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United States33388 Posts
On June 07 2025 01:26 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2025 23:01 WombaT wrote:
I’m still unsure what I think of ZvP balance right now. I’m so used to Serral being basically invincible that it feels odd that even he is sometimes struggling.
Equally, that series he, especially in game 1 it felt he was making mistakes and oversights that 100% should cost you the game. Whether he forgot it, or chose not to get it, not having adrenal was a bad state of affairs.
If it wasn’t Serral, I’d probably not even be asking questions, but it is Serral and ZvP, which does make me wonder.
In previous metas, it felt like Serral either scouted well or read Protoss players like a book from intuition and Starsense and was basically invincible. Guys like Dark and Reynor were super scary in the matchup, but not quite as good at making those reads every time.
My old crude calculation was Serral > herO = other top ZvPers > Most other players. Now it feels way more volatile
Now I’m finding even Serral is making bad reads way more often. It could just be his current shape, but I think an alternative explanation is that current ZvP isn’t a matter of read and react, but read and cut a corner somewhere, or gamble a bit.
Make the right call and cut the right corner, and you can get Reynor stomping herO 3-0. Make the wrong ones and it’s a Serral 0-2 Zoun.
As I said I’m not sure at all, we’ve had a strange off season with not a huge amount to go off.
I think last patch was sorta decent for PvZ. Serral gonna Serral but it’s Serral ZvP, IMO the strongest matchup in SC2 history, and below that you had a lot of 50/50 matchups below him.
TvZ feels in a pretty decent spot, where Clem on form is invincible, Maru gets close but it’s pretty 50/50 with the rest of the field.
I think we basically had that in ZvP last patch, perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. I haven't seen this series yet, but from his losses vs Classic and some vs MaxPax I feel that the current patch is bad for Serral specifically. Serral loves to play reactive macro into lategame win condition and doesn't like taking risks that much. And right now PvZ lategame is clearly Protoss favored so Serral's preferred playstyle is just inferior currently. Is this a problem that needs to be fixed? I'm not sure. I don't think Zerg has a right to have a win condition in lategame. Maru is another player who loves to turtle to lategame but he realized that playing passive as terran is just a no no in the current metagame, so he figured out ways to kill his opponents early which won him DH Dallas. Maybe Serral finally feels the limitations of his playstyle and needs to adapt if he wants to succeed. If he has one weakness it's his unwillingness to take risks and in the current metagame it seems like it's finally being exposed. I mean, against Classic right after 2 extremely difficult super-lategames he chose to go for turtle to lategame strat in the next game as well, that just doesn't seem like the optimal approach.
Eh, I think if you look at Master's Coliseum + LiuLi Cup + PiGSty from the off-season, he's pretty comfortable varying up his strategies and playing very aggressively if he thinks it's necessary (and btw, he did go for a big Roach-Ravager-Bane mid-game attack in game one vs Zoun).
I actually found the Classic series at Dallas peculiar because of how passive he played it. I'm very much inclined to defer to his judgment there, and assume that his practice prior to the tournament + his meta read told him it was fine to play for the late-game. Obviously he was wrong since he lost, but I don't think it's because he was overly stubborn.
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Northern Ireland25324 Posts
On June 07 2025 05:44 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2025 01:26 Charoisaur wrote:On June 06 2025 23:01 WombaT wrote:
I’m still unsure what I think of ZvP balance right now. I’m so used to Serral being basically invincible that it feels odd that even he is sometimes struggling.
Equally, that series he, especially in game 1 it felt he was making mistakes and oversights that 100% should cost you the game. Whether he forgot it, or chose not to get it, not having adrenal was a bad state of affairs.
If it wasn’t Serral, I’d probably not even be asking questions, but it is Serral and ZvP, which does make me wonder.
In previous metas, it felt like Serral either scouted well or read Protoss players like a book from intuition and Starsense and was basically invincible. Guys like Dark and Reynor were super scary in the matchup, but not quite as good at making those reads every time.
My old crude calculation was Serral > herO = other top ZvPers > Most other players. Now it feels way more volatile
Now I’m finding even Serral is making bad reads way more often. It could just be his current shape, but I think an alternative explanation is that current ZvP isn’t a matter of read and react, but read and cut a corner somewhere, or gamble a bit.
