On October 23 2017 02:18 Ganfei2 wrote: I think Kwark's analysis is entirely right. Also, enough with the tired argument that a commentator cannot possibly assess what a progamer did wrong in a game. No, Kwark doesn't need to translate it to Korean and send it to Rain. Think about how silly that statement is. Rain did play poorly. Progamers aren't infallible beings.
Anyone with an understanding of what they're watching would be throwing their hands up asking why Rain is suiciding 200/200 armies into huge static defense against a Zerg that is doing nothing but turtling, while the P has complete map control, a huge supply advantage, and untaken expansions all over the place. Rain's play reminded me of my own, i.e. impatience is my greatest weakness.
The "quit starcraft" etc. comments are a bit much but I don't think it's serious. I assume Rain will learn from his mistakes. I have no doubt he's analyzed the replays and come to many of the same conclusions that Kwark himself did.
Rain did not play poorly.
Kwark's analysis seems centered on the idea that with Rain up bases or even bases all he had to do was defend and win. I couldn't disagree more. I've posted it before, but I'll post again because it's highly relevant:
Bisu vs Larva (11:30)
This game has Larva go quickly down from serious mistakes, unable to make units and forced to sunken heavily. By the time he can even consider moving out Bisu has a full six functional bases to Larva's four. Without Larva ever killing or preventing a Bisu base, Larva is still able to pull the game out; from a SIX base protoss against his 4. Not just that...the best protoss of all.
Rain wasn't attacking because he doesn't know how to play PvZ, he was attacking primarily because he knows that he can't hope to win a longer game against a man that can defend like that.
Those attacks by Rain only look stupid because Kwark's erroneous thinking that Rain could just sit back and "be ahead" against Larva. On even bases Rain never wins. Those busts aren't very good odds, and usually end in disaster; but Rain clearly understands that he has a better chance of breaking Larva before he is absolutely entrenched than letting Larva secure his defense and max unit supply.
lol Kwark. I already mentioned this before but it's likely he wanted to siege the sunkens from the high ground and bust that from the front at the same time, thus granting him access to Larva's 3 o'clock base from the side. I think he made a control mistake and the plan kinda failed. Notice how he kept attacking the base at 3 and 6 because he realized that he needs to stop those 2 from mining to win. He took out the 3 at least once then Larva entrenched himself (don't recall if he killed it more).
On October 23 2017 02:18 Ganfei2 wrote: I think Kwark's analysis is entirely right. Also, enough with the tired argument that a commentator cannot possibly assess what a progamer did wrong in a game. No, Kwark doesn't need to translate it to Korean and send it to Rain. Think about how silly that statement is. Rain did play poorly. Progamers aren't infallible beings.
Anyone with an understanding of what they're watching would be throwing their hands up asking why Rain is suiciding 200/200 armies into huge static defense against a Zerg that is doing nothing but turtling, while the P has complete map control, a huge supply advantage, and untaken expansions all over the place. Rain's play reminded me of my own, i.e. impatience is my greatest weakness.
The "quit starcraft" etc. comments are a bit much but I don't think it's serious. I assume Rain will learn from his mistakes. I have no doubt he's analyzed the replays and come to many of the same conclusions that Kwark himself did.
Rain did not play poorly.
Kwark's analysis seems centered on the idea that with Rain up bases or even bases all he had to do was defend and win. I couldn't disagree more. I've posted it before, but I'll post again because it's highly relevant:
This game has Larva go quickly down from serious mistakes, unable to make units and forced to sunken heavily. By the time he can even consider moving out Bisu has a full six functional bases to Larva's four. Without Larva ever killing or preventing a Bisu base, Larva is still able to pull the game out; from a SIX base protoss against his 4. Not just that...the best protoss of all.
Rain wasn't attacking because he doesn't know how to play PvZ, he was attacking primarily because he knows that he can't hope to win a longer game against a man that can defend like that.
Those attacks by Rain only look stupid because Kwark's erroneous thinking that Rain could just sit back and "be ahead" against Larva. On even bases Rain never wins. Those busts aren't very good odds, and usually end in disaster; but Rain clearly understands that he has a better chance of breaking Larva before he is absolutely entrenched than letting Larva secure his defense and max unit supply.
In my point of view KwarK is right about what he say. when larva was aggressive Rain held it perfectly fine, so i see no problem for him to continue in the same way. I saw very good play from larva in this video, but also saw a sloppy play by bisu, he didnt care for way too much shuttles full of reavers. However it was the same scenario as larva vs rain, Larva did nothing to Bisu expanding all over the place, while Bisu made so many futile attacks. I want to see what will happen if he plays the way KwarK said. Again looking at this, Arbiters are looking to me as the better solution, just hallucinate the arbiter and go for recall.
