[IEM XI] Gyeonggi - Grand Final

On December 18 2016 13:54 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote:
so gonna call it now.

No full blown mech.

Honestly, protoss has a lot of tools to deal with full mech, and I don't think Innovation is going to try something experimental.

But I would love to see him try.

On December 18 2016 14:04 KingofdaHipHop wrote:
what the fuck is that trophy? looks like something you put on your tires

On December 18 2016 14:09 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:

I think they're doing LoL and OW after this, so that's why SC2 is earlier

On December 18 2016 14:46 KingofdaHipHop wrote:

he's never going to make it to the late game

On December 18 2016 14:51 Nakajin wrote:
The demon speed of INnovation is to good for Stats

On December 18 2016 14:51 Phredxor wrote:


Think he would lose anyway, was losing all his workers at home.

On December 18 2016 14:53 EatingBomber wrote:
Did anyone notice what it was that killed 25 Probes at the end? Was it a Liberator or a Medivac with 8 Marines? I don't really recall Liberators made so it must have been the latter right ?

On December 18 2016 14:53 EatingBomber wrote:
Did anyone notice what it was that killed 25 Probes at the end? Was it a Liberator or a Medivac with 8 Marines? I don't really recall Liberators made so it must have been the latter right ?

On December 18 2016 14:54 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


It was a medivac.

On December 18 2016 14:55 TaKeTV wrote:


quoted for truth. He did load in a medivac with 8 marines even though he knew he was being allined. Literal god

On December 18 2016 14:54 EatingBomber wrote:
Oh, nvm, the units tab showed it - 2 Medivacs at the very end and only one of them was present at the fight in INnoVation's natural.

Good god, he actually dared to drop 8 Marines with the 1 Medivac he had while facing an all-in. How good is he?

On December 18 2016 14:56 TaKeTV wrote:


usually thats what a good player does. He is aware that 8 marines probably don't make for hold or not but they can make a difference when being offensive

On December 18 2016 14:57 KingofdaHipHop wrote:
i wish gaming ads didn't have to be so cringeworthy

On December 18 2016 14:56 TaKeTV wrote:


usually thats what a good player does. He is aware that 8 marines probably don't make for hold or not but they can make a difference when being offensive

On December 18 2016 15:00 Solar424 wrote:
Innovation would never blow a 3-0 lead. He has this in the bag.

On December 18 2016 14:59 Charoisaur wrote:

when playing vs an allin it's usually not worth it to send units out to harass because you're already ahead just by holding the allin and if you don't hold the allin it doesn't matter if you kill 20 workers on the other side of the map because you have nothing to kill the army and lose.
in this game it worked but I think if he kept all his units at home he would've won even easier.

On December 18 2016 15:00 Solar424 wrote:
Innovation would never blow a 3-0 lead. He has this in the bag.

On December 18 2016 15:03 Waxangel wrote:
REVERSE SWEEP

On December 18 2016 14:52 Topin wrote:

i didnt even notice, what was it?

On December 18 2016 15:04 IshinShishi wrote:
I think the distraction just barely saved Inno since Stats charged head strong into two widow mines and lost everything, then again, 8 stimmed marines and a medivac would've probably secured the win without any risk attached.

On December 18 2016 15:04 Heyoka wrote:
channel the spirit of soulkey

or effort

On December 18 2016 15:05 negativedge wrote:
what if soulkey was sitting in the front row right now, staring

On December 18 2016 15:06 Noonius wrote:



you're overthinking this. The bottom line is that Inno is almost good enough for GumBa to regain his passion

On December 18 2016 15:06 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
i was hoping for a PF rush just because if anyone could do it it's Inno

On December 18 2016 15:10 asongdotnet wrote:
shrekt

On December 18 2016 15:11 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
Dark vs Byun would have been a better finals. We should rig seeding more

On December 18 2016 15:10 Charoisaur wrote:
what was it with Innos tvp being weak?