Make the right call and cut the right corner, and you can get Reynor stomping herO 3-0. Make the wrong ones and it’s a Serral 0-2 Zoun.
As I said I’m not sure at all, we’ve had a strange off season with not a huge amount to go off.
I think last patch was sorta decent for PvZ. Serral gonna Serral but it’s Serral ZvP, IMO the strongest matchup in SC2 history, and below that you had a lot of 50/50 matchups below him.
TvZ feels in a pretty decent spot, where Clem on form is invincible, Maru gets close but it’s pretty 50/50 with the rest of the field.
I think we basically had that in ZvP last patch, perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. I haven't seen this series yet, but from his losses vs Classic and some vs MaxPax I feel that the current patch is bad for Serral specifically. Serral loves to play reactive macro into lategame win condition and doesn't like taking risks that much. And right now PvZ lategame is clearly Protoss favored so Serral's preferred playstyle is just inferior currently. Is this a problem that needs to be fixed? I'm not sure. I don't think Zerg has a right to have a win condition in lategame. Maru is another player who loves to turtle to lategame but he realized that playing passive as terran is just a no no in the current metagame, so he figured out ways to kill his opponents early which won him DH Dallas. Maybe Serral finally feels the limitations of his playstyle and needs to adapt if he wants to succeed. If he has one weakness it's his unwillingness to take risks and in the current metagame it seems like it's finally being exposed. I mean, against Classic right after 2 extremely difficult super-lategames he chose to go for turtle to lategame strat in the next game as well, that just doesn't seem like the optimal approach. Eh, I think if you look at Master's Coliseum + LiuLi Cup + PiGSty from the off-season, he's pretty comfortable varying up his strategies and playing very aggressively if he thinks it's necessary (and btw, he did go for a big Roach-Ravager-Bane mid-game attack in game one vs Zoun). I actually found the Classic series at Dallas peculiar because of how passive he played it. I'm very much inclined to defer to his judgment there, and assume that his practice prior to the tournament + his meta read told him it was fine to play for the late-game. Obviously he was wrong since he lost, but I don't think it's because he was overly stubborn.
I know pros can’t really reveal their thinking to a really deep level in case rivals exploit it, obviously. Nonetheless I would be fascinated to hear what’s influencing their thinking, how much is the gameplan going in, how much is adaption and why they’re making the calls that they are.
I’d imagine even solid, talented pros are just guessing sometimes as to why Serral makes certain choices, so what hope do I have?
I watched a decent amount of the ‘off season’ stuff, less than some, more than most. Serral’s approach does feel a bit different to then, but it is Serral. He doesn’t play every weekly going under the sun, we only see him at relatively big events so we’re going off relatively few series.
One possibility is that it’s just a bad patch for ZvP. But that’s not going to be figured out day one.
You take away battery overcharge, you give Toss the new energy overcharge ability. You’ve the Queen/Hatch change too to get used to.
Setting aside the latter, that patch introduces two questions, how do I not die to pushes without battery overcharge, and what can I do with my new toy?
On the Zerg side of the ledger, the question is more how do I play my usual way with these changes? They gotta figure out how to defend with fewer Queens generally, but also they don’t get all that much new stuff. The cheaper hatch is only slightly changing a few opening BOs, it’s not opening up new options and timings.
We could simply be seeing the meta settling, and it’s not a good meta if you’re a Zerg in this matchup (or indeed somewhat neutral as I am).
There’s perhaps a lag period where collective Tossdom haven’t quite figured out how to be safe without overcharge of the battery variety, or fully exploit energy overcharge. The closer to the patch, the less that process moved along.
Perhaps Serral was finding in his practice a lot of success with other approaches when Tossers hadn’t really worked out the kinks. Now there’s more flesh on the bones, maybe his practice partners are holding aggression a lot more reliably and he thinks his best option is to go to lategame slug festsz
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Northern Ireland25324 Posts
Also congrats to Zoun who played some bloody good StarCraft. I’ve kinda given up predicting his results. I’ll watch him have a good run, get hyped, then he bombs. Then when I think he’s in bad shape he’ll have a run.
