Both races are insanely hard and the fact that Flash plays terran doesn't diminish any of his accomplishments. In TvZ in particular my (uneducated) opinion is that Zerg often plays with less information and has such a reliance on individual units in the game, that they can almost be considered hero units (mutalisks, lurkers). All in all, combined with a map pool that might favour terran as of right now, zerg's mistakes feel more consequential.

ninazerg

United States7291 Posts

January 18 2017 06:02 GMT

#22

I believe in God now.

LightSpectra

United States1560 Posts

January 18 2017 15:00 GMT

#23

On January 18 2017 07:28 SC2BF3Love wrote:
Jaedong is better player that Flash, Zerg is much more harder to play at this level, just look at the way TvZ plays out, if the terran doesnt take any damage from zerg on the muta part, terran he literally just won, Terran just needs to have open space to beat zerg, since with stim you are able to micro marines vs anything a zerg can throw at them.

and lets not talk about late game army vs late game army, zerg has a really hard time controlling everything at once
meanwhile Terran just siege and Stim.

Aside from the fact that your analysis is just wrong... Flash indeed makes T look overpowered, but Jaedong playing against just about anybody else makes Z look overpowered. If we remove TBLS's trophies from the post-Savior period, Z has been the most dominant of the three races, with starleague golds from GGPlay, July, EffOrt, Luxury, Calm, and Hydra. By contrast, the only T winners were Fantasy and ForGG. (Protoss looks even worse.)

Besides, all this talk of imba is pointless. There's no TvZ in a vacuum, you always play on maps, and maps have varying level of balance. Certain map pools overall favored T at times and Z at other times. That's not even to mention shifts in the meta-game.

Salazarz

Korea (South)2591 Posts

January 18 2017 17:07 GMT

#24

On January 17 2017 16:44 nbaker wrote:

Show nested quote +

No way. Flash was so much better than JD from 2010 on, both head to head and against other opponents. The matchup thing doesnt really hold water because Flash also dominated TvP against Bisu, Stork, Best and others.

If you're going to talk time periods, probably shouldn't forget that Flash lost basically all of the important games in 2011/2012 so "2010 on" should be more like "2010-2011" =)

parkufarku

882 Posts

January 18 2017 22:41 GMT

#25

On January 17 2017 16:39 FlaShFTW wrote:
Just because a matchup is slightly in the favor of one side doesnt constitute 3-1 in finals? O.O but ok yeah. whatever you say bud.

I wouldn't say slightly. A Terran at Flash or Fantasy's level was just unstoppable (Fantasy made a lot of mistakes and wasn't refined as Flash). As long as it wasn't a straight up mistake, outplay, or cheese, T had a substantial advantage. Zergs were forced to open Mutas as part of the standard BO but if the Mutas did no damage, that was already a sign that Z was gonna lose that game. A lot of Zergs would just die before Hive hit, but those that did make it to Hive relied on Ultralings to bail them out. That was still ok before the latter days of BW when Terrans started incorporating mech principles in Zerg matchups, combining mass mines, and tanks, BCs and vessels to just annihilate the Zerg meat army. And that still may have been bearable if spawn broodlings cost 100 energy or less. But it cost a whooping 150 energy. Combine all this with the fact that Zerg had to play reactive to Terran; they were forced to go big econ openings to keep up with T but had a substantial risk of all sorts of cheese and attacks that, even when failed, wouldn't mean instant loss for T.

Now, am I saying a better Zerg player would lose to a worse skilled Terran player? No. Skill level overcomes balance thankfully. But when you are at the top, and everyone around you is nearly your equal nor better than you, that was Flash's scenario. The closest person in skill that could take him down was Jaedong, but JD played Zerg and Flash played Terran.

As 'balanced' as people like to label BW, it still was not at the top level. We even have Zero today saying that a good Zerg will not beat a good Terran straight up unless T makes mistakes. And this is very true.

parkufarku

882 Posts

January 18 2017 22:53 GMT

#26

On January 17 2017 16:44 nbaker wrote:
No way. Flash was so much better than JD from 2010 on, both head to head and against other opponents. The matchup thing doesnt really hold water because Flash also dominated TvP against Bisu, Stork, Best and others.

You can't just say an X player is better than Y player. You have to look at the entire circumstances. The maps they played on during the time, the races they played, the teams they played on.

TvP was the most balanced non-mirror matchup, but at Flash or Fantasy's level, it was still skewed as advantageous for Terrans. It's funny because the matchup is Protoss-favored until progamer level.

There was a lot of timing windows where T could kill P, even a strong FD push is included in these. P started doing a lot better in this matchup when they started abusing carrier transitions and relied on strong 3rd base macro plays to prepare them into late game, where they could use arbiters and storm to dwindle the Terran deathball army. Cost for cost though, P's army just wasn't as cost efficient as T's, especially if you consider the fact that P's army was much more gas dependent than T's. And without good storms and good shuttle drops or arbiter spells, a P army just wasn't gonna win against a T army straight up late game. So the burden was on Protosses to pull off insane spells and critical zealot bombs.

Flash beating Stork is nothing to scoff at, seeing as how Stork was a PvT specialist. Same for Best. But Bisu, no. I don't think Stork was ever at Flash's level in terms of skill. So Flash beating them doesn't disprove any balance issues Terran has.

DyEnasTy

United States3714 Posts

January 19 2017 07:21 GMT

#27

On January 17 2017 14:59 parkufarku wrote:
For those of you who came to BW scene too late to witness this:

1. It is predicted by experts that JD would've beat Flash in the "power outage" game

2. Flash should be required to return some of his trophies for abusing the T's broken race advantages

3. What JD did in the ZvZ matchup where it was the most volatile - beat so many other Zergs that his % was hovering 70%+ deserves recognition on its own

4. Flash was known for his heavy macro standard play, and sometimes greedy 3 CC plays, while JD was known for his aggressive style that wasn't exactly cheese openings

5. Greatest feat JD had done was beat a proxy 2 gate after he opened a 3 hatch before pool. It was supposed to be a Build Order instant loss

6. Flash had better arguably better teammates; Jaedong had Hiya and that was pretty much it

7. For Jaedong to win as much as he did against Flash playing an uphill and unfair ZvT matchup is another accomplishment on its own.

To me, Jaedong >>>>> Flash if you consider these factors

1 get out

2 get out

6 get out

7 get out

and finally, get out.

BigFan

TLADT24920 Posts

January 19 2017 19:41 GMT

#28

On January 18 2017 09:58 Starlightsun wrote:
Great writeup Bigfan. I would feature this if I were a mod.

thanks. I could feature it if I wanted to but I don't think that'll be looked kindly upon XD

On January 19 2017 00:00 LightSpectra wrote:

Show nested quote +

pretty much this. If Terran looks imba, it's usually due to several factors and of course, it's also Flash playing the race.

I love both players and wanted Jaedong to take their series, hence the ending of this blog. However, it's outright ridiculous to see some people chuck Flash's wins up to his race, rather than the player's hard work, map pool and a lot of other factors.

TheYango

United States47024 Posts

January 20 2017 08:42 GMT

#29

I used to hate these race imbalance/player fanboying discussions way back.

But now, just to see them again in 2017...I don't even care. It's just great that BW is back.