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Locutos
Brazil259 Posts
On February 12 2024 05:12 Lexender wrote: Serral is definitively deserving of all his success but I feel like Starcraft froze in 2018 because it just keeps being the same over and over. Yea. And tennis is different game every year... | ||
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youaremysin
119 Posts
On February 12 2024 18:05 Azzur wrote: Whilst I'm an unashamed Terran fanboy and almost always root for the Terran, I quite enjoyed it when Serral swept Maru 4-0 mainly because I never really liked Maru (if he wasn't the Terran champion, I would never like him at all), and for the fact that it was a non-Korean that won. Anyways, my opinion on the matter is that whilst Maru is a great player, he probably does not have the true champion mentality. I think there's plenty of evidence of this, but the most glaring is the failure to win IEM 2023 when the win (and perhaps GOAT status?) was handed to him on a platter and he blew it. Maru has been more emotional and shaky in recent years, that's for sure, but to say he doesn't have the mentality of a champion is a bit ridiculous. The guy's been a cold-blooded killer since he was 14, and there's no counting the number of times he's put on an impassive, unwavering face on the big stage. Serral is the goat, he's done things better than anyone else, he's almost the perfect zerg and probably the closest to what's humanly achievable in terms of skill. He's prime is untouchable in any matchup and at any stage of the game. Scouting, decision making, micro, macro. Everything's top notch. Maru isn't just a great player, he's the best terran to ever touch the game, the 4th race for a reason, not because he did things better than other terrans, because he did things no other terran would even do, he shaped metas way before anyone else. It took months to copy his style with mixed success. When terrans were struggling in TvP, he styled on them. When no one even dared to think of going late game TvP or TvZ, he embraced it. And a beast in mirror, his best MU at his peak, although one could say that without TY or even innovation in the way the competition was less fierce. His main default is his lack of consistency (to take with a grain of salt obviously) as he can completely derp sometimes or be really stubborned with some builds. | ||
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Locutos
Brazil259 Posts
I remember an interview he gave once. He said that thinking about the game took a great part in his preparations. Its really cool to see how he can, amidst all the near perfect microing and macroing he does throughout his game, the little things he does to capitalize even further in games. The overlord-queen creep spread, infestor fungal traps etc...] His mastery takes root in his game mentalization, in an abstract way, i think. And that is really wonderful to see when it takes form S2 | ||
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Argonauta
Spain4906 Posts
On February 12 2024 18:59 youaremysin wrote: Maru has been more emotional and shaky in recent years, that's for sure, but to say he doesn't have the mentality of a champion is a bit ridiculous. The guy's been a cold-blooded killer since he was 14, and there's no counting the number of times he's put on an impassive, unwavering face on the big stage. Serral is the goat, he's done things better than anyone else, he's almost the perfect zerg and probably the closest to what's humanly achievable in terms of skill. He's prime is untouchable in any matchup and at any stage of the game. Scouting, decision making, micro, macro. Everything's top notch. Maru isn't just a great player, he's the best terran to ever touch the game, the 4th race for a reason, not because he did things better than other terrans, because he did things no other terran would even do, he shaped metas way before anyone else. It took months to copy his style with mixed success. When terrans were struggling in TvP, he styled on them. When no one even dared to think of going late game TvP or TvZ, he embraced it. And a beast in mirror, his best MU at his peak, although one could say that without TY or even innovation in the way the competition was less fierce. His main default is his lack of consistency (to take with a grain of salt obviously) as he can completely derp sometimes or be really stubborned with some builds. That was really well put, my only caveat is that we behave as if its et in stone, and luckily this game keeps going, maybe Serral will stop his current god-like form and Maru will overtake him in terms of WC titles and the discurse will be different, or maybe not. But thats the best part, we will got to enjoy them playing this game for sure :D | ||
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AdrianHealeyy
114 Posts
