He did say finals.

Trap has managed it before in the relatively recent past though, playing better than he did here.

In tournament play though a Bo7 against a Zerg generally seems a different beast than managing it earlier in a tournament. To take out a player of Dark’s calibre you have to show your best hand, then when it comes to a Bo7 you’re playing someone of Serral’s calibre who’s seen your best cards already.

It’s just the nature of the matchup I guess. Not sure how the matchup numbers actually work out, from intuition it seems Protoss has a considerably easier time in a Bo3, but when we get to Bo7 finals has a generally awful time.

People used to talk about how Terran was the preparation race, but it really seems like protoss is the preparation race now at least against Zerg. There are so many weekenders where a Protoss will take down one world class Zerg only to be obliterated by another.

mierin

United States4943 Posts

September 13 2021 16:20 GMT

#242

It's not about "the hand" or "the cards"...Trap literally said it himself in his winner's interview, he switches styles based on the player he's playing. It seems like he has a heromarine-ish complex wrt Serral where he feels like he his the superior player--he doesn't face that issue with Dark. Or, lol "I can play dark with better lag than Serral" -- the reason half this forum unironically believes Trap lost 4-0 to Serral and won 3-0 against Dark

WombaT

Northern Ireland26532 Posts

September 13 2021 20:42 GMT

#243

On September 14 2021 01:20 mierin wrote:
It's not about "the hand" or "the cards"...Trap literally said it himself in his winner's interview, he switches styles based on the player he's playing. It seems like he has a heromarine-ish complex wrt Serral where he feels like he his the superior player--he doesn't face that issue with Dark. Or, lol "I can play dark with better lag than Serral" -- the reason half this forum unironically believes Trap lost 4-0 to Serral and won 3-0 against Dark

Why would Trap have a complex against Serral who he’s actually beaten in a tournament final and not Dark who curbstomped him in two GSL finals?

That aside he can also play sub-par, or styles may not mesh to explain any individual series too.

In aggregate over quite a while Protoss seem to struggle in Bo7s against Zerg, partly explicable by only facing the creme de la creme, and quite frequently score an eye catching win against a Zerg only to get roundly defeated by the next one they face in big events.

Protoss isn’t exactly super flexible in the matchup with how their builds work, there’s only so many you can keep tight and in your pocket. Zerg course correction is sometimes something as in-game reactive as skipping a round of drones for army.

Note I do think the reverse is also probably true, Bo3 or less and a match against Protoss is a match against an entire repertoire of potential cheeses, timing attacks and late game turtling all being viable.

If we had a Proleague in its pomp again I imagine Protoss would be having a rather good time.

stilt

France2754 Posts

September 13 2021 21:29 GMT

#244

On September 14 2021 05:42 WombaT wrote:

Show nested quote +

There is some recency biais here.
This year Trap won 3 premier tourney by winning zvp, if you count neeb's win, most zvp finals have been won by toss this year, if you don't, that's a 50/50. In one of them, he even lost to reynor in bo7 before getting his revenge in the finals.
As far as bo7 goes, a quick look on aligulac at zest/trap history vs top zerg opponents shows that's simply not true.

WombaT

Northern Ireland26532 Posts

September 13 2021 23:13 GMT

#245

On September 14 2021 06:29 stilt wrote:

Show nested quote +

You are correct, that period of high tournament density and there was a couple I had to miss and so they weren’t in my memory banks.

Trap is frustrating in that he’s my favourite active player and he is continually breaking ‘Wombat’s Law’, which held up pretty strongly previously for a good few years. Where if a Protoss player has to face 2 or more Zergs in a playoff bracket in a weekend premier, they are doomed to lose to the second (or third in theory, but that rarely happened).

Notable victims of Wombat’s Law being Stats in his last big Katowice run, Classic’s last Blizzcon, Zest also at Katowice etc.

But yes I shall have to concede defeat here, given how old some of those runs are my gut feel is way out with the times.

I do wonder if the patch/meta shifts and the strength of Skytoss have something to do with it. It’s far from unbeatable but Toss have a pretty mapped out path to strong lategame comps which they weren’t really managing a few years ago. Gives Zerg way more to have to think about than when they could just defend and have a lovely day if they made it to real late game.