Serral is such a monster to watch in real time, you can spot little moves he makes all the time, even if you’re an idiot like me. God knows how much smart stuff he’s doing if you slow it down and break it down, so I’m pretty pumped for this episode.
It’s all these little things that add up. I recall a locust swarm, became clear they wouldn’t snipe a planetary, Serral realised this super quickly and focused the sensor tower.
Sounds small, the amount of times I see players initially going for the plantetary, dilly dallying when they realise they can’t kill it, and ultimately end up doing nothing impactful.
Serral seems to crunch the numbers immediately and, if his plan A isn’t popular always picks the good plan B. So he can’t snipe a planetary but gets that sensor tower that ultimately gives him more room to manoeuvre around a position. There are too many units guarding against a runby he backs off, if he can’t get serious damage in a position he pulls backs and uses his lings to snipe a blocking supply depot if he can, which opens it up to future runbys if his opponent doesn’t plug the gap.
On May 21 2019 08:11 Wombat_NI wrote: Serral is such a monster to watch in real time, you can spot little moves he makes all the time, even if you’re an idiot like me. God knows how much smart stuff he’s doing if you slow it down and break it down, so I’m pretty pumped for this episode.
It’s all these little things that add up. I recall a locust swarm, became clear they wouldn’t snipe a planetary, Serral realised this super quickly and focused the sensor tower.
Sounds small, the amount of times I see players initially going for the plantetary, dilly dallying when they realise they can’t kill it, and ultimately end up doing nothing impactful.
Serral seems to crunch the numbers immediately and, if his plan A isn’t popular always picks the good plan B. So he can’t snipe a planetary but gets that sensor tower that ultimately gives him more room to manoeuvre around a position. There are too many units guarding against a runby he backs off, if he can’t get serious damage in a position he pulls backs and uses his lings to snipe a blocking supply depot if he can, which opens it up to future runbys if his opponent doesn’t plug the gap.
it´s true serral is a beast and ep 8 highlighted that appropriately. In a way his play is very reminicent of the unspeakable Zerg. The heavy focus on counterattacks and trading Ling bane for time and mapcontrol is just art to watch. That said, i was quite baffled by Times insistence on not preparing defenses for counters, Like a bunker and a semi wall at the third or a spotter on the counterattackpaths he just neglected the possibility entirely and went for his midgame pushes counting on those to give him the edge he needed to just trade serral down in the lategame. It´s like Times play has a single win condition and plenty of room for failure, while serral´s just patiently waiting for the holes in his armor and decisively exploiting him when he sees the opportunity. Maybe that practise with scarlett worked against him here just because scarlett is so stylisticly different from what serral does. I just hope we get to see Maru V Serral before either of them expires their peak time.
On May 21 2019 08:11 Wombat_NI wrote: Serral is such a monster to watch in real time, you can spot little moves he makes all the time, even if you’re an idiot like me. God knows how much smart stuff he’s doing if you slow it down and break it down, so I’m pretty pumped for this episode.
It’s all these little things that add up. I recall a locust swarm, became clear they wouldn’t snipe a planetary, Serral realised this super quickly and focused the sensor tower.
Sounds small, the amount of times I see players initially going for the plantetary, dilly dallying when they realise they can’t kill it, and ultimately end up doing nothing impactful.
Serral seems to crunch the numbers immediately and, if his plan A isn’t popular always picks the good plan B. So he can’t snipe a planetary but gets that sensor tower that ultimately gives him more room to manoeuvre around a position. There are too many units guarding against a runby he backs off, if he can’t get serious damage in a position he pulls backs and uses his lings to snipe a blocking supply depot if he can, which opens it up to future runbys if his opponent doesn’t plug the gap.
it´s true serral is a beast and ep 8 highlighted that appropriately. In a way his play is very reminicent of the unspeakable Zerg. The heavy focus on counterattacks and trading Ling bane for time and mapcontrol is just art to watch. That said, i was quite baffled by Times insistence on not preparing defenses for counters, Like a bunker and a semi wall at the third or a spotter on the counterattackpaths he just neglected the possibility entirely and went for his midgame pushes counting on those to give him the edge he needed to just trade serral down in the lategame. It´s like Times play has a single win condition and plenty of room for failure, while serral´s just patiently waiting for the holes in his armor and decisively exploiting him when he sees the opportunity. Maybe that practise with scarlett worked against him here just because scarlett is so stylisticly different from what serral does. I just hope we get to see Maru V Serral before either of them expires their peak time.