On October 23 2017 08:17 KwarK wrote: Thus explaining why he recalled his entire army onto a mined out island and left it there.
A few possibilities:
1) Bad decision 2) Wanted to get key tech structures. I know the pool was there, possibly mound and/or spire + hive 3) Wanted to draw Larva's attention there in hopes of making harass/arbiters succeed elsewhere, especially when attention goes there 4) Combination of #2 and #3 5) Something I'm not clever enough to think of but a player like Rain might be
I really think it was a combination of #2 and #3. I think it would have worked as well if he hadn't got another arbiter scourged shortly thereafter (probably part of why he left it there). In all honesty, I think leaving it there didn't turn out too poorly for him, Larva really wanted to get rid of that army, and had significant trouble doing so; in what was one of his moments of what I saw as pretty poor execution in that game. Larva threw a significant number of units at that ball, whitting it down very slowly.
Would it have been better to recall 3' or 6'? Yes, absolutely. However, Larva had already scouted the arbiter tech, and had been defending very well the entire game. I suspect Rain thought his arbiter would just end up being scourged if he had tried to hit either of those bases, and/or that he would recall onto turtled lurker defense.
In my mind, when I go through Rain's decisions, especially considered imperfect information; there seems to be clear and present lines of reasoning for why he made the choices and did, and why he shyed away from others.
If four base Larva can end up beating Bisu on six bases (and I've seen games like this MANY times from Larva), I really don't think the assumption that Rain can just defend and turtle to secure the win really holds up. This is especially true when you consider Rain plays his best when he is playing an aggressive, macro oriented style that sacrifices a little efficiency in frontal assaults for creating harass opportunities.
That assumption if basically the cause of my disagreement with your analysis of the games. If Rain could just sit back and win the games defending, then I'd be in almost total agreement with what you wrote. However, I feel like Larva is almost impossible to beat in drawn out lategames, given his incredible defending ability and that Rain is likely to lose such games even playing from what we would consider as an advantageous protoss position. Combine that with Larva's tendency to lose being in that first perhaps 8-20 minutes of the game, and Rain being the best at the aggressive, harass oriented macro; it's not for me to understand why Rain tried what he did. We already saw that with a lesser zerg like Jaedong (pains me to write that) Rain did fine. It was only when faced with Larva's and SK's impeccable defense that he was made to look foolish.
It's also worth noting that aggressive play is VERY much like that. When you play highly aggressive you usually look like a stubborn moron when you lost, and rather brilliant when you when.
In terms of your analysis the bottom line for me is that I believe it's far too harsh on Rain, and extremely lacking in praise for what was some very, very good zerg play from Larva minues some really bad blunders here and there. Larva felt like he would be brilliant for 3,5, maybe 10 minutes at a time, then do something stupid; then be brilliant again. Those mistakes might have cost him against a protoss like Bisu.
On October 23 2017 02:18 Ganfei2 wrote: I think Kwark's analysis is entirely right. Also, enough with the tired argument that a commentator cannot possibly assess what a progamer did wrong in a game. No, Kwark doesn't need to translate it to Korean and send it to Rain. Think about how silly that statement is. Rain did play poorly. Progamers aren't infallible beings.
Anyone with an understanding of what they're watching would be throwing their hands up asking why Rain is suiciding 200/200 armies into huge static defense against a Zerg that is doing nothing but turtling, while the P has complete map control, a huge supply advantage, and untaken expansions all over the place. Rain's play reminded me of my own, i.e. impatience is my greatest weakness.
The "quit starcraft" etc. comments are a bit much but I don't think it's serious. I assume Rain will learn from his mistakes. I have no doubt he's analyzed the replays and come to many of the same conclusions that Kwark himself did.
Rain did not play poorly.
Kwark's analysis seems centered on the idea that with Rain up bases or even bases all he had to do was defend and win. I couldn't disagree more. I've posted it before, but I'll post again because it's highly relevant:
This game has Larva go quickly down from serious mistakes, unable to make units and forced to sunken heavily. By the time he can even consider moving out Bisu has a full six functional bases to Larva's four. Without Larva ever killing or preventing a Bisu base, Larva is still able to pull the game out; from a SIX base protoss against his 4. Not just that...the best protoss of all.
Rain wasn't attacking because he doesn't know how to play PvZ, he was attacking primarily because he knows that he can't hope to win a longer game against a man that can defend like that.
