IEM Katowice 2024 - Page 51

On February 11 2024 17:19 Charoisaur wrote:

I think with all these players it would probably look like 2018-22 again where Protoss players had okay representation in the ro8 and sometimes won a small event but rarely/never won the biggest events.
I mean that was the situation when they were all still playing.

And it's not like the other races had no losses, Zerg lost Rogue (arguably the Goat) and soO while Terran lost Inno and TY

On February 11 2024 19:02 omop wrote:
Problem isnt so much about protoss lategame than early game. Maybe nexus could start with more energy, maybe some buff to gateway units before twilight council, like a bit more movement speed to zealots. It is grazy how many ways terran can kill protoss in early game and there is really no for protoss to dmg to terran. Dts could get small buff after cheaper ravens and blink nerf. Why warp prism price was increased it is a mandatory protoss unit and the nerf just adds volatility.

On February 11 2024 18:44 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:


Are you kidding me? xD

Yes - If recent Carrier nerfs, shield battery Nerf, and Mothership Nerf hadn't happened, then Macro Protoss Players like Stats and Showtime would have a much better chance.

Yes - If the Void ray wasn't nerfed with a 50 cost increase and a build time increase, Hero probably would have build a Void Ray instead of Oracle and held Cure's Marauder rush. By the time HerO had the money to build a VR his oracle was already 50% done.

Aside from basic things like this, it seems you are not understand how chronic nerfing will necessarily just lead to overall lower performance. It's basic mathematics.

The answer on how to make Protoss more viable is very clear. Protoss needs better units - especially late game Unit. Just make Buff carriers so they don't get deleted, cost-for-cost, against all Terran units. There is no reason that everything from the basic marine to ghost to wido mime to cyclone to viking to thor to BC should at worst trade well against them, and at best delete them before Interceptors are barely out. You know how mass BC Wipes the floor with all protoss comps even tempests, supposed counters? Carriers should have at least a fraction of that ability. If Protoss at least has the option to go to late game it doesn't incentivize Terran players to just throw early game cheeses and timings and not care because they know Protoss struggles hard in the Late Game/closing out games unless you are Hero himself.

Since around 2017 Protoss was tweaked (nerfed) with the incorrect premises that its late game was too powerful against Terran and its timing game was just too powerful (more like uncompetitive) in general but especially against Zerg. And that this mythical Protoss Death Ball, long since neutered, was too powerful. This is clearly wrong, and the results are obvious. Most of the time protoss loses on all forms of engagement, whether being picked apart by Terran/Zerg multiprong or most of the time trading at lower cost efficiency when it's P death ball vs T/Z death ball (and if the Protoss army slips up ever so slightly it just completely evaporates, while T/Z death balls are always doing good damage even if they take a bad engagement). It is 100% fact that Protoss ground doesnt scale anywhere near as well as T/Z ground. And even Protoss air doesnt scale as well as T/Z lategame comps. When Protoss wins it's usually pre true late game through leveraging its ever so slight advantage in terms of logistics. Protoss is even vastly inferior to harassing workers and infrastructure than T/Z. T/Z basic units in form of MM or ling bane will delete a mineral line no problem. A medivac with a couple of windo mines or even a Liberator will often do more damage than 1k worth of Zealots. Protoss is just so heavily outclassed in most cases. This is how the best of Z/T can reach 90+ win rate vs protoss (serral) or win 5 code S off of protoss (Maru). You simply will never see this happen other way around it's impossible.

You're wrong about comparing Zerg and Protoss when acknowledging when it is OP/UP. Nobody seems to ever admit that Protoss is UP, there is always mental gymnastics as to why they underperform at pro level - and even everyone admits when Zerg is OP they get compensated to some degree after a nerf lol....

Incontrol said it best, everyone just loves to hate on Protoss. It's possible it's because Protoss is the most frustrating race to play sub GM (I am a Terran main). And that carriers over to mass sentiment.

Sorry it is just Woe is Protoss. You are not going to convince me, or anyone with eyes and a modicum of understanding of the game, that all of a sudden, after 2017 when MSC was ended and the constant assault on protoss began, that Stats, Zest, Classic, sOS, all just lost all their talent and never again were able to win like the likes of Oliveria, Reynor, Cure, Maru, Serral, Innovation, and Solar. There's no reason except for balance. All the Protoss greats just stopped winning big tournaments at the same time until Hero miraculously won a Code S before falling off the map again.



You know even before Trap, Zest, and Stats left, a protoss fan can't put their hopes into them, since they never won big either xD.

I think it's good for the health of the game if we can all talk about the elephant in their room that protoss just stopped winning anything big after a certain point, even when championship caliber Protoss players were active and peaking.

On February 11 2024 19:09 WombaT wrote:

The answer is just to rename every tournament Super Tournament, that seems to inspire the troops.

But I think we’re seeing two different issues over time, although Toss have certainly lost some talent.

But I’ll crudely divide these last 3/4 years up

1) The ‘Trap era’
Toss players did pretty well, or at least decently against T, and against non ‘Big 4’ Zergs. The latter was kind of a brick wall to winning the very biggest tier of tournaments. Trap won a fair few against top Zergs on that tier down, made Ro8 every season in GSL and two finals (partly IMO because Korea only had 2/4 of those Zergs and Zest cooked up some special builds for WCs and made two deep runs. Parting, I think Creator once, Zoun in Super Tournament were strong enough all-round to make some deep runs.

All in all there’s enough there to at least have decent tournament representation across the year and formats.

