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
for the record i dont play anymore so i dont know what my mmr is. regardless, based on your assessment of game 2 im just gonna come to the conclusion that you have no idea what youre talking about.
bisu started off with a bo win on polestar. 13 nexus vs 11h is a bo win for protoss. convenient of you to overlook that. also bisu never built 3 cannons so i dunno wtf youre on about there? he built 2 and the rest came after larvas mutas came out. also the dt cost nothing? its not like he invested in a shuttle for a dt drop. the dt replaces what would have otherwise just been a zealot. you talk like that dt death was massive. bisu rolled larva that game because: 1. he got away with a 13 nexus, 2. its bisu and hes a production god, 3. he cut corsairs in favour of gateways and didnt get punished for that either and 4. larva was STILL droning at the 11min mark because he was greedy. larva did literally nothing to slow bisu down after the bo loss from basically the 2nd minute of the game. and that is completely typical of larva because he doesnt prefer to play aggressively like soma does.
youre looking at the absolute best protoss at optimising production given the absolute best case circumstances to play to his strengths and youre crying that this is how all pvz games go in the current meta. jesus christ
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.
yes you are correct in your understanding of my point. somas game is all about early game control. thats what hes known for amongst the korean sc community. he quite clearly favours 9 pool/overpool over 11/12 hatch, and he favours leg speed over lair. all of those tendencies favour aggression and priority on the map rather than econ. thats just how soma likes to lay foundations for his games. you will almost never see soma play like larva or hero or action or even soulkey. zergs that dont mind being on the defensive and letting the game go to hive stage
soma actually comes out ahead of bisu in head to head in online matches. like 55/45. says a lot about how somas style is more of a natural counter to bisu. blocks early game vision and goes back and forth between hydra and muta comps to put bisu behind.
edit: i see the bisu vs soma comparison was already answered. different sample size to my one though
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
for the record i dont play anymore so i dont know what my mmr is. regardless, based on your assessment of game 2 im just gonna come to the conclusion that you have no idea what youre talking about.
bisu started off with a bo win on polestar. 13 nexus vs 11h is a bo win for protoss. convenient of you to overlook that. also bisu never built 3 cannons so i dunno wtf youre on about there? he built 2 and the rest came after larvas mutas came out. also the dt cost nothing? its not like he invested in a shuttle for a dt drop. the dt replaces what would have otherwise just been a zealot. you talk like that dt death was massive. bisu rolled larva that game because: 1. he got away with a 13 nexus, 2. its bisu and hes a production god, 3. he cut corsairs in favour of gateways and didnt get punished for that either and 4. larva was STILL droning at the 11min mark because he was greedy. larva did literally nothing to slow bisu down after the bo loss from basically the 2nd minute of the game. and that is completely typical of larva because he doesnt prefer to play aggressively like soma does.
youre looking at the absolute best protoss at optimising production given the absolute best case circumstances to play to his strengths and youre crying that this is how all pvz games go in the current meta. jesus christ
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.
yes you are correct in your understanding of my point. somas game is all about early game control. thats what hes known for amongst the korean sc community. he quite clearly favours 9 pool/overpool over 11/12 hatch, and he favours leg speed over lair. all of those tendencies favour aggression and priority on the map rather than econ. thats just how soma likes to lay foundations for his games. you will almost never see soma play like larva or hero or action or even soulkey. zergs that dont mind being on the defensive and letting the game go to hive stage
soma actually comes out ahead of bisu in head to head in online matches. like 55/45. says a lot about how somas style is more of a natural counter to bisu. blocks early game vision and goes back and forth between hydra and muta comps to put bisu behind.
edit: i see the bisu vs soma comparison was already answered. different sample size to my one though
Larva didn't do anything wrong and he droned hard on 6 lings too. The fact that PSI difference widened this much is obviously due to build order advantage that bisu has and the fact that bisu is a god. What I'm saying is that it's almost impossible to defend such 170 PSI army on modern maps like polestar. Look at the game snow played vs soma yesterday and almost all games were standard. It was crazy to see soma lose 30-40 psi while snow remained largely the same when they were fighting. Soma was trying to defend at wide choke, covering his main/nat with 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurks and expanded twice in that time, leaving soma to be behind economically. I'm also saying is that it doesn't even matter if bisu was at 170 psi. He still would've busted at 145/150 PSI (normal supply if no build order advantage) because its polestar. This is why you see so many zergs opting to not get to this stage in the first place.
