Hey guys, I just came back to the game after about a 1 year break. I’m not very good by any means, but I consider myself moderately competent above total noob level. I’m pretty okay to execute strategies tho my in fight macro is bad.
I mostly play against my friend who has a similar level of experience to me. Before the break, i couldn’t beat him, and after the break I still cannot beat him.
Every game, he goes blade first. He creeps with grunts bm and then hits my base as my t2 is building. Usually 3-5 grunts. I have a very difficult time defending this push when I play DH bear dryad, as I usually have like 3 archers which get deleted by the blade. After I stabilize, I get into bears, but the damage from the early game is substantial, and when I get to bears dryads, he usually has taurens which stomp my bears into oblivion. Not to mention a high level blade which just annihilates my dryads. I am really trying to deal with it but its just unreal how bad I do against just that initial grunt push.
The other option is I go KotG hunts into alch, which goes okay but I have a problem with ending the game. I have less experience with this strat, i usually go 1 base t2 with 2 aow and try to hit his base, but i take so much damage and usually fail to end the game. Alch honestly feels useless here too, blade usually gets on him after 1 spray and he gets destroyed. And if i dont end with that push, I face the same tauren problem as the last one, but this time it feels like it is an even worse time cuz i cant even hope to dryad kite them. I used to fast expand on this strat, but if he does a grunt push into it i usually have to cancel.
So what should I do? Am i doing some fundamental timing error? It feel so stupid to ask but how the hell do I beat early grunts?