LOL: Can’t I play other games professionally?

Chapter 403 My Interstellar Gold Rank is Amazing!

Lin Ruo looked at Ming Kai's expression and seemed to have guessed something, and instantly showed an expression of agreement.

Mingkai smiled but didn't say anything. Geniuses are usually very strange, but Lin Ruo gave him the feeling that she was not just ordinary, but extremely shameless.

It's one thing to play well, but why do you always have to pull off these crazy stunts?

Well, what Mingkai, who was so self-righteous, didn't realize was that when it came to being as flirtatious as Lin Ruo, he was far superior.

[Just start already, why are you taking so long? Seriously, if you want to flirt, find an empty room to do it. Be careful your stream gets banned like this.]

[Kai, get out of the way! Don't disturb Lin's game! What are you doing? You're wasting my time. My time is precious, you know?]

[Even after retiring, he's still not behaving properly. Kick him out; he's always chatting, making Lin Gou (Lin Gengxin) stop playing games.]

Mingkai coughed as he watched the comments section. He was baffled. How could he possibly be flirting with Lin Ruo? They were talking about serious business.

Unable to suppress a mental roll of his eyes, Mingkai got up and returned to his seat, secretly lamenting that newcomers were indeed surpassing the old. Now, Lin Ruo was EDG's most popular player, and he, the cornerstone of the team, had no prestige whatsoever.

EDG fans are constantly mimicking Lin Ruo's daily use of the phrase "Brother Kai," and have even adopted professional-sounding slang, using terms like "Kai" and "factory," referring to whatever they have.

Damn it, in short, he, this old guard, was utterly crushed.

After finally seeing off Kai, Lin Ruo took a sip of water and, urged by the audience, continued the game, choosing the Human race as her next option for ranked matches.

In a sense, the Terran race is arguably the easiest of the two races to pick up in StarCraft.

For beginners, the advantage of the Terran race lies in its balance; the functions and uses of various units are easy to understand.

The controls are simple, helping players quickly understand the game's basic rules. At the same time, the diversity of the Terran race gives players more flexibility in tactical choices.

Whether used individually or in coordinated attacks, many unit types are capable of handling a variety of combat scenarios. Furthermore, the Terran classic campaign mode is relatively simple and easy to learn quickly.

More importantly, through learning from the Human race, newcomers can better understand how units operate, laying the foundation for the other two races to get started.

However, once you actually get the hang of it, you'll find that mastering the Terran race is just as difficult as learning the basics of the Zerg race.

This is the human race, which is easy to play in the early game but troublesome later on.

Frequent airdrops, strong multi-front warfare capability. Relatively easy to learn, highly mobile, and possesses a powerful mechanized force.

However, the biological and chemical units are relatively fragile and prone to mass casualties, while the mechanized units, although powerful, are correspondingly more difficult to assemble.

In summary, the further you progress in the game, the more you'll realize the extremely high skill requirements required for the Terran race.

The Protoss race is relatively easy for new players to pick up, with high health, strong survivability, excellent early-game rush ability, and is also very strong in the late game.

These are all introductory features that can help new players find their way.

However, the Protoss also face disadvantages such as a higher risk of death during the technological transition phase and their units being vulnerable to specific countermeasures.

Therefore, each race cannot be easily generalized or described in a one-sided manner.

As for the Zerg, who possess extremely high burst damage and flexibility, that goes without saying.

As the race widely recognized as the most difficult to master, it requires not only high APM and keen timing awareness, but also the ability to grasp the crucial timing for producing workers and massing units. A misjudgment of timing can lead to an instant defeat.

The fact that their units are relatively fragile and easily suppressed within their base is the race's most fatal weakness.

At the start of the game, Lin Ruo, playing the human race, easily demonstrated to the audience what ease of use truly meant.
First, assign some farmers to start working. Select a farmer, click on the gas field, and let them go to extract gas. Then, allocate an appropriate number of farmers to them.

In terms of operation, Lin Ruo chose a very conventional opening strategy: first build up resources, then build up barracks.

If you expand by gas first, the speed of building barracks will naturally be a little slower, but that's okay. Sending troops to the second base and building the first barracks a little slower won't have too much of an impact.

In StarCraft 2, especially for novice players, the Terran faction generally relies on large-scale mechanized warfare in the late game.

Therefore, for novice players, the early game and late game are all about testing their hand speed. If you want to build a large army, you naturally need to be able to create it quickly.

