1 Introduction to training. What is training like? What can we understand when some top- and pro-gamers say : "Before a tournament I train a lot"? Does it mean that they log in to bNet(for wc3) and keep playing ladder games 24/7? I doubt it. Training has a lot to do with a lot of things. One of them is the "progress bar". If we can call it this way. How can we measure our progress. Can we just play like 50 games and then look at it and say : "Oh yea I am way better than before those 50 games." and " Oh **** i've wasted my time here" or "Hmm, I saw something wrong in my playstyle, maybe I should change something and then look if it's for better..". They are many possibilites after a lot of playing, but...not many realize how important it is, not to look at the so-called progress bar, but look in your playstyle. In this first article of mine I will try and teach(hihi, hi again) the players who doesn't know how exactly to utilize with their time. This is made for new players(not only for WC3). This tutorial can always be used by everyone around average level, maybe even higher. I am sure that it saves time, nerves(!) and will help you before you get addicted to gaming, yes it is possible. 2 Making your mind in the right direction. First things first, right? Before you log in your game(wc3, q3, cs team-wise) there is something much more important for a new player than just play. This is the respect toward himself. If you take another sport for example doesn't mather wich one, when you are new to it and attend some tournament and you have to face the favourites for winning the tournament, don't forget they are only humans. Maybe they are hell of a good sportsmans, but they can make mistakes too. When you attend some tournament (ex. wc3) don't forget what you trained, don't forget to respect yourself and never, never fear anybody just because he is famous. Try to relax and stay calm. "Play your game" a lot of people kept telling me. And I know it's hard, this is where experience comes in action. When you try doing those things, intead of just attending a lot of tournaments and playing without respecting yourself this will make you nervous and thoughs like : "Oh my god I am playing pro-gamer X., he will own me.", " I can't do anything to stop him, he is too good for me." or " There is no way I can beat this guy." will always be infront of you. Don't forget how you trained, don't forget why you are there, don't forget how motivated you are when you first attented a tournament, the joy, the experience. This must guide you always and I said always, because you will always need to keep in mind that you are there for yourself and you deserve to do good, to have fun. Another thing is that you must never push yourself with ultimates like : "This is it, I have to win him, I HAVE to WIN HIM!!!". Don't..this won't help you. Instead just keep playing what you trained and sooner ot later you will make it. And you will be very happy when you make it. Trust me. 3 Understanding the training technique. When you log in your given game (ex. wc3 - bNet) they are a few things you need to know, before enter the pointless playing in ladder. If you are pretty new to a given game and don't know where to start make a few games, see wich race you like and take it the best it fits you. Ofcourse they are players that use more than one race, but it takes a lot more time to study those Match-Ups and strategies and the counters againts them. I won't go too deep here, because it's a whole encyclopedia to be written. Now let's begin on the interesting part. Let's say you have choosen to play with Night Elves. When start making some ladder games, you will start with some wins and then make some looses. Why? Because they are many strategies that you haven't encountered yet. What you have to do when facing a new strategy. Remember it. I will ask you really easy question now : "What is better - making 50 games and don't remember the mistakes you made and make them again or make like 20-30 games, but they remember what you did wrong and try to change it. Study your opponent and the strategy you lost to? Yes it's much more important to study your mistakes, watching the replays will help you understand why you've lost. You have to know that some strategies are better than other, and some are easy to play while others are harder. So when you start playing some strategy and you lose to someone, check your mistakes. Change something in your style and see how it goes. If you are playing versus orc for example and using "strategy X" and you make a few wins and then 1 loss what does this tells you? It means that you either didn't play the strategy good enough or you need to change something, adapt to your opponent's strategy. When losing try understanding your style and understand your opponen'ts style of play. Example : you can play defensively and he can play in offence. In this situation you have to know that he will harras you and you have to make something about it, right? You can't just go and creep while he is attacking you. After you have chosen a strategy and you see your opponent's strategy you have to adapt to it. You won't win any good players if you play like a robot. Most important thing is to adapt. After that you can start making some more games and see how it goes. 4 The training itself. After you know a bit on the theorycraft, now you have to make some games. An important thing to understand is that one game consists of playing