On December 18 2016 15:11 youngjiddle wrote:
Probably the worst series I've seen in starcraft in a long time. :/

On December 18 2016 15:15 usopsama wrote:
This finals was a nice warm-up for tonight's main event.

On December 18 2016 15:15 FrkFrJss wrote:


Gotta agree with you there. It was legitimately terrible by Stats.

On December 18 2016 15:15 purakushi wrote:


Yep, that's what the audience has been waiting for. Gotta sit though some SC2 to get some good seats.

Sigh, Stats could not provide half decent games. D:

On December 18 2016 15:19 usopsama wrote:

Oh, I am sorry. I meant the ASL RO16 is tonight's main event.

On December 18 2016 15:26 usopsama wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

On December 18 2016 15:26 usopsama wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

They are the same object, or am I going crazy?

On December 18 2016 15:17 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Stats played somewhere between mediocre to okay imo. Nothing exceptional, but nothing awful either. INno was clearly several cuts above him though which is why that looked so one-sided.

On December 18 2016 15:28 FrkFrJss wrote:


No, it looked pretty bad. I know Habitation Station can be messy for drops, and especially with Stat's setup as he had three separate bases, but I've seen when Protoss are playing well how they can shut down drops.

On December 18 2016 15:32 ZertoN wrote:
inno won, so i cant wait for the next TL article to spin this as not that big of a deal.

oh right, probably because we live in the "lowest skill era of starcraft yet"

On December 18 2016 15:33 smilingjuggernaut wrote:


That would be way back when MVP, Nestea and MC were considered good players XD

On December 18 2016 15:32 ZertoN wrote:
inno won, so i cant wait for the next TL article to spin this as not that big of a deal.

oh right, probably because we live in the "lowest skill era of starcraft yet"

On December 18 2016 15:30 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


On Habitation Station he was playing from pretty far behind though after that opening.

On December 19 2016 04:35 Charoisaur wrote:

glad I'm not the only one with this opinion.

On December 19 2016 05:12 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


With INnoVation outclassing Stats that much, this series would have been meh with or without colossi.

On December 19 2016 05:18 opisska wrote:


If the colossus hadn't been buffed, the finals could have been even meh-er, because it was just the colossuses that kept stats alive during some minutes ...

On December 19 2016 05:21 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Yeah, that's a point too. What unit composition should Protoss go for in PvT? Without colossi I don't Protoss has anything. Though this map pool is very good for terran in TvP.

On December 19 2016 05:29 opisska wrote:


I think the root of the problem is: what is Blizzard's plan for Protoss? In PvT, terran is obviously the harass, mobile, multi-prong race - and I honestly think that that's a great idea and one of the greatest ideas of SC2 as a whole: terran bio with medivacs as a natural hit-and-run force, being everywhere and nowhere. The question is, what do we want against it? To make a balanced game, you could either make all races equally mobile, but that would be kinda against the idea that they should be different, right? So then you need to make them able to defend and push in one place, but that's the unpopular deathball play ... And that is how protoss sort of is nowadays - they have a lot of tools to fight harass, they have some harass of their own, but terran besides early game can handle it pretty well. And then they have some deathball options, that are just not very good against terran at the moment ...

On December 19 2016 05:43 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Blizzard does have stuff they could do to the match-up. For example it could try to move Protoss towards templar based armies rather than colossi armies maybe by reducing storm research time and cost or increasing feedback range or something while nerfing colossi incrementally. I think that would be fine in PvZ, since high templar aren't really core in PvZ until later on with players preferring immortal archon armies. This would preserve the dynamic of Protoss being the defender in the match-up, while making the gameplay better. But no one's actually talking about this, and no one's going to unless Protoss starts winning with colossi deathballs, so I doubt anything will happen.

On December 19 2016 06:09 opisska wrote:


Oh, I am afraid that any buff to HTs would really deepen the mass carrier issue in PvZ. The "Golden armada" becomes really hard to beat exactly when HTs are standing below it and if you buff feedback range, you remove vipers completely, the last hope the zerg actually has ... Reducing storm research could similarly harm the last hope on a hydra timing before too many carriers.

