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Recommended Games+ Show Spoiler ++ Show Spoiler [Game 1] +Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 1?No (13) 68% Yes (5) 26% If you have time (1) 5% 19 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 1? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): If you have time
Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 2?Yes (18) 90% If you have time (2) 10% No (0) 0% 20 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 2? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): If you have time
Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 3?Yes (46) 100% No (0) 0% If you have time (0) 0% 46 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 3? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): If you have time
Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 4?Yes (31) 97% No (1) 3% 32 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 4? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
I fat fingered it, no 3rd option and don't want to remake. Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 5?Yes (24) 100% No (0) 0% If you have time (0) 0% 24 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 5? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): If you have time
Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 6?If you have time (9) 45% Yes (6) 30% No (5) 25% 20 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 6? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): If you have time
Poll: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 7?No (12) 41% If you have time (9) 31% Yes (8) 28% 29 total votes Your vote: Recommend Snow vs Soulkey Game 7? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): If you have time
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On May 16 2025 23:42 Soulforged wrote:
Hope I got my point across this time.
I'm mostly responding to statements that a forge opener on this map is an auto loss.
This type of map design can force P to make extra early game concessions which are ass, but auto loss they are not.
It is, however, on Snow that he didn't consider risks of standard delayed forge timings vs 5 pool on that map.
No I am aware you can start the forge sooner too but the question is why would you? It's not like you go into the game with the mindset that I have to blind counter a 5 pool. And even if you do so you would look like a mug if later you find out the Zerg goes for a 3 Hatch before pool lol. So the correct mindset is you just carry on with your standard openings. It's basically just like 3 Hatch Hydra too. Protoss can always build extra cannons blindly so that they wouldn't auto loss to the bust, but why would they?
Overall it goes back to the point that Zerg is just allowed to dictate the game too much in this matchup. Protoss is always at a state of "if I preemptively block A, I however may get screwed by B"
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I already feel sad for the guy who inevitably will beat Soulkey in an ASL one day, because everyone will just yell about how it was a fluke, since apparently vs Soulkey, skill doesn't matter, it's all just luck and chance.
The most common Soulkey series are close fought 3-2 and 4-3/4-2 series. He is incredible, but certainly not invincible. And to suggest that beating him is a matter of luck is insulting to him and all of starcraft as a whole.
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Take the least bad option and despair over compound losses, or roll the dice: matchup in a nutshell.
But you aren't wrong, e.g. TvP definitely has more options in that regard.
Better recovery from an economic deficit, bunkers and turrets build very fast, can do stuff like build an e-bay and leave it at 90% and maybe cancel based on scouting, reactive wall-ins vs non-drop DT shimmers, mine positioning, repair and similar.
P meanwhile has "I start extra cannon when sair finishes and cancel it when not needed" / "cancel cannons when drones hatch vs 3hh", battery holds vs mass lings, and a proactive opener of gate FE that still has difficulty dealing with 9pool or pressuring 11(and earlier) hatch.
Maybe one day we'll see maps designed around easier cannon rushes(side hatchery or not), and ways to mineral walk probes into Z main from a completely different angle, or something along those lines. Maybe not.
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geez, what a bunch of protoss whiners, stork is proud of you guys
look at top 4 asl this season: 2 protoss
look at elo board top 10: 4 protoss
last week sponsor match snow mini vs speed rush: terran lost 1:8 wasn't even funny
about death valley pvz: best and snow chose it in asl quarter/semifinals, it was their map pick.
and best apparently chose it again for the finals, go tell him he is wrong
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On May 16 2025 12:13 XenOsky wrote:
ofc snow can beat soulkey in a BoX series, but not in the finals rounds of a premier tournament BoX series...
history is with me in this one... mb snow can beat sk in some online not so huge event. but hes most likely lossing in the biggest stage where preparation and mindgames play a much bigger role.
What you describe is a player having no ice to clutch in under pressure situations.
Like Jordan .
Or A player kicking a Penalty.
Or Soulkey being down 0-3 vs Innovation in the GSL final and coming back.
I mean they are those moments that require you to really put all emotions aside and just bring the best of you to get the win.
Snow is the perfect example of this kind of player that just fail miserable under pressure. And is unlucky to face proly the most coldest progamer in a offline setup. I would argue that SK is way more strong offline than FlaSh that is considered god of Starcraft. I mean the guy doesnt know defeat in a Final.
Gonna be time to show some apreciation to the guy and respect what he is doing cuz is not easy by any means.
But hey if that just make you feel better good for you lol.