Those attacks by Rain only look stupid because Kwark's erroneous thinking that Rain could just sit back and "be ahead" against Larva. On even bases Rain never wins. Those busts aren't very good odds, and usually end in disaster; but Rain clearly understands that he has a better chance of breaking Larva before he is absolutely entrenched than letting Larva secure his defense and max unit supply.
In my point of view KwarK is right about what he say. when larva was aggressive Rain held it perfectly fine, so i see no problem for him to continue in the same way. I saw very good play from larva in this video, but also saw a sloppy play by bisu, he didnt care for way too much shuttles full of reavers. However it was the same scenario as larva vs rain, Larva did nothing to Bisu expanding all over the place, while Bisu made so many futile attacks. I want to see what will happen if he plays the way KwarK said. Again looking at this, Arbiters are looking to me as the better solution, just hallucinate the arbiter and go for recall.
This is where ALOT of the disagreement comes from. These shuttles are not sloppy play at all in my opinion. I think there is a strong tendency to attribute, except in the case of an obvious baller micro moment, a mistake in aggression to the aggressor himself, especially when it comes to the loss of a valuable unit.
It looks sloppy because Larva's defense is so spot on in this case. Aggressive play well defended always looks bad.
On October 23 2017 09:19 Twinkle Toes wrote: Larva made him pay for choosing and eliminating a weak Jaedong. I don't know which I want more, Larva vs. Flash or Larva vs. Bisu
Larva v Bisu would probably be the better series in all likelihood. Larva vs FlaSh has the potential for some great games, but as well prepared and good as FlaSh is in series play; I expect him to come with some great builds and generally disrupt Larva.
I think Larva's got a fighting shot at pushing FlaSh...but I'm still expecting a solid 3-1 or 3-0 from FlaSh v Larva. Bisu vs Larva would be surprise to see a 3-0 in either direction.
On October 23 2017 02:18 Ganfei2 wrote: I think Kwark's analysis is entirely right. Also, enough with the tired argument that a commentator cannot possibly assess what a progamer did wrong in a game. No, Kwark doesn't need to translate it to Korean and send it to Rain. Think about how silly that statement is. Rain did play poorly. Progamers aren't infallible beings.
Anyone with an understanding of what they're watching would be throwing their hands up asking why Rain is suiciding 200/200 armies into huge static defense against a Zerg that is doing nothing but turtling, while the P has complete map control, a huge supply advantage, and untaken expansions all over the place. Rain's play reminded me of my own, i.e. impatience is my greatest weakness.
The "quit starcraft" etc. comments are a bit much but I don't think it's serious. I assume Rain will learn from his mistakes. I have no doubt he's analyzed the replays and come to many of the same conclusions that Kwark himself did.
Rain did not play poorly.
Kwark's analysis seems centered on the idea that with Rain up bases or even bases all he had to do was defend and win. I couldn't disagree more. I've posted it before, but I'll post again because it's highly relevant:
This game has Larva go quickly down from serious mistakes, unable to make units and forced to sunken heavily. By the time he can even consider moving out Bisu has a full six functional bases to Larva's four. Without Larva ever killing or preventing a Bisu base, Larva is still able to pull the game out; from a SIX base protoss against his 4. Not just that...the best protoss of all.
Rain wasn't attacking because he doesn't know how to play PvZ, he was attacking primarily because he knows that he can't hope to win a longer game against a man that can defend like that.
Those attacks by Rain only look stupid because Kwark's erroneous thinking that Rain could just sit back and "be ahead" against Larva. On even bases Rain never wins. Those busts aren't very good odds, and usually end in disaster; but Rain clearly understands that he has a better chance of breaking Larva before he is absolutely entrenched than letting Larva secure his defense and max unit supply.
In my point of view KwarK is right about what he say. when larva was aggressive Rain held it perfectly fine, so i see no problem for him to continue in the same way. I saw very good play from larva in this video, but also saw a sloppy play by bisu, he didnt care for way too much shuttles full of reavers. However it was the same scenario as larva vs rain, Larva did nothing to Bisu expanding all over the place, while Bisu made so many futile attacks. I want to see what will happen if he plays the way KwarK said. Again looking at this, Arbiters are looking to me as the better solution, just hallucinate the arbiter and go for recall.
This is where ALOT of the disagreement comes from. These shuttles are not sloppy play at all in my opinion. I think there is a strong tendency to attribute, except in the case of an obvious baller micro moment, a mistake in aggression to the aggressor himself, especially when it comes to the loss of a valuable unit.