Is Protoss genuinely too weak? Or is that the Protoss crew is just worse than the terran/zerg crew? FWIW: I am a zerg fanboy of Serral. But I am genuinely worried about the Protoss ability to perform on the highest level Could it be that Protoss just has less tools to work with in a late game scenario? Like: the abilities that protoss units have, don't scale as well as the zerg and terran units, with proper control. Is that's what's happening? That's the real potential here, not zerg vs terran. | ||
Poopi
France12774 Posts
On February 12 2024 20:08 AdrianHealeyy wrote: I don't understand how this discussion is about Maru vs Serral and not about the atrocious performance of Protoss. Is Protoss genuinely too weak? Or is that the Protoss crew is just worse than the terran/zerg crew? FWIW: I am a zerg fanboy of Serral. But I am genuinely worried about the Protoss ability to perform on the highest level Could it be that Protoss just has less tools to work with in a late game scenario? Like: the abilities that protoss units have, don't scale as well as the zerg and terran units, with proper control. Is that's what's happening? That's the real potential here, not zerg vs terran. There was only 1 strong protoss in the tournament, herO. Classic could not qualify and MaxPax doesn’t play offline. Trap is gone, Zest is gone, Stats is back from the military and not yet (or ever, it’s hard to come back to sc2) in his best shape although he showed promise. PartinG has been back too recently. Having a game balanced around the lower tier Protoss players would be dangerous, but it might be the solution for entertainment instead of competitive integrity | ||
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Glorfindelio
202 Posts
On February 12 2024 17:24 Poopi wrote: Maru was godlike on Radhused and still could not win it, it's kinda indicative. Overall Clem played well but Maru played even better and it was not enough, despite playing visibly better than Serral on Radhuset. Doesn't really matter since it's Starcraft 2 twilight year(s) anyways though, things ain't gonna change now Maru played absolutely out of his mind on Radhuset--but this is exactly what I mean. No one else besides Serral would have been able to beat him at that stage of the game. Maru entered into the ghost, liberator stage of the game from a position of strength, and you can see the commentators talking about Serral's dire position as Maru sits comfortably on six bases after his most recent attack fails. But the moment Maru moves to take the gold, Serral gets the perfect fight to swing momentum for the next 10 minutes, where he basically accrues small victories in every engagement until taking a couple bad ones at the very end. And then he pulls off the perfect tech switch with the last of his resources and Maru doesn't have the money to match it. If Serral doesn't break Maru's attempt to grab the gold the first time, there's no way he wins. Hell, if he even trades slightly worse despite having enormous momentum for the last half of the game, he loses. People don't understand how tricky it is to engage into entrenched Terran with Lib/Ghost, never mind when it's Maru. How many times have you seen Reynor crash into an entrenched Maru and break? With respect, he struggles to best Spirit in games like that. Dark gets consistently mauled in late game vs Maru and it doesn't look close. Solar is very good at that stage, but loses more often than not. Serral is the only one that wins games like this. No one else touches Maru in late game TvZ (though Clem has gotten quite close), but no one plays like Serral. All of that being said, many of the games could have gone either way if even one engagement had gone differently, or if Maru had scouted those early attacks a bit sooner. Even that last game, if Maru plugs that mineral line gap so a group of banelings don't merc like 16 SCVs, his early tempo lead likely snowballs into a win, but he let runbys ravage his scvs time and time again. Serral was simply intractable and glacial in his dominance this tournament, and for me, the sheer skill of it was something to behold. Fight it, run from it, destiny still arrives as they say. And who knows, maybe Maru unleashes a similar run this summer--it's certainly possible. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6860 Posts
On February 12 2024 20:23 Poopi wrote: There was only 1 strong protoss in the tournament, herO. Classic could not qualify and MaxPax doesn’t play offline. Trap is gone, Zest is gone, Stats is back from the military and not yet (or ever, it’s hard to come back to sc2) in his best shape although he showed promise. PartinG has been back too recently. Having a game balanced around the lower tier Protoss players would be dangerous, but it might be the solution for entertainment instead of competitive integrity Agreed. The worst part is, herO blew it himself. He could have absolutely won his match vs Cure and then vs HeroMarine and then maybe got stopped by Maru in the semis. But he didn't. | ||