2) The ‘herO’ era
Meta shifts have made PvZ more doable against even the top Zergs, thanks to mostly herO’s innovation. But at the same time PvT is now the problem, at least for consistent representation. And who has the deepest roster of similarly good players? Why it’s Terran of course.

Maru and Cure are your historic S tier TvPers, then Clem, Byun, Gumiho, Bunny, Heromarine are all capable of beating anyone.

Trap flubbing his best shot at Katowice aside, had the best PvT of the last 4/5 years. You’d crudely give him a 50/50 shot against that S tier, and he’d be favoured against that second tier, back then. Won’t always win but he’s the favourite. And the next level down of PvTers you’d broadly say had a 50/50 versus that second tier of TvPers

Now? At best you’ve got ‘if herO is on a good day, he can beat anyone of those’, but he’s not always the clear head versus heart favourite against a big chunk of that cohort. Of players not named herO who actually play in big tournaments, Classic can do it too on a good day. Everyone else? I’d probably consider them the underdog against almost all of that group.

So the calculus now, to see Protoss representation is either (or a mix):
1. Protoss-heavy group(s) into Protoss stacked bracket, at least for a round or two.
2. herO running a gauntlet and bringing his absolute A-game without doing a Patience blink at a critical moment. And probably dodging Serral in early rounds, he can take any other Z but not the final ZvP boss IMO.
3. A couple of Protoss consistently playing above expectation in TvP and winning a couple of series consecutively with 40/60 odds. And probably avoiding top ZvP Zergs, it’s really herO alone carrying that particular torch.

Not a particularly promising picture eh?1 isn’t exactly real representation won on the field of battle but we could get some latter stage presence I guess.


TLDR I think it’s the combo of PvT being in quite a rough state, alongside Terran having the most ‘A tier’ players that’s really the rough part at the minute, further exacerbated by Toss retirements too. When Toss was still getting consistently smacked in PvZ, it really was mostly by Dark/Serral/Rogue/Reynor, even at their nadir they were fine against a DRG/Solar/Rag.

Getting consistently obliterated by 2 (in GSL) or 4 players is a pretty big impediment to winning the big titles, but not to at least having a competitive playoff presence.

Having the same problem, although lesser these days IMO in addition to your other non-mirror arguably being unfavourable, and that race having a pretty damn deep field makes it just super tough for any meaningful Toss presence to emerge. Although in terms of actually winning, I’d maybe say herO with a miracle weekend could do it, although Zest got close once he’d shown his new toys off and claimed notable scalps, he was never actually winning those finals.

We could time-travel an in-shape Trap, Parting et al back here and I think it might get marginally better, but not massively. Even Trap would struggle in this PvT meta, Toss is so, so fragile when it’s trying to power and this makes it so unforgiving to play. If you play a close to perfect game you’re OK, but it’s exceptionally hard to keep doing that even within a series, never mind consecutive series.

On February 11 2024 19:32 WombaT wrote:

Protoss relies on having a lot of options. It’s been a long time since Protoss would just build their comp/deathball and go.

And nerfing cuts options, which has a big knock-on effect.

I’m not quite Rotterdam but I’m definitely a Phoenix lover, here’s a case in point you rarely see them in PvT now. They can harass (and escape easily), scout and spot and are obviously excellent drop defence. Plus chasing retreating medivacs, there’s a lot of utility if you can babysit them.

They give Terran something to think about, they can pin them back a bit, or have them worry about sending out drops.

But, they’re just not very good now because, for all their virtues they weaken your standing force too much against dedicated pushes. This didn’t use to be the case, the better batteries, beefier disruptors etc, it wasn’t trivial but you could hold a push while you’re powering.

Just one example of course, but Terrans really only have to worry about something dedicatedly cheesy, or Toss trying to power behind some kind of light pressure, usually with stalkers. They can feel that much more confident that they’re unlikely to face certain things, and cut corners. Be it powering harder and just going across the map for a big push, or send out a few medivacs knowing there’s only a bunch of stalkers out front doing a soft contain.

Now I must say I don’t like batteries being so critical, but it’s hard to see any wider redesign that makes Toss rely on them less. It’s just a bandaid sure but ripping it off has made Toss very fragile and on a knife edge in PvT

On February 11 2024 19:34 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:


Interesting breakdown I like it.

I do have to point out that even in the Trap era, Protoss wasn't only just getting smacked around by Zerg. Zerg was smacking all Protoss including Trap and Zest. But in Korea, Terran was also smacking all Protoss except Trap.

In the Trap era, 3 different Terran player won at least one Code S - Maru, Cure, and TY. Most of that on the expense of Protoss players.

There is something fundamentally wrong about Protoss since the MSC removal. In a race like Terran you can have Cure, TY, and TIME win huge tournaments for first time ever while Protoss ex-champs just cant get the job done year after the year.

On February 11 2024 20:15 Brutaxilos wrote:
How is killing 4 queens at the start not just game ending damage. Zerg is just so frustrating to watch sometimes.

On February 11 2024 20:18 youaremysin wrote:

it's still a 5 reaper investment that delays the T on a huge map. Clem seemed pretty good but also kinda stubborned with the 0 def vs nydus, same vs solar.

On February 11 2024 20:18 youaremysin wrote:

it's still a 5 reaper investment that delays the T on a huge map. Clem seemed pretty good but also kinda stubborned with the 0 def vs nydus, same vs solar.

On February 11 2024 20:21 Brutaxilos wrote:

Felt like Clem was basically on top of his game the entire game. He basically caught almost every runby. It was really just the last nydus that broke him.

On February 11 2024 20:22 Vindicare605 wrote:
Are we sure that Serral isn't British? He sure loves his Queens.