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On May 17 2025 06:51 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:Show nested quote +On May 16 2025 12:13 XenOsky wrote:
ofc snow can beat soulkey in a BoX series, but not in the finals rounds of a premier tournament BoX series...
history is with me in this one... mb snow can beat sk in some online not so huge event. but hes most likely lossing in the biggest stage where preparation and mindgames play a much bigger role. What you describe is a player having no ice to clutch in under pressure situations. Like Jordan . Or A player kicking a Penalty. Or Soulkey being down 0-3 vs Innovation in the GSL final and coming back. I mean they are those moments that require you to really put all emotions aside and just bring the best of you to get the win. Snow is the perfect example of this kind of player that just fail miserable under pressure. And is unlucky to face proly the most coldest progamer in a offline setup. I would argue that SK is way more strong offline than FlaSh that is considered god of Starcraft. I mean the guy doesnt know defeat in a Final. Gonna be time to show some apreciation to the guy and respect what he is doing cuz is not easy by any means. But hey if that just make you feel better good for you lol.
3 posts before that i said that SK is prolly bonjwa and he deserves to win everything...
rofl
besides that, at the very top level of anything, 3% edge is HUGE... that 3% is going to show in the final results if you extrapolate everything to an infinite number of games... so SK is most likely winning due to a 3%-5% edge over ANY protoss of EQUAL SKILL...
different discussion is : is snow actually at the same skill level than SK??? we can't know for sure... but i think that he is... but he is most likely going to lose anyway due to the nature of the match up... thats all im saying...
Snow doesnt have a 50-50 chance to win, he is an underdog... that is an historical fact... nothing to do with my appreciation of SK or his skillls...
SK is the greatest zerg alive, and probably the best starcraft player in the world atm, that doesnt change the fact that when he faces protoss players, he has an edge that he didnt work for, he just happened to pick the right race to play vs protoss.
to me this is not about SK vs Snow, is about Z vs P in a sample of over 20 years... i knew that snow was going to lose this series, and i know that best is going to lose the finals, and any protoss is going to lose in that situation (BoX vs #1 zerg), unless said protoss player drastically changes the meta, like bisu did. and that shit is not happening again.
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That was a nailbiter series.
That's the kind of series I expected from two really hyped players and potentially the literal best players atm.
Although wth was that 3rd base crossspawn canon rush snow lmao. That murdered him lol
On May 17 2025 02:49 Tanzklaue wrote:
I already feel sad for the guy who inevitably will beat Soulkey in an ASL one day, because everyone will just yell about how it was a fluke, since apparently vs Soulkey, skill doesn't matter, it's all just luck and chance.
The most common Soulkey series are close fought 3-2 and 4-3/4-2 series. He is incredible, but certainly not invincible. And to suggest that beating him is a matter of luck is insulting to him and all of starcraft as a whole.
It works the same for other esports. Anybody who beats the dominating player/team will always be told it is a fluke.
Is soulkey the closest thing we have to a next flash assuming he wins vs best ? Although this series he is a little shaky but it could just be snow is also just stupid good at playing
On May 17 2025 07:17 XenOsky wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2025 06:51 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote:On May 16 2025 12:13 XenOsky wrote:
ofc snow can beat soulkey in a BoX series, but not in the finals rounds of a premier tournament BoX series...
history is with me in this one... mb snow can beat sk in some online not so huge event. but hes most likely lossing in the biggest stage where preparation and mindgames play a much bigger role. What you describe is a player having no ice to clutch in under pressure situations. Like Jordan . Or A player kicking a Penalty. Or Soulkey being down 0-3 vs Innovation in the GSL final and coming back. I mean they are those moments that require you to really put all emotions aside and just bring the best of you to get the win. Snow is the perfect example of this kind of player that just fail miserable under pressure. And is unlucky to face proly the most coldest progamer in a offline setup. I would argue that SK is way more strong offline than FlaSh that is considered god of Starcraft. I mean the guy doesnt know defeat in a Final. Gonna be time to show some apreciation to the guy and respect what he is doing cuz is not easy by any means. But hey if that just make you feel better good for you lol. 3 posts before that i said that SK is prolly bonjwa and he deserves to win everything... rofl besides that, at the very top level of anything, 3% edge is HUGE... that 3% is going to show in the final results if you extrapolate everything to an infinite number of games... so SK is most likely winning due to a 3%-5% edge over ANY protoss of EQUAL SKILL... different discussion is : is snow actually at the same skill level than SK??? we can't know for sure... but i think that he is... but he is most likely going to lose anyway due to the nature of the match up... thats all im saying... Snow doesnt have a 50-50 chance to win, he is an underdog... that is an historical fact... nothing to do with my appreciation of SK or his skillls... SK is the greatest zerg alive, and probably the best starcraft player in the world atm, that doesnt change the fact that when he faces protoss players, he has an edge that he didnt work for, he just happened to pick the right race to play vs protoss. to me this is not about SK vs Snow, is about Z vs P in a sample of over 20 years... i knew that snow was going to lose this series, and i know that best is going to lose the finals, and any protoss is going to lose in that situation (BoX vs #1 zerg), unless said protoss player drastically changes the meta, like bisu did. and that shit is not happening again.