It looks sloppy because Larva's defense is so spot on in this case. Aggressive play well defended always looks bad.
No I think this was a source of confusion.
The real disagreement is whether Rain is ahead or not; whether he needed to break Larva or not.
Kwark was extremely critical of Rain’s drops because he deems them unnecesary and executed without forethought. His opinion is that Rain already had an insurmountable advantage.
You think the drops and attacks are necessary because Rain cannot afford to not break Larva. Your opinion is that Rain loses if he leaves Larva alone.
You are completely correct that it is very easy to fall into the trap of judging an attack to be sloppy simply based on its outcome. Kwark may seem like he is doing exactly this but I do not believe that is the case. There is just a very vast difference in your opinions on who is ahead at the time.
On October 23 2017 08:17 KwarK wrote: Thus explaining why he recalled his entire army onto a mined out island and left it there.
A few possibilities:
1) Bad decision 2) Wanted to get key tech structures. I know the pool was there, possibly mound and/or spire + hive 3) Wanted to draw Larva's attention there in hopes of making harass/arbiters succeed elsewhere, especially when attention goes there 4) Combination of #2 and #3 5) Something I'm not clever enough to think of but a player like Rain might be
I really think it was a combination of #2 and #3. I think it would have worked as well if he hadn't got another arbiter scourged shortly thereafter (probably part of why he left it there). In all honesty, I think leaving it there didn't turn out too poorly for him, Larva really wanted to get rid of that army, and had significant trouble doing so; in what was one of his moments of what I saw as pretty poor execution in that game. Larva threw a significant number of units at that ball, whitting it down very slowly.
Would it have been better to recall 3' or 6'? Yes, absolutely. However, Larva had already scouted the arbiter tech, and had been defending very well the entire game. I suspect Rain thought his arbiter would just end up being scourged if he had tried to hit either of those bases, and/or that he would recall onto turtled lurker defense.
In my mind, when I go through Rain's decisions, especially considered imperfect information; there seems to be clear and present lines of reasoning for why he made the choices and did, and why he shyed away from others.
If four base Larva can end up beating Bisu on six bases (and I've seen games like this MANY times from Larva), I really don't think the assumption that Rain can just defend and turtle to secure the win really holds up. This is especially true when you consider Rain plays his best when he is playing an aggressive, macro oriented style that sacrifices a little efficiency in frontal assaults for creating harass opportunities.
That assumption if basically the cause of my disagreement with your analysis of the games. If Rain could just sit back and win the games defending, then I'd be in almost total agreement with what you wrote. However, I feel like Larva is almost impossible to beat in drawn out lategames, given his incredible defending ability and that Rain is likely to lose such games even playing from what we would consider as an advantageous protoss position. Combine that with Larva's tendency to lose being in that first perhaps 8-20 minutes of the game, and Rain being the best at the aggressive, harass oriented macro; it's not for me to understand why Rain tried what he did. We already saw that with a lesser zerg like Jaedong (pains me to write that) Rain did fine. It was only when faced with Larva's and SK's impeccable defense that he was made to look foolish.
It's also worth noting that aggressive play is VERY much like that. When you play highly aggressive you usually look like a stubborn moron when you lost, and rather brilliant when you when.
In terms of your analysis the bottom line for me is that I believe it's far too harsh on Rain, and extremely lacking in praise for what was some very, very good zerg play from Larva minues some really bad blunders here and there. Larva felt like he would be brilliant for 3,5, maybe 10 minutes at a time, then do something stupid; then be brilliant again. Those mistakes might have cost him against a protoss like Bisu.
I could be wrong but my recollection is that only one hat, a pool, and the spire were at that base. And that rather than contest the recalled army Larva happily forfeited the base. His only response was to use a few longs to scout for plague and try to scourge the arbiter once.
What it came down to all game is that what the actual objectives were and what Rain fought over had basically no overlap. A recall at 6, with a probe following to secure it, potentially game winning. The recalled army becomes a garrison denying Larva a key expansion. A recall at 12 is just inexplicable to me unless he recalls back out straight after.
When controlling the middle and those last expansions was everything Rain voluntarily put all his units on an island and left them out of the deciding fights.
Overall I think the kindest defence is the one Tasteless gave him while trying to explain his repeated throwing of his army into a fortified position. It's possible that his macro is so good that against most players on ladder he just easily converts his advantage into a won game by doing these attacks. And so he didn't really understand a need not to just immediately go allin while ahead because usually he doesn't get punished for it. But he was choosing to allin from ahead, and that's beneath his skill level.
