On October 01 2025 15:10 Bonyth wrote: Larva retired from competetive online gaming. I think using his quarter-final game against Bisu for the sake of balance talk is just disrespectful to other zergs that compete on a daily basis.
This. Larva used to be the goat until a few years ago, but then he stopped playing and lost all of his skills. Lately he's been improving, but he's still a shadow of his former self.
The goat ? He basically won a very close ASL vs Mini and retired lol. I dont ever remember him dominating everyone. Him like Soulkey was getting eliminated at early ASls cuz of zerg vs zerg. Then he beat Jaedong and few others on his way to the final. Larva was Known for playing 1000 games vs FlaSh and taking 20 lol.
Btw Game 1 What he did with the mass sunkens if Bisu just put 4 reavers to shutdown that shit.. But instead Bisu doing Bisu things decided it was more optimal to attack up ramp.
Larva was extremely strong. In my view he was the clear favorite against everyone other than Rush, who failed to stop him. After that I was almost 100% convinced he'd win the tournament, although Mini shocked us with his impressive skills. He made it a close final match.
If Larva had kept practicing after that, I'm convinced he would've destroyed everyone for years to come. Other players were very lucky that he went on a hiatus, because no other zerg player had such a strong macro game. He was the reason why Flash stopped doing mech transitions in every TvZ, as Larva proved that zerg was actually a clear favorite against that strategy. Towards the end of their rivalry, Flash could only beat Larva with heavy early/mid game aggression, and so the TvZ meta reverted back from mech to bio.
So actually. Terran stopped doing the mech switch hardcore after the new 1-1-1 Build of FlaSh.Then Soma introduced real counters to it and terrans started doing it again but less cuz the maps werent the most apropiated to play that style. Instead going 4`barracks +1 into 2 starports like we still see was the build of choice. Mech Switch died cuz of the mass Queens style. For a while if i remember correctly Mong was the only guy that stick to it. Now i have to admit something. in 2021 i wasnt following starcraft. I kinda lost interesting after blizzard not upgrading the terrible mappool of Benzene/eclipse/optimizer/Plasma/Ringing bloom etc.
In fact i only recall seeing the finals from that ASL and i tuned in cuz im actually friends with Larva so i was curious if he could beat Mini lol. If Larva actually had year of domination in 2021 like Snow and Soma are doing then my bad.Genuinely didnt know. About Macro. Call me crazy but Effort macro is kinda insane too.There is this famous game between him and FlaSh before going to military that everyone was freakin out.
On September 30 2025 21:36 sas.Sziky wrote: Bisu with no mapple defense practice looks strong this is why he is my favorite Protoss player. Just not die against Soma all ins, and then win this ASL man, if Jaedong cant do it this season
I told before you can have a huge power spike at 9 if you mineral boost vs 12 if you don't. All those all ins Soma deal have a 45 second advantage. It is either do or die for protoss and soma can overcommit the protoss to defense without revealing his tech.
45 second ? oo you mean with boost u can like ~5 second erlier a pool,lair and etc as zerg perspectiva. 45 is to much man :D
You can boost saving 5 seconds, but saving 1 overlord and 3 drones, 4 larvae in essence, is part of the 45 seconds. The math goes, how much minerals extra is how much mining time. You save 200 from boosting and 250 from not spending for those units, something like that. I just went for the highest income gap and that was at that moment. You might say aha got you, however who cares whether you have 9 or 12 drones if you mineral boost the same income. PS: correction 9 mineral boost is 43.58s of normal 9 drone economy.
On October 01 2025 15:10 Bonyth wrote: Larva retired from competetive online gaming. I think using his quarter-final game against Bisu for the sake of balance talk is just disrespectful to other zergs that compete on a daily basis.
This. Larva used to be the goat until a few years ago, but then he stopped playing and lost all of his skills. Lately he's been improving, but he's still a shadow of his former self.
The goat ? He basically won a very close ASL vs Mini and retired lol. I dont ever remember him dominating everyone. Him like Soulkey was getting eliminated at early ASls cuz of zerg vs zerg. Then he beat Jaedong and few others on his way to the final. Larva was Known for playing 1000 games vs FlaSh and taking 20 lol.
Btw Game 1 What he did with the mass sunkens if Bisu just put 4 reavers to shutdown that shit.. But instead Bisu doing Bisu things decided it was more optimal to attack up ramp.
Larva was extremely strong. In my view he was the clear favorite against everyone other than Rush, who failed to stop him. After that I was almost 100% convinced he'd win the tournament, although Mini shocked us with his impressive skills. He made it a close final match.
If Larva had kept practicing after that, I'm convinced he would've destroyed everyone for years to come. Other players were very lucky that he went on a hiatus, because no other zerg player had such a strong macro game. He was the reason why Flash stopped doing mech transitions in every TvZ, as Larva proved that zerg was actually a clear favorite against that strategy. Towards the end of their rivalry, Flash could only beat Larva with heavy early/mid game aggression, and so the TvZ meta reverted back from mech to bio.
So actually. Terran stopped doing the mech switch hardcore after the new 1-1-1 Build of FlaSh.Then Soma introduced real counters to it and terrans started doing it again but less cuz the maps werent the most apropiated to play that style. Instead going 4`barracks +1 into 2 starports like we still see was the build of choice. Mech Switch died cuz of the mass Queens style. For a while if i remember correctly Mong was the only guy that stick to it. Now i have to admit something. in 2021 i wasnt following starcraft. I kinda lost interesting after blizzard not upgrading the terrible mappool of Benzene/eclipse/optimizer/Plasma/Ringing bloom etc.
In fact i only recall seeing the finals from that ASL and i tuned in cuz im actually friends with Larva so i was curious if he could beat Mini lol. If Larva actually had year of domination in 2021 like Snow and Soma are doing then my bad.Genuinely didnt know. About Macro. Call me crazy but Effort macro is kinda insane too.There is this famous game between him and FlaSh before going to military that everyone was freakin out.
Larva was the player who kept working on the broodling counter strategy to Flash's mech switch. He was the one who figured out that it is a hard counter. It developed over many dozens if not hundreds of games between those two players. Then Flash realized it wasn't working anymore and started relying on a repertoire of marine centric strategies, which included all kinds of older high aggression builds that he knew from his long standing career. This put Larva back in his place for quite a while until he also started to learn to deal with that aggression. He wasn't good at that stuff, and he got much better at it during his rivalry with Flash. This all preceded his ASL victory. Flash is basically responsible for much of Larva's later success. And their rivalry is responsible for the meta changes that destroyed the TvZ mech switch.
Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
On October 01 2025 15:10 Bonyth wrote: Larva retired from competetive online gaming. I think using his quarter-final game against Bisu for the sake of balance talk is just disrespectful to other zergs that compete on a daily basis.
This. Larva used to be the goat until a few years ago, but then he stopped playing and lost all of his skills. Lately he's been improving, but he's still a shadow of his former self.
The goat ? He basically won a very close ASL vs Mini and retired lol. I dont ever remember him dominating everyone. Him like Soulkey was getting eliminated at early ASls cuz of zerg vs zerg. Then he beat Jaedong and few others on his way to the final. Larva was Known for playing 1000 games vs FlaSh and taking 20 lol.
Btw Game 1 What he did with the mass sunkens if Bisu just put 4 reavers to shutdown that shit.. But instead Bisu doing Bisu things decided it was more optimal to attack up ramp.
Larva was extremely strong. In my view he was the clear favorite against everyone other than Rush, who failed to stop him. After that I was almost 100% convinced he'd win the tournament, although Mini shocked us with his impressive skills. He made it a close final match.
If Larva had kept practicing after that, I'm convinced he would've destroyed everyone for years to come. Other players were very lucky that he went on a hiatus, because no other zerg player had such a strong macro game. He was the reason why Flash stopped doing mech transitions in every TvZ, as Larva proved that zerg was actually a clear favorite against that strategy. Towards the end of their rivalry, Flash could only beat Larva with heavy early/mid game aggression, and so the TvZ meta reverted back from mech to bio.
So actually. Terran stopped doing the mech switch hardcore after the new 1-1-1 Build of FlaSh.Then Soma introduced real counters to it and terrans started doing it again but less cuz the maps werent the most apropiated to play that style. Instead going 4`barracks +1 into 2 starports like we still see was the build of choice. Mech Switch died cuz of the mass Queens style. For a while if i remember correctly Mong was the only guy that stick to it. Now i have to admit something. in 2021 i wasnt following starcraft. I kinda lost interesting after blizzard not upgrading the terrible mappool of Benzene/eclipse/optimizer/Plasma/Ringing bloom etc.
In fact i only recall seeing the finals from that ASL and i tuned in cuz im actually friends with Larva so i was curious if he could beat Mini lol. If Larva actually had year of domination in 2021 like Snow and Soma are doing then my bad.Genuinely didnt know. About Macro. Call me crazy but Effort macro is kinda insane too.There is this famous game between him and FlaSh before going to military that everyone was freakin out.
Larva was the player who kept working on the broodling counter strategy to Flash's mech switch. He was the one who figured out that it is a hard counter. It developed over many dozens if not hundreds of games between those two players. Then Flash realized it wasn't working anymore and started relying on a repertoire of marine centric strategies, which included all kinds of older high aggression builds that he knew from his long standing career. This put Larva back in his place for quite a while until he also started to learn to deal with that aggression. He wasn't good at that stuff, and he got much better at it during his rivalry with Flash. This all preceded his ASL victory. Flash is basically responsible for much of Larva's later success. And their rivalry is responsible for the meta changes that destroyed the TvZ mech switch.
Too bad he cannot queen up every game because even in zvp he can steer a queen better than zero does.
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Don’t overanalyze it. I learnt to take his posts as a form of art and enjoy them without trying to look for a meaning.
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Not a strange concept. Since boosting give you some income faster and if you do it overtime is clear that you can get great results when it comes to eco. That is the reason sometimes do you even see 10 hatchery or 11 hatchery this days trying to counter 8 rax or 9pool vs zerg. 11h or 10h vs gateway first. The problem is that doing that you are sacricing other aspects of your game for the return of extra larva at early game. And the most important if terran just predict you will play like that and just hard counter you with eco Rush u are in more big trouble. So all those variations can be valid against the right card. But i mean that is pretty much progamer games these days. We truly need a map revolution.
I think the issue of you not understanding him is cuz he is thinking out of the box. And since the game is from 1998 we just get with the flow that everything has been explored. The reality is that no one is really trying to push out of the conform zone.Take as example Larva on game 1 vs Bisu and his strategy. I havent seen any other pro exploring such routes.
btw im also this way LOL. thats why i keep asking to get maps like Sylphid 1.0 Circuit Breakers Apocalypse Allegro etc. And to recent times Tempest was one of my favorites too. I really hate the gimmick maps being included .
On September 30 2025 21:23 TMNT wrote: Yeah, I can feel the pain of Zergs during that 10-13th min power spike of Protoss when they have that kind of a death ball army and you can't be sure whether they'll hit the natural or the 3rd to put your defence.
It seems like the benefits from that sneaky 4th base of Larva didn't kick in yet for him though. Bisu probably hit the only timing for him.
This is why zergs are all inning so hard early game to either get ahead or outright kill protoss. It gets really hard for zerg to snowball into solid macro game onwards from 11 min and forward on these maps.
On the topic of maps, it is interesting but probably not meaningful due to miniature sample sizes that some maps have seen wild swings in win rates from ASL season 19 to 20.
In ZvP: Metropolis - 50% -> 16.7% Pole Star - 60% -> 25% Radeon - 50% -> 20%
There's a common theme here. Wide chokes. See larva vs bisu games? It felt pretty one sided on these maps. Bisu can just 1a2a3a4a into it or into narrower point, if larva put 80% of his army in wide chokes.
Those maps didn't change between seasons, so you can't really use obvious features of them to justify swings in win rates. The sample sizes are too small for those numbers to be meaningful anyway.
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Not a strange concept. Since boosting give you some income faster and if you do it overtime is clear that you can get great results when it comes to eco. That is the reason sometimes do you even see 10 hatchery or 11 hatchery this days trying to counter 8 rax or 9pool vs zerg. 11h or 10h vs gateway first. The problem is that doing that you are sacricing other aspects of your game for the return of extra larva at early game. And the most important if terran just predict you will play like that and just hard counter you with eco Rush u are in more big trouble. So all those variations can be valid against the right card. But i mean that is pretty much progamer games these days. We truly need a map revolution.