He’s a bit like the anti-Showtime really. Showtime will basically always look good on the eye test, he’ll beat who you think he’ll beat, he won’t beat who you don’t expect him to beat. I, perhaps unkindly have referred to this as the ‘Heromarine’ zone. Zoun can vacillate between godlike and godawful in the same series, beat anyone on his day but also lose to people he really shouldn’t be losing to.
I was Aligulacing a bit, I may be wrong. Outside of Serral’s very early days, or since he ‘ascended’ anyway, least from the multitude of names I’ve stuck in so far, Zoun may be unique in the scene in having a winning record versus Serral offline.
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On June 07 2025 09:03 WombaT wrote:
Also congrats to Zoun who played some bloody good StarCraft. I’ve kinda given up predicting his results. I’ll watch him have a good run, get hyped, then he bombs. Then when I think he’s in bad shape he’ll have a run.
He’s a bit like the anti-Showtime really. Showtime will basically always look good on the eye test, he’ll beat who you think he’ll beat, he won’t beat who you don’t expect him to beat. I, perhaps unkindly have referred to this as the ‘Heromarine’ zone. Zoun can vacillate between godlike and godawful in the same series, beat anyone on his day but also lose to people he really shouldn’t be losing to.
I was Aligulacing a bit, I may be wrong. Outside of Serral’s very early days, or since he ‘ascended’ anyway, least from the multitude of names I’ve stuck in so far, Zoun may be unique in the scene in having a winning record versus Serral offline.
So Zoun is the latter day Hurricane?
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Northern Ireland25324 Posts
On June 07 2025 09:28 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2025 09:03 WombaT wrote:
Also congrats to Zoun who played some bloody good StarCraft. I’ve kinda given up predicting his results. I’ll watch him have a good run, get hyped, then he bombs. Then when I think he’s in bad shape he’ll have a run.
He’s a bit like the anti-Showtime really. Showtime will basically always look good on the eye test, he’ll beat who you think he’ll beat, he won’t beat who you don’t expect him to beat. I, perhaps unkindly have referred to this as the ‘Heromarine’ zone. Zoun can vacillate between godlike and godawful in the same series, beat anyone on his day but also lose to people he really shouldn’t be losing to.
I was Aligulacing a bit, I may be wrong. Outside of Serral’s very early days, or since he ‘ascended’ anyway, least from the multitude of names I’ve stuck in so far, Zoun may be unique in the scene in having a winning record versus Serral offline. So Zoun is the latter day Hurricane?
I feel Hurricane was more a guy who like 9/10 tournaments played to his level, and occasionally made a run
Zoun’s more like, there is a tournament, will Zoun do well? And just flip a coin. There’s almost no pattern at all. I can’t remember the tournament but based on form going in and looking at results I was like ‘He’ll have a good tournament if the bracket gives him Ps and Zs, he’s sucked at PvT lately’. And then he like takes out 3 good Terrans back to back
Then next tournament I’m thinking ‘well, he’s obviously been working on his vT, that’s not a weakness anymore’ and very next tournament he loses to a mediocre Terran.
I’m really struggling to think of a player in SC2 history who’s more unpredictable.
Others are streaky, absolutely but usually within some kinda semi-predictable framework. Player x may be sweet at 2 matchups and struggle in a third, but they spring an upset in it and do better than expected.
Zoun it’s like, I don’t even really have a gauge on what his best matchup is. It seems to flip in a timeframe of days, where for others it’s months, or a particular patch. He’ll be slaughtering Zergs and getting demolished by Terrans, turn up to a tournament and then beat a bunch of good Terrans and lose all his PvZs
It is quite fun though I have to say!
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On June 07 2025 01:15 Waxangel wrote:
Not to look past Ryung, but ShoWTimE does seem to have an adv now since him beating Reynor is more probable than SKillous or Lambo beating Serral.
Edit nvm I didn't realize this match already took place.
