I just came back to SC2 ladder after a long break (The last time I played was when LotV came out) and got back into the 1v1 ladder. After playing over 100 games and placing in a diamond (was a Master player), I am quite confused about the type of matches I’ve been getting. It seems it’s either I get rolled by a far superior players or I crush them. Out of my 100 games, I can probably nearly count on my fingers how many games I played were me and my opponent are even in skill level.
I am just genuinely confused and just want to know if this is just ladder now because of fewer players or if I just keep working at it I will actually have some “GGs”
Other than that it’s been great coming back, sc2 always satisfies my RTS itch.
I don’t know what league you are in, but as far as I see, people have very different playstyles in lower diamond.
Some players rely on all-ins and cheese to win the game, and can’t really do much outside that.
Some have very strong timing attacks that often deal huge damage.
Some are very aggressive and easily deal a lot of damage.
Some have very strong macro and if is not killed by previous groups, easily roll them over.
People in low diamonds are good in 1-2 of mentioned (and not mentioned) playstyles. That may give the feeling of not even games.
If you get higher, it evens out. But in here, if strategy doesn’t work, people are outside their comfort zone and don’t play that effectively.
First one, starting when nearing D1-M3 level, is the lower amount of players compared to the bulk of them (which are in gold-plat-D3). It will be easy for you to say if that’s the case, because the displayed MMR of your opponent will be farther away of yours than the usual, and the waiting times will increase proportionally.
Second, is that there are people who deliberately lower their level in order to be matched with players of lesser skill. Those are called smurfs, and are of course much stronger than what their displayed MMR would imply. Depending on the leagues, there currently are between 20 and 25% smurfs, sometimes more in some specific tiers.
This induces that depending on the ratio of smurfs they’re used to play, the average regular players will also be of different strengths, since an user who’s used to play at hours with ≥30% smurfs and manages to maintain his MMR will in fact be stronger than the ones who play at that same MMR but at hours were there are only 10% smurfs. Also, as Dallarian says, one user trying to move from one playstyle to another will underperform during a certain time.
And so the level of play can vary wildly in a same league even among regular players. That’s even more the case for diamond, since MMR-wise it’s one of the largest leagues.
