been watching this series from ep1 and I want to thank you for it. You have vastly improved my gameplay with my favorite race. Your personality is charming and your ability to teach SC is second to none. Just wanted to give you some much deserved positive reinforcement. God bless good sir!
I just played my placement matches only having practiced this build and your advice a little bit vs AI. It believes that I am platinum straight out the gate. This is impressive as I've only ever been gold in the past and only on protoss. Haha Thanks for the sage advice PiG
I dont even play starcraft, but god damn, the way you teach is so amazing, so patient, forgiving non-salty. IRL teachers can learn so much from you. keep up the good work sire!
Followed vibes b2gm for around 4 months and went from silver to plat 1 but got stuck there. Was even losing when it went long game. But then I found this channel and watched upto plat and I’ve gone to diamond in a week and I’m regularly beating 4Kmmr players. Using vibes macro mixes with micro from this I’ve improved 10 times thankyou very much for taking the time!
I am actually in the same situation, just came here for a rewatch looking for advices at plat as Vibe's B2GM seem to always lose vs early void rays for me. Is there any clear thing that you would advice against that? My take right now is taking the aggresion to their base by switching to a Ling style
I just started watching your videos. I jumped into ranked game from ZERO games played as a total beginner to the game. Immediately got to gold 1 (about to hit plat) just by following your videos/build order/tips. The hatchet camera location + inject cycle is something invaluable you taught! Now I can get better in between cycles, real roadmap to improve. Thanks so so much dude
Game 4 was an absolute godsent, it shows the whole strategy with zerg so well and its really so good for actually seeing it in action thanks for the amazing videos man!
Hey, Pig. I am a long time starcraft player since 1998 and I thought I was pretty good at the game. I have been in Diamond for a couple years now but I just started watching your videos for the hell of it and i learned a LOT. I have been playing a lot better now and I want to thank you for your awesome videos!
Pig don’t feel bad about doing the bronze to gm, your intentions are good and content like this is so valuable to new players and really anyone trying to get better at the game. Keep up the great work as always!
@Ben Perkins I disagree with the sentiment that smurfs “ruin” the ladder for the majority. Most of the people players call a smurf are not and your chances of running into a GM player like Pig in your Silver League games are extremely rare.
@Ben Perkins that’s because there isn’t a smurf problem, as I stated it effects an extremely small number of players. Not to mention the skill gap between someone in silver or gold and someone in Plat or Diamond is not that significant. Smurfing is a part of all games these days where you can just make an account for free. What if someone with a high skill just wants to level up a new account? They shouldn’t be allowed to do that? Doesn’t make sense
I also say smurfs don't ruin it. They teach you to get better because you'll see them again. ViBE says if you want to get good quickly, play someone better than you and watch the replays, because you're going to want to beat them.
@Ben Perkins life's about setting goals. If you won every game it would be boring. But if a smart stops you, now your goal should be to be able to beat that surf get better watch the replay study there stuff. And work out getting better.
@Ben Perkins yes and that ladder ranking is designed to do its best to keep you at a 50% win rate. It’s called balance. It’s also not going to match you every time to someone of your exact skill. I guarantee you probably almost never run into an actual smurf on the ladder because it is extremely rare
Man, the review/things to learn section in this one was... just mindblowing. Amazingly helpful tips. Looking forward to building into this league to truly grow as a player. Currently in Silver 1 as the first season of 2022 draws to a close, looking to hopefully get into Gold before the season ends. Watching a little ahead to kind of believe that I can survive in Gold once I get there because the competition won't be where this level of play is. But holy smokes the advice in the shadow boxing, visualizing where things went wrong, etc... Endlessly valuable. Absolutely LOVE this series. Thanks PiG!
Idk if this game got easier or harder over the years but regardless you’re a great teacher. Back in after a ~3 year break. Peaked at plat for 10+ seasons but now taking games off low diamond players, which I used to have great difficulty doing. I have no clue what exactly happened but your eco management concepts and macro cycle tutorial were massive parts of it for sure. I sometimes go entire games without getting supply capped (minus the first ovie) anymore. I might eventually not suck at this game thanks to you. Big props!
@@Caseyw462 I just wanna bump into some of the folks Harstem casts on Is It Imba Or Do I Suck. Might actually move up a league if I can string a few of those guys together lol.
Really like the discussion on "set plays". I think this applies to a lot of hobbies. For example, a guitarist "improvising" is most likely playing different combinations of licks they already know and like. A martial artist is going to use combos they've drilled over and over again.
Absolutely loving this series! I’m new to sc2, just did my placements with this build and I’m gold 2! I keep watching every video multiple times and keep learning something every time! Do you have a patreon?
Thought I was losing my mind but you're definitely using the music from Rimworld @9:52. I definitely remember the sound of all my villagers dying from torn ligaments and famine. Great soundtrack.
So I’ve been doing all of this. And guess what? It’s working! I mean damn this game makes you want to quit sometimes. But I remember you saying “it’s good to lose!” 😅 and I keep hitting play again, play again, play again. I’m listening to this series over and over at work. I’m making my set plays and watching replays. I’m losing half the time but I’m WINNING half the time! I’m now in gold 2. I want it! Let’s go!!!!🔥🔥🔥
Game 6 is my most common experience with Protoss in Silver/Gold. When I send in my first roach attack, I don’t even think about the void rays. 2-5 void rays against a huge roach army is a minor annoyance. Roach speed into the mineral line and just annoy them while building hydras at home. What happens? The void rays come in to harass after the roach attack and BAM. They run right into hydras, lose every void ray, and gg.
Where are the AirToss or early/mass BC games? I always loose against those in Plat. Every second game against T or P they go fortify into massive air. What is the answer? Early Hydra, Macro up and Spire?
@@atrtsh The key is the method of learning not the games. The games he plays are only part of the example he is showing for how to climb. Also, in most of your losses you're probably really losing to yourself. You didn't lose because they went skytoss, you lost because you got supply blocked multiple times, messed up your macro cycles, forgot your upgrades and made various other macro mistakes. You probably didn't split your army or scout very well and didn't replace your map vision etc. That is the point of the series. If you physically write down your benchmarks and rewind all of your games like Pig is showing you then you will climb. Cheese isn't the reason you're stuck in whatever league you're in.
