A lot of people make it to dimond apparently relying on a "cheese" stratergy. It works great until they encounter people who know how to handle it and as such they start to lose. This means that dimond get some people who rely on cheese rather than skill to win and when they try using skill or fighting a better cheese they lose.
I don't use the word 'cheese'. Sounds silly. I call standard strats and .. I guess the other non-standard. It sounds to me like noobsd use it (when I lower league in my 1st beta games they cried I cheese). For me this doesn't exist, I even hail those who win with standard.
Example of someone winning vs me I respect such players: TvT Playing normal we even do the same units etc, lots of battles, I won and just when i think he;s gg he coutners me I become less supply then it turns out he has expand(s) more so I lose. Interesting game and that's a gg i.e cheese ? I like it. I smile and I say (if I knwo he copied it fromtop replay) ahh so he learnt to do it, nice, that's skill.
Example of non cheese, no respect for such: TvT on SStation, he's gold at 400 games which is like war3's level 27-30 at 200-300-400 games i,e pretty bad but there was decay there still those who made it just couldnt go higher for less games, not decay.
So he goes banshees that i stop ofc, then he starts making battlecruisers (Wtf mass air !? reminds me of the SC times in the 90s when I wasw a kid and we attacked each otehr with MASS carriers/BCs/ Guardiands/Devourers no Ground, NO Skill!), I do vikings and in some of his attacks he loses those BCs I even thought he's gg. Then we both have expands, I needed some strong counter as he had 5-6 BCruisres, I stared making vikings but mostly was 30-40 marines as he did just air units as if that's FFA. So his bc's became 10 with some vikings, my marines 40 and vikings, the marines kinda died I had to retreat, as I lost units, I couldn;t stop that.
If you call that non-cheese (yes) but skill, I beg to differ. I rolfed at that loss but you know, shit happens. There are such lamers that do something stupid and win and cause you are used to playing normal, you know... But stats and games speak for themselves. In war3 I can tell you such mass games+low levels were doing mass towers and trying smth lame non-standard that ofc didnt work 90% of the cases,
My message: Watch top replays learn from them, play like them. You can change smth to fir your style, e.g I sitll have lots of my own ideas but it has a basis of smth seen. Or if you try to be smart not learning from replays, you will likely end up like those at 400 games low league, doing smth silly that doesnt win 90% then when they match bronze due to too many losses, it works there lol.