vikings, some liberators, and a few Ravens with about 3-4 starports with one tech lab and the rest reactors. Most of the time I do this however my opponent just out muscles me whether they do bio, mech, mass vikings, mass BCs or a combination of any, most of the time without Raven support.
In TvP I always use MMM + tank. What my opponent does varies. Usually I see immortal stalker chargelot archon. Ghost emp is effective initially and I have their base sieged with a few units but they break free with a few warped-in chargelots. And once they get Colossi it’s over most of the time. I’ve tried to transition to vikings but it’s always too late.
The other thing protoss decides to do is straight to air (void rays, carriers, even motherships). Can’t transition early enough for that. Carrier’s are probably my biggest problem here. I use marine-mine-viking against them but it does nothing especially once they get up to 4 or 5 carriers. I try to focus fire the carriers with my vikings and draw interceptors to my mines but friendly fire just kills my vikings instead.
TvZ is probably my favorite, but they either rush me and crush me or if they don’t, I use marine-tank which either gets destroyed by banelings or they use roach/hydra and transition to brood lord/corrupter or Ultras. For the former I add in mines and marauders and for the latter I use mass vikings and is easier to deal with for me but the Ultras I have no ghosts or liberators to snipe them. I rarely use liberators aside from harass.
Nydus play is uncommon but when it happens I’m dead.
I’ve seen the “super thread” for TvP and TvZ and have done a lot of what it says. But as soon as I get up to gold every season my win-loss ratio is about 1:3 and when it isn’t I’m going through a losing streak. I guess the only things I can think of to improve this is just better unit placement/micro or scouting to see if I have to transition builds but I know I’m missing out on a lot of things.
I’m probably being too whiny about the game and I don’t mean to be, but if anyone has some advice that’d be great.