I was getting very F'd in both those situations a lot but I've slowly gotten over it (BCs still make me rage sometimes). As pig mentions here do spores in each base (1 for voids, 2 for BCs), build a few extra queens in your creep group and then wait to backstab. Keep your roaches in some corner of the map near their base and when they come in a move the army in and micro at home (pull drones, move queens etc). When they recall or blink back pull your army back out. Usually they're gonna have nothing to defend since they tech'ed up quickly. Of course meanwhile you continue the build and when you reach hydras you wreck em. As Tommy mentions of course the most important thing is keep your macro up, but what I mention is kind of a set play that works for me and if anything having a plan helps me not panic which helps me not mess up my macro too. By now I think 90% of the times I lose to these it's because I failed to scout it and they catch me pants down. So that's the actual first step really: remember to do your ovi scout at 3:45.
@@tommydashed4205 hard disagree. starcraft only works that way for mutual macro games - for cheese you have to know exactly how to respond immediately, and usually micro a lot better than the opponent does. Remember they're only doing it because it's easier for them to do than you to hold. Also note that turtle skytoss even with perfect macro you still cannot attack into it, and if they don't move out before you've maxed you HAVE to then take a shit trade into their entrenchent with batteries and AoE instamelting your stuff, then they come over the map while you're still rallying replacements from eggs, a few storms later and you're dead. Re spores vs voids, that helps initially if they're as late as possible, but once they get 4 or more voids they can instasnipe a spore down and usually a hatch or lair too before you can waddle queens there. You can't leave ovies out as they just die to voids for free.
@@atrtsh One fundamental downside of the series (and any series like it really), is that the ladder doesn't actually "settle" your mmr gains until about 25 games. Most of us took 25 games just to get out of Wood 3 (wait, only me? >
love this series! helped me from being an utter noob to being an okay noob. love distant view on things and very strategic thinking. heck, i didn't even know there were macro cycles, lol. cheers mate!
Pig hands down the best helpful vids to date i love your zb2gm series. I think its the best out there. I watch your vids on my way to work 🙂Thx for putting in all the hard work for us. Im glad there are still sc2 players out there that are passionate about the game like me.
Honestly man, don't feel too bad. your kind of "smurfing" isn't all that bad. It's really akin to making an alt account and going through the process of bringing it up to par with the main. Everyone has an alt to mess around with new builds on without affecting their main. It's the people that intentionally stay at lower leagues to pick on those worse than them that are the scummy ones. in the case of you and ViBE, you're not in these leagues long enough to even make a real impact overall, and on top of that you're giving back to the community. I know it probably doesn't feel that way in the moment, but still gotta keep that perspective.
@@benjaminchen8857 seems to me like everytime I play ranked I get a diamond or masters player that is playing unranked, since the ranked and unranked matchmaking pools aren't separated..you might as well be claiming THEY are smurfing because they're getting put up against people jumping into unranked for the first time to unlocked ranked play(this is how the free to play part of this game works) and tanked their unranked mmr to fix the very broken ladder system. that would at least be accurate. Besides, it's not exactly smurfing if both accounts are the same ranks now is it?
@@tommydashed4205 sure, sure... but he left all the games and was placed in bronze 1, and was there for all of one game... same for, pretty much every tier he played in 1 or 2 games tops and was immediately promoted due to his 6k mmr mechanics. It's rather besides the point, though as this is hardly the case for anyone NOT doing a b2gm series of videos, though. they're gonna do their placements, probably start off somewhere in the gold league, because you can't be placed higher than that to start off on a new account, rarely people have gotten lucky and placed straight into plat 3, but it's pretty atypical, but the person making the alt, like pig, will quickly fly through the ranks until they get to where their main account is. Depending on how much time they have, it might take them a day or two worth of games. figure maybe 8-10 games per day would put it at a few hours per day, assuming 5-10 games/league if you are winning all of them(and if you're doing this you absolutely should be until you get within a tier or two of where you normally are). It's really not nearly long enough to create a real problem. As I said... it'd be a problem if he were intentionally keeping the MMR down at the metal leagues with no intention of improving, which isn't the case. he's rushing right on through the ranks. it's a pretty big difference.
@@imzesok excuses. You are the problem lol. Sounds like this is exactly why PiG doesn't want to smurf. So people like you don't feel validated in doing the same
Should do a quick analysis from cheeseburger's perspective to make it up to him. Something similar to your viewer submitted replay sessions. Surely would be worth the lost MMR if he saw it.
Insane some of these games towards the end how good the platinum one players where and how long it went on for. 10 years ago plat one would have been an absolute push over but now its a whole diffrent story. Some serious engagements and a real difficult push to overcome them here. This games gotten alot harder since I last played (10 years ago). Im a zerg plat one player and started playing ladder for the first time about a month ago and Its a fucking slug fest to survive at this level as I dont yet have the skills like PIG does to overcome these engagements with protoss balls and skytoss One thing most people wont have at my level as Zerg is when to engage and when to pull back. PIG has this but most of us dont, so your likely going to lose badly in these situations. It takes a thousands of long games to get the knowledge of when to drone, When to reinforce and when to engage/run away. I was pretty shocked to see how good the average player is now on SC2.
Ive been playing SC and BW since they came out and SC2 for about 5 years and just started ladder. talk about feeling like a noob with almost 20 years experience lol
Thank you so much for these videos! Im getting back in after 10 years, I got the build order down vs 15 games of ai, hopped into my first placement match. I got put against a 2800mmr and at 7mins he warped a battle cruiser behind my main and wiped all my workers, right before I got my hydra den. Same guy bunker rushed me too. It’s so disheartening and frustrating so get cheesed. Especially my first game vs a plat. Why the hell are battlecruisers allowed to warp anywhere on the map without vision. Beyond game breaking and OP. Why is Terran so OP
When you're starting out I'd advise you do the 2-base roach speed push from the earlier episodes and you'll find it does really well at killing a lot of air builds before they have many units up. That being said expect to lose your first games as ladder starts you off in the middle of the ladder and then adjusts very quickly to where you actually belong. GL hf mate
Thanks again for this series! I've learned a lot. I just started the video and I'm anxiously waiting to see if he stream sniped you after you shared your twitch channel at the start... haha.