Yeah, and more than once. It feels a real rivalry is needed, I don’t want a singular match that fans say proves who is better. Still I’ll take that singular match over having none!
My feel with TIME’s play is he had to cut corners to have a chance of winning, Serral punished it every time almost.
I think he played better than Special did overall. Although Special didn’t get ripped apart by counter-attacks, there were also fewer times where he had forces in position that had me worried for Serral.
Taking risks can look stupid when they don’t pay off, and way more so if you take risks against a play worse than you. If the player is just better I think you have to do it.
Really, they're gonna talk about Protoss design and difficulty to balance and they aren't going to talk about the elephant in the room? Warp Gate?
Warp Gate is why Protoss is so hard to balance. It has ALWAYS been Warp Gate. It's the dumbest mechanic because it breaks all of the rules of maps. Blizz has nerfed it so many times and yet it's still core to the race and as long as that's true the race will be weird and hard to balance.
On June 10 2019 14:07 Vindicare605 wrote: Really, they're gonna talk about Protoss design and difficulty to balance and they aren't going to talk about the elephant in the room? Warp Gate?
Warp Gate is why Protoss is so hard to balance. It has ALWAYS been Warp Gate. It's the dumbest mechanic because it breaks all of the rules of maps. Blizz has nerfed it so many times and yet it's still core to the race and as long as that's true the race will be weird and hard to balance.
I suppose I’ll have to watch the episode. I do agree it’s an issue, one I’ve agreed is in an issue for basically SC2’s lifespan but I can’t really see Blizzard radically rebalancing the game at this stage, which they’d have to do.
Despite thinking it’s poor at a fundamental design I’m actually impressed how balanced SC2 is with stuff like warpgate in it
On June 10 2019 14:07 Vindicare605 wrote: Really, they're gonna talk about Protoss design and difficulty to balance and they aren't going to talk about the elephant in the room? Warp Gate?
Warp Gate is why Protoss is so hard to balance. It has ALWAYS been Warp Gate. It's the dumbest mechanic because it breaks all of the rules of maps. Blizz has nerfed it so many times and yet it's still core to the race and as long as that's true the race will be weird and hard to balance.
I suppose I’ll have to watch the episode. I do agree it’s an issue, one I’ve agreed is in an issue for basically SC2’s lifespan but I can’t really see Blizzard radically rebalancing the game at this stage, which they’d have to do.
Despite thinking it’s poor at a fundamental design I’m actually impressed how balanced SC2 is with stuff like warpgate in it
They started talking about why Protoss always seems to be the one that has the balance issues that result in bad metagames and it's centered a lot around how their base units are balanced. Artosis talked a lot about Sentries, NoRegret talked about Warp Prisms and they went back and forth on it, and never once mentioned ACTUAL warp gate tech, that's the part that boggled my mind. They just sort of danced around the elephant in the room.
On June 10 2019 14:07 Vindicare605 wrote: Really, they're gonna talk about Protoss design and difficulty to balance and they aren't going to talk about the elephant in the room? Warp Gate?
Warp Gate is why Protoss is so hard to balance. It has ALWAYS been Warp Gate. It's the dumbest mechanic because it breaks all of the rules of maps. Blizz has nerfed it so many times and yet it's still core to the race and as long as that's true the race will be weird and hard to balance.
I suppose I’ll have to watch the episode. I do agree it’s an issue, one I’ve agreed is in an issue for basically SC2’s lifespan but I can’t really see Blizzard radically rebalancing the game at this stage, which they’d have to do.
Despite thinking it’s poor at a fundamental design I’m actually impressed how balanced SC2 is with stuff like warpgate in it
They started talking about why Protoss always seems to be the one that has the balance issues that result in bad metagames and it's centered a lot around how their base units are balanced. Artosis talked a lot about Sentries, NoRegret talked about Warp Prisms and they went back and forth on it, and never once mentioned ACTUAL warp gate tech, that's the part that boggled my mind. They just sort of danced around the elephant in the room.