I think the issue of you not understanding him is cuz he is thinking out of the box. And since the game is from 1998 we just get with the flow that everything has been explored. The reality is that no one is really trying to push out of the conform zone.Take as example Larva on game 1 vs Bisu and his strategy. I havent seen any other pro exploring such routes.
btw im also this way LOL. thats why i keep asking to get maps like Sylphid 1.0 Circuit Breakers Apocalypse Allegro etc. And to recent times Tempest was one of my favorites too. I really hate the gimmick maps being included .
No I think the reason WE don't understand him is because he often writes weird English.
For example, this sentence:
The math goes, how much minerals extra is how much mining time
I struggle to understand what it means. So I have to guess, and if you guess, you may be unsure of what he actually means. And he has like 10 sentences like that in a paragraph and at the end you have no clue what he tries to say.
I can rarely dispute the content of what he says, not because he's thinking out of the box. For example when he said Zerg should infest CC instead of attacking Turrets, ok I get it, ridiculous idea but I get it. But most of times I don't even understand what he says. So I figure we could use a translator here.
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Not a strange concept. Since boosting give you some income faster and if you do it overtime is clear that you can get great results when it comes to eco. That is the reason sometimes do you even see 10 hatchery or 11 hatchery this days trying to counter 8 rax or 9pool vs zerg. 11h or 10h vs gateway first. The problem is that doing that you are sacricing other aspects of your game for the return of extra larva at early game. And the most important if terran just predict you will play like that and just hard counter you with eco Rush u are in more big trouble. So all those variations can be valid against the right card. But i mean that is pretty much progamer games these days. We truly need a map revolution.
I think the issue of you not understanding him is cuz he is thinking out of the box. And since the game is from 1998 we just get with the flow that everything has been explored. The reality is that no one is really trying to push out of the conform zone.Take as example Larva on game 1 vs Bisu and his strategy. I havent seen any other pro exploring such routes.
btw im also this way LOL. thats why i keep asking to get maps like Sylphid 1.0 Circuit Breakers Apocalypse Allegro etc. And to recent times Tempest was one of my favorites too. I really hate the gimmick maps being included .
No I think the reason WE don't understand him is because he often writes weird English.
The math goes, how much minerals extra is how much mining time
I struggle to understand what it means. So I have to guess, and if you guess, you may be unsure of what he actually means. And he has like 10 sentences like that in a paragraph and at the end you have no clue what he tries to say.
I can rarely dispute the content of what he says, not because he's thinking out of the box. For example when he said Zerg should infest CC instead of attacking Turrets, ok I get it, ridiculous idea but I get it. But most of times I don't even understand what he says. So I figure we could use a translator here.
On September 30 2025 23:51 TornadoSteve wrote: When im allinin, its usually to outright kill my opponent, or get ahead. This sounds about right
The issue is that they are "forced" to because if they don't protoss is usually ahead in these macro games. It gets real easy for protoss to just macro up to 140-150 psi and expand to 3 bases if z also tries to do the same. P can 1a2a3a4a5a into wide chokes on these modern maps and get some really good engagements and snowball into 4/5 base protoss with 2/2 upgrades. This is why soma has worked so hard on mineral optimization and crafted a well thoughout builds to kill protoss in early mid games or mind trick protoss into being defensive.
No bro. I don't know how you got it in a total opposite way like that.
Protoss is only ahead during the 10-13th minute if they do some damage to Zerg in the earlier phases, or by a BO luck. Like a sneaky Zealot getting some Drone early on, or a pre-storm Zealot timing that deals some damage, or a good trade between Corsairs vs Muta/Scourge, or a failed Hydra bust attempt from Z. Basically, race A is ahead of race B at the x minute because because player A deals some damage to player B y minutes earlier, which is true in every matchup.
There's no games where Protoss and Zerg both play safe, just macro up, and no one does anything to the other, and Protoss can naturally get ahead like you described. If that were the case, why would Protoss players even bother with Gate expand? Just FFE, build Cannons to be safe, camp and macro until you get 150 supplies and push out lol. And the global PvZ win rate would be ~55% instead of ~45% like currently lol.
You're just so tunnel visioned into those games where Protoss crushes Zerg at their power spike, because well, you're a Zerg supporter and can only see the difficulties of Zerg in the matchup, like the problem with maps you always claim. Why can't we have mineral lines that don't allow Zealot to hide? Why can't we have narrow chokes to defend? Basically, why mapmakers don't make the matchup easier for us?
I'm really curious what your mmr is and how you keep refuting what every z pros are saying right now. You really don't seem to understand zvp that well. The games where they go 50:50 are games that z/p cross spawn and constantly scout each other and z ends up making only 6 lings and protoss goes straight to stargate before cannon.
See the games snow played vs soma today (FYI snow destroyed soma 7-2 as soma seemed to purposefuly go standard to get ready for bisu matches. Soma did say he will play 30 games every day until the day of the match to increase his mechanics and he has ALWAYS said he lacks standard macro game. It's crazy how many mineral lines allow for zealots to hide and let's not even mention wide choke points which is the biggest culprit.
You see effort, larva, and soma all doing crazy styles to not let it get to standard macro game. Foreigners think soma played so well but the sad reality is that he needed to do this in order to be ahead because it sure is easy for protoss to 1a2a3a into wide chokepoint and get insane advantage. For example, see game 7 or 8 of snow vs soma BO9 (forgot which game it was but it was on polestar). Snow lost 2 DTs for FREE in the beginning and then soma opted to go standard and soma lost so much at wide chokepoint, attempting to defend both his nat and 4th with like 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurkers and expanded twice. Soma had no answer for such eco disadvantage and the fact that he lost all his gas heavy units. It's really crushing as zerg to play like this where the other race can play macro standard game, stress free while zerg has to be the one initiating the variance play so that it doesn't fall into typical standard game.
somas standard macro play is indeed his weakest part of his game, and yet you rely on that as evidence that protoss is generally favoured in a macro race against zerg and zergs just crumble to protoss deathball? ok mate.
soma plays like that because his standard game is shit. he tries mind games or weird builds and tries to greed as much leverage he can get out of any lead in order to snowball his game, because once again, his standard macro game is shit. and when the benchmark for a good toss in a standard macro game is bisu, then yeah, its understandable that zergs try to punish protoss earlier. but the reality is, no other toss has a standard game as clean as bisus anyway. snow and mini arent known for optimisation and macro, and best doesnt have bisus unit control. also zvp will never change in that priority is pretty much always with zerg and the onus is on protoss to find out what zerg is doing at all times and respond perfectly. its far easier to make a mistake as a protoss or straight up die to a build you didnt even see coming. stress free is the last thing i would say to describe a protoss playing a zvp.