Really appreciate your calming approach to a hectic game! :) Any chance you could make this series, and its companion Terran b2gm, into playlists? Otherwise it can be messy to track down.
@@PiGstarcraft Thanks for taking the time to reply! I wasn't aware of your 3rd channel, Pig Coaching, where you seem to keep those. My bad as you do say so in the description under the video as I now realize. :)
@16:00 someone in chat is talking about getting lag spiked. PiG says "I don't think that's possible, I've never heard of that" when was the lag hacker officially ID'd and banned? This must have been their early daays
Rimworld and SC2 are the two games I'm on right now, so it's really funny to me that for whatever reason you went with the Rimworlds background music for this series)
39:06 I agree, Im bronze and I play 2v2 with a friend in a casual way and many times i play mutas , they are super fun , although im not good with them yet, its entertaining
Can they cannon rush before your overlord scouts through the natural? I saw one because of that a scout but was probably just too slow to stop it. 4 drones per pylon or anything being built?
Pig, this series has completely improved my ability massively and I'm finally crushing it in gold. I have one problem though, it's the camera hotkey location for the 3 bases. Is there an alternate way to set this up? I don't like using f1-f3 at all. I think it's due to playing on a laptop with small F keys. At the moment I'm using the minimap to look at each one. But I realise this is a much slower way of doing it. Thanks :)
I watched your tutorials, first time starcraft. I play from very easy AI to Elite. Then I start playing against ppl. Wala Plat 2 after placement finish. Took me whole Sunday to practice and placement. I'm not new to sc2 thou. Since I watch You,Lowko, and Wardi. I was watcher for almost 3years. Now I decided to join today. Still tense and fun. Still need to learn composition and counter of each.. exp will do it job I guess Thank you so much
Answering your possibly rhetorical questions about monthly fire alarm tests... it is probably a local ordinance or a state law (specifically if you are in an apartment) that they be tested. The tests are super annoying, yes, but when you need them to work, you want them to work! Cheers!
Finally hit plat, I actually got busted down to silver shortly after I last commented but I stuck to the plan and started droning up and macroing hard after my initial roach attack once people started not just out right dying from it. Hoping to get to diamond soon! We’ll see how plat goes.
Yoooo, what?! Master 1 Zerg player here, I never knew that you could press the poop creep button, then move, then shift, then hold position, then deselect. What I normally do is move, then shift, hold position, shift, poop creep, then deselect. So I had to individually put the poop command on every overlord on top of the hold position command, this is like 33% (or something) less key presses for the same shit!
I'm a returning player, got placed in silver but with platinum MMR, and I got a lot of proactive and aggressive terran players in my first 10 matches that go early reapers into helions and then contain me hard enough that I can't contest map presence nor take a 3rd hatch. Then if I move out I get medivacs, cloaked banshees and widow mines harass until I'm so overwhelmed I can't handle the macro cycles and I fuck up the entire build order. I wonder if I got bad luck with my opponents (every single one of them seem to have diamond-masters MMR).
I actually feel so bad for the first guy. This is a legitimate issue in so many games; and people who do these kind of climbs in them have received account bans for it. Unfortunate a game as skilled as starcraft doesn't have something similar implemented. These sort of videos could easily be done in custom rooms by people of different ranks who truly "want" to learn from facing a GM. Not the guy who hopped on after work trying to get better against his ranked peers.
You might feel bad for him but it literally does not matter in the long run. He might get placed worse, but all that means is that he faces weak opponents until he reaches an mmr level that matches his skill. A couple of matches against smurfs won't change anything about him finding his true ranking in a matter of days of playing. If I would have to make a suggestion though: Don't make players in their placement matches face opponents with only a few games in the season (unless the season just began obviously, and even then just make them face opponents that played the last season at similar level). If you face only "seasoned" players in their respective mmr brackets you can be sure not to get hit by a smurf. At last I wanna remind everybody how incredibly rare it is to get hit by a smurf (especially in your placement matches) in general.
I can guarantee you will be a fucking beast if you watch vibes b2gm zerg and pigs b2gm zerg. 2 different ideologies of teachings. If you combine them both, you will def see fast results for real. I appreciate both of their videos for helping the sc2 community. I'm no longer hard stuck silver boutta hit D3 soon.
You're not ruining anyone's ladder experience. This was just a very unfortunate situation. Even then you could match someone 5 times in a row and only their mentality will ruin their experience. Think of it this way, how many people in lower leagues would love a practice session with someone like Maru or Serral? This is basically what this guy got from you for free.
I have been sailing through plat with this build. I am on an 11 game win streak. The only problem I have encountered is when a terran turtles on two base with half a dozen tanks accumulating thors and upgrades then expands to a third base with a superior fighting force.
Play around with using like 2 vipers and just yoink stuff out of his base into your hydra/roach. Or you can have lurkers and hydra basically quarantine him outside the natural while you tech to broodlords. I used to lose to turtle Terran all the time but these have worked for me. I would go the spire/hydra contain if he goes BCs, lurker/hydra if thors. Vipers are good in either case
Middle mouse to scroll is better in my opinion except for that it's broken. It has a bug that gets me killed when I use it in fights. Sometimes if the mouse is moving when the button is pressed, the screen will jump wildly. I recently stopped using it, because it's incredibly frustrating to lose games to.
I'd love an update to PiGs bronze to gm series. It seems all of them are from very old patches which makes them mostly irrelevant in 2024. Or perhaps just an update to show what has changed since this content?
It's weird. Yes, smurfing is annoying to both sides, but as someone who has always been mediocre at all competitive games, the fact that you're aware it's unfun for the other person makes it more tolerable.