it till the end. You can't make good start and then make some bad mistake, then lose because of it and say : "Not fair, I played better." right? Let's take an example here. Let's say you are playing versus ORC on TR and you want to play on DH+BM+Tinker with a few archers in the start and then the favourite mass DoTT. You make a good start - good harras on the orc hero you save some archers if he attacks you and all fine. But then you make some mistake and he gets advantagea and in and in a few minutes he is able to use this advantage and win the game. Where is the mistake? How come you played better in the start and then lose the game? Pretty simple. As it seems in this situation your middle game isn't as good as your early game. What to do? Concentrate on your mistake. How? Another easy answer. If you want you can write down your mistakes so you can view them later. When you start the game and you know that your middle game is on lower level than your early game, keep concentrating on this issue. Change something, make some different move. Study what you made wrong, compared to other NE players in middle game. Investigate your mistake, and keep changing untill you fix it or change your style to simething different what helps you. For example : when you hit Tier2 and you have to push him with Beast Master in his base, but during the attack loses your hero or more units that's is not normal to lose - train the same situation a few time, if you keep making the same mistake, watch the replay again. Concentrating on a given mistake you make in your playstyle will help you improve overall. When you take a look in your Orc versus NE match-up and see that you are not good in it fix the mistakes one by one. Don't try and fix all of them at one time. Better fix one thing and learn to do it the best way possible, than doing more things on an average level. This was only an example and they are a lot more situations you will need to learn, but if you take it one by one you will be heading forward, not staying on the same level of MU for a longer period of time. 5 Elements of training. 5.1 Timing. Timing is something you have to feel and understand in the same time. You have to feel it because when start training you will get to know that one thing is followed by another. For me it's mostly logical to study timing. Example: NE versus Human on TR. You scout him and see he is with AM and in most cases he will be creeping with a few militia the green creeps(turtles) or the yellow creep(small trolls and ogres). Now when you scout him(depending on your strategy) you can either harras(dh/warden/other hero) or creep(dr/beast/other hero). Now the first thing to know is that if he has gone creeping you have to know where he can creep. This is a creep routine. He can't go and creep the red camp(ogres with shockvave and bloodlust) with a few footmans and 4-5 milita right? But he will most proppably go and creep another green or yellow creeps. On TR they are 4 green spots and 4 yelllow(2 trolls+2ogres). When you go and harras him and he is not there, where can he be? Trying to evade your harras. A good scout will help you find him easly. If you have a wisp near one of the green creeps and use to scout it with him and then the yellow one and he is not there, where could he be? The other green/yellow creeps or he can use a different route to creep, wich can help him evade your harras. This is only an exaple of early game, where scout is most important. Middle and late game(for me) timing is not random-luck going somewhere, building expos, attacking etc. You have to follow everything in the game - where he was creeping, what items he has(this will reveal, the possible creep location he was). When you get to play the ladder games make sure you follow the game. Everything that hapends depends on how the game will go. Example: if you have harrased him well and took advantage you can keep harrasing him in middle game in some way(killing peasants if possible, harassing the AM, etc). Different example is if he has advantage over you - then he can come and attack you and use his advantage or he can put an expo and defent it/attack you. The outcome of the early game will decide the start of the middle game. When you start making some more games, good and focused game you will have to understand and remember : why he did that? Why didn't he do that? Why this, why that...it's mostly logical. So timing is not just random stuff, you have to remember the moves(where he was, where he can go) you have to use your advantage(or defend against his advantage) and scout good. This is the easyest way to learn the timing element. 