Does FlaSh owe his success to picking Terran? - Page 4

On May 29 2023 17:39 Magic Powers wrote:

It takes years for a player to become number one. It takes a similar amount of time for the frontrunner effect to change a matchup statistic. For example because of Boxer and Yellow, many Koreans were inspired to practice terran and zerg, and while only few of them made it to the top, they helped push the meta and the win rate.
The protoss meta stagnated, perhaps because Garimto, Nal_rA, Kingdom, Reach and Anytime didn't have the same pull. Anytime in particular looked very interesting for a brief period, but something stopped him.
The lack of optimizations wasn't because protoss couldn't be innovated, as Bisu proved a few years later with fast expand builds and his infamous dark templars, or with Stork using carriers to make PvT look broken. Had these two popped up sooner as top players, maybe a larger share of protoss players would've pushed through with optimizations. Especially terran players would've suffered from that. But instead Bisu had to carry the crown all by himself. Innovation rarely comes from only one person.

This is why it's so important to acknowledge the historic changes as something fluid and dynamic, but certainly not fair or equal. As the meta progresses, the level of meta variability is more likely to be reduced while matchup fairness is more likely to increase, and that's exactly what we've been observing. Maps and matchups used to have more imbalances than nowadays, and big meta changes used to occur much more often.
Just consider: what would've happened without iloveoov showing that terran has strong macro capabilities in every matchup? Or without Flash and his race to 3 weapons upgrades in TvP? I think both protoss and zerg would've stood a much better chance for years longer. But instead we had Boxer, Nada, iloveoov, Flash, and Fantasy, five top players who innovated terran and they also showed the results to prove the viability of their ideas. And Flash stuck around for so many years that more of his optimizations just kept coming. For zerg it was Yellow, Savior and Jaedong, and later also Larva, and there were a few more top zerg players who also brought optimizations like JulyZerg and GGPlay.

Protoss had only three or four players at the very top with Nal_rA, Reach, Bisu and Stork. They stood up against a large number of innovators from the other two races. Out of these four, only Bisu was ever truly dominant.
What would've happened if Rain had stuck around post-ASL? He was among the greatest hopes for protoss. What about Jangbi late Kespa? He looked promising, but his drive was lacking.

It took many years before Mini and Snow finally popped onto the scene, and they've been making big splashes. Mini has already innovated and optimized a few things in PvZ, and Snow has found further optimizations, plus he has pushed PvT back in protoss' favor. It's now an open buffet for other protoss players. They can absorb this new information and push it further, or they can let it waste away and protoss will continue to suffer from a lack of talent.

On May 29 2023 19:42 Magic Powers wrote:
I can even give an example of how it was Flash who optimized PvT from the protoss perspective. When he did his random run, he introduced the method of continuously storming scv lines. In and of itself this wasn't groundbreaking, but his idea had an important twist: he didn't intend to kill many scvs, instead he just wanted to keep their numbers low. That way terran would have a harder time building a strong 200/200 army from 3 bases. It would take longer and allow protoss to fight smaller skirmishes while rapidly taking bases. HT and shuttles were the key units in this strategy. The idea was improved upon a few times until it became standard.

On May 29 2023 21:56 Magic Powers wrote:


Ok I must've imagined all the comments praising Flash for demonstrating a fresh take on a PvT tactic.

Your argument could also be used to take away from Larva's broodling invention. It was done before, he didn't do it first. Only the context in which he did it was new, and he improved on it, so it's not new.

If we go by that logic, then Bisu's fast expand in PvZ also wasn't new, and his dark templar harassment wasn't new, and his corsair builds weren't new. It has all been done before, he just did it better.

On May 29 2023 22:56 Magic Powers wrote:
No, I think we're simply talking past each other. I'm not only talking about grand innovations, but also optimizations. That's why I've been using that word as well.
Viability comes from innovation + optimization. You can't make something viable just by innovating it, that's not enough. But first you have to innovate it before you can optimize it. This is why the person optimizing something isn't always the same person who innovated it. Flash optimized storm drops in PvT, but he didn't invent them. Anyhow, it was because of him that protoss players got on board with the idea of storming the living hell out of scv lines, when previously that wasn't much of a thing.

On May 29 2023 23:14 Magic Powers wrote:
Why do you keep saying that "nobody has ever done that before"? That's not the point I'm making. I'm saying that he's done it in a different way, far more aggressively.
It has evidently resulted in far more of these builds being used by protoss. It was debated in the community how valid this is, and as it turns out the top pros are in agreement that it's very valid and can be done every other game.