The only thing Is @PiG if you study how people play you can explain whilest playing like a metal league. Then it isn't really surfing cause you'll lose alot too
Technically you could crash your opponent game if you can somehow influence the data you are sending in some unexpected way (overflowing data, affecting memory etc), realistically its a old game , with 11 years of debuging and crashing someone's game to win is kind of unsatisfactory even for a hacker
lmao the double pylon made me freak out so much I was way behind cause I was doing a hatch first and in the chaos I didn't macro at all so I didn't even have a pool quickly to deal with any pylons and I didn't make a macro hatch before way to late and it was in my main base hahaha. I lost that game of course
Pig I'm copying how you play and I can't get out of gold 3, I lose every single game against terren and protos. I can have 30 more army supply then theirs but by the end of the fights its 0 vs 80 supply (0 for me). I don't understand how to win.
Followed your guide and got to plat3 but this seems to be where my wall is. I'm not having fun anymore and don't feel myself improving at all. Great guides. I guess this game just isn't for me.
Watching this series just wants me wanna quit my day job, terminate all social contacts, remove all friends on facebook, throw my phone out the window, and lock myself in my cave where my computer is, and then inject inject inject =)
High diamond? You kidding me? Terran not expanding to 4 bases at 11 mins is so mediocre. He can’t even di multi prongs. Micro is completely absent. I dont know how you judge that as masters or even diamond.
Actually they aren't. Haven't been in awhile. Terran is seen as the strongest race. Terran is easiest race in metal leagues diamond its harder. Zer is easier diamond and uo, and protoss is middle of the ground. Zerg is hard early because of the macro cycle. But come diamond youre macro should be amazing. Where as Terran has little macro and spam marine. Makes it a little easier. But harder because of micro skills in diamond. And toss we can all agree canons
@@mattstoss1423 I wouldn't go quite that far. sure, terran is very strong bronze -gold 3, but gold 2 it hits a pretty hard wall vs T and P. TvZ, not that hard especially if they're staying on lings for a bit. Ugh, the spread, stim and win meme is real sometimes though. lol
@@imzesok oh I agree, I was just saying, maybe I shouldn't say upnto diamond xD let me try again. Terran is easier early on for the fact of marine tank being a very solid probably the best composition if utilized correctly. And I've seen B2GM builds for terran that are just marine spam with stim. No other race has that. I'm not saying it's an easy build. But terran just had really solid units. And has really solid macro mechanics for minerals so that helps with marines and hellions. No 1 race is the best for sure. Every race has pros and cons. I just like razing terrans. Because I had a terran tell me lurkers are to OP and broken inTVZ and it's too cost effective and that I was trash for using them and winning.
@@mattstoss1423 yeah, marine tank is pretty obscene with high numbers of tanks. I've done the whole pure marine medivac build as well, which works great if you greedily expand like you would with thor-hellbat. as far as lurkers go, the reasonable terran complaint is they're too fast with burrow/unburrow with the upgrade. and I kinda agree as a plat zerg. when compared to a tank, it's insanely mobile, and could probably use a *slight* nerf to the instant burrow/unburrow. I play all three races, and I give terrans crap too from time to time where it's warranted.
@@imzesok you mean always warranted xD if there's lurkers the answer is more leap frog tanks and marauders. Plus scan. I'm only gold terran toss, diamond zerg, so I can't say much. I just give everyone shit xD
"VISUALIZING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO"
me who's been listening to the whole series at work: " I am nailing this training"
Cheese Burger was the true hero in this series lol
legend says he saw the show and is Gm now
@@billylionisnotagoat he embraced the cheese?
@@d07RiV they are one
agreed, PiG you gotta make it up to them that was crappy luck. maybe give them free coaching and help them get to plat?
fuck yeah he is.
been watching this series from ep1 and I want to thank you for it. You have vastly improved my gameplay with my favorite race. Your personality is charming and your ability to teach SC is second to none. Just wanted to give you some much deserved positive reinforcement. God bless good sir!
PiG you have gotten me back into SC2 multiple times. I cannot thank you enough for putting in the effort to make it an accessible game
I just played my placement matches only having practiced this build and your advice a little bit vs AI. It believes that I am platinum straight out the gate. This is impressive as I've only ever been gold in the past and only on protoss. Haha
Thanks for the sage advice PiG
I dont even play starcraft, but god damn, the way you teach is so amazing, so patient, forgiving non-salty. IRL teachers can learn so much from you. keep up the good work sire!
You can hover over supply to see total drones. Only took me 11 years to randomly find out from you, thanks mate.
pure gold :D
no way......TIL lmao after so many years I just thought he did math army count - total supply
Followed vibes b2gm for around 4 months and went from silver to plat 1 but got stuck there. Was even losing when it went long game. But then I found this channel and watched upto plat and I’ve gone to diamond in a week and I’m regularly beating 4Kmmr players. Using vibes macro mixes with micro from this I’ve improved 10 times thankyou very much for taking the time!
Congrats!
Follow my other channel for more educational starcraft videos: ruclips.net/user/PiGRandom
I am actually in the same situation, just came here for a rewatch looking for advices at plat as Vibe's B2GM seem to always lose vs early void rays for me.
Is there any clear thing that you would advice against that? My take right now is taking the aggresion to their base by switching to a Ling style
I just started watching your videos.
I jumped into ranked game from ZERO games played as a total beginner to the game. Immediately got to gold 1 (about to hit plat) just by following your videos/build order/tips. The hatchet camera location + inject cycle is something invaluable you taught! Now I can get better in between cycles, real roadmap to improve. Thanks so so much dude
Welcome to StarCraft! Check out my sc coaching vids and terran b2gm over on ruclips.net/user/PiGCasts if you want more vids to learn from
Game 4 was an absolute godsent, it shows the whole strategy with zerg so well and its really so good for actually seeing it in action thanks for the amazing videos man!
Hey, Pig. I am a long time starcraft player since 1998 and I thought I was pretty good at the game. I have been in Diamond for a couple years now but I just started watching your videos for the hell of it and i learned a LOT. I have been playing a lot better now and I want to thank you for your awesome videos!
