5 Deadly sin of the Noob/Newb

so i have seen alot of posts here with new people asking for help, im hoping the 5 Deadly sins of the Noob/Newb will help and maybe if any one has anymore they would like to add we can ( also the Deadly sins of a diamond/plat player might be good too)

1. Rushing for that "Imba" unit,
this is typical of newer play, such that most people rush for void rays for protoss, thors, tanks banshees, mutas, ect. and while these units can be effective the reason they fail, is that they are mid to high tier units, and are easily beaten by an early push. rushing for a single units is rareley a good idea. the exception to this is if it is part of a larger composition or a way in which to force your opponent to build what beats that unit or to harass him so that you can have time to do something which you wouldn't have had previously.


2. Not building enough workers.
this is typical of all new players and most ask how many workers do they need? the answer simply is as many as you can get away with having. in the beginning a general rule of thumb is make workers at all times, this means that you will be oversaturated and able to make the best use of an expansion when it comes down by transferring workers, this is more efficient than trying to saturated afterwards as it takes time. you will learn when to stop making workers for certain strats but for now know that you'll forget before the end of the game so keep trying to remember.

3. Doing something cause Uber IMBA korean super player did it.
this seems odd but you must understand the why before you can actually pull off the stuff that they do. the most obvious example is early probe scouting, alot of people do it, i honestly dont understand why therefore i dont ( unless im on a 4 player map or they are random) the reason being is that i dont really care what they are doing before i get my observe up, so that i can really see what they are planning. but the key thing to understand here is not that scouting is bad, but rather understand what you are doing is import for play improvement.

4. Living in Fear.
the easiest example is the terran player who builds turrets at every base, builds bunker and leaves tank inside his base, so that he cant be dropped he cant be mutaed and he is completely safe from everything when he moves out. this all seems reasonable, and is something i have done in the past. the reason it is wrong is that it reduces your ability to attack, or defend effectively because the other player has more units due to not building so much defense. be less cautious with what the guy can do and watch and see what he is going to do with scouting and build defenses a lean as possible for your mobile force is far stronger. ( you can abuse this idea by constantly harassing and forcing static defense to reduce potential offence strength )

5. Going for Glory, and over comitting
This is something my friend and i used to do after he rushed invis banshees ( Sinning in the first Degree) which is he would get to the guys main and instead of killing works or supply or something easy he would go straight for the main, all in all this sounded like a great idea, with one flaw, if you get that main to 99.99999% of its health but it survives you just did nothing rather than killing a whole bunch of stuff such as supply depots, queens, add-ons probes, gas geysers and pylons. the key here is doing a little damage that is guaranteed rather a whole lot that may or may not work. ( i believe reactors are the best target to go for with queens next and either geysers or supply after ( though creep tumors can be good to)) the second part of this is the idea that you just killed his force with yours and now you are going to kill him with 4 marines 2 marauders and a medivac, this really isnt going to happen pull back ( its ok) and rebuild this time youll be ahead by 4 marines 2 marauders and medivac which can make alot of difference in the next battle.




Good Hunting
Toochaos.

 

Nice post! bound to be useful! ^_^

 

Nice post (though with some grammatical/sense errors? idk im a bit sleepy) and ive nvr seen u b4.

 

i dont make alot of posts tend to reply and yes there are errors i suck at writing, but mostly im bad at makefile sense.

 

I agree so much with point 3...people do complicated tricks that they've seen pros do and don't realise it's a focused response to a threat they've seen. Whether it be expanding, digging in, rushing or massing marauders. Always easy to run over those players since they have no idea what to do after it fails.

Even in diamond I am yet to see a player use helions well :S

 

well hellions aren't exactly the best unit for a lot of situation since the siege tank already does most of the job the hellion can do. Although i love to use it as a scout or to deal with zealots or zerglings when doing a marauder push .

 

I completely disagree with point 3. Pro players always have a reason for doing something, and is a very useful way to learn general good play, like micro, scouting (which btw is done early to see if the opponent is doing some crazy rush like 6 pool or something), and build orders.

 

point three is to meant to be that you must understand the reason not that there is no reason i gave scouting as an expample because its something,that is done by alot of low level players for reasons they dont know yet, but they do it cause they are told you should, also i dont do early with probe due to the fact that i always build for a six pool and reaper rush as those are the units im getting, so i dont need to worry. ( but thats personal thing)

once again point 3 is that you shouldnt do something just because someone else did it. understanding why will get you better results.

 

wow im guilty of all of these....

 

toochaos, if a zerg is doing a 6 pool, the standard 13 gate will NOT be prepared for it unless you see it coming and defend your ramp/choke with probes while your zealot finishes. (Well, it's also possible to defend if you stick your first few zealots in your mineral line, but that is a far more messy situation in which you can end up losing anyway if the zerg has better micro than you.) Also, if you are getting your gateway on 10 or 11 so you are always prepared for it, then you are actually losing more economy than if you just scout and get your gateway on 13.