I’ve watched that section, still got an hour to go on the game stuff
I think their position is sort of mine, maybe, not sure. They probably think Warp gate brings problems, but it’s been 9 years and it’s never been fundamentally reworked so we have to couch stuff in what could conceivably be something Blizzard might actually touch
I personally don’t like the mechanic, we’ve had two full expansions and they haven’t touched it, so while it might be a legit issue IMO, focusing on stuff that could actually be touched seemed sensible for this episode
On June 10 2019 14:07 Vindicare605 wrote: Really, they're gonna talk about Protoss design and difficulty to balance and they aren't going to talk about the elephant in the room? Warp Gate?
Warp Gate is why Protoss is so hard to balance. It has ALWAYS been Warp Gate. It's the dumbest mechanic because it breaks all of the rules of maps. Blizz has nerfed it so many times and yet it's still core to the race and as long as that's true the race will be weird and hard to balance.
I suppose I’ll have to watch the episode. I do agree it’s an issue, one I’ve agreed is in an issue for basically SC2’s lifespan but I can’t really see Blizzard radically rebalancing the game at this stage, which they’d have to do.
Despite thinking it’s poor at a fundamental design I’m actually impressed how balanced SC2 is with stuff like warpgate in it
They started talking about why Protoss always seems to be the one that has the balance issues that result in bad metagames and it's centered a lot around how their base units are balanced. Artosis talked a lot about Sentries, NoRegret talked about Warp Prisms and they went back and forth on it, and never once mentioned ACTUAL warp gate tech, that's the part that boggled my mind. They just sort of danced around the elephant in the room.
I’ve watched that section, still got an hour to go on the game stuff
I think their position is sort of mine, maybe, not sure. They probably think Warp gate brings problems, but it’s been 9 years and it’s never been fundamentally reworked so we have to couch stuff in what could conceivably be something Blizzard might actually touch
I personally don’t like the mechanic, we’ve had two full expansions and they haven’t touched it, so while it might be a legit issue IMO, focusing on stuff that could actually be touched seemed sensible for this episode
The thing is, they HAVE touched it. They nerfed the research time almost as many times as Bunkers have had their build times nerfed.
They've nerfed the radius of pylons just because of warp gate, they nerfed warping onto high ground and just in LoTV, they changed it so you needed a gateway or a nexus near a pylon to achieve a faster warp in speed, or a warp prism.
They HAVE been tweaking the mechanic, just in tiny increments because they know it's one of the many reasons why Protoss is so hard to balance.
I just want them to be a little more aggressive with it in their next big design overhaul. I mean hey, if they actually had the guts to straight up REMOVE the Mothership Core (something I never saw them actually doing) then a guy can dream that one day they'll actually man up and do something progressive about Warp Gates.
Honestly, I was a little disappointed with their discussions on the Warp Prism changes. Artosis seemed to just not want to talk AT ALL about the unit and just sounded upset about it. Wouldn't even entertain the idea, even for argument's sake. NoRegret really seemed to want to actually discuss the implications of the change and eventually backed down.
However, I'm fully on board with his mission to have macro keyboards banned from professional events. I never understood why these things were allowed in the first place.
The latest episode of in-depth with Scarlett going over her GSL prep. is truly excellent:
There's just a ton of insight into what goes into tournament prep. (changing overlord scouting patterns), tips and tricks (using an evo. chamber to be able to get the building grid and place the hatchery faster), and just stuff that's easy to miss (like how taking the vertical third on Nightshade accelerates the vertical creep spread due to the building hatch having a little creep). And of course NoRegret and Scarlett go in depth into that fake out build against Rogue.
Also mildly interesting was that Scarlett seems to trust Liquipedia map statistics with regards to map vetoes though they can be a bit misleading. It's true that on Liquipedia Nightshade isn't too different in TvZ than the most of the other maps, but part of that's due to weaker players being mixed in the stats. If you only look at games between good players, Nightshade is noticeably worse for Zerg in TvZ than the other maps (apart from P&I of course which is truly a trainwreck map for Zerg against Terran regardless of how you slice the stats).
TeamLiquid StarLeague 5 in 
EPT