I would personally prefer seeing more HTs in TvP, because the periods when HTs were dominant brought some really great PvT games and there are many positional tactics to be done with them. But the PvZ issue cannot be so easily dismissed.

On December 19 2016 08:06 The_Red_Viper wrote:
The colossus is an extremely boring unit and there is no way the game should be balanced/designed around using it.
It also forces this stupid "do i have enough vikings?" scenario which is boring as well because there really are no interesting unit interactions going on here.
Buffing the colossus simply because balance might asks for it is the lazy way and not the one which creates the best possible product.

On December 19 2016 08:54 FrkFrJss wrote:


It seems that a buffed aoe is not the answer against Terran. Either you give them a boring aoe like colossus or you give them somewhat gimicky aoe with the HT and the Disruptor. Those are both fine options, but they rely more on the Terran being bad than the Protoss being good.

I wonder if a buff to the chargelot could be in order. Maybe give it a lategame buff from like the twilight council that increases health or shields and armor. That way it would be much more effective against bio, but still weak enough that pure chargelots couldn't kill everything. At the same time, it wouldn't hurt the PvZ matchup as much because zealot armor does't affect the PvZ matchup all that much. (I mean, mass zergling, maybe, but it's not like zerglings vs zealots late game was that big of a late game matchup. Perhaps against pure roaches, but I'm thinking this would be a later game buff after charge (perhaps needing templar archives as a pre req), and I think with roach hydra, the + armor and shields/health wouldn't change hydras shredding them.

And if you wanted to buff HT, perhaps don't make it do friendly fire. I've not really seen any instances aside from with chargelots where storm doing friendly fire really made much of any difference.

Also, I wonder if you could give the liberator a nerf of damage vs light. Perhaps it could do only 50 damage to light. This would enable chargelots to more effectively engage a terran bio army without melting too fast to liberators. And widow mines would still be a threat, but that would mean careful control of chargelots.

I would see this change only affecting really chargelots, adepts, and hydralisks, and to make it fair, you could change hydralisk armor and take away the "light" tag so that they are still killed in one attack. Then, to make that fair, you could slightly buff the adept damage vs all to compensate for its lost damage against hydralisks. Perhaps have adepts do 15 flat damage or something + bonus to light.

So in summary, although it's heavily theory crafting, I'm wondering

Zealot late game upgrade from twilight w/ templar archives pre req:
+ 1 armor
+ shields/health (maybe health to reduce bonus damage from widow mines or add shields to make it vulnerable to ghosts)

HT
- Storm no longer does FF

Liberator Ground damage vs light changed to 50 vs light, 85 vs everything else

Hydralisk no longer has the light armored tag (this would change it vs baneings, but I don't see that dynamic quite as much).

I think the point here is to have stronger zealots against primarily Terran bio, because they are more of a high dps, low statistical damage, whereas the Zerg tends to be closer to Protoss in that it is higher damage, lower fire rate. And banelings would still counter Zealots. Liberators would be weaker vs light units, but I think with keeping its damage against hydras, nothing much would change. Obviously, zealots, adepts, and high templars have a lot greater survivability, but I think that's fine because you don't often seen high templars running into liberator zones as much

On December 19 2016 09:22 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Chargelots are so far from being viable in PvT (due to kiting, being bad at drop defense, widow mines, many other reasons) that any buff large enough to help them in that match-up would almost certainly break PvZ where chargelots are actually useful. If you want to change a core gateway unit to fix PvT, the stalker looks a lot more promising.

On December 19 2016 10:15 FrkFrJss wrote:



Couldn't you take off some of the + shield damage for widowmines or at least put back in the tiered splash? I mean the widowmine was one the things no body really asked to be buffed. Besides, a mild health buff would enable more survivability against widowmine splash I feel like the stalker is such a core unit in all three matchups, that one tiny change will drastically change this unit. Besides, how would you change it? Any buff to its survivability or damage would negatively affect Zerg a lot.

