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On March 20 2011 16:05 MrBitter wrote:
So wait... Your analysis is that forcefield was a non-factor in these games?
Seriously?
Are you trolling, or are you really that dense?
I expected a better post from some one so established in SC2 strategy.
I apologize if my OP comes off overly in favor of sentries. Writing "he could have won without them" was probably too much, and is also impossible to prove. The main purpose of this was simply my belief that sentries were far and away not the only thing that won the match for protoss, rather it was his crisply executed builds against lackluster responses.
On March 20 2011 16:35 theBOOCH wrote:
I agree completely with a lot of what you are saying. I have two questions, though.
First of all, it seems like the major game decisions were almost always in MC's control. The four games that July lost related to him not having enough information to respond accurately to MC who always made the first move. The one game MC lost related to MC not having enough information about July's strategy. But, MC never gathered any more relevant information on July in any of his games and never suffered for it because he always carried the initiative (I'm really struggling for a vocabulary here). So basically, I feel that July's lack of strategic flexibility (whether it is built into the game, or July's shortcoming) coupled with MC's vast strategic flexibility is what made the match incredibly lopsided, and I'm not sure how much this can be faulted on July. Certainly, MC should be commended for taking advantage of powerful strategies, but when did July have the option to pursue any similar strategy that would put the impetus on MC to adapt to his gameplay? Baneling busts and Roach rushes both do that to some extent, but they are relatively all-in strategies. Don't you think that, especially in the time-frame that those games happened, it seems like Zerg's lack of strategic flexibility and Protoss' wealth of strategic flexibility are what make Zerg disadvantaged (but certainly not handicapped) in this match-up?
Secondly, if forcefields were completely unnecessary for MC's success in any game in this series, then isn't the fact that MC still used them to gain an advantage in almost all of those games simply just an indicator of how Protoss has an advantage on top of an advantage? If forcefields have the ability to make a bad situation for the Zerg even just that much worse without detracting from the efficacy of the Protoss' strategy, doesn't that just show how powerful they really can be? It just seems to show that they are no risk and all gain in the situations in which they were used in those games, and that's what I think people are really responding to when they scream imbalance.
To answer the first question, July did not do the standard roach burrow timing, there is a reason that that timing push exists: to shut down non-robo protoss play. Had July done that standard timing, MC would have to go defense mode instead of being the controller of the game. iNcontroL and machine talk about this roach timing in their lessons as a time when Zerg reigns supreme. (Or at least one lesson that was streamed  don't want someone telling me they didn't teach them ect. ect.)
Second, I was probably over zealous about FF not being needed at all, but it definitely wasn't the reason he won. The 6 gate timing is very difficult to hold off with perfect, aggressive play, I believe there is a day9 daily on it MC vs Ret. But I'm not entirely understanding the second part of your question, thank you for a well thought out post :D
Also to everyone in this thread that read half of it and posted, says I know nothing, ect. ect. At least appreciate that I posted this in the strategy forum as an analysis of the finals and how July Zerg could have won them. This is real game analysis and I would respect the same in return instead of the typical nonsense found on the forum. There is a reason this is in Strategy and not SC2 general. Even if my analysis is wrong you should say how it is wrong, specifically, and even put 1/4 of the time towards a post that I did into the OP.
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On March 20 2011 22:29 Nakas wrote:
I was pretty stunned by the use of stalkers+sentries to beat hydras. That strikes me as gamechanging as MarineKing's use of marines against banelings, showing that a counter is in fact not a counter. Does this mean that burrow roaches are now the only correct response?
As I put in the analysis, pure hydra will beat pure gateway, but July never got range and was 2 range attack upgrades behind MC :O gateway armies will still die to hydra's The roach burrow timing just allows you to be aggressive faster than hydras do.
On March 20 2011 22:18 avilo wrote:
I didn't see the finals, but from reading the OP, it seems he's totally unqualified to be analyzing the finals. Not to mention entirely downplaying just how strong forcefields are, and in the one analysis of why july won he says july "deserved the win by making hydras."
