EPT[ASL22] Ro16 Group D - Page 19
| Forum Index > Brood War Tournaments |
Recommended Games + Show Spoiler + + Show Spoiler [Game 1] + + Show Spoiler [Game 2] + + Show Spoiler [Winner's Game] + + Show Spoiler [Losers' Game] + + Show Spoiler [Final Game] + | ||
|
Qikz
United Kingdom12056 Posts
| ||
|
Just_a_Moth
Canada1971 Posts
On September 18 2026 09:05 Villainiquity wrote: Make Hallucination researched from the beginning so Protoss has another means to scout. That's my suggestion. This might be the best balance idea, if any change were to be made (probably shouldn't be any, because even if it is possible to make bw more balanced nobody knows exactly what changes would make it so) | ||
|
Slayer91
Ireland23401 Posts
That also means you are playing corsairless vs mutas which means you basically need to rush dark archon as well Corsairs already allow good enough scouting, the problem is trying to survive until your first corsair is out and not being behind from zerg doing some hidden sneaky shit at that point. In fact, in the game we debated on, SnOw simply kept his scouting probe alive and scouted everything the whole game, and still lost | ||
|
Slayer91
Ireland23401 Posts
On September 18 2026 15:43 Qikz wrote: Of all the PvZs I saw this season I'm usually one to point out how hard it is, but literally every protoss player took risks and died from them. There wasn't a single protoss player who you could safely say played well in any of their series against zerg outside of Best - it genuinely feels like you need a dark archon now to deal with the mutas and later game defilers with feedback. It's just sad to watch. Dark archon makes 1100/1100 worth of units go pop with total two spells, I don't think its sad at all if we see them, it's surprising it's not used a bit more already I think defilers in late game ZvP would seem less scary if protoss isn't already behind in bases etc, we've seen SnOw win half map games, templars, reavers, and archons can be very efficient even after defilers are out Mutas sniping every templar is way more oppressive than defilers in PvZ IMO Protoss blueprint to gain an advantange is ZvP is using Psi storm to kill or force a zerg to turtle, and then when protoss can get even bases they are generally ok in the late game. If they get into midgame without many templars and down to even supply it's easy to blame the lategame but the game was kind over already | ||
|
TMNT
3344 Posts
On September 18 2026 15:43 Qikz wrote: Of all the PvZs I saw this season I'm usually one to point out how hard it is, but literally every protoss player took risks and died from them. There wasn't a single protoss player who you could safely say played well in any of their series against zerg outside of Best - it genuinely feels like you need a dark archon now to deal with the mutas and later game defilers with feedback. It's just sad to watch. It's not hard to understand why they do that (unless you are Tastosis who are so ignorant these days). They have to play on maps with ~30% win rate for PvZ. A safe opening almost guarantees you will lose in the long term. Protoss doesn't have kill-cheese like Zerg (no 2 Gates is not it). So they have to gamble to gain an advantage. Remember last season's Jane Doe - a map so bad for ZvP. Zerg just did 1 base cheese (well, because they have that option). There's no point playing a normal game with such disadvantage. The only difference is that Protoss econ cheeese looks stupid when failed: lings arrive and you tap out, whereas the reaction to a kill cheese may be "ok worth a shot but opposition defends well". Bur even generally speaking, taking risks has always been a feature of Protoss to gain an advantage, in both matchups too. The race is designed like that. If both sides macro safely, they naturally become weaker than Zerg and Terran. Their 200/200 is the worst. Protoss has to deal damage in a certain time frame to get ahead (see Bonyth point a couple pages ago). But at the top level that has become increasingly difficult, not to mention T and Z always have defender advantage. The last ASL Protoss won was by Mini with literally a series of 12 Nexus. People talk about Mini as an innovator or PvZ specialist, but what has he done since? Nah he just hit jackpot that season. His overall PvZ win rate online is barely above 50% if anyone bothers to check. | ||
|
Slayer91
Ireland23401 Posts