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Starcloud
137 Posts
On February 12 2024 17:00 WombaT wrote: Many bring the whole ‘Terran master race’ mentality to bear, which has been around since the beginning of WoL. Like everything Terran needs to do is just so hard or so absolutely fair, no other races take any skill, and the only things worth valuing in a strategy game is pumping out units, microing them and dropping all over the place. Even in very strong metas Terrans still are like this, at least Protoss Afficionados save their complaining for when their faction is getting rinsed (which is increasingly often). TvZ for this tournament was 40.9%, 18-26 in total sets. Of which Serral on his own accounts for 9-0 in the Zerg column. Rag went on a tear of delightfully That’s really not to me indicative of horrific balance, there’s a pretty decent trading there, and Serral was just in imperious outlier form this last few days. Neither would I claim it’s perfectly balanced either, but it’s not that bad surely? When Maru was at god tier in TvZ and basically untouchable for a stretch, and other Terrans couldn’t replicate it, that’s held up as evidence the race is undercooked, maybe with a cheeky ‘just play like Maru’ sarcastically thrown in. When Serral is nigh-on untouchable but other Zergs are eminently beatable, people will still attribute it to the race being overtuned and not extend Serral the same kind of credit. Apologies to my many Terran brethren on here who aren’t like that of course ^_^ I think it is this 100%. Its so sad, that every time Serral wins, there is this crying of some excuses why he is just "good", and won ONLY because zerg is so IMBA. And same happened after this tournament again, although it was the perfect example of one player being just miles better than anybody else in the planet. He has been practically untouchable for two premiers now with best players and still people whine about balance. Indeed, if Maru had done the same, there would be no balance talks at all and he would be praised just "better than anybody, LTP!". He destroyed Dark and Reynor, who are the second and third best zergs in the world. Did anybody whine about balance ? No, because Maru was really good and deserved his wins, same way as Serral did. On February 12 2024 17:24 Poopi wrote: Maru was godlike on Radhused and still could not win it, it's kinda indicative. Overall Clem played well but Maru played even better and it was not enough, despite playing visibly better than Serral on Radhuset. Doesn't really matter since it's Starcraft 2 twilight year(s) anyways though, things ain't gonna change now Maru was simply amazing on that game. But have you people really thought how OVERPOWERED terran actually looked on that map ? Most are whining about OP infestors atm and how zergs toolset is so much better than any other race. In addition, the map was heavily zerg favoured. IF all of that were true, why the best player in the world couldnt finish the game although he mined much more than his opponent for 40 minutes and still barely won ? IF you complain about infestors, bad luck with scans, bad maps, etc., it really shouldnt have been that close of a game in the first place ? Serral used practically every zerg stunt to try to finish Maru, but didnt succeed. No other zerg could do what he did on that map. Multi-pronged attacks, runbys, lurkers, broods, burrowed infestors, ultras(lol), drops,vipers etc. Yes, he could have been more efficient in some trades for sure. But other than that, how could he actually played better ? Like I said, Maru was amazing in that game, but so was Serral. Sigh, imo the TvZ is in an excellent state atm. Sure, there are little things that could be adjusted and map-pool should maybe be more balanced in some ways. Usually you review the balance situation through the results. If you see that the matchup seems to be working otherwise well, but one players domination turns the scale to the other direction, it most times isnt the balance that is screwed but that the one player is just better than anyone else. Serral just is that one player. | ||
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Nasigil
137 Posts
1. Serral also played to literal perfection on that map, no other Zerg in the world can beat Maru when he turtle like this. 2. Maru made a few massive mistake mid game by letting his army caught by fungals too many times. He's definitely capable of doing better than that. That extra loss of resource came back and bite him in the end when the whole map was mined out from both sides, Serral was the one with a bigger last army. Imagine Maru didn't lose 20 ghosts early on to fungals, he will have that one. | ||
