On September 04 2025 22:48 tigera6 wrote: So the plan to have a Protoss win a world title is to buff them so that other players will switch race to Protoss? Would be hilarious to see a Ro4 of Clem Maru Reynor and Hero/Classic and guess who pick which race.
Weirdly, Maru only race-switched versus Zerg. He played Terran against MaNa.
From a statistical point of view, TvZ is just as favoured towards Terran as PvT is towards Protoss.
Seems likely he race-switched versus Zerg for reasons other than balance.
Statistics don't always describe balance perfectly, so it might still be due to balance considerations.
It just seems weird that a Terran would race pick against Zerg for balance reasons, if they're not also going to do it against Protoss, given what the statistics look like.
I think Maru might be avoiding the most mechanically demanding Terran match-up, which is undoubtedly TvZ, because of his shoulder and wrist issues.
Astrea having a disaster in game two against Reynor. Carelessly lost three Carriers for nothing whilst doing a Carrier rush, and then died to the counter-attack. I bet he's kicking himself.
Trigger almost threw the F away in game 2 against Byun, hes up 3 base, have map control and built a big bank but keep taking terrible fight and almost lost the game.
if you guys don't mind, I'm gonna post the youtube link here. Since when you click open the match, there is no direct link to that specific game. It's not recorded in Twitch.tv either. The Beginning time is 6AM for me, it's too early. So i usually watch backwards.
as always, GLHF. (btw, if posting youtube link to the game is not allowed for whatever reason, please let me know)
On September 06 2025 20:42 tigera6 wrote: Trigger almost threw the F away in game 2 against Byun, hes up 3 base, have map control and built a big bank but keep taking terrible fight and almost lost the game.
First two series from the playoffs are happening today.
Cure absolutely blitzed SHIN in the first series, whereas Reynor and Zoun are currently 1-1.
In the first game, Zoun went for a Blink Stalker all-in, but Reynor eventually managed to defend.
In the second game, Zoun went for a cute Adept timing, using a Sentry to Force Field the main ramp whilst the Adepts shaded in. That crippled Reynor's economy so much that he couldn't hold against subsequent attacks.
Zoun doing basically the same build in game three as he did in game two, but this time he made a Dark Shrine as a follow-up.
Reynor was better prepared for the Adept/Sentry play, but completely unprepared for the Dark Templar.
Clever series management from Zoun!
EDIT:
Zoun ends up winning 3-2 doing the same build twice more, but with different follow-ups.
The fourth game was Reynor holding the Adept pressure and gaining a lead from doing so, but his response was very aggressive. Zoun still committed to trying to do damage and it was a disaster.
The fifth game was much the same, with Reynor going for another aggressive response, but Zoun smartly chose not to commit with his Adepts, taking a third base and moving up the tech tree much quicker than in the fourth game. He eventually won with a mostly Tempest/Templar/Immortal army vs. a mostly Lurker/Corruptor army.
Good games. Great series management from Zoun. His changes in approach, albeit using the same opening four times in a row, really put Reynor through the ringer.
So cool to see more mech TvP. Even though Maru lost both g1 and g3, they were good and dynamic games. As a player who goes mech in all MUs since SC2's launch, this is so amazing to see it finally work consistently at the top level. (Not including the silly reactor cyclone rework, or the occasional TvP mech game).
I hope people see these recent mech games and stop saying mech is boring and don't vouche to nerf it to be unviable again. The Cyclone bugs should be fixed, but it should be given some buff to compensate as it's proven that a small buff to its lockon dps is able to round out mech enough to be viable in TvP without becoming OP for other MUs.
Keep in mind, the Cyclone lock on upgrade used to give a total of +400 bonus damage to Armored. But a patch trying to buff the Cyclone to make mech more viable changed it to give bonus damage to all units, but only +200. This was arguably a nerf overall. While this was useful versus I guess Hydras and Queens in TvZ, the Cyclone lost a ton of its usefulness vs all the armored units - such as most of the entire Protoss army. A fitting change once the cyclone bug is fixed is to change the upgrade to give it something similar to a total of +200 vs All (+200 vs Armored). So that it would be a true buff compared to the old upgrade giving a total of +400 vs Armored. This way, the Cyclone won't really affect Bio since the dps is locked behind an upgrade.
Similarly, blue flame upgrade could give Hellions +1 vs All (+4 vs Light) instead of only being +5 (vs Light). This could be a nice way to give Mech a tiny bit of extra damage without affecting Bio play because you never make more than ~10 Hellions when playing Bio, but when playing Mech you may have tons of Hellions, and being able to poke with them allows Mech to keep some map control which it needs to balance out its immobility.