It's not like, 1 gate core vs nexus first like it might be in PvT It's literally, forge nexus cannon vs nexus forge cannon, you are not gaining that much, and with overpool being the standard I don't really understand why it's being used so much, I dunno if Im clueless or what I more understand the game where they skip cannon, get gateway core wall and then die to lings, because at least, you are getting faster tech, and no forge to be cancelled in your wall, so you save money if you need to mass cannons later, and save your +1 | ||
|
Ideas
United States8178 Posts
| ||
|
Slayer91
Ireland23401 Posts
Like if you put him in a 50:50 macro game he mightn't look at amazing, let's see in the later rounds. | ||
|
TMNT
3344 Posts
On September 18 2026 19:19 Slayer91 wrote: I don't know if I think 12 nexus is even particularly that good against Zerg? It's not like, 1 gate core vs nexus first like it might be in PvT It's literally, forge nexus cannon vs nexus forge cannon, you are not gaining that much, and with overpool being the standard I don't really understand why it's being used so much, I dunno if Im clueless or what I more understand the game where they skip cannon, get gateway core wall and then die to lings, because at least, you are getting faster tech, and no forge to be cancelled in your wall, so you save money if you need to mass cannons later, and save your +1 The lazy answer is that if pros are doing it, it must be good and worth it and us mere mortals should not question their strategies The more elaborate answer is that Nexus first (actually 11 Nexus) can easily hold a close spawn overpool (see example), and can even hold 9 pool in certain locations. It's also different to forge nexus cannon in that not only you get your nexus up earlier, you can skip the second pylon. I can't do maths here but let's just arbitrarily assume you gain ~200 more minerals for other stuff in the early game. At their level it probably means you get this stuff x seconds earlier therefore can deal that damage to your opposition y seconds earlier and it can snowball from there. | ||
|
doktordingerdonger
134 Posts
In my opinion, to be a top 5 protoss is much easier to be than any other race... if you got Flash trash talking Snow for lack of optimization as a PRO, in a scene where slight optimization of overpracticed builds gives you a much larger edge than other games, and that being one reason he loses stupidly all the time.... but he still is the best protoss out there, it does say something about the protoss rooster. You can play greedy with perfect optimization or play not greedy with shit optimization, and not lose to hydra busts. You cannot do both like Snow does and expect to somehow win. | ||
|
Rainalcar
Croatia541 Posts
On September 18 2026 22:00 doktordingerdonger wrote: PvZ is slightly imbalanced in favor of zerg, not by much, within top players. That being said, the top 5 protoss are much worse than the top 5 zergs in skill. This is just how it is. You can ask for factors that may influence this instead. The top 100 protoss and zerg may be more comparable. It leads to this pattern of protoss not winning anything at the very highest level. Does not mean that protoss is harder at that much higher level. At these very low sample size of 5, variations can still be very high. In my opinion, to be a top 5 protoss is much easier to be than any other race... if you got Flash trash talking Snow for lack of optimization as a PRO, in a scene where slight optimization of overpracticed builds gives you a much larger edge than other games, and that being one reason he loses stupidly all the time.... but he still is the best protoss out there, it does say something about the protoss rooster. You can play greedy with perfect optimization or play not greedy with shit optimization, and not lose to hydra busts. You cannot do both like Snow does and expect to somehow win. After 25 years, to say the problem is Protoss always having less skillfull or lazier players at the top is just nonsense. Eventually we would get a pvz monster with that amount of time. We never did, not even close. Flash is free to switch and show us all how it's done. Let's see that starsense of his when you don't have scan. | ||
|
A.Alm
Sweden559 Posts
A more narrow entrance to natural bases? More width for natural bases (allowing more cannons on one row)? More width for the "small low-ground ramp at naturals" (without making it entirely highground)? Some neutral building outside the natural that has to be killed before u can get a good spread of attack? Idk, but something like that combined with maps having a somewhat easy 3rd base with a gas might have some effect without. | ||