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.
Larva's overall record against Flash improved from 10% to upwards of 30% after countless battles. Perhaps what you're referring to is the fact that Larva's winrate fell off again the moment Flash stopped relying on mech transitions. He had to learn to survive the early/mid game to reclaim his 30%+ winrate. That's why I'm saying Flash is a big reason why Larva became so goated.
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
for the record i dont play anymore so i dont know what my mmr is. regardless, based on your assessment of game 2 im just gonna come to the conclusion that you have no idea what youre talking about.
bisu started off with a bo win on polestar. 13 nexus vs 11h is a bo win for protoss. convenient of you to overlook that. also bisu never built 3 cannons so i dunno wtf youre on about there? he built 2 and the rest came after larvas mutas came out. also the dt cost nothing? its not like he invested in a shuttle for a dt drop. the dt replaces what would have otherwise just been a zealot. you talk like that dt death was massive. bisu rolled larva that game because: 1. he got away with a 13 nexus, 2. its bisu and hes a production god, 3. he cut corsairs in favour of gateways and didnt get punished for that either and 4. larva was STILL droning at the 11min mark because he was greedy. larva did literally nothing to slow bisu down after the bo loss from basically the 2nd minute of the game. and that is completely typical of larva because he doesnt prefer to play aggressively like soma does.
youre looking at the absolute best protoss at optimising production given the absolute best case circumstances to play to his strengths and youre crying that this is how all pvz games go in the current meta. jesus christ
On October 02 2025 00:02 WombaT wrote:
On October 01 2025 23:33 Shinokuki wrote:
On October 01 2025 17:51 evilfatsh1t wrote:
On October 01 2025 07:27 Shinokuki wrote:
On October 01 2025 03:02 TMNT wrote:
On September 30 2025 23:58 Shinokuki wrote:
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.
yes you are correct in your understanding of my point. somas game is all about early game control. thats what hes known for amongst the korean sc community. he quite clearly favours 9 pool/overpool over 11/12 hatch, and he favours leg speed over lair. all of those tendencies favour aggression and priority on the map rather than econ. thats just how soma likes to lay foundations for his games. you will almost never see soma play like larva or hero or action or even soulkey. zergs that dont mind being on the defensive and letting the game go to hive stage
soma actually comes out ahead of bisu in head to head in online matches. like 55/45. says a lot about how somas style is more of a natural counter to bisu. blocks early game vision and goes back and forth between hydra and muta comps to put bisu behind.
edit: i see the bisu vs soma comparison was already answered. different sample size to my one though
Larva didn't do anything wrong and he droned hard on 6 lings too. The fact that PSI difference widened this much is obviously due to build order advantage that bisu has and the fact that bisu is a god. What I'm saying is that it's almost impossible to defend such 170 PSI army on modern maps like polestar. Look at the game snow played vs soma yesterday and almost all games were standard. It was crazy to see soma lose 30-40 psi while snow remained largely the same when they were fighting. Soma was trying to defend at wide choke, covering his main/nat with 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurks and expanded twice in that time, leaving soma to be behind economically. I'm also saying is that it doesn't even matter if bisu was at 170 psi. He still would've busted at 145/150 PSI (normal supply if no build order advantage) because its polestar. This is why you see so many zergs opting to not get to this stage in the first place.
dont know about the snow vs soma game youre referring to, but queen did just fine against best in the group stages on polestar.