Again, what's your mmr and have you actually seen BO9 for zvps recently? Soma's macro is actually top tier. its just that his macro game is not close to his mind tricks and build trickeries.
On September 30 2025 21:23 TMNT wrote: Yeah, I can feel the pain of Zergs during that 10-13th min power spike of Protoss when they have that kind of a death ball army and you can't be sure whether they'll hit the natural or the 3rd to put your defence.
It seems like the benefits from that sneaky 4th base of Larva didn't kick in yet for him though. Bisu probably hit the only timing for him.
This is why zergs are all inning so hard early game to either get ahead or outright kill protoss. It gets really hard for zerg to snowball into solid macro game onwards from 11 min and forward on these maps.
On the topic of maps, it is interesting but probably not meaningful due to miniature sample sizes that some maps have seen wild swings in win rates from ASL season 19 to 20.
In ZvP: Metropolis - 50% -> 16.7% Pole Star - 60% -> 25% Radeon - 50% -> 20%
There's a common theme here. Wide chokes. See larva vs bisu games? It felt pretty one sided on these maps. Bisu can just 1a2a3a4a into it or into narrower point, if larva put 80% of his army in wide chokes.
Yes, and Bisu only camped and moved out at 150 supplies and 1a2a3a'd and won. Feels like something a B rank player can do too.
Nothing to do with having a lead with Nexus first and a executing 2 base timing while Zerg took his 4th base at 9:30 (game 2), holding off an all-in attempt with just Zealots and Probes while not even losing the Gate (game 3), a base trade that could have gone Larva's way if his execution was better and he didn't forget his Lurker in the Overlord (game 4), or hitting a timing right before Zerg's sneaky base kicked in, plus Zerg decided to fight the Protoss deathball by having his small groups of army going in one by one (game 5).
Btw, out of curiosity, what chokes do you consider wide? Polestar chokes don't seem wide to me. Neither are Metropolis. Knockout's double bridges and high ground 3rd aren't narrow enough for you? The only one I can say has wide chokes is Radeon. You want chokes like Fighting Spirit's?
Chokes like polypoid is fine. Metropolis is a bit weird because you practically have to place your units in 3 places but it's somewhat "ok" for current meta What is crazy is that Bisu pylon scouted/made pylon vs larva's 11h on polestar and THEN proceeded to make 3 cannons (overreaction). Bisu also lost a free DT and he STILL had 170 PSI vs larva's 119 PSI at 11 min mark. That's a big joke tbh and it's such a slap for current pvz meta. You cannot defend that in maps like polestar where chokes are so wide your lurkers need to be spaced out and can't target multiple units effectively like you can on maps lik FS/polypoid
On October 01 2025 15:10 Bonyth wrote: Larva retired from competetive online gaming. I think using his quarter-final game against Bisu for the sake of balance talk is just disrespectful to other zergs that compete on a daily basis.
This. Larva used to be the goat until a few years ago, but then he stopped playing and lost all of his skills. Lately he's been improving, but he's still a shadow of his former self.
The goat ? He basically won a very close ASL vs Mini and retired lol. I dont ever remember him dominating everyone. Him like Soulkey was getting eliminated at early ASls cuz of zerg vs zerg. Then he beat Jaedong and few others on his way to the final. Larva was Known for playing 1000 games vs FlaSh and taking 20 lol.
Btw Game 1 What he did with the mass sunkens if Bisu just put 4 reavers to shutdown that shit.. But instead Bisu doing Bisu things decided it was more optimal to attack up ramp.
Larva was extremely strong. In my view he was the clear favorite against everyone other than Rush, who failed to stop him. After that I was almost 100% convinced he'd win the tournament, although Mini shocked us with his impressive skills. He made it a close final match.
If Larva had kept practicing after that, I'm convinced he would've destroyed everyone for years to come. Other players were very lucky that he went on a hiatus, because no other zerg player had such a strong macro game. He was the reason why Flash stopped doing mech transitions in every TvZ, as Larva proved that zerg was actually a clear favorite against that strategy. Towards the end of their rivalry, Flash could only beat Larva with heavy early/mid game aggression, and so the TvZ meta reverted back from mech to bio.
So actually. Terran stopped doing the mech switch hardcore after the new 1-1-1 Build of FlaSh.Then Soma introduced real counters to it and terrans started doing it again but less cuz the maps werent the most apropiated to play that style. Instead going 4`barracks +1 into 2 starports like we still see was the build of choice. Mech Switch died cuz of the mass Queens style. For a while if i remember correctly Mong was the only guy that stick to it. Now i have to admit something. in 2021 i wasnt following starcraft. I kinda lost interesting after blizzard not upgrading the terrible mappool of Benzene/eclipse/optimizer/Plasma/Ringing bloom etc.
In fact i only recall seeing the finals from that ASL and i tuned in cuz im actually friends with Larva so i was curious if he could beat Mini lol. If Larva actually had year of domination in 2021 like Snow and Soma are doing then my bad.Genuinely didnt know. About Macro. Call me crazy but Effort macro is kinda insane too.There is this famous game between him and FlaSh before going to military that everyone was freakin out.
Larva was the player who kept working on the broodling counter strategy to Flash's mech switch. He was the one who figured out that it is a hard counter. It developed over many dozens if not hundreds of games between those two players. Then Flash realized it wasn't working anymore and started relying on a repertoire of marine centric strategies, which included all kinds of older high aggression builds that he knew from his long standing career. This put Larva back in his place for quite a while until he also started to learn to deal with that aggression. He wasn't good at that stuff, and he got much better at it during his rivalry with Flash. This all preceded his ASL victory. Flash is basically responsible for much of Larva's later success. And their rivalry is responsible for the meta changes that destroyed the TvZ mech switch.
You talk as if larva actually had decent win rate. Larva would win 5-2 flash randomly and people just remember that but fail to remember larva overall record was like 20-152 lol and larva always lost vs flash/bisu even at end. Larva was never the dominant zerg online too. He wasn't the goat.