|
Maks
Ukraine203 Posts
But I’d like to point out that the fact that Protoss is forced to open with an expensive (150 minerals, 100 gas) and largely useless Corsair just to have some idea of what Zerg is doing and avoid dying to a sudden Muta switch says a lot in itself. Corsairs die very easily to much cheaper Scourge, which gives Zerg an easy path to a sudden transition into Mutalisks. Even if you invest in 5–7 Corsairs, the absolute best-case scenario is that you manage to snipe a few Overlords and temporarily supply-block the Zerg and that only happens if the Zerg is playing extremely sloppy. | ||
|
TMNT
3344 Posts
On September 18 2026 22:00 doktordingerdonger wrote: That being said, the top 5 protoss are much worse than the top 5 zergs And how do you prove this? By results? But if the matchup is already unbalanced, the results will be in favor of Zerg. So you're stuck in a loop. By watching the games and catching "sloppy play" from Protoss? Once again, if the matchup is unbalanced, it just forces out errors from one race more than the other. Protoss leaves the entrance open for 3 seconds, lings run in and end the game --> Protoss players bad, sloppy. There's no equivalent situation for Zerg. I'd like to point out again Flash (P) vs Soma (Z) in ASL10. Flash fails to block a 9 pool where the lings arrive late because they run to the wrong base, the lings slip through the entrance and destroy a fucking Nexus while Flash struggles with multi-tasking and can't cancel it on time. If the current Zerg players switched to Protoss, they'd show the same "mistakes" the current Protoss players have been suffering. It's just how the matchup is designed. | ||
|
Katkishka
United States661 Posts
| ||
|
Slayer91
Ireland23401 Posts
On September 18 2026 19:48 TMNT wrote: The lazy answer is that if pros are doing it, it must be good and worth it and us mere mortals should not question their strategies The more elaborate answer is that Nexus first (actually 11 Nexus) can easily hold a close spawn overpool (see example), and can even hold 9 pool in certain locations. It's also different to forge nexus cannon in that not only you get your nexus up earlier, you can skip the second pylon. I can't do maths here but let's just arbitrarily assume you gain ~200 more minerals for other stuff in the early game. At their level it probably means you get this stuff x seconds earlier therefore can deal that damage to your opposition y seconds earlier and it can snowball from there. Ah thanks for that link, effort got destroyed there, trying to pressure the nexus and losing 3rd hatch drone, ouch It's well optimized, someone tried this against me on ladder and I just killed 3 probes for free putting me more ahead than if he went forge nexus Also it depends on how well the wall can be blocked with probes and also if zerg went for hatch before lings, it does seem very tight, but viable I guess thats why zergs are doing more 9 pool and 11 hatch now than pure overpool | ||
|
PachiBW
25 Posts
On September 17 2026 23:30 TheAceOfHearts wrote: I decide to do a check in to how things turned out and wow, no protoss makes it through. I'm just done watching Brood War until they fix this matchup. Somehow the zerg cabal is defending the state of the game, enjoy your dead game. Who wants to keep watching this nonsense? I keep watching season after season of protoss losing to zerg in the most uninteresting ways imaginable. You can argue about the minutua of balance all you like, but the only thing that matters is having entertaining games and an ecosystem which reliably produces interesting and fun games. Take a step back and recognize that unlimited zerg wins just aren't that interesting to many people and it makes them lose interest and stop watching. I don't care about some theoretical abstract game balance, I care about there being interesting games and the current map pool and game balance is failing to deliver on this front. You need to balance around the players that you have, not some theoretical roster of pros that doesn't exist. Yeah, I reintroduced two former broodwar enjoyers and one new person to the tournament scene a few years ago. All have stopped watching because zerg just dominates protoss. I'm also about to stop watching, but I've got too much time on my hands so I'll probably stick around xD. It's really odd to me how much people bend over backwards to cater to zerg in tvz, but somehow when we want something to be done to cater to protoss in pvz people cry foul. | ||
| ||
