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South Africa4316 Posts
Another week down, and we're almost at the halfway mark of this season! This week had lots of excitement, with some big matches happening: Wemade and SKT battled it out for a top position; OGN caught two of the bigger teams to see if they can claw their way back into the season, and Lecaf had to fight hard to keep top spot. So what happened?
Lecaf dropped a spot, after losing a tense game to WeMade, with Mind taking a strong win over an uncertain Jaedong, and Pure taking down the Death God on Andromeda. SKT is at first position after winning both their matches, walking over WeMade fox with only Pure, yet again, being able to take a win, and beating an uncertain Hanbit Stars 3-1, with only Bisu losing a game.
KTF continues their stagnation into mediocrity this season, once again dropping two places. They took down CJ, but they couldn't beat OGN, as OGN started its comeback. OGN Sparkyz also ravaged a strong MBC team, with Chalenge, Leta, and the threatening Flower/Zues team getting them the three games they needed.
In the map standings we see Zerg continuing their slump. The only map where Zerg seems to have a chance on is Andromeda, and even there they are 2-5 against Terran. With that in mind, they did climb 2% in the win percentage since last week, taking three wins and only two losses on Andromeda, while holding their own on the other maps.
Protoss continues to dominate last season's map, sporting a 73% win percentage on Katrina, and an 80% win percentage on Blue Storm, having won 4 out of 5 games against Zerg there. On the new maps, Protoss are holding their own but not doing much more.
Finally, the Terran players seem to be enjoying a good season on the new maps, winning at least half the time on all the newest maps. More importantly though, there has been 32 TvT's on Othello and Wuthering combined, and even though Terran does not seem to dominate on these maps (except against Zerg), few teams are willing to risk non-Terran players.
Flash holds on to the number one spot this week, even after losing an unnecessary game to go.go. Pure is gaining quickly though, with just win seperating him and Flash now, as he powers his way to a 7-0 rank. On Pure's heels is Ruby who is making a name for himself taking down some of the biggest Zerg players this season including Jaedong and Luxury.
Ignoring the big names on the chart and just looking at the pretty colours, the lack of Zerg players stand out very clearly. There is not a single Zerg in the top 10 list. Where are the top KeSPA ranked Zerg players?
Luxury is doing fairly well on 4-2, while Savior's only solo game so far has been a dismal game against Firebathero. While the KeSPA #1, Lee Jaedong, has won five of his games so far, but he has managed to lose three games against Terran opponents on three different maps.
In the 2v2 rankings, Max and Piano climbed two spots after taking another win to lead the table, while the other Terran team, Saint and Light, dropped a place. The only new team this week is Bul_T and Rumble, whose 2-0 stats this week insured the top position for SKT.
I'd like to leave you guys with a discussion for the week, which concerns the map balance. Do you think the lack of Zerg players at the top are thanks to an innate imbalance of the maps, or are the lack of quality Zerg players causing the stats to lean towards the other races? I'm leaning towards lack of strong Zerg players rather than map imbalances, but I'd like to hear what you have to say.
I hope you've all enjoyed this week, and I'll see you again next week with another Weekly Stats Report!
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So pretty! Thanks for the update!
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I think maps have been pretty uninteresting for a very very very long time.
Athena being about the only interesting map since forever.
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I think it's because of the Zerg players and coaches playing it safe by favouring Terrans and Protoss in their line-ups over shaky Zergs.
Total games played by each race:
Terran: 84
Protoss: 56
Zerg: 36
As for maps, I find Colosseum, Othello, Wuthering Heights, and Blue Storm to be rather entertaining. But they could use some other maps than macro-oriented 4 player maps, e.g. Tiamat or Athena. :D
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Dammit KTF, why :-(
They have a good lineup for once too :-/
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Well teams should begin training new zerg "stars" if they want to keep zerg quality up. It always looks like weaker zerg players hardly defeats higher tier terran/protoss players. But protoss and terrans do beat higher tier zergs more often. Top of it, maps doesn't really favor zergs, because those maps are macro heavy nowdays. It's much safer to put protoss or terran, for example, to wuthering heights because of map layout (muta harass is hard to execute, getting third gas, etc)
I hope still its lack of top tier zerg players...
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I think there is a lack of quality zergs. The only Zergs who come to mind are: Jaedong [becoming shaky], Luxury [on the decline], July [becoming more consistent, but can never be too sure], rumble [not a good player, but hes starting to get better], GGplay [never managed to become a *top* player again after his OSL win...] and 815. Only 815 is actually truly proving to be solid, really. Even he has lost a few matches he should of won, not due to maps, but due to his own mistakes. I'm just eagerly awaiting a Zerg hero to come and retake the Zerg throne; Jaedong has lost momentum, he can no longer lead us!