Pig don’t feel bad about doing the bronze to gm, your intentions are good and content like this is so valuable to new players and really anyone trying to get better at the game. Keep up the great work as always!
@Ben Perkins I disagree with the sentiment that smurfs “ruin” the ladder for the majority. Most of the people players call a smurf are not and your chances of running into a GM player like Pig in your Silver League games are extremely rare.
@Ben Perkins that’s because there isn’t a smurf problem, as I stated it effects an extremely small number of players. Not to mention the skill gap between someone in silver or gold and someone in Plat or Diamond is not that significant. Smurfing is a part of all games these days where you can just make an account for free. What if someone with a high skill just wants to level up a new account? They shouldn’t be allowed to do that? Doesn’t make sense
I also say smurfs don't ruin it. They teach you to get better because you'll see them again. ViBE says if you want to get good quickly, play someone better than you and watch the replays, because you're going to want to beat them.
@Ben Perkins life's about setting goals. If you won every game it would be boring. But if a smart stops you, now your goal should be to be able to beat that surf get better watch the replay study there stuff. And work out getting better.
@Ben Perkins yes and that ladder ranking is designed to do its best to keep you at a 50% win rate. It’s called balance. It’s also not going to match you every time to someone of your exact skill. I guarantee you probably almost never run into an actual smurf on the ladder because it is extremely rare
Man, the review/things to learn section in this one was... just mindblowing. Amazingly helpful tips. Looking forward to building into this league to truly grow as a player. Currently in Silver 1 as the first season of 2022 draws to a close, looking to hopefully get into Gold before the season ends. Watching a little ahead to kind of believe that I can survive in Gold once I get there because the competition won't be where this level of play is. But holy smokes the advice in the shadow boxing, visualizing where things went wrong, etc... Endlessly valuable. Absolutely LOVE this series. Thanks PiG!
Idk if this game got easier or harder over the years but regardless you’re a great teacher. Back in after a ~3 year break. Peaked at plat for 10+ seasons but now taking games off low diamond players, which I used to have great difficulty doing. I have no clue what exactly happened but your eco management concepts and macro cycle tutorial were massive parts of it for sure. I sometimes go entire games without getting supply capped (minus the first ovie) anymore. I might eventually not suck at this game thanks to you. Big props!
Yeah diamond is a different beast these days. Less players and they're all solid opponents
@@Caseyw462 I just wanna bump into some of the folks Harstem casts on Is It Imba Or Do I Suck. Might actually move up a league if I can string a few of those guys together lol.
This series has been stupid helpful and I catch myself looking forward to more of the series. thank you man!
This is exceedingly instructive, thank you very much!
Really like the discussion on "set plays". I think this applies to a lot of hobbies. For example, a guitarist "improvising" is most likely playing different combinations of licks they already know and like. A martial artist is going to use combos they've drilled over and over again.
Absolutely loving this series! I’m new to sc2, just did my placements with this build and I’m gold 2! I keep watching every video multiple times and keep learning something every time! Do you have a patreon?
www.patreon.com/PiGSC2 :)
Thought I was losing my mind but you're definitely using the music from Rimworld @9:52. I definitely remember the sound of all my villagers dying from torn ligaments and famine. Great soundtrack.
So I’ve been doing all of this. And guess what? It’s working! I mean damn this game makes you want to quit sometimes. But I remember you saying “it’s good to lose!” 😅 and I keep hitting play again, play again, play again.
I’m listening to this series over and over at work. I’m making my set plays and watching replays. I’m losing half the time but I’m WINNING half the time! I’m now in gold 2.
I want it! Let’s go!!!!🔥🔥🔥
Just found these your B2GM series clips. Best online zerg class on yt so far. Real thanks to you great teacher. Your new fan/student from 🇹🇭.
Cheers mate! Hope you enjoy the game :)
Game 6 is my most common experience with Protoss in Silver/Gold. When I send in my first roach attack, I don’t even think about the void rays. 2-5 void rays against a huge roach army is a minor annoyance. Roach speed into the mineral line and just annoy them while building hydras at home. What happens? The void rays come in to harass after the roach attack and BAM. They run right into hydras, lose every void ray, and gg.
Cheeseburger. Thank you for being a GG. A Good guy.
Love the Rimworld music at 16:39!!!!!!!
Where are the AirToss or early/mass BC games? I always loose against those in Plat. Every second game against T or P they go fortify into massive air. What is the answer? Early Hydra, Macro up and Spire?
Pig should do more games per league to show more cheese. We've hardly seen zvz, let alone cannon, BC, skytoss turtle etc
@@atrtsh The key is the method of learning not the games. The games he plays are only part of the example he is showing for how to climb. Also, in most of your losses you're probably really losing to yourself. You didn't lose because they went skytoss, you lost because you got supply blocked multiple times, messed up your macro cycles, forgot your upgrades and made various other macro mistakes. You probably didn't split your army or scout very well and didn't replace your map vision etc.
That is the point of the series. If you physically write down your benchmarks and rewind all of your games like Pig is showing you then you will climb. Cheese isn't the reason you're stuck in whatever league you're in.
I was getting very F'd in both those situations a lot but I've slowly gotten over it (BCs still make me rage sometimes). As pig mentions here do spores in each base (1 for voids, 2 for BCs), build a few extra queens in your creep group and then wait to backstab. Keep your roaches in some corner of the map near their base and when they come in a move the army in and micro at home (pull drones, move queens etc). When they recall or blink back pull your army back out. Usually they're gonna have nothing to defend since they tech'ed up quickly. Of course meanwhile you continue the build and when you reach hydras you wreck em.
As Tommy mentions of course the most important thing is keep your macro up, but what I mention is kind of a set play that works for me and if anything having a plan helps me not panic which helps me not mess up my macro too. By now I think 90% of the times I lose to these it's because I failed to scout it and they catch me pants down. So that's the actual first step really: remember to do your ovi scout at 3:45.
