IEM Katowice 2024 - Page 55

On February 11 2024 22:11 Brutaxilos wrote:
Can Dark even go to the Esports World Cup? Isn't he going to military soon?

On February 11 2024 22:11 Poopi wrote:
Finally time to see the GOAT play, let’s go Maru!!

On February 11 2024 22:20 WombaT wrote:
Brackets just alter so much anyway, specially with such a small pool of players, with few players being the complete package.

Then add in wonky groups and it can tell a rather distorting tale.

Dark is looking good, with a ridiculous range and less of the occasional silly thing he does. I can see him beating Serral, ofc we said that of Clem, but where Clem is trying to go toe-to-toe versus Serral in his domain and comfort zone, Dark is a tricky customer who’s got just as much on-stage clutchness.

If Maru can negotiate a TvT gauntlet, we may get that dream final on such a stage, better late than never! I may narrowly favour Serral on shape, and Maru isn’t beyond doing something silly on such a stage. But Dark is probably a favourable matchup for Maru.

If Maru doesn’t negotiate the TvT gauntlet, I just don’t think there’s any way the rest of the Ts are taking out a Serral in this shape, and Dark is probably favoured too.

Perhaps some will disagree with my reads but so much of the calculus changes off those factors that it’s hard for me to make any kind of T versus Z judgement.

On February 11 2024 22:08 Starcloud wrote:


Well, of course not as a whole, but its still a good example from todays racial strengths. So you are saying that TvZ is unbalanced ? If we look up from Aligulac, the current situation of win rates; TvZ and PvT are at 50% and only PvZ is 53% for protoss.



You complained about balance after TvZ(Clem/Serral). Now it is about protoss too weak ? And in your list, there are 2 terrans and 3 zergs ? How is that SO unbalanced ? Also, one could argue that at least MaxPax and her0 could be on that list in their best days. I agree though that protoss seems bit weaker atm. It’s not as bad as before though.

On February 11 2024 22:28 Poopi wrote:
Maru has no chance vs Serral though on this patch / map pool, but he will not look as hopeless as Cure / ByuN or HeroMarine, so we gotta hope to see him navigate the TvTs

On February 11 2024 22:30 M3t4PhYzX wrote:
zero protoss players in top8?!

Shocking! :O





this game is broken af lol

On February 11 2024 13:32 Nezgar wrote:


Maps get brought up in almost every single one of these threads. And every time it's "Well, this current map pool is just bad for Protoss, we'll just have to wait for the next one to fix that" and then that next magical map pool that fixes that balance problem never comes.
Why that is the case is probably another discussion altogether. I personally blame it on every single map pool being almost identical standard maps, and if Protoss is just worse on standard maps then of course this will never change if we don't fundamentally change how we approach the map pool.
When people talk about experimental and crazy map contests, it's stuff like "a healing shrine in the corner of the map", as if that would change anything about how the maps are played.

The point is that all this talk about the map pool and the players just not showing up in shape or how Protoss X threw the game and so forth is happening in almost every thread.
Protoss won their last world championship in 2015 and their last premier tournament in 2022.
Before herO won his GSL Code S in late 2022, the last time a Protoss won that tournament was in 2017.
Quite a lot of great players have come, peaked and gone in that period of time, yet somehow they just don't seem to win the big tournaments. So this whole argument of "Look how bad this Protoss lineup is" just doesn't work when the results have been largely the same no matter how much you stack a tournament with great Protoss talent.

At some point we have to admit that there is a fundamental problem and miniscule balance changes just aren't going to cut it. PiG said that the last balance patch was a bold step in the right direction, but it was "bold" in much the same way that the finalists of the recent map making contest were "experimental".

Do some massive changes. If the pendulum swings in the opposite direction for a while, so be it. If we have to make arguments that the best Protoss players deserve to make it out of the group stage while players like SHIN make deep runs in a tournament and no one bats a fucking eye, it's time to shake the whole thing up.

Though that is just not going to happen. We'll hear the same excuses and arguments that we have been hearing for the last 5+ years and then the Void Ray gets a movement speed buff which then gets reverted a couple month later because MaxPax uses it to beat up other top tier players and we clearly cannot have that, now can we?

I am just tired of hearing how each and every tournament is an outlyer that can be blamed on factor X.