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It may be true that T>Z fundamentally at the highest levels. The reason is simply that terran benefit more from micro/multitasking than zerg do. So while zvt may have been balanced at skill levels from 3 years ago, even if both races increase in skill at the same rate, the advantage goes to terran.
The main example is lurkers vs marines. At noob levels, lurkers > marines. At the pro level however, a group of Casy's or Hwasin's marines will beat a few lurkers without much trouble. This is especially true in small-scale battles, which modern terrans can force with their sick multi-tasking. Ling micro can only do so much for support.
(Sure, zerg had their time in the sun with muta stack micro, but this has largely been nullified by terrans now. Hold lurker is a good trick, but there's only a small window where it can be effective, and even so terran reaction time can abate this.)
edit: One way to test this hypothesis would be to have pros play on oldschool maps and see if the balance has tilted in terran's favour. The closest thing we'll get for now is Namja Iyagi vs Return of the King. Namja Iyagi used to be heavily zerg favoured.
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There was a big map disadvantage, but anyone who says  Jaedong played his best those games against  forGG_V_ is lying.
Jaedong played tired, and forGG_V_ played well. Maybe if the maps were balanced it would have been 3-2, or 3-1, but forGG_V_ would have won still.
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I'm not sure if I agree with the whole post, but some of it definitely applies. Tiamat is a joke ZvT map, at least give Jaedong SOME chance to come back from 2-0 :/
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plexa !!! thanks for the article 
but.. poor jaedong .. ]:
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On August 10 2008 02:35 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2008 02:32 Shauni wrote:
I read it all plus the comments and I even agreed with the last Plexa article yet I can't for the love of my life agree with this article. Sorry but no zerg is 'helpless' even if the map is slightly imbalanced. And really, Troy isn't that bad for zerg. Not Blue Storm or Othello either. You do realize that by saying that the maps are not imbalanced (especially bluestorm) that you are acknowledging that P>Z and T>Z on a fundamental level right? Else how do you explain the 30% winrate vs Protoss on BS? And sure "helpless" was an hyperbole, but at an inherent disadvantage is the truth
You need access to practise quarters results to be sure about the imbalance of those maps because a couple of TV games can't possibly count as real statistics. And analyzing how much cheese that erupts from playing on certain maps is just ridiculous. I said - and agree to the point - that those maps are slightly favored against zerg, more or less but not to the state that Jaedong is 'helpless'. And I don't think you can talk about maps as 'imbalanced' as a whole, because in a map like Blue Storm, zerg has advantage early game against a protoss but loses that advantage as the map is split. It's the same on all non mirrored matchups on that map. Is TvP imbalanced on Blue Storm because it forces people to go carriers? Was Monty Hall imbalanced TvZ before the silver strat became popular? Is Tiamat imbalanced because four terrans won in a row against zerg? Imbalance is such a subjective term and it's impossible to analyze how much each player suffer from it.
I was not commenting because I want to argue that there is no imbalance in those maps. I wanted to comment about it because you made it sound like it was the end of Jaedong. As many other people said in this thread, those maps are nowhere near as imbalanced as many mappools in the past has been.
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I agree with many of the issues here. Some of the maps are clearly T/P favoring while I wouldn't say any maps are favoring Z. I don't think troy/athena/BS is really terrible maps for zvp, but indeed MSL final maps were pretty dumb. It looked awfully hard to beat Hwasin in them, and after that all the tricks in his sleeve were kinda showed for ForGG. After all it's really zerg who has to do tricks to beat top terrans while they just have to play very solid to do fine. Overall zergs have been doing very bad against terrans lately, and I don't think that means hwasin/forgg etc. have suddenly raised to level of top zergs like JD.
It's an overstatement though to say JD was destined to go 0-3. It did look like he had to do desperate stuff to survive though. He was doing fine in Colosseum so that game was definately possible for him to win. I agree that Tiamat looks like pretty bad map for zvt, and in othello T also has slight advantage.
Clearly when talking about map imbalance you can't really use such small samples as arguments as you did. I'd say 30% in less than 15 game sample doesn't prove anything, and as said 9-15 still isn't proof but when this happens in every map granted: slight overall imbalance shows when facing against players who play close to perfect solid games á la forgg/hwasin. I wouldn't notice the imbalance in lower levels since opponents @ iccup C-/C don't really use maps into their favor enough, but players at individual league finals definately do.