U being generous to metropolis. Metropolis basically force you to take a new main as a 4 and then pray that you dont die to the insane timing for 8 gateways that is coming at your face. Cuz on top of that creep doesnt even go very far in your natural so you are in a very weird position where your lurkers are out without defense from sunkens.And that is counting he decides to attack your main. Cuz he very well strike your 4 and put you in a very weird spot where you either counter attack and die to storms.Or you try to defend your 4 but end up losing all the units and the game. And that is the biggest issue of all these maps. No easy at all to defend or setup your 4 expo..
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Not a strange concept. Since boosting give you some income faster and if you do it overtime is clear that you can get great results when it comes to eco. That is the reason sometimes do you even see 10 hatchery or 11 hatchery this days trying to counter 8 rax or 9pool vs zerg. 11h or 10h vs gateway first. The problem is that doing that you are sacricing other aspects of your game for the return of extra larva at early game. And the most important if terran just predict you will play like that and just hard counter you with eco Rush u are in more big trouble. So all those variations can be valid against the right card. But i mean that is pretty much progamer games these days. We truly need a map revolution.
I think the issue of you not understanding him is cuz he is thinking out of the box. And since the game is from 1998 we just get with the flow that everything has been explored. The reality is that no one is really trying to push out of the conform zone.Take as example Larva on game 1 vs Bisu and his strategy. I havent seen any other pro exploring such routes.
btw im also this way LOL. thats why i keep asking to get maps like Sylphid 1.0 Circuit Breakers Apocalypse Allegro etc. And to recent times Tempest was one of my favorites too. I really hate the gimmick maps being included .
No I think the reason WE don't understand him is because he often writes weird English.
The math goes, how much minerals extra is how much mining time
I struggle to understand what it means. So I have to guess, and if you guess, you may be unsure of what he actually means. And he has like 10 sentences like that in a paragraph and at the end you have no clue what he tries to say.
I can rarely dispute the content of what he says, not because he's thinking out of the box. For example when he said Zerg should infest CC instead of attacking Turrets, ok I get it, ridiculous idea but I get it. But most of times I don't even understand what he says. So I figure we could use a translator here.
You don't have to quarrel to understand. I chopped off half of my post. Beforehand, • I went into each hatchery making (5-1.05)n larvae per minute, • How much time it would take to make 9 drones by, -9 drone 1-hatch 1 base 2 minutes, -18 drone 2-hatch 2 bases 1 minute, -27 drone 3-hatch 3 bases 40 seconds, -36 drone 4-hatch 4 bases 24 seconds. • If zerg skipped on an early natural how much it would skew math, -1 less base at 3-hatch, say, 27 drone 3-hatch '2' bases slows mining by 15% just so you would understand, but you keep posting this astroturf nonsensical jibberish just because I play zerg and you don't.
On September 30 2025 23:51 TornadoSteve wrote: When im allinin, its usually to outright kill my opponent, or get ahead. This sounds about right
The issue is that they are "forced" to because if they don't protoss is usually ahead in these macro games. It gets real easy for protoss to just macro up to 140-150 psi and expand to 3 bases if z also tries to do the same. P can 1a2a3a4a5a into wide chokes on these modern maps and get some really good engagements and snowball into 4/5 base protoss with 2/2 upgrades. This is why soma has worked so hard on mineral optimization and crafted a well thoughout builds to kill protoss in early mid games or mind trick protoss into being defensive.
No bro. I don't know how you got it in a total opposite way like that.
Protoss is only ahead during the 10-13th minute if they do some damage to Zerg in the earlier phases, or by a BO luck. Like a sneaky Zealot getting some Drone early on, or a pre-storm Zealot timing that deals some damage, or a good trade between Corsairs vs Muta/Scourge, or a failed Hydra bust attempt from Z. Basically, race A is ahead of race B at the x minute because because player A deals some damage to player B y minutes earlier, which is true in every matchup.
There's no games where Protoss and Zerg both play safe, just macro up, and no one does anything to the other, and Protoss can naturally get ahead like you described. If that were the case, why would Protoss players even bother with Gate expand? Just FFE, build Cannons to be safe, camp and macro until you get 150 supplies and push out lol. And the global PvZ win rate would be ~55% instead of ~45% like currently lol.
You're just so tunnel visioned into those games where Protoss crushes Zerg at their power spike, because well, you're a Zerg supporter and can only see the difficulties of Zerg in the matchup, like the problem with maps you always claim. Why can't we have mineral lines that don't allow Zealot to hide? Why can't we have narrow chokes to defend? Basically, why mapmakers don't make the matchup easier for us?
I'm really curious what your mmr is and how you keep refuting what every z pros are saying right now. You really don't seem to understand zvp that well. The games where they go 50:50 are games that z/p cross spawn and constantly scout each other and z ends up making only 6 lings and protoss goes straight to stargate before cannon.
See the games snow played vs soma today (FYI snow destroyed soma 7-2 as soma seemed to purposefuly go standard to get ready for bisu matches. Soma did say he will play 30 games every day until the day of the match to increase his mechanics and he has ALWAYS said he lacks standard macro game. It's crazy how many mineral lines allow for zealots to hide and let's not even mention wide choke points which is the biggest culprit.
You see effort, larva, and soma all doing crazy styles to not let it get to standard macro game. Foreigners think soma played so well but the sad reality is that he needed to do this in order to be ahead because it sure is easy for protoss to 1a2a3a into wide chokepoint and get insane advantage. For example, see game 7 or 8 of snow vs soma BO9 (forgot which game it was but it was on polestar). Snow lost 2 DTs for FREE in the beginning and then soma opted to go standard and soma lost so much at wide chokepoint, attempting to defend both his nat and 4th with like 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurkers and expanded twice. Soma had no answer for such eco disadvantage and the fact that he lost all his gas heavy units. It's really crushing as zerg to play like this where the other race can play macro standard game, stress free while zerg has to be the one initiating the variance play so that it doesn't fall into typical standard game.
somas standard macro play is indeed his weakest part of his game, and yet you rely on that as evidence that protoss is generally favoured in a macro race against zerg and zergs just crumble to protoss deathball? ok mate.
soma plays like that because his standard game is shit. he tries mind games or weird builds and tries to greed as much leverage he can get out of any lead in order to snowball his game, because once again, his standard macro game is shit. and when the benchmark for a good toss in a standard macro game is bisu, then yeah, its understandable that zergs try to punish protoss earlier. but the reality is, no other toss has a standard game as clean as bisus anyway. snow and mini arent known for optimisation and macro, and best doesnt have bisus unit control. also zvp will never change in that priority is pretty much always with zerg and the onus is on protoss to find out what zerg is doing at all times and respond perfectly. its far easier to make a mistake as a protoss or straight up die to a build you didnt even see coming. stress free is the last thing i would say to describe a protoss playing a zvp.