Also, just like 50 other people are gonna post, the OP doesn't know what he's talking about when he says getting zealot/stalkers instead of sentries would have the same result. That's obviously not the case.
yeah...
The quoted "July deserved the win by making hydras" is a result that vs. a pure gateway army, hydra's will win you the game. July should have won, as MC never gave him a reason not to go pure hydra (i.e. colossus, storm, ect.) but July was very flustered and engaging poorly off creep and way behind with upgrades as I said above. And I addressed in the post above that I was probably over-zealous in stating that he would have won with pure zealot stalker because that is impossible to prove, rather what I should have said was "it was not the sentries that won him the game." I'll edit the OP. And now I know why this line is getting quoted so much, as it is under game one.
Thank you to everyone putting in real analysis rather than saying I'm stupid. Well, and to the people saying I'm stupid but letting me know why
Also I was actually going to add into this post that people should be complaining about Zerg scouting mechanics rather than FF, as I think that is a legitimate thing for people to complain about.
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The first game wasn't a unique build by any means, I mean even Choya did 3gate/Stargate with a fake expo against Nestea but I think it's incorrect to say that the sentries didn't make the difference - the ramp was continuously FF'd, you could see that there would be enough roaches/lings produced from the main that could have cleaned up the remainder of MC's forces before his next warp-in, but they were constantly stuck inside the base and out of range.
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On March 20 2011 23:26 PartyBiscuit wrote:
The first game wasn't a unique build by any means, I mean even Choya did 3gate/Stargate with a fake expo against Nestea but I think it's incorrect to say that the sentries didn't make the difference - the ramp was continuously FF'd, you could see that there would be enough roaches/lings produced from the main that could have cleaned up the remainder of MC's forces before his next warp-in, but they were constantly stuck inside the base and out of range.
Ya, I'm really not sure if the other units had not been sentries he still would have won as I said earlier. Either way I think it is safe to say that July began pumping units too late, and that his play was not optimal against a 2 gas - 4 warp gate
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On March 20 2011 23:31 confusedcrib wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2011 23:26 PartyBiscuit wrote:
The first game wasn't a unique build by any means, I mean even Choya did 3gate/Stargate with a fake expo against Nestea but I think it's incorrect to say that the sentries didn't make the difference - the ramp was continuously FF'd, you could see that there would be enough roaches/lings produced from the main that could have cleaned up the remainder of MC's forces before his next warp-in, but they were constantly stuck inside the base and out of range. Ya, I'm really not sure if the other units had not been sentries he still would have won as I said earlier. Either way I think it is safe to say that July began pumping units too late, and that his play was not optimal against a 2 gas - 4 warp gate
how was he to know that it was a 4 gate and not 3 gate expand though? positioning of the gates mean sacking an overloard wouldn't have cut it. he was running in lings every 10 seconds to check unit composition and the minute he noticed too many units, he cut drones and pumped non stop units. this is an actual question. how could he have known earlier?
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On March 20 2011 23:35 rmAmnesiac wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2011 23:31 confusedcrib wrote:On March 20 2011 23:26 PartyBiscuit wrote:
The first game wasn't a unique build by any means, I mean even Choya did 3gate/Stargate with a fake expo against Nestea but I think it's incorrect to say that the sentries didn't make the difference - the ramp was continuously FF'd, you could see that there would be enough roaches/lings produced from the main that could have cleaned up the remainder of MC's forces before his next warp-in, but they were constantly stuck inside the base and out of range. Ya, I'm really not sure if the other units had not been sentries he still would have won as I said earlier. Either way I think it is safe to say that July began pumping units too late, and that his play was not optimal against a 2 gas - 4 warp gate how was he to know that it was a 4 gate and not 3 gate expand though? positioning of the gates mean sacking an overloard wouldn't have cut it. he was running in lings every 10 seconds to check unit composition and the minute he noticed too many units, he cut drones and pumped non stop units. this is an actual question. how could he have known earlier?
