Archive for SC2 Guide Reviews

Shokz Starcraft 2 Mastery Guide Review

Let me start off by saying this…you don't need to buy a Starcraft 2 strategy guide if you want to get better at the game. What you do need to do is practice doing the right things as much as you can. Things like macro, micro, multi-tasking as well as knowing every unit in and out, and what strategies work against what races.

The only problem is that it can be hard to find all this information in the first place! You could spend hours searching the web and only find a few good articles from people who actually know what they're talking about. And all that time surfing the web is time that you could have spent playing the game and having fun.

That's the very reason I recommend you buy a strategy guide. By having a solid source of information all in one place you won't have to search the web and sift through all the garbage out there.

Instead you can just go to your guide, pick a strategy out, learn what you need, and go play! Much faster and easier.

So if you're tired of getting bad ideas that don't work on forums and crappy websites, paying a few bucks for a guide is the way to go.

But which guide should you get?

Just like the info you'll find on the web there's a couple good guides and some bad ones as well. Through all my searching, Shokz guide is the only one that is actually written by a top Diamond player, the rest make no claims which means the author may not even play Starcraft 2!

Being a Diamond ranked player myself, Shokz guide is by far the best source of strategies and tactics out there on the web.

Click Here To Check Out
Shokz Starcraft 2 Mastery Guide

What's Good About Shokz Starcraft 2 Guide?

Here's a list of what you'll find inside the Member's Area once you have access to Shokz Guide:

  • Beginner's Guide covering everything from Starcraft 2 basics to general skills like timings and build orders.
  • Hot Key & APM Guides explaining how to be more productive during a game and have better control of your army.
  • Downloadable custom training maps that you can play to work on one thing at a time (multi-tasking, build orders, etc.)
  • 8 General guides about Starcraft 2 that cover scouting, controlling the map, race comparisons, mentality, and more.
  • Lots of strategies for each race in 1v1 that will help you keep your opponent's guessing, you should practice these one at a time until you master and memorize each.
    • At this time there's 18 Terran guides, 11 Protoss guides, and 13 Zerg guides
    • This includes build orders, how to micro, rush guides, defensive strategies, and more.
  • Complete unit guides for each race detailing every unit, their strengths, weaknesses, and strategies against each race.
  • Several team guides for 2v2 and Galaxy Editor guides will be added in the future
  • He's even got a place where you can request a strategy and vote up the one you want delivered first.

What's Bad About The Guide?

If you're a high diamond level player you may not learn a whole lot of new strategies since you've probably been using them to rank that high. Being a Diamond player myself I still do use Shokz guide as a reference and to get more ideas when I get in a slump.

Also the Campaign guide is not quite complete as of this writing, there's a few missions still left out. It is almost done and I think it will be finished shortly, but it's not there yet.

The guide hasn't been updated for awhile so a few of the strategies have been dated by the patches that Blizzard comes out with. However, the majority of the content is still good & relevant and definitely worth the read.

Final Thoughts

I'm a Diamond level Terran player and I've even learned a few new strategies that I have been using to win more games.

For any newer player there's so much information in Shokz Starcraft 2 Guide that it will keep you busy for a long time learning and developing your skill. Plus you'll be able to play more and browse the internet less, which is a huge bonus.

I've had the opportunity to review quite a few of the Starcraft 2 guides out on the market right now, and I can tell you first hand that some are terrible, while others are better, but Shokz Guide is holding it's spot as the biggest resource for the serious SC 2 player.

Click Here To Grab Your Copy of
Shokz Starcraft 2 Mastery Guide


Joana’s Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide Review

If you're serious about getting better at Starcraft 2 so you can start competing at higher levels, then a strategy guide can save you a ton of time researching and figuring things out on your own. There's a lot to learn to master Starcraft 2, and relying on free information out there on the net isn't very reliable.

But if you want to buy a strategy guide, which one should you pick up? There's a bunch out there on the market and they all have different strengths and weaknesses. I've got just about all of them, so I want to give you the opportunity to learn about the various guides before you buy.

After checking out all of them, Joana's Starcraft 2 Strategy guide is definitely one of the best out there. If you haven't heard of Joana, he's helped thousands of gamers level up at record speeds in World of Warcraft. He's a pretty hard core gamer and has a way of breaking down information in an easy-to-understand format so you can get the most out of what he has to teach you. He's done his homework with Starcraft 2 and his guide can help you learn the in's and out's of the game.

Click Here to Visit Joana's Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide

Strengths

Without a doubt, Joana's got the best Campaign strategy guide around so far. He's got actual video recordings of each mission that shows how it was beaten and how to get all the achievements on Brutal difficulty. He added in maps as well to show exactly where to go to get everything needed in each mission.

If you're into multiplayer, but don't have a very high rank on the ladder yet, you'll probably benefit from the extensive section in Joana's guide on the basics. He explains how the game works, what macro and micro are and how to do them both effectively. He's even got an area that will help you with any abbreviations that you might not understand in the Starcraft 2 universe.

As a more advanced player, I got a lot out of each of the race specific guides. Joana's Strategy Guide explains every unit in the game and the role they play in the game, what their strengths/weaknesses are and when to use them. Especially helpful are the sections on each matchup that you may face (for example as a Terran player I need to know 3 matchups: Terran vs Terran, Terran vs Zerg, & Terran vs Protoss). Strategies change depending on the race you're playing against, so knowing what your opponent will do is key if you want to win.

If you're into Team games and like 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4, Joana's Starcraft 2 Guide even has a section dedicated to team strategies. As of this writing it's not very extensive, but he says it will be updated more as time goes on.

Weaknesses

While still a great guide, Joana's Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide does have a few weaknesses that you need to know about before you buy it. First of all, it's a completely online guide, which means there's no PDF file or ebook to download that you can print out. This means that if you want it in printed form you'll have to copy/paste the info from the net into your own file.

He also formatted the guide a little funny where he has extremely long pages which makes the guide a little hard to navigate online. The nice thing about the guide being online is that it's going to be constanly updated even though there's no monthly fee, which is pretty cool.

As of this writing, the Campaign guide isn't quite done yet, but new missions are being added almost daily so I suspect that it won't be long before it's completed. Just keep in mind that if you need a strategy for the last mission and it's the day after I wrote this, you may have a little bit of a wait. =)

Final Thoughts

Joana's Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide is a solid collection of strategies and will help you get better at the game if you follow his advice. Though it's no perfect, for only a few bucks you can have a bunch of powerful strategies right at your fingertips that will help you increase your win/loss ratio online. Plus if you've got a pesky friend that you can't seem to beat and keeps talking smack, you'll be able to put him in his place. =)

And since it's being updated constantly, it's much better than buying one of those books at the store that will sit on your shelf and get old. Check it out through the link below and let me know what you think.

Click Here to Check Out Joana's Starcraft 2 Strategy Guide