I cant take any writing seriously when it hinges on pro players not understanding the game...
Rain had this game won for 20 straight minutes if he could just work out that there was nothing he could do about Larva's first four bases, and nothing that he needed to do about them. Rain was starving Larva, not the other way around, but he seemed to be completely unaware that he had already won the game. It was just sad. Apparently Rain has absolutely no idea how to play PvZ when macro alone isn't enough.
Apparently, one of the best players in the world is actually a fucking moron who doesnt understand basic starcraft BUT!! he was also ahead and winning for most of the game because hes JUST THAT FUCKING GOOD!
Rain had this game won for 20 straight minutes if he could just work out that there was nothing he could do about Larva's first four bases, and nothing that he needed to do about them. Rain was starving Larva, not the other way around, but he seemed to be completely unaware that he had already won the game. It was just sad. Apparently Rain has absolutely no idea how to play PvZ when macro alone isn't enough.
Apparently, one of the best players in the world is actually a fucking moron who doesnt understand basic starcraft BUT!! he was also ahead and winning for most of the game because hes JUST THAT FUCKING GOOD!
k...
Care to offer a rival explanation for his allin attacks from ahead? If you disagree that he was throwing the game accidentally, are you implying that he did it deliberately?
On October 23 2017 09:19 Twinkle Toes wrote: Larva made him pay for choosing and eliminating a weak Jaedong. I don't know which I want more, Larva vs. Flash or Larva vs. Bisu
If Bisu takes down Flash then I want Bisu to take it all.
If Flash takes out Bisu then I want Larva to take it all.
It's just a better story like that. Much better than "Oh FUck yeah Bisu played at the top of his skill and it was enough to win a series vs Flash. He's the best! Fuck yeah! Oh fuck! he lost the finals to Larva. Who's the best? Hmmmm blablaa who's the best ZvP and who's the best PvT and who's the best ZvT?"
I want one straight up champion and I want it to be Bisu.
Would be nice to see Larva take it though, after all the Tesagi-talk, "What can Zerg do against such reckless mech?". All the new people who never experienced the natural change of meta and top players, only knows of a deus ex machina in the shape of a company called Blizzard and their patches.
Word from the wise Artosis, when you are ahead, get more ahead! Get another base!
But ya....it hard to tell when you are ahead especially on that weird map where zerg can expand to the side. Also being a some what zerg favored map made Rain probably felt pressure to do something. Considering that he was maxed out and the zerg army was some what split, it seemed logical to think he could break the zerg
On October 23 2017 10:36 SheaR619 wrote: Word from the wise Artosis, when you are ahead, get more ahead! Get another base!
But ya....it hard to tell when you are ahead especially on that weird map where zerg can expand to the side. Also being a some what zerg favored map made Rain probably felt pressure to do something. Considering that he was maxed out and the zerg army was some what split, it seemed logical to think he could break the zerg
Yeah. And the playstyle Rain has developed is a very aggressive one. That's his usual way to go about things, VS a Zerg with strong macro who wants long games that seems like a reasonable thought.
He should have mixed it up after some point though. At least move his army towards Larvas main to force him to making more sunkens below as well. Treat it a bit like a TvZ like that. Go for another elevator. or multipronged attacks or slowpush.
Overall I'm thinking that Protoss should go sair reaver whenever Larva does stuff like that. Slow push his sunken societys, keep air control to be able to keep his shuttles and reavers safe and possibly elevate.
Only logical reason I see him recalling to the main was because he figured it was the least defended place and he was correct. He destroy a hive, spire and pool for basically free. I think where he messed up is that he sent half his army down south for no reason. He should of recalled out, or committed to breaking the zerg natural attacking from the high ground and front to secure that mineral expansion by the zerg natural. Sending half that army down south achieve nothing and was a bad call considering he lost his shuttle which slowed him down for having to baby sit his reavers.
But ya I think reaver and sairs push wouldof been better as well
On October 23 2017 12:06 KwarK wrote: Or at least some sairs, enough to protect his shuttles and arbs.
This was probably the oddest/worst seeming thing, especially given Larva's use of primarily scourge. All I can think is that he may have been low on gas because he was dropping alot of templar + archon/temp in army + arbiters. That does eat gas.
Good read all in all, at least better than the previous reviews. Larva and hero article were nice and in depth, while Bisu preview was meh and Flash preview predictable. I notice certain biased towards Larva though, as a result of bias for Rain maybe?
EPT
Bisu vs 
Larva (11:30)