This is one of the rare times that this build has every been done so most Zergs wouldn't even be thinking it. I honestly don't know how he could have seen it without sacking two overlords, I think that this lack of scouting for Z is a legitimate problem with the game.
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____It's important to add to this discussion, that any form of 6 gate without sentries or massive numbers of stalkers is complete garbage and can be dealt with almost any zerg unit composition( as seen in builds like the one aquanda posted on this forums), what makes it so strong is the ability to cut reinforcements and the ability to negate roach and ling use, electively cutting down the standing zerg army from tier one out of the of the fight.
____Ppl seem to rly like the effective use of forcefields but neglect the fact, that their free, sentries still do dmg even tho they do less dmg then the other units so it's not like their loosing army size to get forcefields.
____With these two points alone it's easy to see that the answer to this kind of mass sentry is neither simple nor does i have equal costs for both sides, the other point i would like to make is that there is only one known counter to 6 gate atm which is roach with burrow (doesn't work with other units because u need the regen) that in itself is a huge problem, zerg is forced to do a huge commitment without rly knowing if he's going to be attacked or not, the protoss can just throw 5/6 gates in their base and not use it while the zerg will have to immediately spend all of is resources building an army (roach + speed + burrow).
____And that creates a problem in the match-up, where u either go blind burrow with roach and get behind hoping to get 6 gated or u don't, and hope that ur opponent doesn't 6 gate, and yes scouting doesn't rly work here, the protoss can easily make the 6 gates and never use them with just the slight cost of 300 minerals and a delayed robot tech forcing the scouting zerg to pay higher costs creating a defense for nothing.
____People keep downplaying the importance of the sentry in the mc-july games, and to do that they should understand why they were built, mc didn't make 10-12 sentries 3 of the games just because he could, he made them because they increased is army effectiveness ten fold, while i do believe he would've won with other units compositions, the fact is that those fights we're completely lopsided even tho in some of the cases july had the units to fight back.
u shouldn't answer to this post if ur not gonna read everything
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I'd only like to point out one thing that I believe is wrong:
+ Show Spoiler +The only thing FF did in game 2 was keep the roaches from kiting the 4 zealots of MC, if all of those sentries were other units, July would have still been rolled because of his mediocre roach timing against a perfect 6 wg timing. The FF's literally stuffed 15 roaches, and 20 lings into a space wide enough to fit 2 zealots at a time, and so the lings and roaches would one-shot a zealot, but take 4 roach shots (because of overkill) to take out the 4 zealots blocking the way. In that time, the 11 sentries, and few stalkers were able to pretty much kill everything. The roaches were unable to hit the sentries and stalkers because of the 4 range vs 5/6 range. July was only rolled because his army was a nice and easy ball to ff. He had sufficient forces to deal with the push excepting the ff. Perhaps he wasn't used to being ff'd so effectively, but he shouldn't have had the army in such a tight ball (the lings must have been in the same control group because they moved the same way as the roaches). As far as the rest of what you wrote - there are some stuff that are pretty correct, and some stuff up for interpretation. We don't know what July was thinking (especially in that last game), but he didn't play that badly. His micro was very good, and his reaction times were good (in game 1, he started the roaches the moment MC moved out, not halfway across the map). My guess is that he never faced a toss of MC's ability, and so his timings were all just a little off.
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Thank you for pointing out the actual builds and strategies the players did and some of their thoughts and reactions to them rather than going "oh he got unit x and used ability y when his opponent didn't get unit z so he won". Everybody seems to think that there was absolutely nothing July could have done to win these games due to forcefields, which is absolutely untrue.
Good decision to wait a day or two before posting this thread as well, allows some more thought to be put into it and causes less anger to be received. Overall very good OP.