@@tommydashed4205 hard disagree. starcraft only works that way for mutual macro games - for cheese you have to know exactly how to respond immediately, and usually micro a lot better than the opponent does. Remember they're only doing it because it's easier for them to do than you to hold.
Also note that turtle skytoss even with perfect macro you still cannot attack into it, and if they don't move out before you've maxed you HAVE to then take a shit trade into their entrenchent with batteries and AoE instamelting your stuff, then they come over the map while you're still rallying replacements from eggs, a few storms later and you're dead.
Re spores vs voids, that helps initially if they're as late as possible, but once they get 4 or more voids they can instasnipe a spore down and usually a hatch or lair too before you can waddle queens there. You can't leave ovies out as they just die to voids for free.
@@atrtsh One fundamental downside of the series (and any series like it really), is that the ladder doesn't actually "settle" your mmr gains until about 25 games. Most of us took 25 games just to get out of Wood 3 (wait, only me? >
love this series! helped me from being an utter noob to being an okay noob. love distant view on things and very strategic thinking. heck, i didn't even know there were macro cycles, lol. cheers mate!
9:40 Instructions unclear, lmao.
Much love man. Thanks uploading to RUclips regularly.
Pig hands down the best helpful vids to date i love your zb2gm series. I think its the best out there. I watch your vids on my way to work 🙂Thx for putting in all the hard work for us. Im glad there are still sc2 players out there that are passionate about the game like me.
Cheers mate! Hope your starcraft journey is a fun one
this series is really helpful for me. thanks for doing it!
Honestly man, don't feel too bad. your kind of "smurfing" isn't all that bad. It's really akin to making an alt account and going through the process of bringing it up to par with the main. Everyone has an alt to mess around with new builds on without affecting their main. It's the people that intentionally stay at lower leagues to pick on those worse than them that are the scummy ones. in the case of you and ViBE, you're not in these leagues long enough to even make a real impact overall, and on top of that you're giving back to the community. I know it probably doesn't feel that way in the moment, but still gotta keep that perspective.
Not really true. If you make an alt and you're 6k GM you will likely place a lot higher... a lot lot higher than bronze.
I think that's what ranked vs unranked is for. Unranked is for messing around with builds. You don't need another account lol. Stop smurfing
@@benjaminchen8857 seems to me like everytime I play ranked I get a diamond or masters player that is playing unranked, since the ranked and unranked matchmaking pools aren't separated..you might as well be claiming THEY are smurfing because they're getting put up against people jumping into unranked for the first time to unlocked ranked play(this is how the free to play part of this game works) and tanked their unranked mmr to fix the very broken ladder system. that would at least be accurate. Besides, it's not exactly smurfing if both accounts are the same ranks now is it?
@@tommydashed4205 sure, sure... but he left all the games and was placed in bronze 1, and was there for all of one game... same for, pretty much every tier he played in 1 or 2 games tops and was immediately promoted due to his 6k mmr mechanics. It's rather besides the point, though as this is hardly the case for anyone NOT doing a b2gm series of videos, though. they're gonna do their placements, probably start off somewhere in the gold league, because you can't be placed higher than that to start off on a new account, rarely people have gotten lucky and placed straight into plat 3, but it's pretty atypical, but the person making the alt, like pig, will quickly fly through the ranks until they get to where their main account is. Depending on how much time they have, it might take them a day or two worth of games. figure maybe 8-10 games per day would put it at a few hours per day, assuming 5-10 games/league if you are winning all of them(and if you're doing this you absolutely should be until you get within a tier or two of where you normally are). It's really not nearly long enough to create a real problem. As I said... it'd be a problem if he were intentionally keeping the MMR down at the metal leagues with no intention of improving, which isn't the case. he's rushing right on through the ranks. it's a pretty big difference.
@@imzesok excuses. You are the problem lol.
Sounds like this is exactly why PiG doesn't want to smurf. So people like you don't feel validated in doing the same
Should do a quick analysis from cheeseburger's perspective to make it up to him. Something similar to your viewer submitted replay sessions. Surely would be worth the lost MMR if he saw it.
That'd be so wholesome. But don't feel too bad.
I mean he already got basically a free practice session from a 6k+ zerg.
1:41:20 Can confirm that
The coaching style is so good for casual🔥🔥🔥
This series made me beat Mid Plat players in my placement matches easily without having played the game in years
Thanks a lot ❤ very useful series
Insane some of these games towards the end how good the platinum one players where and how long it went on for. 10 years ago plat one would have been an absolute push over but now its a whole diffrent story. Some serious engagements and a real difficult push to overcome them here. This games gotten alot harder since I last played (10 years ago). Im a zerg plat one player and started playing ladder for the first time about a month ago and Its a fucking slug fest to survive at this level as I dont yet have the skills like PIG does to overcome these engagements with protoss balls and skytoss One thing most people wont have at my level as Zerg is when to engage and when to pull back. PIG has this but most of us dont, so your likely going to lose badly in these situations. It takes a thousands of long games to get the knowledge of when to drone, When to reinforce and when to engage/run away. I was pretty shocked to see how good the average player is now on SC2.
Ive been playing SC and BW since they came out and SC2 for about 5 years and just started ladder. talk about feeling like a noob with almost 20 years experience lol
Yo. Loving this mate.
Thank you so much for for the guides!
Thank you so much for these videos! Im getting back in after 10 years, I got the build order down vs 15 games of ai, hopped into my first placement match. I got put against a 2800mmr and at 7mins he warped a battle cruiser behind my main and wiped all my workers, right before I got my hydra den. Same guy bunker rushed me too. It’s so disheartening and frustrating so get cheesed. Especially my first game vs a plat. Why the hell are battlecruisers allowed to warp anywhere on the map without vision. Beyond game breaking and OP. Why is Terran so OP
When you're starting out I'd advise you do the 2-base roach speed push from the earlier episodes and you'll find it does really well at killing a lot of air builds before they have many units up. That being said expect to lose your first games as ladder starts you off in the middle of the ladder and then adjusts very quickly to where you actually belong. GL hf mate
Thank you for the reply! Hope to stop in during a stream sometime. Cheers
platinum here, this video is amazing
Thanks again for this series! I've learned a lot.