I feel like chargelots are a lot more viable to be buffed in PvT and in either PvZ or PvP. Since there are a lot of things that counter chargelots, we don't see as much usage that would be game breaking in either the mirror or the versus Zerg matchup.

Even if we put a +3 armor buff late game (which would be absurd I know) to chargelots, the effect would be minimal to Zerg since roaches, hydras, and lurkers along with banelings and fungal would still counter Zealots. Then in the PvP matchup, archons and forcefield would prevent them from doing as much damage.

EDIT: Also, zealots with charge are now super fast.

On December 19 2016 10:34 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


I'm not sure how you'd change the stalker. Possibly a buff against air units to help deal with liberators and medivacs, but that feels a bit artificial. As for buffing the chargelot, Protoss is mainly struggling in the mid game against terran (and would struggle more if Blizzard nerfed the colossus for design-related reasons). So if you make the chargelot change too late-game focused it doesn't help at all, and if you make the buff affect earlier stages of the game it makes PvZ chargelot builds like those Stats does too strong.

On December 19 2016 09:22 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Chargelots are so far from being viable in PvT (due to kiting, being bad at drop defense, widow mines, many other reasons) that any buff large enough to help them in that match-up would almost certainly break PvZ where chargelots are actually useful. If you want to change a core gateway unit to fix PvT, the stalker looks a lot more promising.

On December 19 2016 11:51 FrkFrJss wrote:


So you could buff two ways versus air: +mechanical or +armored. The problem with mechanical is that you then buff them versus all air of Protoss/Terran, and that's not so great, and with +armored, then you buff stalkers vs overlords, corruptors, brood lords, viking even more that they already do. Or if you do just a flat buff vs air, then, because of the stalker massability, you transform a +2 or so damage into a much greater bonus.

For the Terran, that's why I'm thinking too nerfs:

The liberator nerf to light (except hydra) and the widowmine nerf to tiered stages of splash (including shield damage). This way, when Protoss gets charge, and they charge into the bio, the surrounding zealots don't get smashed, and Protoss can defend during the midgame before splash and the late game upgrades with more durability to adepts and zealots. It's mainly about making the units last longer as opposed to making them hit harder. By nerfing the liberator and the widow mine in ways that don't really affect the other matchups as much then the buffs can be more targeted as well.

With regards to multi-prong drops in the early-mid game, you're not going to have the two or three medivacs of highly upgraded bio; you're going to have one, maybe two medivacs dropping at most two locations, and in the early/midgame, you're probably not going to be dropping two or more places with more than one medivac. Properly placed stalkers and adepts can shut down single-medivac drops relatively easy as long as you are in place.

And the thing is, Marines do 5 damage against Zealot health, and Marauders do 2x4, and these numbers assuming equal upgrades stay the same. So if you buff Zealots slightly in armor, say maybe +1 or +2 armor, that change alone increase their survivability significantly. At +1 armor, Marines do 4 damage, and marauders do 2x3, and with +2 armor, Marines do 3 damage and marauders do 2x2 damage.

So in this way, the Protoss army can survive the midgame push and then have storm and the late-game buff to chargelots. This also has the added affect of making zealot harass more effective because they last longer. Zealots are quite tanky, but because of their formerly slower speed and everything else killing it, they became somewhat useless. However, nerf the things that killed, and give it some more speed and some more tankiness, and the zealot can become something that more readily deals damage than a colossus. Also, with the Terran microing out of the way of the zealots, it pushes them out of position so that the stalkers can deal with the liberators.

On December 19 2016 12:03 juicyjames wrote:
Was this recommended?

On December 19 2016 17:51 opisska wrote:


I would recommend forgetting that this ever happened and forcing yourself to accept that Dark vs. Innovation was the actual final.