Even if beginners don't have super high hand speed, there are simpler, more mechanical ways to win the game.

This is roughly Lin Ruo's strategy in this game: first build up the gas, then the barracks, and as soon as the barracks are built, immediately build the VF (Very Factory), which is the Terran's heavy factory, and can build auxiliary buildings such as the technology lab or reactor.

It is also mainly used to manufacture a wide variety of human military vehicles. Whenever a new siege tank is manufactured in the heavy factory, it will provide effective support to the infantry legion.

This is the factory's specialty, capable of producing various large-scale weapons, such as the Hellfire Train. As a rapid scout, it can inflict fire damage on enemy units in a straight line, and can also transform into a close-range combat unit.

There's also the Widow Mine, a mechanical mine that can launch missiles while burrowed, causing splash damage. It becomes visible when the Sentinel Missile is on cooldown. The Burrowing Claws can be upgraded to accelerate burrowing and activation.

Needless to say, fixed mechanized vehicles like siege tanks can switch between tank mode and siege mode.

In tank mode, the tank is used for movement, but its firepower is reduced. In siege mode, it provides long-range artillery fire with a greatly increased range.

Furthermore, the technology lab within the Heavy Factory can research various enhancement technologies, such as the Hellfire Pre-burner, the Electric Magnetic Field Accelerator, the Intelligent Servo, and the Burrowing Claw. These technologies can further enhance the combat capabilities of the aforementioned units, thus illustrating the importance of early-stage manufacturing.

After completing the series of buildings in the heavy factory, you need to set up the star-raising orbit and continuously place barracks and machine guns to start a sneaky tower defense strategy.

In StarCraft II, Terran players often need to make flexible use of the "Load" ability and allocate the number of workers reasonably to adapt to the combat needs of different situations.

Before upgrading the Star Orbit Command Headquarters, players can make full use of this skill to quickly build a powerful army of peasants.

As the game progresses, upgrading the Star Orbit Command Headquarters becomes inevitable. At this point, players need to change their strategy and no longer rely on large groups of farmers.

The upgraded Star Orbit Command Headquarters will provide players with stronger technological support and more diverse combat options.

The next part is where you hang the technology accessories and put down 2 gas.

Devices that enhance the functionality of Terran buildings through technological upgrades, appearing as attachments on specific buildings such as Barracks and Factory, provide tactical convenience and advantages to Terran players.

It's clear that changing the accessories not only helps Lin Ruo save time, but also enables a tactical shift.

By changing different tech accessories, Lin Ruo can quickly produce specific units, such as fast Banshee, fast Bluefire, and fast airdrop tactics.

To expedite tank production, Lin Ruo made a trade-off by reducing the number of machine guns and maintaining a production rate of 3 trains per day.

As an indispensable unit for Terran players utilizing mechanized units in combat, Zerglings are extremely fast, making it difficult for most units to keep up. Even if they do manage to keep up, facing a large number of Zerglings often results in suicide. The Train was created specifically to address this issue. The Train's attack is an area-of-effect (AOE) attack, and it deals bonus damage to lightly armored units.

If the trains are upgraded at the factory, then two or three trains can instantly burn all the ghouls in front of them, so trains are often used by the Terran to harass and ambush.

In addition, his Gundam form is another reason for his popularity. When the train becomes Train Hero, he becomes a professional front-line fighter. With the help of the transport plane's healing, a large number of Train Heroes can burn away any enemies in his way!

The opponent in this game is the Zerg, so Lin Ruo has no reason not to mass-produce trains.

As the train departs, the second base is deployed, followed by the production of tanks and the upgrading of support structures.

After harassing the area with the train, build a second mine and a third bunker. Then, launch two more attacks.

After that, you can build heavy factories and Vikings, which are fighters that can attack air units, and can also be switched to a mode that targets only ground units.

Once Mine 2 is operational, add two more heavy factories. Maintain tank operations throughout this period.

At this point, the most prominent feature of mechanized warfare becomes clear: the combination of unit types and efficient construction.

Since mechanized unit combinations emphasize a balance between speed and firepower, starting with two mines and then mechanizing them requires no transition period; once enough troops are gathered, a single wave of suppression can be launched.

Especially with the following strategies: 3 heavy factories plus 1 double airfield, 3 tanks, double heavy factories to produce Train Heroes, 6 medical machines, double technology to produce Thors, single defense upgrades, etc.