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
for the record i dont play anymore so i dont know what my mmr is. regardless, based on your assessment of game 2 im just gonna come to the conclusion that you have no idea what youre talking about.
bisu started off with a bo win on polestar. 13 nexus vs 11h is a bo win for protoss. convenient of you to overlook that. also bisu never built 3 cannons so i dunno wtf youre on about there? he built 2 and the rest came after larvas mutas came out. also the dt cost nothing? its not like he invested in a shuttle for a dt drop. the dt replaces what would have otherwise just been a zealot. you talk like that dt death was massive. bisu rolled larva that game because: 1. he got away with a 13 nexus, 2. its bisu and hes a production god, 3. he cut corsairs in favour of gateways and didnt get punished for that either and 4. larva was STILL droning at the 11min mark because he was greedy. larva did literally nothing to slow bisu down after the bo loss from basically the 2nd minute of the game. and that is completely typical of larva because he doesnt prefer to play aggressively like soma does.
youre looking at the absolute best protoss at optimising production given the absolute best case circumstances to play to his strengths and youre crying that this is how all pvz games go in the current meta. jesus christ
On October 02 2025 00:02 WombaT wrote:
On October 01 2025 23:33 Shinokuki wrote:
On October 01 2025 17:51 evilfatsh1t wrote:
On October 01 2025 07:27 Shinokuki wrote:
On October 01 2025 03:02 TMNT wrote:
On September 30 2025 23:58 Shinokuki wrote:
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.
yes you are correct in your understanding of my point. somas game is all about early game control. thats what hes known for amongst the korean sc community. he quite clearly favours 9 pool/overpool over 11/12 hatch, and he favours leg speed over lair. all of those tendencies favour aggression and priority on the map rather than econ. thats just how soma likes to lay foundations for his games. you will almost never see soma play like larva or hero or action or even soulkey. zergs that dont mind being on the defensive and letting the game go to hive stage
soma actually comes out ahead of bisu in head to head in online matches. like 55/45. says a lot about how somas style is more of a natural counter to bisu. blocks early game vision and goes back and forth between hydra and muta comps to put bisu behind.
edit: i see the bisu vs soma comparison was already answered. different sample size to my one though
Larva didn't do anything wrong and he droned hard on 6 lings too. The fact that PSI difference widened this much is obviously due to build order advantage that bisu has and the fact that bisu is a god. What I'm saying is that it's almost impossible to defend such 170 PSI army on modern maps like polestar. Look at the game snow played vs soma yesterday and almost all games were standard. It was crazy to see soma lose 30-40 psi while snow remained largely the same when they were fighting. Soma was trying to defend at wide choke, covering his main/nat with 20 lurkers. Snow killed 20 lurks and expanded twice in that time, leaving soma to be behind economically. I'm also saying is that it doesn't even matter if bisu was at 170 psi. He still would've busted at 145/150 PSI (normal supply if no build order advantage) because its polestar. This is why you see so many zergs opting to not get to this stage in the first place.
dont know about the snow vs soma game youre referring to, but queen did just fine against best in the group stages on polestar.
You should check it out. It's right on snow's youtube yesterday. It's the perfect series to dissect what's wrong with standard macro game without any trickeries in zvp. Soma seems like he went macro game to prepare for bisu
On October 02 2025 02:14 Shinokuki wrote: You should check it out. It's right on snow's youtube yesterday. It's the perfect series to dissect what's wrong with standard macro game without any trickeries in zvp. Soma seems like he went macro game to prepare for bisu
After watching said game (Snow vs Soma on Pole Star, game 9 of the series), I think it's fair to say you have a heavy bias that you can only see what you want to see.
That game is a macro game yes, but it's far from a standard one. Evidence one: Snow never built a Stargate for the entire game.