Again, what's your mmr and have you actually seen BO9 for zvps recently? Soma's macro is actually top tier. its just that his macro game is not close to his mind tricks and build trickeries.
Evil is guilty of slightly exaggerating, I mean no ASL Ro4 player or potent Proleague(s) player has a shit macro game, even relatively speaking.
I think their point that Soma’s strength is getting into an early/midgame advantage and riding that out, versus being good at playing from deficits and grinding it out probably does have some validity though.
It’s not as extreme, and it’s not all build gambles, some of it is his hyper-optimisations too, but it’s a bit reminiscent of how Mini plays.
Sure Mini can play a good macro game, but his stock approach is to try and play his macro games with a big initial advantage. Something that can bite him in the ass too.
Speaking of Soma, I don’t religiously follow the non-ASL stuff, how’s his matchup shape overall and how’s he stack up versus Bisu?
I’m a big Bisu fan, obviously some here are bigger :p But I’ve been rooting for Soma to win an ASL for ages despite not really being a Zerg enjoyer. Think it would be cool that like a (relatively) new player who wasn’t a previous frontline Kespa player and improved, innovated and optimised wins one of these things.
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Not a strange concept. Since boosting give you some income faster and if you do it overtime is clear that you can get great results when it comes to eco. That is the reason sometimes do you even see 10 hatchery or 11 hatchery this days trying to counter 8 rax or 9pool vs zerg. 11h or 10h vs gateway first. The problem is that doing that you are sacricing other aspects of your game for the return of extra larva at early game. And the most important if terran just predict you will play like that and just hard counter you with eco Rush u are in more big trouble. So all those variations can be valid against the right card. But i mean that is pretty much progamer games these days. We truly need a map revolution.
I think the issue of you not understanding him is cuz he is thinking out of the box. And since the game is from 1998 we just get with the flow that everything has been explored. The reality is that no one is really trying to push out of the conform zone.Take as example Larva on game 1 vs Bisu and his strategy. I havent seen any other pro exploring such routes.
btw im also this way LOL. thats why i keep asking to get maps like Sylphid 1.0 Circuit Breakers Apocalypse Allegro etc. And to recent times Tempest was one of my favorites too. I really hate the gimmick maps being included .
No I think the reason WE don't understand him is because he often writes weird English.
For example, this sentence:
The math goes, how much minerals extra is how much mining time
I struggle to understand what it means. So I have to guess, and if you guess, you may be unsure of what he actually means. And he has like 10 sentences like that in a paragraph and at the end you have no clue what he tries to say.
I can rarely dispute the content of what he says, not because he's thinking out of the box. For example when he said Zerg should infest CC instead of attacking Turrets, ok I get it, ridiculous idea but I get it. But most of times I don't even understand what he says. So I figure we could use a translator here.
You don't have to quarrel to understand. I chopped off half of my post. Beforehand, • I went into each hatchery making (5-1.05)n larvae per minute, • How much time it would take to make 9 drones by, -9 drone 1-hatch 1 base 2 minutes, -18 drone 2-hatch 2 bases 1 minute, -27 drone 3-hatch 3 bases 40 seconds, -36 drone 4-hatch 4 bases 24 seconds. • If zerg skipped on an early natural how much it would skew math, -1 less base at 3-hatch, say, 27 drone 3-hatch '2' bases slows mining by 15% just so you would understand, but you keep posting this astroturf nonsensical jibberish just because I play zerg and you don't.
How does this intersect with what opponents can do in a real game scenario?
It seems to me these aren’t optimisations on what one can viably do, but just abstracted calculations of one specific facet of a multi-faceted game.
On September 30 2025 23:51 TornadoSteve wrote: When im allinin, its usually to outright kill my opponent, or get ahead. This sounds about right
The issue is that they are "forced" to because if they don't protoss is usually ahead in these macro games. It gets real easy for protoss to just macro up to 140-150 psi and expand to 3 bases if z also tries to do the same. P can 1a2a3a4a5a into wide chokes on these modern maps and get some really good engagements and snowball into 4/5 base protoss with 2/2 upgrades. This is why soma has worked so hard on mineral optimization and crafted a well thoughout builds to kill protoss in early mid games or mind trick protoss into being defensive.
No bro. I don't know how you got it in a total opposite way like that.
Protoss is only ahead during the 10-13th minute if they do some damage to Zerg in the earlier phases, or by a BO luck. Like a sneaky Zealot getting some Drone early on, or a pre-storm Zealot timing that deals some damage, or a good trade between Corsairs vs Muta/Scourge, or a failed Hydra bust attempt from Z. Basically, race A is ahead of race B at the x minute because because player A deals some damage to player B y minutes earlier, which is true in every matchup.
There's no games where Protoss and Zerg both play safe, just macro up, and no one does anything to the other, and Protoss can naturally get ahead like you described. If that were the case, why would Protoss players even bother with Gate expand? Just FFE, build Cannons to be safe, camp and macro until you get 150 supplies and push out lol. And the global PvZ win rate would be ~55% instead of ~45% like currently lol.
You're just so tunnel visioned into those games where Protoss crushes Zerg at their power spike, because well, you're a Zerg supporter and can only see the difficulties of Zerg in the matchup, like the problem with maps you always claim. Why can't we have mineral lines that don't allow Zealot to hide? Why can't we have narrow chokes to defend? Basically, why mapmakers don't make the matchup easier for us?
I'm really curious what your mmr is and how you keep refuting what every z pros are saying right now. You really don't seem to understand zvp that well. The games where they go 50:50 are games that z/p cross spawn and constantly scout each other and z ends up making only 6 lings and protoss goes straight to stargate before cannon.