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Have u even played zerg before? Ur basically assuming julg had maphacks and knew exactly everything mc was doing. In reality its so fking hard to scout toss. Mc was good in placing his buildings and stopping overlord scouting, rlly hard to know exactly what hes doing. Yea if july poured all his resources into defending the rush he would have survived but if u played zvp ud realize theres a bunch of shit toss can do to u and u have to at least set urself up to react to it. So wen u say things like he shouldnt have built a spire it may be right cuz ur an observer but for the player theres no guarentee hes not hiding a robo or something in which case u lost. To me it comes down to zerg being the most reactive race yet having worse scouting option.
Also i question how much u actually know when u say things like forcefields didnt help win the game. Yea he only boxed 10 roaches and stopped 5 from coming down the ramp no biggie. No, the FFs were everything on those pushes. Like seriously i cant understand how any1 who knows anything about the game can come to that conclusion. Mc said himself protoss live and die by forcefields. Bad analysis imo
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On March 20 2011 23:48 confusedcrib wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2011 23:35 rmAmnesiac wrote:On March 20 2011 23:31 confusedcrib wrote:On March 20 2011 23:26 PartyBiscuit wrote:
The first game wasn't a unique build by any means, I mean even Choya did 3gate/Stargate with a fake expo against Nestea but I think it's incorrect to say that the sentries didn't make the difference - the ramp was continuously FF'd, you could see that there would be enough roaches/lings produced from the main that could have cleaned up the remainder of MC's forces before his next warp-in, but they were constantly stuck inside the base and out of range. Ya, I'm really not sure if the other units had not been sentries he still would have won as I said earlier. Either way I think it is safe to say that July began pumping units too late, and that his play was not optimal against a 2 gas - 4 warp gate how was he to know that it was a 4 gate and not 3 gate expand though? positioning of the gates mean sacking an overloard wouldn't have cut it. he was running in lings every 10 seconds to check unit composition and the minute he noticed too many units, he cut drones and pumped non stop units. this is an actual question. how could he have known earlier? This is one of the rare times that this build has every been done so most Zergs wouldn't even be thinking it. I honestly don't know how he could have seen it without sacking two overlords, I think that this lack of scouting for Z is a legitimate problem with the game.
Its not even unique ive had this done to me so mang times on ladder >_>
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On March 21 2011 00:22 SubtleArt wrote:
Have u even played zerg before? Ur basically assuming julg had maphacks and knew exactly everything mc was doing. In reality its so fking hard to scout toss. Mc was good in placing his buildings and stopping overlord scouting, rlly hard to know exactly what hes doing. Yea if july poured all his resources into defending the rush he would have survived but if u played zvp ud realize theres a bunch of shit toss can do to u and u have to at least set urself up to react to it. So wen u say things like he shouldnt have built a spire it may be right cuz ur an observer but for the player theres no guarentee hes not hiding a robo or something in which case u lost. To me it comes down to zerg being the most reactive race yet having worse scouting option.
Also i question how much u actually know when u say things like forcefields didnt help win the game. Yea he only boxed 10 roaches and stopped 5 from coming down the ramp no biggie. No, the FFs were everything on those pushes. Like seriously i cant understand how any1 who knows anything about the game can come to that conclusion. Mc said himself protoss live and die by forcefields. Bad analysis imo
Had July seen what was going on he could have stopped it, I actually think that Zerg scouting is unbelievably difficult and still has to be figured out/ perhaps needs some kind of buff to help it. FF did help win the game, but he did not win because they are too good.
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Let me see you play protoss dont you Original poster
cause no one in there right state thinks thats balanced even MC him self said protoss is over powered in the post game interview what does that tell you?