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Even though I totally hate Jaedong, it seems this is the correct reason as to why Jaedong has been losing recently. Great writeup, as usual.
Plexa is on a blogging spree. O_O
<3
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United States10774 Posts
Plexa as much as I love your articles I cannot agree with this one. Did you even watch Jaedong vs han on Blue Storm? JD had a comfortable lead all along, then fucking blew it with horrible attack timing and micro. I wouldn't attribute that to the map...he got outplayed. 3-5 on Troy is HEAVILY Protoss favored? Whaaaaat.
Jaedong failed to adapt and went with typical fast hive build every game vs ForGG. Got trashed the same way every game.
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Jaedong is a monster on Blue Storm he lost ot Han , maybe because he got overconfidant and over extended himself after their first encounter don't know normaly he has an endless suply of lings after his lurker wall on his side of the map .
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can you explain why the maps are imbalanced besides the numbers?
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jaedong had the same advantage forgg did when they played, he was able to see forgg's strategies in advance when they practiced. its not like forgg was the only one paying attention when theu practiced
you cant rely on statistics because there are way more good terran and protoss players than there are zerg
terran: nada hwasin flash midas iris lomo leta forgg sea.really sea fbh, the list goes on and on
protoss: best, much, stork(maybe not anymore), bisu, jangbi, kal
zerg: jaedong luxury julyzerg
there are simply a lack of good zerg players and using simple matchup statistics will not work, especially when there are relatively few games being played on maps
and kwanro isnt exactly "good" anymore
but i feel that jaedong was cheated out of his msl victory as well. forgg was totally undeserving imo, he lucked past flash who decided that a greedy and stupid bo would work 3 times in a row, even though the previous games totally proved him wrong
but isnt it still a victory for lecaf? :D
but you are right, jaedong losing to han is pretty bs t.t
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United States10774 Posts
Btw since when was Blue Storm considered a bad map for Zerg? Zerg has a HUGE lead over Terran on that map, and ZvP is balanced.
Troy, Athena, Blue Storm. Zerg friendly. Jaedong blew it.
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United States1655 Posts
On August 10 2008 03:34 OneOther wrote:
Jaedong failed to adapt and went with typical fast hive build every game vs ForGG. Got trashed the same way every game.
It's not so much that Jaedong failed to adapt, but he was forced to go fast Hive in games 2 and 3. His Mutalisk harass did next to zero damage to ForGG's economy, so Jaedong had to tech quickly to Defiler to have even a remote chance of fighting off ForGG's ball.
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imo the maps are slightly imbalanced, but not to the point where you can write JD off. I'd bet that Flash takes the opening Blue Storm game, just because he seems really strong on that map every game I watch. I'm just praying that JD 3-1's him becaues a Blue Storm final would be shitty for him imo.
Offtopic: Does anyone know what time the stream starts in Eastern Standard Time?
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On August 10 2008 03:15 Shauni wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2008 02:35 Plexa wrote:On August 10 2008 02:32 Shauni wrote:
I read it all plus the comments and I even agreed with the last Plexa article yet I can't for the love of my life agree with this article. Sorry but no zerg is 'helpless' even if the map is slightly imbalanced. And really, Troy isn't that bad for zerg. Not Blue Storm or Othello either. You do realize that by saying that the maps are not imbalanced (especially bluestorm) that you are acknowledging that P>Z and T>Z on a fundamental level right? Else how do you explain the 30% winrate vs Protoss on BS? And sure "helpless" was an hyperbole, but at an inherent disadvantage is the truth You need access to practise quarters results to be sure about the imbalance of those maps because a couple of TV games can't possibly count as real statistics. And analyzing how much cheese that erupts from playing on certain maps is just ridiculous. I said - and agree to the point - that those maps are slightly favored against zerg, more or less but not to the state that Jaedong is 'helpless'. And I don't think you can talk about maps as 'imbalanced' as a whole, because in a map like Blue Storm, zerg has advantage early game against a protoss but loses that advantage as the map is split. It's the same on all non mirrored matchups on that map. Is TvP imbalanced on Blue Storm because it forces people to go carriers? Was Monty Hall imbalanced TvZ before the silver strat became popular? Is Tiamat imbalanced because four terrans won in a row against zerg? Imbalance is such a subjective term and it's impossible to analyze how much each player suffer from it. I was not commenting because I want to argue that there is no imbalance in those maps. I wanted to comment about it because you made it sound like it was the end of Jaedong. As many other people said in this thread, those maps are nowhere near as imbalanced as many mappools in the past has been.
