On May 09 2025 12:57 Severedevil wrote: Snow, please bring reavers back to PvZ. There's gotta be a unit composition that makes them effective in the midgame. They're powerful AOE that's cheap on gas, and they even outrange lurkers!
There was a DT-Reaver timing like a decade ago iirc maybe that'll make a comeback. It looked stupid strong although idk how well it will do against modern zergs especially the current best zerg and the most dominating player
Zerg can just suicide some units on the Shuttle and it's job done. It's not a viable strat on modern games.
There are two scenario that Snow can beat Soulkey: massive build order luck (the kind of blind 12 Nexus/ no scout builds that Mini tends to use, or what Best did to Queen earlier), or Soulkey just underperforms on that day.
If both players make no major mistakes and just play the game out in a standard manner, like in a lengthy 20+ minute macro game, Zerg wins most of the times. And Snow plays standard 90 percent of the times.
Reaver is viable on certain maps that have difficult to traverse terrain for the zerg to quickly respond to the shuttle moving around between bases. Metropolis for example is pretty good, much like how we had La Campanella being a good map for offensive reavers vs zerg. As long as the hydras can be outpaced by shuttle movement, reaver shuttle is viable.
On May 10 2025 00:28 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote: Reaver is viable on certain maps that have difficult to traverse terrain for the zerg to quickly respond to the shuttle moving around between bases. Metropolis for example is pretty good, much like how we had La Campanella being a good map for offensive reavers vs zerg. As long as the hydras can be outpaced by shuttle movement, reaver shuttle is viable.
Let me add that reavers does poorly against air units
Game 2 was disgusting. Rush was up 51 supply (135-84) on Soulkey but couldn't break through because of fast defilers. What exactly was Rush supposed to do in that situation? 30-40 supply for each player would be workers, so Rush's army was about double the supply of Soulkey's. Then in the endgame, Rush lost the supply lead and GG'd less than a minute later.
In any other matchup, a 51 supply lead means you're going to win 9 times out of 10. It just seems totally insane that fast defilers with Dark Swarm + Consume can stall that big of an army until the macro from the extra base kicks in.
On May 10 2025 04:21 Gippy wrote: Game 2 was disgusting. Rush was up 51 supply (135-84) on Soulkey but couldn't break through because of fast defilers. What exactly was Rush supposed to do in that situation? 30-40 supply for each player would be workers, so Rush's army was about double the supply of Soulkey's. Then in the endgame, Rush lost the supply lead and GG'd less than a minute later.
In any other matchup, a 51 supply lead means you're going to win 9 times out of 10. It just seems totally insane that fast defilers with Dark Swarm + Consume can stall that big of an army until the macro from the extra base kicks in.
I think most of that is because of the early and mid game. Rush scouted what Soulkey was doing way too late to react to it in a proper way. Because of that he went for a suboptimal tech against the lurkers and Soulkey got a very fast third up completely unscathed (wasn't even pressured, had to build 0 sunkens, lost 0 drones). Soulkey also caught the first group of M&Ms out on the map and took a very favourable trade. At that point, if he had gone muta, I would dare to say he probably could have ended the game. Then Rush took some unfavourable trades against the soft contain. All this enabled Soulkey to go into late game with a very large lead, especially tech-wise. Supplies can lie in TvZ because they don't show which player is ahead in tech, which is much more important in this match up. 150 terran supply means nothing if it's just M&M's with a couple of vessels and a couple of tanks against a dozen defilers. You would need a fleet of vessels at that point. Appart from that, I also think Soulkey's defense was insane. At every point he was a step ahead of Rush, i.e. his defense was already set up when Rush arrived. Usually what you do as Terran is to attack on multiple fronts, use drops, move around the dark swarms. Rush used one drop all game and then parked it in the top left for the rest of the game. The rest of his army moved around as one blob instead of trying to hit two or more locations at once. To be fair, the map helped Soulkey quite a bit in his defensive stance. There were hardly any weaknesses in his defense I could spot (which doesn't mean there were none). I personally wonder if Rush could have transitioned into mech as well when I saw how the map helped Soulkey defend 4 bases. Seems good for mech on paper but he might have been too far behind to switch.
On May 09 2025 12:57 Severedevil wrote: Snow, please bring reavers back to PvZ. There's gotta be a unit composition that makes them effective in the midgame. They're powerful AOE that's cheap on gas, and they even outrange lurkers!
There was a DT-Reaver timing like a decade ago iirc maybe that'll make a comeback. It looked stupid strong although idk how well it will do against modern zergs especially the current best zerg and the most dominating player
Zerg can just suicide some units on the Shuttle and it's job done. It's not a viable strat on modern games.