5.2 Micro and Macro. Micro is almost as important as it is the strategy and the adapting. You can't win a game versus a good opponent, without good micro. For every situation it's different. Depending on the unit mixes and races you have to move your units in different formations. Example1 : If you are using bear/dry(dh+naga) in NE mirror and his bears are already in line and a few of your bears are after the first ones he will start with advantage over you beacuse he will have more bears fighting, while half of your bears are still behind the first few bears. Before a battle you have to re-arrange your units in the best positions of your whole army(you can't use dry first and then bears right?) Example2: If you are using a mix of hunts/archer/dott/dry versus orc and put all on attack move, and are your hunts are in the middle of all your units you will lose time moving your units in the same battle line of range(hunts, dry, dott, archer+range upgrade) meanwhile your opponent will already be doing his micro in focusing unarmored units with demoilshers etc. Before every battle re-arrange your units in the best battle lines, this will be most important before the battle itself. You may have more population, but if you don't use it in the best possible way, the advantage you have in population may be lost. In all different MUs and strategies you have to study what is best to do first(not a good idea using scrool of healing when you 5-6 units are on yellow Hp) better move those units back so other units can get some damage, low HP so you can use your scrools in the best way. In every particular case you have to train the situations many times to make it perfect and believe me - you can always perform better, not only in battles, but in your whole games. 5.3 Strategy. We've talked a bit on the strategy, here we will go a deep further so you can understand why some strategies work, why others don't and why some strategies are harder then others. Example1: Let's say you are NE versus human on TR. We will skip the early game, and just say that you will be playing on DH+Naga and a few archers, with teching to t3 for bears/dry. He on the other hand will scout you and see that you will be making bear/dry. He was going to play a few footmans in start with AM and then Naga. Now there something you need to know. Choosing a strategy, playing as best as you can, you can still lose. You have to understand that every strategy has a counter, some have easy others - hard. The human can decide to make 1-2 riflemans to protect himself from the dryad harras and then switch to caster/breaker/mortar. In this situation everything it's clear, expect for the right units. For example if he makes more sorcs and has a lot more slow then usually and switches AM-to Blizzard together with F.lighting and you have like 70% bears and 30% in your army, I am sure you dryads won't have enough mana to abolish all of the sorcs's slow and blizzard/lighting will make it even harder on bears to kill the breakers. In this situation what you can are two things: first one is to start making more dryads and the easy one is to take a few wisps with you(note: if they are 4-5 they won't be enough versus 2lvl lighting, 3 of them will die) so a good number of wisps is a must-have. The point here is that you can't play on one thing whole game. Strategy is just for start and it is almost every game that you need to change it. It's just the way it is. You have to adapt to your opponent's strategy in order to have biger chances of countering it. 6 Building everything in the puzzle. When grow up in your gaming career in your game you have to assemble all the pieces in to one - your personal playstyle. The more games you play and the more experience you get, things will go harder. You will meet harder opponents, you will have to react faster, better and the right way/time. Don't forget that this is just a game and you have to have fun with it. But having fun in tournaments(and wining them:) is a good thing too. As one man once said(I think it was Fatal1tY) : practice, practice, practice. The best way to improve is to split the puzzle in pieces. You now know what I mean. Train hard, go pro if you want. But train in the right way. Don't make pointless games(expect if you are having fun etc.). When you are training focused choose one of the elements and train it till you see some improvement. 7 Don't forget where you started - everyone begins by first being an amateur. Nothing will fall of the sky and give you better results, prizes, etc.. You have to work for it. I think that's all I know about training. I've been an active gamer since 2001. I've tryed a lot of styles, a lot of things to get better. I even tryed making a record (48 hours with 3-4 hours break). It's pointless to do that. Have fun with gaming. Go out with friends. DON'T listen to players that say: you can't go pro if you don't play 24/7. One thing is true - you will never get better if you don't respect yourself, don't see yourself as geting better in your mind. Visualize yourself wining tournaments. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in an interview: "Before I went to my first Mr.Olimpia I knew it was mine. I wone like 1000 times in mind. I saw it in my eyes and never had a doubt about it." How is Arnold different from you? Is he? No he isn't. He is a man just like you. He is a successful man indeed, but he was an amateur just everybody else. 8 The grand finale. This is what i've been giving to the players who knows me best. Some sais :tnx, others flamed me. This is life, if this helps atleast one player - I am happy with it. I've been a CS player for a few years and I played with a lot of boys from my city (Bourgas!). I've watched this technique in action for years. Half of the boys who listen to me, become top players from my city. I have tested it on ages between 13/17 and it works. All you need is a will. "If there is a will, there is way". Last thing to say I : good luck! and have fun! this is what games are made for. FUN! "When you get to the top, and stay there for a while don't forget where you started, look down because you were there once before. We all start by being an amateurs. So simply we are the same. You are just one stair infront of me." Iliyan diG1tY Petrov