He opened Nexus after 1 Zealot (17 Nexus) and the probe only went out to scout after that. Then he tech'd all the way up to Citadel before dropping the first Cannon. Later, somehow Snow's probe just walked right pass 6 Lings in front of Soma's natural, seeing a Lair morphing and a finished Hydra Den. It was 4:40 in the game that he saw this, which means if Soma went for a Muta switch bullshit, Snow had to start 3 Cannons in his main at the latest around 7:10 (might even be sooner than that, depending on the progress of the Lair). He started ONLY 1 Cannon in his main at 7:20.
Probably Snow identified Soma wouldn't go for a Muta switch and played like that. And combined with his opening, he was able to sit on 9 Gates, with 4 HTs and storm research already done, plus 1 DA morphing in, at 8:00. He cut corners left and right and took so many risks to get to that state, also partly because he was up 6-2 at that point already and given the way Soma only played macro in this series (like you said). Needless to say, such opening allowed Snow to outfight, outmanoeuvre Soma's army for the rest of the game.
If Protoss is allowed to skip Stargate tech in PvZ and that being considered standard, we'll never say a word about the matchup again lol.
You can even say Snow treated that game like a risk-free one on ladder and Soma treated it like a practice session for his Defiler tech macro game (because the series already had a winner at that point and they are likely facing each other in finals)
On October 02 2025 02:14 Shinokuki wrote: You should check it out. It's right on snow's youtube yesterday. It's the perfect series to dissect what's wrong with standard macro game without any trickeries in zvp. Soma seems like he went macro game to prepare for bisu
After watching said game (Snow vs Soma on Pole Star, game 9 of the series), I think it's fair to say you have a heavy bias that you can only see what you want to see.
That game is a macro game yes, but it's far from a standard one. Evidence one: Snow never built a Stargate for the entire game.
He opened Nexus after 1 Zealot (17 Nexus) and the probe only went out to scout after that. Then he tech'd all the way up to Citadel before dropping the first Cannon. Later, somehow Snow's probe just walked right pass 6 Lings in front of Soma's natural, seeing a Lair morphing and a finished Hydra Den. It was 4:40 in the game that he saw this, which means if Soma went for a Muta switch bullshit, Snow had to start 3 Cannons in his main at the latest around 7:10 (might even be sooner than that, depending on the progress of the Lair). He started ONLY 1 Cannon in his main at 7:20.
Probably Snow identified Soma wouldn't go for a Muta switch and played like that. And combined with his opening, he was able to sit on 9 Gates, with 4 HTs and storm research already done, plus 1 DA morphing in, at 8:00. He cut corners left and right and took so many risks to get to that state, also partly because he was up 6-2 at that point already and given the way Soma only played macro in this series (like you said). Needless to say, such opening allowed Snow to outfight, outmanoeuvre Soma's army for the rest of the game.
If Protoss is allowed to skip Stargate tech in PvZ and that being considered standard, we'll never say a word about the matchup again lol.
You can even say Snow treated that game like a risk-free one on ladder and Soma treated it like a practice session for his Defiler tech macro game (because the series already had a winner at that point and they are likely facing each other in finals)
I like how you never mention snow lost 2 dts practically for free and THEN still made DA which is a huge sunk in gas and resources. Soma had equal PSI vs snow and got obliterated. You talk as if snow had some sort of 180 psi vs 120 psi advantage. Soma had around equal ground power and still got rolled over and then snowballed into snow's insane eco advantage. You're missing the point here. The macro game on POLESTAR/etc is very hard for zerg when z needs to set up their 4 base with 65 drones and p can pressure and z cant drone up as usual.
I checked polestar stats and it stands at 50.6% win rate for zvp while at 39% win rate for zvt. Looks like zvp win rate is going down as protoss is figuring out trickeries and how to deal with all ins. It used to be at 52%. Goddamn this kinda map is horrible for zergs
On October 02 2025 02:14 Shinokuki wrote: You should check it out. It's right on snow's youtube yesterday. It's the perfect series to dissect what's wrong with standard macro game without any trickeries in zvp. Soma seems like he went macro game to prepare for bisu
After watching said game (Snow vs Soma on Pole Star, game 9 of the series), I think it's fair to say you have a heavy bias that you can only see what you want to see.