Edit: Hyun and Kwanro arent too bad. But I kind of agree with the FE article on the Zerg race. They are just so powerful with the right mindset, without it they stagnant. Right now Jaedong is the only Zerg with momentum, so hes the only one truly showing anything. As I said, Jaedong is slowing down. I just dont trust any Zerg players to remain consistent without dominating or being lower tier, so I think his days are truly numbered. If he does not perform this MSL I think Jaedong will go the way of Savior. As I said, we need another Zerg player to take the throne fast, before Jaedong collapses. =0
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Calgary26004 Posts
Thanks so much; I love following the map statistics!
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Its the lack of strong zerg !
what are the best zerg ? Jaedong, luxury, 815 and then ???? there is lack of new blood in the Zerg scene !
The maps are very entertaining this season compared to others and led to a lot of good games (look at this OSL, every game are entertaining !, look at the previous, he was so boring !)
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Wow! SKT T1 Fighting! It's impressive to see what iloveoov and Kingdom have pulled off. Teams aside, I'm worried about zerg. In all honesty, I'm not sure if it's the maps, or the players. There are a lot of good zergs, but not very many dominant ones. However, there are a lot of good tosses, but no dominant ones, and toss is doing just fine. In the same vein, there are a lot of good terrans, but only one dominant one. I hope zerg can solidify some good strats on the new maps, so we can see more Z's in proleague. Also, I hope that Jaedong can find his fire again. The swarm needs a leader, and we are being deprived of one.
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To add-on, I think zerg players and coaches looks to much on results @ different maps. If zerg player loses few games they just don't put anymore zergs there (wuthering heights and well colosseum[well this maps seem to suck for zerg even more] and othello seems to fall out of zerg play).
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wow I just noticed how CJ's 2v2 owns so hard but their 1v1 sucks the biggest ass
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Hong Kong20321 Posts
WHY NO ZERGZ?!??!?!  OMg so sad
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United States12607 Posts
I also think it's the lack of quality Zerg players. With Jaedong slumping (especially in ZvT) and Lux looking pretty crappy, there's really no strong Zergs to speak of aside from 815, and he hasn't really proved himself outside of Blue Storm. Where's Yarnc?
What's even more shocking is the lack of good NEW Zerg players, I mean while BeSt, Pure, Flash, RuBy, fOrGG, LuCifer are all on the rise and playing well, we see very little development on the Zerg side.
My hopes are with Hyuk, a young T1 Zerg who looks quite promising...
And guys, Lecaf and T1 are playing THIS WEEKEND!!!!1111
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I'd say it's because the whole zerg play needs to be revitalized. I feel that zerg players have two hard MUs and no hard ones.
After sAviOr perfected the macro style ZvT everyone learnt how to play against it, and on these maps not much else works consistently. ZvP is also so much harder after the invention of FE. It's better these days, since after the early days of FE there seemed to be no zergs able to outmacro a FE P, and the only way to win was by "all-ining". These days I've seen solutions to the FE, like jaedong-bisu games, but it's so much harder than outmacroing 2/1gate.
Jaedong is certainly not the player to do this though, as the reason for his "dominance" is due to extreme mechanics and tactics, not really smart, easy to use builds. The twins are better at those things (trying things like spire->lurks and muta->ultras builds), but we'll have to wait and see if anyone rises to the challenge. Two years ago the protoss were a rare sight at the top and now they're dominant (by the number of players).
Terran is now the most dominant i feel though because of stronger players like mind and flash and a whole wave of more or less new terrans (go.go, leta (watch out for this kid, he's going to be big), forGG (hate his guts), hwasin, sea (hate him too) and Midas who finally seems to have regained his game sense.
Maybe sometime soon a new messiah will do his (or her?....) entrance on the zerg scene.
I pray that someone will create some smart easy BO like the FE that people can use and must adopt to.
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Feels like Jaedong did'nt have what it took to take sAviOrs place. I'm hoping the twins and Kwanro can do something about this before we get to much TvT and the whole proscene collapses due to boredom.
Just a thought: Wow the Korean scene just has such a high percentage of top terran players compared to the foreign scene. If Jaedong can't make something happen terran will dominate the power rank.
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is awesome32282 Posts
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On May 23 2008 03:55 EtherealDeath wrote:
Dammit KTF, why :-(
They have a good lineup for once too :-/
They could have a good lineup, if they played Lucifer 815 and Ra on a rotation with Flash every game and Reach/Yellow in 2s. The last few weeks they've been playing other random Protoss players who have lost.
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On May 23 2008 04:59 jwd241224 wrote:My hopes are with  Hyuk, a young T1 Zerg who looks quite promising...
You mean HyuN from MBC? I thought Hyuk sucked.
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