 

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(3 years ago)  #1 G2HHorde

Nice 1 digi :) I really liked it. I agree with most of the things u are right for all expect that when u play vs famous players thing. There is psychologic barrier that the player must put down.Example : grubby vs moon on weg : after the games grubby said that he was ready to lose , he couldn't do anything.After the 1st game that he won , he knew he can do it.U have to do ur best , to be confident in ur skills and u can do anything nothing is imposible gj Anything that can go wrong will go wrong

(3 years ago)  #2 diG1tY

#1 Yes yes true, but both Moon and Grubby are on a higher level than both of us. So when you play play bo5 versus will be different whey they play bo5 versus eacht other. Different level. I am talking about a new player facing them. PS: This article was originally supposle to be for mYm articles so i wrote it here. http://www.id-petrov.com

(3 years ago)  #3 Noname

Holy shit, reading atm, but this is just insane work =) pwnz all so far :)

(3 years ago)  #4 Konna

nice work

(3 years ago)  #5 imported_OxyGen

nice work. Thanks a lot man!

(3 years ago)  #6 wanzerg

ye nice work

(3 years ago)  #7 diG1tY

I will be writing another one in the next days. This article will be covering the mental or if we can call it the theory part, not only about gaming, but I think it can be used about any other sphere. http://www.id-petrov.com

(3 years ago)  #8 sayd

well done, thats what i always say: ADAPT, ADAPT AND ADAPT ! e.g. alotta humans play now this mass knighs gyro shit. -> i dont do mass destroyers , i go mass ghuls with banshee i won all the games so far playing versus this strategy YouŽre rockinŽ with the best.

(3 years ago)  #9 diG1tY

#8 Well done:) http://www.id-petrov.com

(3 years ago)  #10 infi_

One of the best reads of the recent times...gj. Respect is everything.

(3 years ago)  #11 G2HTech0

It deserves to be in the articles section and more people to read it. Great job Ilian. Very nice. Hell is our playground. ®

(3 years ago)  #12 TiOw

Great job diG1tY

(3 years ago)  #13 Experto

Good Job. It helped me in some way's, if some new players will read this, they improve in a better and faster way. Well done! www.team-nb.de

(3 years ago)  #14 miczo

really nice work dig1

(3 years ago)  #15 Kage

i was directed to this rather late. Excellent work sir. Very well done cheers! Size doesn't Matter, Speed does.

(3 years ago)  #16 diG1tY

Thanks guys, soon I will write another one wich is much more imporant than this one:) http://www.id-petrov.com

(3 years ago)  #17 DK][Stone_Bone

I hope it will be well like this :) But I'm quite sure it will. °_^ Proud Member of DemonKnights

(3 years ago)  #18 Kage

Where is Article 2 ? ! Size doesn't Matter, Speed does.

(2 years ago)  #19 diG1tY

It takes a lot more time and a lot more understandings for life and much more information. WC3 is not even a main topic in it. So it will be very hard:) http://www.id-petrov.com