That said, I will agree that it is bad for someone to scout and then not react at all to what his scout sees, like if a newb sent his probe to the enemy base but didn't pay any attention to it and thus missed the enemy going 6 pool. But that definitely does not mean such a player should stop scouting; it just means he needs to pay more attention when he scouts and react accordingly.

 

a newbie scouting and found opponent has 4-5 stalkers in base and 3+ wrap gates will understand that he will get a bit stalker hit coming, thus look back at base and prepare for counter stretagies; while their re-action might not work, they still at least respond to what they see, they just need to learn what is the correct thing to do.

a newbie scouting and found no wrap gate at all and no pylons with one gas only, or two gates no gas, might get confused and think that opponent is just slow... and return the focus back to base and progress with teching up. he will later get rushed and fail the game because he was not preparing the counter action.

my point is, scouting is important in either cases; in the second case he will fail but at least will learn and prepare himself next time when he sees the same. if he never scout in the first place, he will never know how the hell does proxy works. as long as he is using his head and review the game, he will learn even just from mimicing higher level player's action.

the keyword is to 'think', not following a bo simply expect it to work. many 6pool rushers got countered and go straight to gg... or simply under-play the rest of the game. to those players, they will lose either way.

 

I don't mean to dismiss your point because I know you aren't saying "this is 100% correct, these are all useless" - but early scouting for me is really important. Loosing to rushes is frustrating but I think unless its totally imba (not come across "totally" imba yet) you should learn to protect it. SO seing terran do early gas for reapers, seing protoss early forge, seing an empty zerg base... for the cost of one SUV, fine by me...

Also with large way points you can visit them periodically and tread their paths, I've caught them leaving a base and been able to literally produce counters to them as they arrive.

But yea good points, the rush-tech of certain stuff isn't good - having 2 stealthed banshees may shock a mineral line but if they had a bit of sense they'd A: have an army that can counter it soon after (with some dmg, but still unable to persist) and B: send as little as 6-8 tier 1 to your base and destroy it.

 

You missed one I notice all the time.

6) Going for a "plan" with little reguard for whats going off.

You know the signs. When the zerg keep throwing zergling at your front door when its covored in defence. Or the terran that keep creating sneaky little base out of the way, dispite knowing you have 20 mutas flying about on active patrol.

 

No. 3 was not meant as a dont scout, but rather know why you are doing something with scouting as an example mainly because i have seen people say they scout here and then ask what they are looking for which kinda defeats the point of scouting. but once again number 3 is not about scouting but the idea that you shouldnt copy because someone else did it but have an understanding of why

 

That is fair enough, but some of the initial post has some bad ideas.

Scouting early can be very important. If you just go up to a stalker fast enough to counter a reaper rush, and they marine rush they you will get rolled even with slowing that down after the last patch. For scouting zerg, figuring out a 6 or 7 pool is key. As protoss I handle it easily if I scout it early, if not you have problems. If you automatically block as protoss to fight a 6 or 7 pool, then you have killed your ability to stop a fast expand. If you don't block then you will at least lose some probes if they do rush and set back your econ a whole lot and probably lose.

Against terran scouting early is key because they'll be blocked if you wait. If you tech first to observers then you've committed a lot of resources to robo that you may not have wanted to that early.

 

I would add also to keep an eye on your workers so they dont end idle after building/warping/doing something

 

If your shift clicking workers back to
min you shouldnt have that problem

 

Djctsuakdmcysyaoeltnshxct
SCOUTING IS A MUST!!!!!!!!
Playing blind is NEVER a good thing. That drone can tell so much...early gas as terran, possible reaper. Early 2 gas, heavy mech play or 1-1-1. Watch for the banshees or vikings. Possible thor-ship if it's TvZ on lost T.
Early 2 assimilatit on Protoss, possible void ray. Especially if he throws down a forge after gate.

Scouting saves the game my friend

 

thats right you HAVE to scout... no matter what your enemy does.... and once you arrive to his base dont just run back with your worker you must keep it in his base for as long as possible even if you might lose it.... i usually send my drone out when i reach 9 suply ^^

 

the point of no 3 still is not nor ever was dont scout, but rather understand why, the example was given because many people were scouting early then coming to this forum and asking why they were scouting and what they were looking for essentially putting them back one worker for a reason they had no understanding for. also i dont early scout like at 9 because even if i find a six pool the best i can do at that point is going to be a 13 gate, ( which is slower than my standard no early scout 12 gate) and a 12 gate just makes it for lings at a 6 pool on stepes of war any other map and you have the zealot. i then scout later this is all personal choice and still has no relevance back to No 3. since it was one example that people are still hung up on, the original idea being know why you are doing something so that you can execute that something to the best of your ability. also you can always scout the front of terrans base and see what kills you if you see grenades then they prolly dont have alot of gas, if its all marines then expect something more gas heavy, once again know what you are doing