That game is a macro game yes, but it's far from a standard one. Evidence one: Snow never built a Stargate for the entire game.
He opened Nexus after 1 Zealot (17 Nexus) and the probe only went out to scout after that. Then he tech'd all the way up to Citadel before dropping the first Cannon. Later, somehow Snow's probe just walked right pass 6 Lings in front of Soma's natural, seeing a Lair morphing and a finished Hydra Den. It was 4:40 in the game that he saw this, which means if Soma went for a Muta switch bullshit, Snow had to start 3 Cannons in his main at the latest around 7:10 (might even be sooner than that, depending on the progress of the Lair). He started ONLY 1 Cannon in his main at 7:20.
Probably Snow identified Soma wouldn't go for a Muta switch and played like that. And combined with his opening, he was able to sit on 9 Gates, with 4 HTs and storm research already done, plus 1 DA morphing in, at 8:00. He cut corners left and right and took so many risks to get to that state, also partly because he was up 6-2 at that point already and given the way Soma only played macro in this series (like you said). Needless to say, such opening allowed Snow to outfight, outmanoeuvre Soma's army for the rest of the game.
If Protoss is allowed to skip Stargate tech in PvZ and that being considered standard, we'll never say a word about the matchup again lol.
You can even say Snow treated that game like a risk-free one on ladder and Soma treated it like a practice session for his Defiler tech macro game (because the series already had a winner at that point and they are likely facing each other in finals)
I like how you never mention snow lost 2 dts practically for free and THEN still made DA which is a huge sunk in gas and resources. Soma had equal PSI vs snow and got obliterated. You talk as if snow had some sort of 180 psi vs 120 psi advantage. Soma had around equal ground power and still got rolled over and then snowballed into snow's insane eco advantage. You're missing the point here. The macro game on POLESTAR/etc is very hard for zerg when z needs to set up their 4 base with 65 drones and p can pressure and z cant drone up as usual.
I checked polestar stats and it stands at 50.6% win rate for zvp while at 39% win rate for zvt. Looks like zvp win rate is going down as protoss is figuring out trickeries and how to deal with all ins. It used to be at 52%. Goddamn this kinda map is horrible for zergs
The two DTs means almost nothing in the grand scheme of things thanks to the advantages he got from the corners he cut and the risks he took. In fact I like how that's the only thing you mentioned while the rest of Snow's build doesn't matter. On top of skipping the entire air tech tree, the early Nexus and early Citadel not only allowed Snow to afford 4 DTs + 4 HTs + 9 Gates, it also allowed him to have them much sooner than usual and can contest Zerg before they grow out of control. He achieved that at the risk of dying any time to a Ling rush or Mutas because that game didn't matter to him at 6-2 already. It's not a standard game at all and it's stupid to use it as an example of a macro game.
It's also funny that you're complaining about a ~50% win rate. Maybe devote that energy on the 39% ZvT. Imagine how Protoss players feel when their win rates in both matchups are always below 50% on most maps all these years lol.
Plus, I didn't see Soma's supplies, but if he was on equal supplies with Snow and lost the battles then maybe he should look at his army control before blaming the map. I mean, well yeah Polestar may be harder than FS or Polypoid but we're talking about going from 53% to 50% ffs. If you complain about a matchup that your race has 50% win rate, might as well ask the referees to hand the win to you already.
On October 02 2025 02:14 Shinokuki wrote: You should check it out. It's right on snow's youtube yesterday. It's the perfect series to dissect what's wrong with standard macro game without any trickeries in zvp. Soma seems like he went macro game to prepare for bisu
After watching said game (Snow vs Soma on Pole Star, game 9 of the series), I think it's fair to say you have a heavy bias that you can only see what you want to see.