Another balance whine ? This place is turning into sc2 discussion boards.
If you want a game with zero imbalance then dont play any multiplayer game like literally any cause there will be no completely equal multiplayer game ever. Just play single player forever there it doesnt matter if it is imbalanced or not.
Also your argument is that if Soulkey won it is cause zerg imba and if Snow win cause he deserved it ? Complete nonsense especially considering Snow fucked up the last game
Like do we start taking away wins from any protoss player away as a disguised balance whine ? LOL
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On May 17 2025 03:13 Soft_General_5023 wrote:
geez, what a bunch of protoss whiners, stork is proud of you guys
look at top 4 asl this season: 2 protoss
look at elo board top 10: 4 protoss
last week sponsor match snow mini vs speed rush: terran lost 1:8 wasn't even funny
about death valley pvz: best and snow chose it in asl quarter/semifinals, it was their map pick.
and best apparently chose it again for the finals, go tell him he is wrong
Result-based balance talk is only valid if we use large enough sample size. Over small series, you just need to look at the gameplay.
Snow Mini vs Speed Rush always ought to be 6 3 or 7 2 due to the skill gap.
Eloboard is very activity and opponent dependent and is not a good measure of balance. For example, if you filter for 2025, Sacscri is at no 14 and Hero at no 16. Doesn't make sense.
I'll give you the map pick argument. Probably they have something up their sleeve but so far the Zergs have too and it hasn't worked out for P.
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I wish we had more games on Death Valley to see how this map plays out on different scenarios.
I'm thinking, maybe the reason Best and Snow both picked it is because the possibility of Hydra bust is limited on this map (Zerg won't place their 3rd Hatch on top right due to proximity to P, so they have to use the backdoor base, which means no Hydra bust)
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On May 17 2025 14:30 TMNT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2025 03:13 Soft_General_5023 wrote:
geez, what a bunch of protoss whiners, stork is proud of you guys
look at top 4 asl this season: 2 protoss
look at elo board top 10: 4 protoss
last week sponsor match snow mini vs speed rush: terran lost 1:8 wasn't even funny
about death valley pvz: best and snow chose it in asl quarter/semifinals, it was their map pick.
and best apparently chose it again for the finals, go tell him he is wrong
Result-based balance talk is only valid if we use large enough sample size. Over small series, you just need to look at the gameplay. Snow Mini vs Speed Rush always ought to be 6 3 or 7 2 due to the skill gap. Eloboard is very activity and opponent dependent and is not a good measure of balance. For example, if you filter for 2025, Sacscri is at no 14 and Hero at no 16. Doesn't make sense. I'll give you the map pick argument. Probably they have something up their sleeve but so far the Zergs have too and it hasn't worked out for P.
that snow mini vs speed rush is also largely snow beating them up. speed and rush genetally do well vs mini. speed was in fact at 70% winrate vs mini before it.
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I personally don't care about the order of maps. I'm supposed to win at least 4 out of 7 maps, I don't really care in which order. No need to create theories about small things like map order.
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When you're the challenger and you open 9gate middle, that says it all.
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On May 17 2025 15:06 TMNT wrote:
I wish we had more games on Death Valley to see how this map plays out on different scenarios.
I think this is one of my biggest gripes with the more experimental maps. Maps are made and finished very close to the ASL season they are being used in. There is not a lot of time to amass games in practice to figure the map out. Of course this ignores the fact that players quickly veto the maps on ladder and never practice them anyways, which is also a huge issue. There is very little pressure on players to not do that since the maps are only kept for a single season and the map pool is large enough that players can skip them completely in the earlier rounds. But even if players had more of incentive to play those maps and figure them out, I feel like there is not enough time to establish a somewhat stable meta.