See the games snow played vs soma today (FYI snow destroyed soma 7-2 as soma seemed to purposefuly go standard to get ready for bisu matches. Soma did say he will play 30 games every day until the day of the match to increase his mechanics and he has ALWAYS said he lacks standard macro game. It's crazy how many mineral lines allow for zealots to hide and let's not even mention wide choke points which is the biggest culprit.
You see effort, larva, and soma all doing crazy styles to not let it get to standard macro game. Foreigners think soma played so well but the sad reality is that he needed to do this in order to be ahead because it sure is easy for protoss to 1a2a3a into wide chokepoint and get insane advantage. For example, see game 7 or 8 of snow vs soma BO9 (forgot which game it was but it was on polestar). Snow lost 2 DTs for FREE in the beginning and then soma opted to go standard and soma lost so much at wide chokepoint, attempting to defend both his nat and 4th with like 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurkers and expanded twice. Soma had no answer for such eco disadvantage and the fact that he lost all his gas heavy units. It's really crushing as zerg to play like this where the other race can play macro standard game, stress free while zerg has to be the one initiating the variance play so that it doesn't fall into typical standard game.
somas standard macro play is indeed his weakest part of his game, and yet you rely on that as evidence that protoss is generally favoured in a macro race against zerg and zergs just crumble to protoss deathball? ok mate.
soma plays like that because his standard game is shit. he tries mind games or weird builds and tries to greed as much leverage he can get out of any lead in order to snowball his game, because once again, his standard macro game is shit. and when the benchmark for a good toss in a standard macro game is bisu, then yeah, its understandable that zergs try to punish protoss earlier. but the reality is, no other toss has a standard game as clean as bisus anyway. snow and mini arent known for optimisation and macro, and best doesnt have bisus unit control. also zvp will never change in that priority is pretty much always with zerg and the onus is on protoss to find out what zerg is doing at all times and respond perfectly. its far easier to make a mistake as a protoss or straight up die to a build you didnt even see coming. stress free is the last thing i would say to describe a protoss playing a zvp.
Again, what's your mmr and have you actually seen BO9 for zvps recently? Soma's macro is actually top tier. its just that his macro game is not close to his mind tricks and build trickeries.
Evil is guilty of slightly exaggerating, I mean no ASL Ro4 player or potent Proleague(s) player has a shit macro game, even relatively speaking.
I think their point that Soma’s strength is getting into an early/midgame advantage and riding that out, versus being good at playing from deficits and grinding it out probably does have some validity though.
It’s not as extreme, and it’s not all build gambles, some of it is his hyper-optimisations too, but it’s a bit reminiscent of how Mini plays.
Sure Mini can play a good macro game, but his stock approach is to try and play his macro games with a big initial advantage. Something that can bite him in the ass too.
Speaking of Soma, I don’t religiously follow the non-ASL stuff, how’s his matchup shape overall and how’s he stack up versus Bisu?
I’m a big Bisu fan, obviously some here are bigger :p But I’ve been rooting for Soma to win an ASL for ages despite not really being a Zerg enjoyer. Think it would be cool that like a (relatively) new player who wasn’t a previous frontline Kespa player and improved, innovated and optimised wins one of these things.
On eloboard, Soma is strong in ZvP with a total lifetime record of 60%, which also corresponds to his recent shape in the matchup. However, Bisu is the only top Protoss that he has a losing (lifetime) record against (49%, compared to 61% vs Snow, 58% vs. Best, 57% vs. Mini). His recent shape against Bisu is pretty even (20-17 since July, 6-6 in September), though that still lags behind his overall ZvP record. To be fair, his lifetime record against Snow is probably a little inflated because Snow used to be literally incapable of winning PvZ at all. So in general I'd say that Soma has very strong ZvP but Bisu (and perhaps Snow) can definitely give him some trouble.
On October 01 2025 21:45 TMNT wrote: Eon why don't you spare some of your energy to help us translate mtcn's posts? Since I see you don't ever disagree with him and even agree with him sometimes. What does he mean in the above post? Does he mean Zerg should go for 9 Hatch instead of 12 Hatch?
Not a strange concept. Since boosting give you some income faster and if you do it overtime is clear that you can get great results when it comes to eco. That is the reason sometimes do you even see 10 hatchery or 11 hatchery this days trying to counter 8 rax or 9pool vs zerg. 11h or 10h vs gateway first. The problem is that doing that you are sacricing other aspects of your game for the return of extra larva at early game. And the most important if terran just predict you will play like that and just hard counter you with eco Rush u are in more big trouble. So all those variations can be valid against the right card. But i mean that is pretty much progamer games these days. We truly need a map revolution.
I think the issue of you not understanding him is cuz he is thinking out of the box. And since the game is from 1998 we just get with the flow that everything has been explored. The reality is that no one is really trying to push out of the conform zone.Take as example Larva on game 1 vs Bisu and his strategy. I havent seen any other pro exploring such routes.
btw im also this way LOL. thats why i keep asking to get maps like Sylphid 1.0 Circuit Breakers Apocalypse Allegro etc. And to recent times Tempest was one of my favorites too. I really hate the gimmick maps being included .
No I think the reason WE don't understand him is because he often writes weird English.
For example, this sentence:
The math goes, how much minerals extra is how much mining time
I struggle to understand what it means. So I have to guess, and if you guess, you may be unsure of what he actually means. And he has like 10 sentences like that in a paragraph and at the end you have no clue what he tries to say.
I can rarely dispute the content of what he says, not because he's thinking out of the box. For example when he said Zerg should infest CC instead of attacking Turrets, ok I get it, ridiculous idea but I get it. But most of times I don't even understand what he says. So I figure we could use a translator here.
You don't have to quarrel to understand. I chopped off half of my post. Beforehand, • I went into each hatchery making (5-1.05)n larvae per minute, • How much time it would take to make 9 drones by, -9 drone 1-hatch 1 base 2 minutes, -18 drone 2-hatch 2 bases 1 minute, -27 drone 3-hatch 3 bases 40 seconds, -36 drone 4-hatch 4 bases 24 seconds. • If zerg skipped on an early natural how much it would skew math, -1 less base at 3-hatch, say, 27 drone 3-hatch '2' bases slows mining by 15% just so you would understand, but you keep posting this astroturf nonsensical jibberish just because I play zerg and you don't.