That game is a macro game yes, but it's far from a standard one. Evidence one: Snow never built a Stargate for the entire game.
He opened Nexus after 1 Zealot (17 Nexus) and the probe only went out to scout after that. Then he tech'd all the way up to Citadel before dropping the first Cannon. Later, somehow Snow's probe just walked right pass 6 Lings in front of Soma's natural, seeing a Lair morphing and a finished Hydra Den. It was 4:40 in the game that he saw this, which means if Soma went for a Muta switch bullshit, Snow had to start 3 Cannons in his main at the latest around 7:10 (might even be sooner than that, depending on the progress of the Lair). He started ONLY 1 Cannon in his main at 7:20.
Probably Snow identified Soma wouldn't go for a Muta switch and played like that. And combined with his opening, he was able to sit on 9 Gates, with 4 HTs and storm research already done, plus 1 DA morphing in, at 8:00. He cut corners left and right and took so many risks to get to that state, also partly because he was up 6-2 at that point already and given the way Soma only played macro in this series (like you said). Needless to say, such opening allowed Snow to outfight, outmanoeuvre Soma's army for the rest of the game.
If Protoss is allowed to skip Stargate tech in PvZ and that being considered standard, we'll never say a word about the matchup again lol.
You can even say Snow treated that game like a risk-free one on ladder and Soma treated it like a practice session for his Defiler tech macro game (because the series already had a winner at that point and they are likely facing each other in finals)
I like how you never mention snow lost 2 dts practically for free and THEN still made DA which is a huge sunk in gas and resources. Soma had equal PSI vs snow and got obliterated. You talk as if snow had some sort of 180 psi vs 120 psi advantage. Soma had around equal ground power and still got rolled over and then snowballed into snow's insane eco advantage. You're missing the point here. The macro game on POLESTAR/etc is very hard for zerg when z needs to set up their 4 base with 65 drones and p can pressure and z cant drone up as usual.
I checked polestar stats and it stands at 50.6% win rate for zvp while at 39% win rate for zvt. Looks like zvp win rate is going down as protoss is figuring out trickeries and how to deal with all ins. It used to be at 52%. Goddamn this kinda map is horrible for zergs
The two DTs means almost nothing in the grand scheme of things thanks to the advantages he got from the corners he cut and the risks he took. In fact I like how that's the only thing you mentioned while the rest of Snow's build doesn't matter. On top of skipping the entire air tech tree, the early Nexus and early Citadel not only allowed Snow to afford 4 DTs + 4 HTs + 9 Gates, it also allowed him to have them much sooner than usual and can contest Zerg before they grow out of control. He achieved that at the risk of dying any time to a Ling rush or Mutas because that game didn't matter to him at 6-2 already. It's not a standard game at all and it's stupid to use it as an example of a macro game.
It's also funny that you're complaining about a ~50% win rate. Maybe devote that energy on the 39% ZvT. Imagine how Protoss players feel when their win rates in both matchups are always below 50% on most maps all these years lol.
Plus, I didn't see Soma's supplies, but if he was on equal supplies with Snow and lost the battles then maybe he should look at his army control before blaming the map. I mean, well yeah Polestar may be harder than FS or Polypoid but we're talking about going from 53% to 50% ffs. If you complain about a matchup that your race has 50% win rate, might as well ask the referees to hand the win to you already.
Losing 2 DTs is nothing? That's kinda crazy and you'd know if you played zvp at high level and idk why you consider this not a standard macro game. It's a perfect game to show why these maps suck "MACRO" wise because if it gets to this point and supplies are similar toss has an upper hand advantage due to widechokes It's also crazy talk how you "assume" that since snow was already 6-2 it didn't matter.. Every win is $100 for snow man. Z has many ways to all in protoss but cannot do a standard macro game and it will seem to be that way, moving forward and that's what we're arguing. Why should we be cheesing when we just want to braindead macro like protoss/terran? It's hard for non pros to execute a certain micro/strats 20 different ways. It gets tiring.