There are two scenario that Snow can beat Soulkey: massive build order luck (the kind of blind 12 Nexus/ no scout builds that Mini tends to use, or what Best did to Queen earlier), or Soulkey just underperforms on that day.
If both players make no major mistakes and just play the game out in a standard manner, like in a lengthy 20+ minute macro game, Zerg wins most of the times. And Snow plays standard 90 percent of the times.
Honestly that reaver-dt strat i've seen was from a decade ago. No surprise it doesnt work given people just build spires in all matchups nowadays it seems
On May 11 2025 14:36 Emnjay808 wrote: Soulkey making Rush look like chop liver. No matter what, Im always impressed with how seamlessly Soulkey gets plague off. Its a thing of art.
Yeah kinda disgusting how good he is at everything.
The last zerg champions not Soulkey iirc are effort and larva. They didnt look this close to dominating
On May 10 2025 04:21 Gippy wrote: Game 2 was disgusting. Rush was up 51 supply (135-84) on Soulkey but couldn't break through because of fast defilers. What exactly was Rush supposed to do in that situation? 30-40 supply for each player would be workers, so Rush's army was about double the supply of Soulkey's. Then in the endgame, Rush lost the supply lead and GG'd less than a minute later.
In any other matchup, a 51 supply lead means you're going to win 9 times out of 10. It just seems totally insane that fast defilers with Dark Swarm + Consume can stall that big of an army until the macro from the extra base kicks in.
Supply doesn’t matter that much in TvZ if Zerg has at least 3 base and 70 supply. Rush needed to go tanks to fight off the lurker contain which resulted in way fewer vessels to control zerg. It was just a matter of time where wears you down with defiler, gets a 4th/5th and runs you over with ultra ling.
On May 07 2025 03:55 Ideas wrote: Soulkey's scouting and reactions are so insanely good. After game 1 rush couldn't do anything without SK knowing about it and having the perfect response.
Soulkey also has an insane level of optimization in how he places and moves his units. For example when he went in to take down one of Rush's expos, forgot which game it was, he perfectly aligned all his hydras and lings to instantly maximize damage efficiency, but also to cut off the Rush's escape path and reinforcement path. No other zerg ever does these things with this level of attention to optimization for every single scenario. timestamped
It is so interesting I don't recall one TvZ moment where Mutalisks got irradiated in higher brackets. Maybe happened in Ro16 and Ro8, but I don't recall SK being intimidated by Science Vessels irradiating his Mutalisks like forever this ASL. It is very interesting how he differs from regular zergs and how his starcraft math is more granular than others at picking winning engagements. I guess with that mechanics, he really turtles better than other zergs. When is the last time you saw a zerg play from an expo deficit and play to win. I guess True is the only one with his 7 pool against Barracks and I gave him enough props for that.
On May 08 2025 01:14 Miragee wrote: The first game gave me some hope for a somewhat even series but holy this was one-sided. It's insane that at this level one player makes the other one look like 2 ranks below.
I honestly don't know if Soulkey can be stopped. I personally don't think his ZvP is too hot but both Snow and Best don't seem like the kind of candidates who can beat him. I think Light has the best chances but Soulkey's ZvT looks insane with his defense being almost impenetrable. It's usually not something I say for TvZ, especially when Light is involved, but I think it's going to be an uphill battle for Light in this case.
Contrasting SK with True is really a stark example. One fights a losing battle, one loses a winning one even the opponent calls at the post game interview.
On May 10 2025 04:21 Gippy wrote: Game 2 was disgusting. Rush was up 51 supply (135-84) on Soulkey but couldn't break through because of fast defilers. What exactly was Rush supposed to do in that situation? 30-40 supply for each player would be workers, so Rush's army was about double the supply of Soulkey's. Then in the endgame, Rush lost the supply lead and GG'd less than a minute later.
In any other matchup, a 51 supply lead means you're going to win 9 times out of 10. It just seems totally insane that fast defilers with Dark Swarm + Consume can stall that big of an army until the macro from the extra base kicks in.
Supply doesn’t matter that much in TvZ if Zerg has at least 3 base and 70 supply. Rush needed to go tanks to fight off the lurker contain which resulted in way fewer vessels to control zerg. It was just a matter of time where wears you down with defiler, gets a 4th/5th and runs you over with ultra ling.
That is why Terrans go SV bio because it costs nothing to terran to irradiate a unit and everytime a Science Vessel irradiates a defiler, or a lurker, Zerg gets 150 vespene gas down. It is really a numbers game. JyJ tried to innovate TvZ with mech and now other players are following suit with no difference in outcome.
EPT