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On May 17 2025 14:30 TMNT wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2025 03:13 Soft_General_5023 wrote:
geez, what a bunch of protoss whiners, stork is proud of you guys
look at top 4 asl this season: 2 protoss
look at elo board top 10: 4 protoss
last week sponsor match snow mini vs speed rush: terran lost 1:8 wasn't even funny
about death valley pvz: best and snow chose it in asl quarter/semifinals, it was their map pick.
and best apparently chose it again for the finals, go tell him he is wrong
Result-based balance talk is only valid if we use large enough sample size. Over small series, you just need to look at the gameplay. Snow Mini vs Speed Rush always ought to be 6 3 or 7 2 due to the skill gap. Eloboard is very activity and opponent dependent and is not a good measure of balance. For example, if you filter for 2025, Sacscri is at no 14 and Hero at no 16. Doesn't make sense. I'll give you the map pick argument. Probably they have something up their sleeve but so far the Zergs have too and it hasn't worked out for P.
What i was trying to say TvP struggles more nowadays than PvZ in my opinion, with current meta and map pool.
Might be because of Snow's outlier 90+ % pct winrate
Hell even YSC and Shuttle are doing quite well vs terrans atm.
New map pool comes around ASL end right? Let's see who is going to favor. Will we see some anti Snow maps?
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On May 17 2025 20:47 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2025 15:06 TMNT wrote:
I wish we had more games on Death Valley to see how this map plays out on different scenarios. I think this is one of my biggest gripes with the more experimental maps. Maps are made and finished very close to the ASL season they are being used in. There is not a lot of time to amass games in practice to figure the map out. Of course this ignores the fact that players quickly veto the maps on ladder and never practice them anyways, which is also a huge issue. There is very little pressure on players to not do that since the maps are only kept for a single season and the map pool is large enough that players can skip them completely in the earlier rounds. But even if players had more of incentive to play those maps and figure them out, I feel like there is not enough time to establish a somewhat stable meta.
issue with death valley specifically was that the first two versions were just so atrocious to the balance of the match-ups that players just didn't want to play it until those issues were fixed. They were soft fixed. Players did play it occasionally but not much.
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On May 17 2025 23:54 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2025 20:47 Miragee wrote:On May 17 2025 15:06 TMNT wrote:
I wish we had more games on Death Valley to see how this map plays out on different scenarios. I think this is one of my biggest gripes with the more experimental maps. Maps are made and finished very close to the ASL season they are being used in. There is not a lot of time to amass games in practice to figure the map out. Of course this ignores the fact that players quickly veto the maps on ladder and never practice them anyways, which is also a huge issue. There is very little pressure on players to not do that since the maps are only kept for a single season and the map pool is large enough that players can skip them completely in the earlier rounds. But even if players had more of incentive to play those maps and figure them out, I feel like there is not enough time to establish a somewhat stable meta. issue with death valley specifically was that the first two versions were just so atrocious to the balance of the match-ups that players just didn't want to play it until those issues were fixed. They were soft fixed. Players did play it occasionally but not much.
That's ok but then it would have been better to save it for next season and keep testing it until then? They could have kept one of the older non-standard maps for this season that have already seen a bit of play like Monty Hall, Blitz Y or something like that.
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They should publish new maps for the next season sooner to allow time for iterations. Ideally new maps for ASL 20 should have been announced by now.
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I think death valley has been a good addition to the map pool this year. It’s nice to see something a bit different and the strats the players come up with. I get it’s not ideal from a pure balance perspective but it’s worth trying to keep the game fresh.
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United Kingdom1744 Posts
It feels like the narrative among some people that Snow can't keep it together on a big stage is really not quite fair. He delivered an incredible set of games here against the undisputed best current player. Yes, if he'd have been a bit more on top of his mental game for that last match, he could have taken it rather than do something ill-advised. But it was damned close all the way, and credit is due for that.
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On May 21 2025 22:30 ImbaTosS wrote:
It feels like the narrative among some people that Snow can't keep it together on a big stage is really not quite fair. He delivered an incredible set of games here against the undisputed best current player. Yes, if he'd have been a bit more on top of his mental game for that last match, he could have taken it rather than do something ill-advised. But it was damned close all the way, and credit is due for that.
It just something people make up to try and explain why someone loses. people seem to forget that with in competitions someone wins and someone loses. both players can be in great mental states and in peak performance mode, and one still will lose. Specifically with Starcraft the person who loses can look like they are fumbling. Pros can snowball advantages really hard and really quick. This can make it look like the losing player is falling apart mentally. They are not. They are just playing with the game state being in favor of their opponent. Everything they do has a bigger chance to fail than to succeed when playing from a deficit.
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EPT