You're missing my point man. I'm not complaining about zvt. I'm complaining about the macro set up for zvp on these modern maps like polestar. That's my entire argument.
Soma himself said it too! It's crazy how you refute this. Soma said in proleague today "This map sucks for defense against Goon/ht timing" and even stork agreed to it lol. Stork also said "Honestly if both z and p macro up without making lings or p going to fast tech, its good for P." Watch the game queen vs snow on polestar and soma/stork commentate on it lol
On October 02 2025 17:39 TMNT wrote: It's also funny that you're complaining about a ~50% win rate. Maybe devote that energy on the 39% ZvT. Imagine how Protoss players feel when their win rates in both matchups are always below 50% on most maps all these years lol.
Plus, I didn't see Soma's supplies, but if he was on equal supplies with Snow and lost the battles then maybe he should look at his army control before blaming the map. I mean, well yeah Polestar may be harder than FS or Polypoid but we're talking about going from 53% to 50% ffs. If you complain about a matchup that your race has 50% win rate, might as well ask the referees to hand the win to you already.
To be fair, with the sample sizes we're talking about, a map's balance shifting towards 50% from imbalance is achieved by the losing side now winning more than 50% of games. e.g. ZvP going from 53% to 47%. The sample sizes are also so small that only a handful of games going the other direction would also have maintained the previous balance.
Your point about Zerg players being whiners is absolutely correct. They complain about Protoss because they know Terran will jump in and agree because if Protoss wins 10% of games, that's 10% too high.
On October 02 2025 17:39 TMNT wrote: It's also funny that you're complaining about a ~50% win rate. Maybe devote that energy on the 39% ZvT. Imagine how Protoss players feel when their win rates in both matchups are always below 50% on most maps all these years lol.
Plus, I didn't see Soma's supplies, but if he was on equal supplies with Snow and lost the battles then maybe he should look at his army control before blaming the map. I mean, well yeah Polestar may be harder than FS or Polypoid but we're talking about going from 53% to 50% ffs. If you complain about a matchup that your race has 50% win rate, might as well ask the referees to hand the win to you already.
To be fair, with the sample sizes we're talking about, a map's balance shifting towards 50% from imbalance is achieved by the losing side now winning more than 50% of games. e.g. ZvP going from 53% to 47%. The sample sizes are also so small that only a handful of games going the other direction would also have maintained the previous balance.
You're point about Zerg players being whiners is absolutely correct. They complain about Protoss because they know Terran will jump in and agree because if Protoss wins 10% of games, that's 10% too high.
Just because TMNT brought up zvt win rate, I'll just mention this. We don't complain about zvt because it is what it is. The reason for such abysmal win rate in zvt is that unless you're top tier zergs like soulkey/soma you're going to suffer a lot vs terran but the main key point is that terrans are able to simcity and tech/eco on low marine count which is very good for terran. They are able to do this because of the wall.
You may argue "why not remove this simcity then?" But that would destroy zvp and make it so zvp favored because protoss now has to work with bad simcity and because of such reason, protoss cannot be greedy anymore. Zerg can all in a lot more and snowball this into a more favorable game and make this match up 60% win rate. We don't want that to happen here. What I'm arguing here is that wide chokes are the very problem of modern day zvp. They keep giving help to protoss while giving zerg nothing in return. Look at maps like knock out.. It's like telling zergs not to 973... while also giving protoss mineral lines for zlots to go in and gain lot of advantages.