I just started the video and I'm anxiously waiting to see if he stream sniped you after you shared your twitch channel at the start... haha.
Really appreciate your calming approach to a hectic game! :) Any chance you could make this series, and its companion Terran b2gm, into playlists? Otherwise it can be messy to track down.
They are in playlists. Zerg: ruclips.net/p/PLFUDU8AOevUd6ej64SOB429mHyuRL-XC9 Terran: ruclips.net/p/PLOrKQEirgvjC6wYzKFAYaIBI5kaIS9NX5
@@PiGstarcraft Thanks for taking the time to reply! I wasn't aware of your 3rd channel, Pig Coaching, where you seem to keep those. My bad as you do say so in the description under the video as I now realize. :)
@16:00 someone in chat is talking about getting lag spiked. PiG says "I don't think that's possible, I've never heard of that"
when was the lag hacker officially ID'd and banned? This must have been their early daays
Rimworld and SC2 are the two games I'm on right now, so it's really funny to me that for whatever reason you went with the Rimworlds background music for this series)
Cos its badass!
So one question. If you're tapping unit production, are you control grouping those eggs every time?
9:40, "Grab your thing and go" lol
How are you injecting bases by only selecting the queens? Rapid fire?
love this series
39:06 I agree, Im bronze and I play 2v2 with a friend in a casual way and many times i play mutas , they are super fun , although im not good with them yet, its entertaining
When or where do you teach some more advanced (or exotic) zed builds or strategies? Like vipers, infectors, broodlords, worm House, etc... Thanks
Sorry PiG, but fire alarms actually do have to cause hearing damage. They have to wake up even the heaviest sleepers! Pain is the only guarantee!
That Terran from 1:05:30 was strong. Diamond for sure
Can they cannon rush before your overlord scouts through the natural?
I saw one because of that a scout but was probably just too slow to stop it.
4 drones per pylon or anything being built?
Pig, this series has completely improved my ability massively and I'm finally crushing it in gold.
I have one problem though, it's the camera hotkey location for the 3 bases.
Is there an alternate way to set this up? I don't like using f1-f3 at all. I think it's due to playing on a laptop with small F keys. At the moment I'm using the minimap to look at each one. But I realise this is a much slower way of doing it. Thanks :)
I put the base camera in the spacebar, so every time I press it, jumps throug the hatchs... works fine for me
PIG is on FIRE!!
I watched your tutorials, first time starcraft. I play from very easy AI to Elite.
Then I start playing against ppl. Wala Plat 2 after placement finish. Took me whole Sunday to practice and placement.
I'm not new to sc2 thou. Since I watch You,Lowko, and Wardi. I was watcher for almost 3years. Now I decided to join today. Still tense and fun.
Still need to learn composition and counter of each.. exp will do it job I guess
Thank you so much
Answering your possibly rhetorical questions about monthly fire alarm tests... it is probably a local ordinance or a state law (specifically if you are in an apartment) that they be tested. The tests are super annoying, yes, but when you need them to work, you want them to work! Cheers!
SUCH GOOD CONTENT
Finally hit plat, I actually got busted down to silver shortly after I last commented but I stuck to the plan and started droning up and macroing hard after my initial roach attack once people started not just out right dying from it.
Hoping to get to diamond soon! We’ll see how plat goes.
You are a legend
How do you select half the army
Wait what music is this? In game??
How do you get this color green??
currently in plat following these lessions ty pig uwu
gl on the road to diamond mate
Trying to do this and still sucking against terrans. At some point I'll get there!!!! At Gold 3 now. Thanks for the vids, PiG
What do we do in between macro cycles guys? Test the fire alarm
Yoooo, what?! Master 1 Zerg player here, I never knew that you could press the poop creep button, then move, then shift, then hold position, then deselect. What I normally do is move, then shift, hold position, shift, poop creep, then deselect. So I had to individually put the poop command on every overlord on top of the hold position command, this is like 33% (or something) less key presses for the same shit!
I see a lot of people not connect creep from main to natural. why not?
I'm a returning player, got placed in silver but with platinum MMR, and I got a lot of proactive and aggressive terran players in my first 10 matches that go early reapers into helions and then contain me hard enough that I can't contest map presence nor take a 3rd hatch. Then if I move out I get medivacs, cloaked banshees and widow mines harass until I'm so overwhelmed I can't handle the macro cycles and I fuck up the entire build order. I wonder if I got bad luck with my opponents (every single one of them seem to have diamond-masters MMR).
I actually feel so bad for the first guy. This is a legitimate issue in so many games; and people who do these kind of climbs in them have received account bans for it. Unfortunate a game as skilled as starcraft doesn't have something similar implemented. These sort of videos could easily be done in custom rooms by people of different ranks who truly "want" to learn from facing a GM. Not the guy who hopped on after work trying to get better against his ranked peers.
You might feel bad for him but it literally does not matter in the long run. He might get placed worse, but all that means is that he faces weak opponents until he reaches an mmr level that matches his skill. A couple of matches against smurfs won't change anything about him finding his true ranking in a matter of days of playing.
If I would have to make a suggestion though: Don't make players in their placement matches face opponents with only a few games in the season (unless the season just began obviously, and even then just make them face opponents that played the last season at similar level). If you face only "seasoned" players in their respective mmr brackets you can be sure not to get hit by a smurf.
At last I wanna remind everybody how incredibly rare it is to get hit by a smurf (especially in your placement matches) in general.
I can guarantee you will be a fucking beast if you watch vibes b2gm zerg and pigs b2gm zerg. 2 different ideologies of teachings. If you combine them both, you will def see fast results for real. I appreciate both of their videos for helping the sc2 community. I'm no longer hard stuck silver boutta hit D3 soon.
You're not ruining anyone's ladder experience. This was just a very unfortunate situation. Even then you could match someone 5 times in a row and only their mentality will ruin their experience. Think of it this way, how many people in lower leagues would love a practice session with someone like Maru or Serral? This is basically what this guy got from you for free.