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Argonauta
Spain4906 Posts
On February 12 2024 21:49 Nasigil wrote: People like to talk about Maru played incredibly on Radhuset but manage to forget that 1. Serral also played to literal perfection on that map, no other Zerg in the world can beat Maru when he turtle like this. 2. Maru made a few massive mistake mid game by letting his army caught by fungals too many times. He's definitely capable of doing better than that. That extra loss of resource came back and bite him in the end when the whole map was mined out from both sides, Serral was the one with a bigger last army. Imagine Maru didn't lose 20 ghosts early on to fungals, he will have that one. The problem of point 2 is that 1) burrowed infestor is the hardest unit to spot as cloacked, its literally invisible when halted and leaves the faintest mark when moving. Obs , borrowed roaches, banshees dts and wm are easier to see. 2) Maru was scanning quite diligently, couple of times the scan missed for 2 pixels or less. Woudl you call that a mistake? or bad luck since inmovile infestors are impossible to see? | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6860 Posts
On February 12 2024 22:19 Argonauta wrote: The problem of point 2 is that 1) burrowed infestor is the hardest unit to spot as cloacked, its literally invisible when halted and leaves the faintest mark when moving. Obs , borrowed roaches, banshees dts and wm are easier to see. 2) Maru was scanning quite diligently, couple of times the scan missed for 2 pixels or less. Woudl you call that a mistake? or bad luck since inmovile infestors are impossible to see? Actually most of his scan got an infestor. But Serral had like 10+ of them there, all micro'd independantly, so there was always another close by | ||
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Nasigil
137 Posts
On February 12 2024 22:19 Argonauta wrote: The problem of point 2 is that 1) burrowed infestor is the hardest unit to spot as cloacked, its literally invisible when halted and leaves the faintest mark when moving. Obs , borrowed roaches, banshees dts and wm are easier to see. 2) Maru was scanning quite diligently, couple of times the scan missed for 2 pixels or less. Woudl you call that a mistake? or bad luck since inmovile infestors are impossible to see? Look, this is not the first time we see burrowed infestors. They are powerful but Terran has learned to deal with them for years. Clem and Maru knows perfectly well how to scan diligently and built turrets all over the place to counter burrowed infestors without Ravens, and they have beaten Serral like this before in late game many times. I especially remember Maru won a late game against Serral in 2022 where he caught like 20 burrowed infestors. This is just the nature of the matchup, if Zerg can't land a few good fungals, all their late game units are weak to ghosts. Maru is definitely capable of not letting his ghosts getting fungals 10 times in a game, that just never happened before, you can't toss it up to "well duh burrowed infestors hard to spot". Some bad luck probably, but definitely not a balance problem. And make no mistake, having multiple infestors isolated from main army and moving around the map all the time is not easy and you rarely see F2 Zerg like Solar attempt this, Dark and Reynor sometimes try it but could never use it as consistently and efficiently as Serral. Serral is on next level when it comes to this level of multi-pronged army control. | ||
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Poopi
France12774 Posts
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Argonauta
Spain4906 Posts
On February 12 2024 22:39 Nasigil wrote: Look, this is not the first time we see burrowed infestors. They are powerful but Terran has learned to deal with them for years. Clem and Maru knows perfectly well how to scan diligently and built turrets all over the place to counter burrowed infestors without Ravens, and they have beaten Serral like this before in late game many times. I especially remember Maru won a late game against Serral in 2022 where he caught like 20 burrowed infestors. This is just the nature of the matchup, if Zerg can't land a few good fungals, all their late game units are weak to ghosts. Maru is definitely capable of not letting his ghosts getting fungals 10 times in a game, that just never happened before, you can't toss it up to "well duh burrowed infestors hard to spot". And make no mistake, having multiple infestors isolated from main army and moving around the map all the time is not easy and you rarely see F2 Zerg like Solar attempt this, Dark and Reynor sometimes try it but could never use it as efficiently as Serral. Serral is on next level when it comes to this level of multi-pronged army control. I am not denying any of your points. Its just that if infestors are invisible, there is no skill involved into missing a scan and therefore it can hardly be considered a mistake. You just gotta scan constantly around your army and hope for the best. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15914 Posts