How does this intersect with what opponents can do in a real game scenario?
It seems to me these aren’t optimisations on what one can viably do, but just abstracted calculations of one specific facet of a multi-faceted game.
I was like yourself, thinking Roaring Currents would be the end of zerg, but noticed how greedy it is. You have to strip your thinking from a normal game and look for where the optimisations are because Larva made Bisu throw in the towel. That speaks for the real gaming scenario I'm trying to demonstrate.
On September 30 2025 23:51 TornadoSteve wrote: When im allinin, its usually to outright kill my opponent, or get ahead. This sounds about right
The issue is that they are "forced" to because if they don't protoss is usually ahead in these macro games. It gets real easy for protoss to just macro up to 140-150 psi and expand to 3 bases if z also tries to do the same. P can 1a2a3a4a5a into wide chokes on these modern maps and get some really good engagements and snowball into 4/5 base protoss with 2/2 upgrades. This is why soma has worked so hard on mineral optimization and crafted a well thoughout builds to kill protoss in early mid games or mind trick protoss into being defensive.
No bro. I don't know how you got it in a total opposite way like that.
Protoss is only ahead during the 10-13th minute if they do some damage to Zerg in the earlier phases, or by a BO luck. Like a sneaky Zealot getting some Drone early on, or a pre-storm Zealot timing that deals some damage, or a good trade between Corsairs vs Muta/Scourge, or a failed Hydra bust attempt from Z. Basically, race A is ahead of race B at the x minute because because player A deals some damage to player B y minutes earlier, which is true in every matchup.
There's no games where Protoss and Zerg both play safe, just macro up, and no one does anything to the other, and Protoss can naturally get ahead like you described. If that were the case, why would Protoss players even bother with Gate expand? Just FFE, build Cannons to be safe, camp and macro until you get 150 supplies and push out lol. And the global PvZ win rate would be ~55% instead of ~45% like currently lol.
You're just so tunnel visioned into those games where Protoss crushes Zerg at their power spike, because well, you're a Zerg supporter and can only see the difficulties of Zerg in the matchup, like the problem with maps you always claim. Why can't we have mineral lines that don't allow Zealot to hide? Why can't we have narrow chokes to defend? Basically, why mapmakers don't make the matchup easier for us?
I'm really curious what your mmr is and how you keep refuting what every z pros are saying right now. You really don't seem to understand zvp that well. The games where they go 50:50 are games that z/p cross spawn and constantly scout each other and z ends up making only 6 lings and protoss goes straight to stargate before cannon.
See the games snow played vs soma today (FYI snow destroyed soma 7-2 as soma seemed to purposefuly go standard to get ready for bisu matches. Soma did say he will play 30 games every day until the day of the match to increase his mechanics and he has ALWAYS said he lacks standard macro game. It's crazy how many mineral lines allow for zealots to hide and let's not even mention wide choke points which is the biggest culprit.
You see effort, larva, and soma all doing crazy styles to not let it get to standard macro game. Foreigners think soma played so well but the sad reality is that he needed to do this in order to be ahead because it sure is easy for protoss to 1a2a3a into wide chokepoint and get insane advantage. For example, see game 7 or 8 of snow vs soma BO9 (forgot which game it was but it was on polestar). Snow lost 2 DTs for FREE in the beginning and then soma opted to go standard and soma lost so much at wide chokepoint, attempting to defend both his nat and 4th with like 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurkers and expanded twice. Soma had no answer for such eco disadvantage and the fact that he lost all his gas heavy units. It's really crushing as zerg to play like this where the other race can play macro standard game, stress free while zerg has to be the one initiating the variance play so that it doesn't fall into typical standard game.
somas standard macro play is indeed his weakest part of his game, and yet you rely on that as evidence that protoss is generally favoured in a macro race against zerg and zergs just crumble to protoss deathball? ok mate.
soma plays like that because his standard game is shit. he tries mind games or weird builds and tries to greed as much leverage he can get out of any lead in order to snowball his game, because once again, his standard macro game is shit. and when the benchmark for a good toss in a standard macro game is bisu, then yeah, its understandable that zergs try to punish protoss earlier. but the reality is, no other toss has a standard game as clean as bisus anyway. snow and mini arent known for optimisation and macro, and best doesnt have bisus unit control. also zvp will never change in that priority is pretty much always with zerg and the onus is on protoss to find out what zerg is doing at all times and respond perfectly. its far easier to make a mistake as a protoss or straight up die to a build you didnt even see coming. stress free is the last thing i would say to describe a protoss playing a zvp.
Again, what's your mmr and have you actually seen BO9 for zvps recently? Soma's macro is actually top tier. its just that his macro game is not close to his mind tricks and build trickeries.
Evil is guilty of slightly exaggerating, I mean no ASL Ro4 player or potent Proleague(s) player has a shit macro game, even relatively speaking.
I think their point that Soma’s strength is getting into an early/midgame advantage and riding that out, versus being good at playing from deficits and grinding it out probably does have some validity though.
It’s not as extreme, and it’s not all build gambles, some of it is his hyper-optimisations too, but it’s a bit reminiscent of how Mini plays.
Sure Mini can play a good macro game, but his stock approach is to try and play his macro games with a big initial advantage. Something that can bite him in the ass too.
Speaking of Soma, I don’t religiously follow the non-ASL stuff, how’s his matchup shape overall and how’s he stack up versus Bisu?
I’m a big Bisu fan, obviously some here are bigger :p But I’ve been rooting for Soma to win an ASL for ages despite not really being a Zerg enjoyer. Think it would be cool that like a (relatively) new player who wasn’t a previous frontline Kespa player and improved, innovated and optimised wins one of these things.
On eloboard, Soma is strong in ZvP with a total lifetime record of 60%, which also corresponds to his recent shape in the matchup. However, Bisu is the only top Protoss that he has a losing (lifetime) record against (49%, compared to 61% vs Snow, 58% vs. Best, 57% vs. Mini). His recent shape against Bisu is pretty even (20-17 since July, 6-6 in September), though that still lags behind his overall ZvP record. To be fair, his lifetime record against Snow is probably a little inflated because Snow used to be literally incapable of winning PvZ at all. So in general I'd say that Soma has very strong ZvP but Bisu (and perhaps Snow) can definitely give him some trouble.
EPT