It's pretty suffocating and not fun when zerg has to be the one needing to perform some trickeries/all ins in order to "prevent" the game from flowing to your standard macro game. Zergs just want to be able to turn it off and get into nice groove of macro game and this matters especially when it's not a tournament like ASL lol and most games are played outside of ASL. Same goes for us normal zerg players. We play hundred of ladder games. Do we really want to all in all day long like zelot? Why can't we just braindead macro like P/T. Have a 2/3 set build orders we can hit our eco and play a nice macro game rather than play some gamble risk game. Players like Eon would understand this and any zergs 2200+ will probably understand it
What I'm arguing here is that wide chokes are the very problem of modern day zvp. They keep giving help to protoss while giving zerg nothing in return.
Bruh, wide chokes would completely destroy protoss. They rely on narrow choke points to defend their bases against the mass onslaught of hydras and zerglings and whatnot. Wide choke = good for zerg.
What I'm arguing here is that wide chokes are the very problem of modern day zvp. They keep giving help to protoss while giving zerg nothing in return.
Bruh, wide chokes would completely destroy protoss. They rely on narrow choke points to defend their bases against the mass onslaught of hydras and zerglings and whatnot. Wide choke = good for zerg.
Ok I really don't know what to say to this. What's your mmr? Have you actually played zvp? Are you trying to refute soma and stork's argument here? Idk why you're even trying to argue about wide chokes. This was the most backseater comment I've seen. This tells me you know nothing about modern day zvp. Zerglings and hydras?? Are we in 2007 era? lol
wide chokes screw zerg, terran, and protoss over tremendously. all three races rely heavily on the narrow chokes. protoss does not rely on it more than terran or zerg. all three races have situations where they need them or die.
Yes, there's not a single rule as to wide/narrow chokes benefit which race more. It depends on the specific situations.
In PvZ, narrow chokes are better for the defensive side, whether it's P or Z, because noone wants to shove their army through a choke to eat storms or lurker/sunken spines. I reckon the reason Shinokuki is so vocal about wide chokes is because of the power spike of the 2-base Protoss around 130-150 supplies at 10-15 minutes, before Defiler is out, which corresponds exactly to the period of the game that gives P the most wins. Basically, he wants the FS/CB/Eclipse type chokes with the bridges and the invincible 3rd base, so Zerg can have an easier time surviving this period.
What I wonder is, even with that power spike, the PvZ win rate is still around 47%, so if you nerfs it, what would P become? You're asking to have all the Zerg shenanigans in the early to mid game that can kill a vulnerable Protoss immediately, plus an easier time during the Protoss power spike, and the powerful late game with dark swarm, plague, cracklings and the insane economic power. Poor Protoss is only allowed to have fuck all. Maybe what Rogue said is correct: if Protoss wins 10% of games, that's 10% too high.
What I'm arguing here is that wide chokes are the very problem of modern day zvp. They keep giving help to protoss while giving zerg nothing in return.
Bruh, wide chokes would completely destroy protoss. They rely on narrow choke points to defend their bases against the mass onslaught of hydras and zerglings and whatnot. Wide choke = good for zerg.
Ok I really don't know what to say to this. What's your mmr? Have you actually played zvp? Are you trying to refute soma and stork's argument here? Idk why you're even trying to argue about wide chokes. This was the most backseater comment I've seen. This tells me you know nothing about modern day zvp. Zerglings and hydras?? Are we in 2007 era? lol
This is simply not in dispute. The wider the choke, the more space hydras have to shoot and move around, the more space zerglings have to sneak through gaps and attack from every angle. I'm sorry but that's not something anyone can deny. Protoss doesn't have an answer to that, which is precisely why every natural base ever in the last several decades has been made the perfect size for gateway+forge.
On October 03 2025 06:03 Uldridge wrote: Or Barracks supply depot wall or zerg sim city. What are you smoking MP.
I don't know what you mean. I was talking about PvZ from the protoss perspective. The wider the area leading into the protoss main/nat, the more trouble they have defending against zerglings and hydras. This has always been the case and it's the main reason why natural bases have been designed like this for decades. The map makers know exactly what they're doing. Narrow natural choke points are in service of protoss in PvZ.
EPT