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On March 21 2011 00:43 Mr.marine wrote:
Let me see you play protoss dont you Original poster
cause no one in there right state thinks thats balanced even MC him self said protoss is over powered in the post game interview what does that tell you?
http://sc2ranks.com/us/678710/ConfusedCrib I play random
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On March 21 2011 00:48 confusedcrib wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2011 00:43 Mr.marine wrote:
Let me see you play protoss dont you Original poster
cause no one in there right state thinks thats balanced even MC him self said protoss is over powered in the post game interview what does that tell you? http://sc2ranks.com/us/678710/ConfusedCrib I play random
The fact that hes cocky should add more weight to it... I can see someone modest saying that their race helped but when some1 that confident in his skill says his race helped him it says something
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@confusedcrib
One of the points that you did not mention in your original post is that the zerg kept on engaging protoss in non-favourable position(ramps, chokes). For Zergs, where you engage the opponent makes a huge difference. For example, in the 5th game on Shakuras, July was baited into attacking MC at the choke. MC did not use FFs in the wide open area where he first met the hydras.
I have one additional point to add. FFs are not free. They cost quite a bit of energy, which is why MC always gets them early. During this time, there is a small window of opportunity in which they mostly have zealots and sentries. They can't get too many stalkers because it is too gas intensive. This is the perfect time for zergs to go for some speedling/baneling aggression to bait out FFs and to trade cheap mineral units for expensive gas ones. Letting a protoss store energy for FFs is like letting a Zerg whore drones in the first 8 minutes without any pressure.
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Expansion-cancelling should've been something July knew of. It has been around since a while (I saw it Socke doing it 2 weeks ago), but otherwise good analysis.
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On March 21 2011 00:43 Mr.marine wrote:
Let me see you play protoss dont you Original poster
cause no one in there right state thinks thats balanced even MC him self said protoss is over powered in the post game interview what does that tell you?
He didn't say it was overpowered. He just said that he accepst any upcoming protoss nerfs if that would remove any doubts that he won because of his skill and not his race. The funny thing is that none of the upcoming nerfs would have affected that final anyway.
I really don't understand why it is so complicated. If the Zerg doesn't prepare for Colossus, he dies. Everyone can accept that. So why don't people accept the fact that if he doesn't go for burrowed roach against mass sentries, he's gonna be in huge trouble.
Seriously Kudos to MC for not having to rely on robo builds. It's sad that people do not appreciate the people who are thought of new builds as much as the people who are executing them. It's rare to have a player than can do both. If you think that,sentry forcefield, blink stalkers + DT is not harder to execute than deathball collossus or mass roach/hydra, you have not played much. Give credit where it is due.
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FINALLY someone with some sense analyzing these games. the nonstop flood of 'forcefield IMBA' has been starting to make me sick to my stomach. July played like crap, plain and simple. yes the forcefields helped MC a lot. but they did not win the series, they just helped him out. July being folded every which way by MC's mindgames is why MC won.
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On March 21 2011 01:05 setmeal wrote:
@confusedcrib
One of the points that you did not mention in your original post is that the zerg kept on engaging protoss in non-favourable position(ramps, chokes). For Zergs, where you engage the opponent makes a huge difference. For example, in the 5th game on Shakuras, July was baited into attacking MC at the choke. MC did not use FFs in the wide open area where he first met the hydras.
I have one additional point to add. FFs are not free. They cost quite a bit of energy, which is why MC always gets them early. During this time, there is a small window of opportunity in which they mostly have zealots and sentries. They can't get too many stalkers because it is too gas intensive. This is the perfect time for zergs to go for some speedling/baneling aggression to bait out FFs and to trade cheap mineral units for expensive gas ones. Letting a protoss store energy for FFs is like letting a Zerg whore drones in the first 8 minutes without any pressure.
So with your reasoning zerg should all in every single zvp game. I rlly dont know what game youre playing but to me a game where u have to all in 5 minutes in or have no chance is pretty stupid. This is of course assuming ur right but i have no idea where ur pulling this timing from. Ling bling all in is easily holdable with forcefields anx good building placement
Also ur sentry / drone for 8 minute comparison is lost when u realize a zerg droning for 8 minutes will outright die to light aggresion let alone a committed attack whereas its basically impossible for z to pressure early without all ining and even that sucks. Seriously what wat r u gonna have, slow roaches ?
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EPT