Once the rally point is set up, the second-base workers join the push, making them virtually invincible until 20 minutes in, unless the opponent's Zerg player starts by building Void Rays or jumps directly to Tier 2 and builds a Host.

……

Lin Ruo felt very relieved when the game ended, as the plan was exactly as he had expected.

That's how it is with StarCraft 2; the more diverse the gameplay you absorb, the more likely you are to win the game.

Lin Ruo, however, was able to master these tactics and make even more unique choices.

Only Mingkai, who was silently watching, was stunned.

He doesn't play StarCraft 2, but watching Lin Ruo's smooth and skillful gameplay, with various hotkeys triggering buildings and units, ultimately forming a large-scale army, he thought, "That's really impressive."

The reactions of the viewers in the live stream confirmed this; indeed, from their perspective, Lin Ruo was learning incredibly fast.

For ordinary people like them, it would be difficult to achieve this in less than half a month or a whole month, but Lin Ruo had already completed the fixed pattern in just two days, which was the application of tactics.

So, how far away is innovation?

...

After a full morning of live streaming, and a lunch break followed by a nap, EDG has already entered MSI preparation mode.

Just like the Spring Split, a training match was held as scheduled.

Fortunately, since Lin Ruo is a substitute, there's no need for him to train with the team all day.

Yes, he will be a substitute and stay behind the scenes for this MSI, mainly because playing him too early would prevent other teams from having a good gaming experience.

Moreover, Abu also values ​​Haro highly and wants to groom him as the next generation's crown prince, so Lin Ruo naturally accepts this and tries to give him as many playing opportunities as possible.

The more vigorous Haro was, the more comfortable he felt on the bottom.

As a substitute, what should he do? Naturally, he should stream and continue playing ranked games to get back into form. However, the game Lin Ruo is playing ranked games in is StarCraft 2.

Five days passed in a row.

As expected, Lin Ruo climbed to Gold rank in the current Chinese server's ranked ladder system, advancing three major ranks in five days, which is quite a fast climb.

This is also thanks to the special mechanics of the StarCraft 2 ranked ladder.

As we all know, the most direct way to improve your ranking on the ladder is to defeat your opponents and gain points, which will improve your ranking.

Advancing in rank requires constantly challenging opponents; when you have enough strength, you will advance in rank.

Does it take a long time to upgrade from Bronze to Diamond or Master?
Of course not, StarCraft 2 is not like League of Legends, which is slow and drawn out.

Its ranking system is very intelligent, so intelligent that it will automatically analyze your hand speed, operational skills and other abilities, which means it will give each player a fairly accurate assessment of their strength.

When the system determines that your strength is sufficient to reach a certain level, a level skipping will occur.

In other words, with sufficient strength, it is possible to upgrade directly from Silver to Platinum.

Lin Ruo felt that he was very capable. Although he did not directly upgrade from silver to gold, it did not affect his strength. After all, his performance in the past five days was quite impressive.

Because MSI is approaching and she has to leave for Berlin, Germany tomorrow, Lin Ruo only streamed the morning segment on May 7th, spending the rest of the time packing her luggage.

That evening, the MSI qualifying rounds officially came to an end, without any of the upsets that occurred in the previous edition.

Flash Wolves, the LMS representative team, defeated GMB, the representative of the Independent States League (LCL), with a score of 3:0 in the second round of the competition, and successfully advanced to the group stage.

Following closely behind, the Vietnamese team EVS unsurprisingly defeated their opponent, securing the second spot to advance to the group stage.

With the familiar five major regions plus a Vietnamese team, this year's MSI remains true to its original flavor, preserving its most authentic beauty.

"Everyone should get some rest early tonight. We need to catch our flight tomorrow morning. Don't stay up late and you'll be in poor spirits, and you'll have to adjust to the time difference later."

Abu, who is increasingly resembling a support staff member, gave some instructions to everyone after the training match.

Yes, this group doesn't include Lin Ruo. Abu doesn't need to discuss the health benefits of going to bed early and waking up early with someone who goes to bed at dawn every day.

He's just asking for trouble.

However, Lin Ruo nodded seriously. Abu's words made sense, so he should go to bed early before 11 p.m. tonight.

Actually, resting in the early morning is not the healthiest time of day; it is clearly 11 p.m.

Therefore, Lin Ruo felt that she needed to rest like this even more.

(End of this chapter)