Monty Hall has mixed feelings. Both maps (normal and SE) are around same %winrate for terranvszerg, but main thing is how mirrors been going on. As we can see Z has bad winratio vs Protoss so game lately switched to PvT and/or PvP and finally TvT festival. Something must be wrong with map if zergs don't play that map anymore.
Little different with Colosseum, even if map is good for ZvP but the risk facing terran is high and its very hard map for zerg to win. So map has either PvP / TvT or PvT.
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On August 10 2008 02:00 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2008 01:54 SuperJongMan wrote:
It coulda easily easily been 4-4 if Best didnt best Lux. Your claim for troy is weak.
I do agree with the basic sentiment that the maps made it so much harder for JD. But I think ForGG deserves credit on his brackets. Such a lame finals. Do you want me to unpack every ZvP on troy? + Show Spoiler +Yarnc > Backho -> i dont even recall this game haha  but its backho so its probably terrible Lux > Bisu -> 5 pool brilliance, one time wonder build July > Best -> Drone drill, cheese at its finest Troy is an imbalanced map, thats why it was removed from the TSL. I can't beleive i have to argue this point ;;
So really, you have no games to prove shit about troy.
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Drone drill, 5 pool, and a game you don't remember, and a sneak attack from Best.
Have you even seen a late game on the highest level? If not, can you play one yourself?
If not, how can you accurately commentate?
If you have nothing right to say about troy, just don't say anything.
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On August 10 2008 03:39 OneOther wrote:
Btw since when was Blue Storm considered a bad map for Zerg? Zerg has a HUGE lead over Terran on that map, and ZvP is balanced.
Troy, Athena, Blue Storm. Zerg friendly. Jaedong blew it.
Those wins are from pre 1.2/1.1 time after that map has been altered and zerg harass is little bit weaker.
Bad thing is that TLPD mixed all versions together, so nowdays Z has low winratios. See it from proleague thread.
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I think the blame for Jaedongs poor results lately have been more his fault that anyone elses. Yes the pool does favour Terran, and yes Jaedong in the past has overcome map imba for titles, but he just doesn't have his perfection play anymore. If you watch the games on Athena and Tiamat you'll see that Forgg executes perfect timing pushes that would have been applicable on most other maps. Jaedong just dealt with them poorly.
Obviously this isn't just to criticise Jaedong, the skill of his opponents has also been a huge factor. People clearly don't want to see it, but Han played good and Forgg played incredibly. Jaedong has been playing good lately too, but thats all his play has been.
My thoughts.
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United States1866 Posts
Man this is a great article.
Jaedong has had such a fucking hard career thus far, all his leagues have been packed full of anti-zerg maps that he has, quite amazingly, overcome. But the MSL finals against fOrGG were just.... stupidly imbalanced, and i'm a little dumbfounded by the people trying to argue that they arent.
There was even a translated interview with Jaedong BEFORE the finals over on GG.net, where he said that he predicted it would be an easy win for fOrGG because of the many days where he simply could not win on the maps during practice. (Not to mention the translated interview with fOrGG where he said whenever teammates play each other, it usually favors the Terran so he was confident about that). Jaedong was faced not with just a difficult final (ala sAviOr vs NaDa Shinhan 3), he was faced with an impossible final.
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I dont think bluestorm has even changed much in pvz since its change, protoss have figured out the map, they haven't been granted any particular change in the geography that allows them to dominate. Zergs have failed to adapt, Jaedong has failed to adapt, its their failings. Jaedongs awkwardness in his games against forgg and Hwasin through most of his matches with him, can be placed on Jaedongs lack of confidence recently, less so than the maps. Unless you can point out why Tiamat, Othello etc, are so damned impossible for even an incredibly skilled zerg to win, you are simply grasping at straws.
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EPT