On February 12 2024 21:48 Starcloud wrote: I think it is this 100%. Its so sad, that every time Serral wins, there is this crying of some excuses why he is just "good", and won ONLY because zerg is so IMBA. And same happened after this tournament again, although it was the perfect example of one player being just miles better than anybody else in the planet. He has been practically untouchable for two premiers now with best players and still people whine about balance. Indeed, if Maru had done the same, there would be no balance talks at all and he would be praised just "better than anybody, LTP!". He destroyed Dark and Reynor, who are the second and third best zergs in the world. Did anybody whine about balance ? No, because Maru was really good and deserved his wins, same way as Serral did. That's bullshit and you know it. When Clem beat Serral in DH Atlanta tons of people were whining about Ghosts and widow mines. | ||
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Glorfindelio
202 Posts
On February 12 2024 22:19 Argonauta wrote: The problem of point 2 is that 1) burrowed infestor is the hardest unit to spot as cloacked, its literally invisible when halted and leaves the faintest mark when moving. Obs , borrowed roaches, banshees dts and wm are easier to see. 2) Maru was scanning quite diligently, couple of times the scan missed for 2 pixels or less. Woudl you call that a mistake? or bad luck since inmovile infestors are impossible to see? I know this is crazy, but I still think that a Raven or two would be super useful in supreme late-game. It's kind of how Zergs ignored burrow for YEARS, despite in having applicable uses outside of baneling landmines. Even burrowing underneath command centers/expansions is supremely annoying if you have the APM to spare. Beyond that, if Serral doesn't catch Maru with some of those fungals, it's literally impossible for a Zerg to trade efficiently enough that they don't get ground into dust against late-game Lib/Ghost/Mine. If Maru is even a bit more methodical about taking his gold during that first attempt, Serral loses. | ||
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Glorfindelio
202 Posts
On February 12 2024 22:41 Poopi wrote: Ghosts have been nerfed, they are not as powerful as they once were. Zerg can very often escape from ghosts snipe with the patch, that's partly why zerg is stronger than terran atm You say this categorically like this is fact--didn't Clem just beat Serral convincingly in a straight-up series a month ago? Did we have a balance patch somewhere since then I'm not aware of? Didn't Reynor and Dark lose to Maru in games that weren't particularly close? Solar looked amazing for a couple of games against Clem--and he also got 2-0'd by Heromarine. Controversial opinion--it's a match-up right now where the better player that day wins the majority of the time, or if they're close enough *gasp* having tailored builds/strategies for certain maps or player tendencies can tilt the scales. | ||
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AdrianHealeyy
114 Posts
If it was _purely_ a race and map thing, then that doesn't explain that Serral not only beats other races, but also other zergs in a equally dominant manner a lot of the times. Here is Serral's rapport since the start of Master's Colloseum: Serral-Reynor: 2-0 (mirror match up) Serral-Maru: 0-2 (ZvT, loss from Serral) Serral-Solar: 2-1 (mirror match up) Serral-Cure: 2-0 (ZvT) Serral-Solar: 3-0 (mirror match up) Serral-Maru: 3-0 (ZvT) Serral-Reynor: 4-0 (mirror match up) Serral-Hero: 5-1 (ZvP) During that same master's colloseum: Hero beat Reynor (zvp), Dark (zvp), Solar (4-0). Maru beat Dark 2-0, but also lost to Dark 4-3. Like: if it was 'just' the racial balance, the differences wouldn't be that consistent. Dark, Reynor, Maru, Solar, Hero, etc. all have pretty equal chances towards each other, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Let's add Katowice Groupfase: Serral-Kelazhur: 2-0 Serral-Byun: 2-0 Serral-Skillous: 2-0 Serral-Astrea: 2-0 Serral-Firefly: 2-0 Oke, that was the easy group, relatively speaking, fair enough. Serral-Clem: 3-0. This comes after Clem beat Solar: 3-2. (Serral beat Solar in Master's Colloseum: 2-1.) Serral-Dark: 3-1 (mirror match up.) Dark lost to Reynor: 2-1 AND lost to Maru: 2-0. Serral: 4-0. Maru beat Cure, Byun, Reynor, Hero, Showtime and Dark. (And miraculously lost to Cyan.) Like: if we would reduce to purely racial balance, this consistency just wouldn't be there. He bearts the other zerfs