I have been sailing through plat with this build. I am on an 11 game win streak. The only problem I have encountered is when a terran turtles on two base with half a dozen tanks accumulating thors and upgrades then expands to a third base with a superior fighting force.
Play around with using like 2 vipers and just yoink stuff out of his base into your hydra/roach. Or you can have lurkers and hydra basically quarantine him outside the natural while you tech to broodlords. I used to lose to turtle Terran all the time but these have worked for me. I would go the spire/hydra contain if he goes BCs, lurker/hydra if thors. Vipers are good in either case
Middle mouse to scroll is better in my opinion except for that it's broken. It has a bug that gets me killed when I use it in fights. Sometimes if the mouse is moving when the button is pressed, the screen will jump wildly. I recently stopped using it, because it's incredibly frustrating to lose games to.
Ryan started the fire.
I'd love an update to PiGs bronze to gm series. It seems all of them are from very old patches which makes them mostly irrelevant in 2024. Or perhaps just an update to show what has changed since this content?
How did PiG know that the stargate meant void rays instead of phoenixes?
Respect to Cheeseburger, who wouldn't roll over in the face of his/her +2k mmr opponent.
🐖🐷 is checking the fire 🔥🚒 alarm part of your macro cycle?
It's weird. Yes, smurfing is annoying to both sides, but as someone who has always been mediocre at all competitive games, the fact that you're aware it's unfun for the other person makes it more tolerable.
Weird way to think about it. Also smurfing isn't annoying to both most of the time
The only thing Is @PiG if you study how people play you can explain whilest playing like a metal league. Then it isn't really surfing cause you'll lose alot too
Plot twist, he’s splitting because like you, he’s doing a bronze to gm livestream
Technically you could crash your opponent game if you can somehow influence the data you are sending in some unexpected way (overflowing data, affecting memory etc), realistically its a old game , with 11 years of debuging and crashing someone's game to win is kind of unsatisfactory even for a hacker
lmao the double pylon made me freak out so much I was way behind cause I was doing a hatch first and in the chaos I didn't macro at all so I didn't even have a pool quickly to deal with any pylons and I didn't make a macro hatch before way to late and it was in my main base hahaha. I lost that game of course
Coulda thrown the homie Cheeseburger some coaching haha
I have definitely drunk laddered before. Never won a game doing that though.
Pig I'm copying how you play and I can't get out of gold 3, I lose every single game against terren and protos. I can have 30 more army supply then theirs but by the end of the fights its 0 vs 80 supply (0 for me). I don't understand how to win.
Maybe have someone from my discord community have a look at your replays, they'll be able to help you out: discord.gg/SkhbzCM
Followed your guide and got to plat3 but this seems to be where my wall is. I'm not having fun anymore and don't feel myself improving at all. Great guides. I guess this game just isn't for me.
Plat league is where a lot of people hit a wall. It takes much more practice and patience from here on out to improve
Watching this series just wants me wanna quit my day job, terminate all social contacts, remove all friends on facebook, throw my phone out the window, and lock myself in my cave where my computer is, and then inject inject inject =)
Why does he wear a 🧢 while indoors?
F for my boy 🍔
Control click idle workers... my mind is blown...
god what do i need to do to have 1ms
here after vibe's guides stopped working in plat. i just get 2 based every game in plat and his greed macro cheese build does not work that high up
Game 4 was a master or a high diamond. Compare that to game 5.
High diamond? You kidding me? Terran not expanding to 4 bases at 11 mins is so mediocre. He can’t even di multi prongs. Micro is completely absent. I dont know how you judge that as masters or even diamond.
I was sad to have to hit "like" on this video, being the 700th like it was sad to see that 699 go away....
Bronze2Gm with Terran would be awesome! Zerg's are strongest atm, they don't need it. ;)
Actually they aren't. Haven't been in awhile. Terran is seen as the strongest race. Terran is easiest race in metal leagues diamond its harder. Zer is easier diamond and uo, and protoss is middle of the ground. Zerg is hard early because of the macro cycle. But come diamond youre macro should be amazing. Where as Terran has little macro and spam marine. Makes it a little easier. But harder because of micro skills in diamond. And toss we can all agree canons
@@mattstoss1423 I wouldn't go quite that far. sure, terran is very strong bronze -gold 3, but gold 2 it hits a pretty hard wall vs T and P. TvZ, not that hard especially if they're staying on lings for a bit. Ugh, the spread, stim and win meme is real sometimes though. lol
@@imzesok oh I agree, I was just saying, maybe I shouldn't say upnto diamond xD let me try again. Terran is easier early on for the fact of marine tank being a very solid probably the best composition if utilized correctly. And I've seen B2GM builds for terran that are just marine spam with stim. No other race has that. I'm not saying it's an easy build. But terran just had really solid units. And has really solid macro mechanics for minerals so that helps with marines and hellions. No 1 race is the best for sure. Every race has pros and cons. I just like razing terrans. Because I had a terran tell me lurkers are to OP and broken inTVZ and it's too cost effective and that I was trash for using them and winning.
@@mattstoss1423 yeah, marine tank is pretty obscene with high numbers of tanks. I've done the whole pure marine medivac build as well, which works great if you greedily expand like you would with thor-hellbat. as far as lurkers go, the reasonable terran complaint is they're too fast with burrow/unburrow with the upgrade. and I kinda agree as a plat zerg. when compared to a tank, it's insanely mobile, and could probably use a *slight* nerf to the instant burrow/unburrow. I play all three races, and I give terrans crap too from time to time where it's warranted.
@@imzesok you mean always warranted xD if there's lurkers the answer is more leap frog tanks and marauders. Plus scan. I'm only gold terran toss, diamond zerg, so I can't say much. I just give everyone shit xD
Im trying this build into A.I Its hard to beat a AI terran with only roaches its like AI terran vs Zerg is better than a human.
awww poor cheeseburger lol
I know your do t like doing these B2M, but it has improved my shitty, shitty play.
Poor Cheeseburger :(