fairly consistent as well. Those other zergs - like Solar and Dark - have been around for a long time and are still competing for the very top but simply are not as dominant. Denying that Serral has had an absolute top-tier consistency for an entire period, even despite (minor) nerfs (like the baneling nerf) is just weird. Serral doesn't have accidents like 'loosing to Cyan'. The last time this happened... is probably Serral vs Shin (Ragnarok) in last year's Katowice. And Shin, although no Dark or Reynor, is also no slouch at the game. (Shin is by far a better player than Cyan, right?) In a BO5 according to Aligulac, here are the chances of Serral winning against these other top 12 players in a BO5. Maru: 84% Maxpax: 80% Dark: 79% Hero: 76% Clem: 80% Reynor: 80 Byun: 88% Solar: 80% Cure: 96% (!!!) Heromarine: 95% Not only that, if we look at the ratings from IEM Katowice, Serral received a 99 (!!!) in 3 categories. If I am not mistaken (but please, don't flame me if I am wrong?): these ratings were given by other players, right? That means that other top players rank Serral as well as being the absolute very top of their peers. All other players consistently tell everyone that Serral is a monster. Which he is and his record reflects that. Serral's overall aligulac ranking is currently 3825. The second place is for Maxpax, with 3487. This is almost 400 points less. The third place? Clem, who is 53 (!) points behind. Maru, Dark and Hero are also within the 34XX range. This is the entire set of losses of Serral were against: Maru (Master's Coliseum) Clem (WTL 2023 Winter) Clem (ESL Pro-Tour Winter main event) Solar (SCBoy WTL) Clem (Master's Coliseum 6 Main Event) Solar (WTL 2023 Summer) Solar and Classic (Gamers 8) Reynor (Homestory Cup XXIII) Maxpax (Kung Fu Cup) Clem (PiG Sty Festival) And then we have Shin in Katowice 2023. I count 5 losses vs terran, 2 losses vs protoss and 4 losses vs zerg. If it was all balance and serral is 'just' his race, most of his losses would come from zvz match ups, which isn't the case. (Assuming a reasonable equal-ish distribution of skill.) But that just isn't the case. Serral is the best Z-Z player in the world, he is the best Z-T player in the world and the best Z-P in the world, according to aligulac. Every single datapoint, wether it's subjective (other people's estimates), objective (aligulac and win-rate data), for the last years consistently point towards Serral as the absolute best player, together with Maru. Yes, the game needs to be balanced. Yes, the maps need to be balanced. Yes, there is probably an argument to be made that this is a zerg-favored map pool, etc. If we look at the 'periods of domination', Serral is ranked as the absolute number 1 with more points (but a slower length) than Maru and Dark. This looks (but I could be wrong on this) like it's mainly explained because Serral has had less times at the top than either of the other 2. (Could be wrong on this.) Serral has the highest rating ever achieve on Aligulac, the highest rating in the v P match up and the Vs T match up. (4 players: Clem, Maru, Hero and Maxpax have had higher ratings in the vZ match up.) I just don't know what else could convince people that Serral truly is the best SC2 player for a while now. This is independent from Goat-status. But people complaining about Serral just being 'good' don't really understand how good he is and has been for a consistent while. He isn't 4-0 Maru all the time. But he is _never_ 2-0 loss to Cyan. And that, in itself, is an amazing feat. To be clear: I am not arguing for Goat-status, I am not arguing that Maru isn't also the absolute top tier. But according to the data: Serral is just a higher tier above everyone else. Even if he sometimes looses. | ||
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FFXthebest
75 Posts
On February 12 2024 20:08 AdrianHealeyy wrote: I don't understand how this discussion is about Maru vs Serral and not about the atrocious performance of Protoss. Is Protoss genuinely too weak? Or is that the Protoss crew is just worse than the terran/zerg crew? FWIW: I am a zerg fanboy of Serral. But I am genuinely worried about the Protoss ability to perform on the highest level Could it be that Protoss just has less tools to work with in a late game scenario? Like: the abilities that protoss units have, don't scale as well as the zerg and terran units, with proper control. Is that's what's happening? That's the real potential here, not zerg vs terran. In order to make Protoss competitive they need to revert a lot of the nerfs. For example, cost of immortal / warp prism, chargelots, battery overcharge, void ray etc. Protoss got all these nerfs and didn’t get any buff to compensate it, except the useless “decrease research time for weapon upgrade” | ||
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