Showtime vs reynor should be a banger. Yes Reynor did seem to pull away with the series last time they played but you have to consider this is a shorter best of series if I'm correct it's a bo3? So showtime could definitely pull out some builds AND- do not forget, even if he doesn't get anything done with some cheeky timing Reynor knows he lost to showtime 3 times doing crazy builds so he should be on higher alert and not play as greedy meaning a more contested middle game and Reynor can't just run away with superior eco and nyduses everywhere as easily (potentially).
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Thing is i dont See how one can call it a Bad zvp Patch in Terms of Numbers when in recent bigger tournaments it hovered around 50% (with some outliers Here and there).
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if showtime and lambo both lose (and thus tie in placement) who gets the EWC seed? do they play a tiebreaker match? Some map score shenanigans? or perhaps a cointoss? or what? O_o
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As i said reynors lategame looks better than serrals rn imo.
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I wouldnt call what Reynor doing is lategame PvZ, his highest tech is Lurker, no spellcaster, no Ultra, no Blord. Its a mid-game army with Lurker and Nydus ad it works because he keep out-positioning Showtime.
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On June 07 2025 17:57 darklycid wrote:
Thing is i dont See how one can call it a Bad zvp Patch in Terms of Numbers when in recent bigger tournaments it hovered around 50% (with some outliers Here and there).
The few dozen games played at a level where there's a 100MMR difference between the player of rank N and rank N+1 are not a comparable sample compared to hundreds of aligulac games over months and months where the MU has consistently been heavily protoss favored.
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Showtime making Tempest for 10 minutes and zero air upgrade, and still trying to have 18 Zealots running around is sad.
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On June 07 2025 20:06 Ciaus237 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2025 17:57 darklycid wrote:
Thing is i dont See how one can call it a Bad zvp Patch in Terms of Numbers when in recent bigger tournaments it hovered around 50% (with some outliers Here and there). The few dozen games played at a level where there's a 100MMR difference between the player of rank N and rank N+1 are not a comparable sample compared to hundreds of aligulac games over months and months where the MU has consistently been heavily protoss favored.
Im sure aligulac ratings arent skrewed by some good protosses stomping over mid zergs in weeklies since years 
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More on topic, this time showtime didnt get outmined brutally and they went into the lategame more even it felt because of reynors investment in roaches (burrow move never used) and well never getting adrenal hurts.
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On June 07 2025 20:18 darklycid wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2025 20:06 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 07 2025 17:57 darklycid wrote:
Thing is i dont See how one can call it a Bad zvp Patch in Terms of Numbers when in recent bigger tournaments it hovered around 50% (with some outliers Here and there). The few dozen games played at a level where there's a 100MMR difference between the player of rank N and rank N+1 are not a comparable sample compared to hundreds of aligulac games over months and months where the MU has consistently been heavily protoss favored. Im sure aligulac ratings arent skrewed by some good protosses stomping over mid zergs in weeklies since years
The odds that the whole top of ladder and aligulac's sample is massively biased by a pool of worse players, vs the odds that the handful of top players have a skew, are not at all comparable.
"The top few Zergs were just better" is much more likely than "The whole top pool of players, minus a few zergs, has consistently better protoss".
A situation where top tier tournaments have 50/50 winrates and Zerg just disappears below that doesn't look like balance. It looks like you have a few really good Zergs in quite an imbalanced game.
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On June 07 2025 20:29 Ciaus237 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 07 2025 20:18 darklycid wrote:On June 07 2025 20:06 Ciaus237 wrote:On June 07 2025 17:57 darklycid wrote:
Thing is i dont See how one can call it a Bad zvp Patch in Terms of Numbers when in recent bigger tournaments it hovered around 50% (with some outliers Here and there). The few dozen games played at a level where there's a 100MMR difference between the player of rank N and rank N+1 are not a comparable sample compared to hundreds of aligulac games over months and months where the MU has consistently been heavily protoss favored. Im sure aligulac ratings arent skrewed by some good protosses stomping over mid zergs in weeklies since years The odds that the whole top of ladder and aligulac's sample is massively biased by a pool of worse players, vs the odds that the handful of top players have a skew, are not at all comparable. "The top few Zergs were just better" is much more likely than "The whole top pool of players, minus a few zergs, has consistently better protoss". A situation where top tier tournaments have 50/50 winrates and Zerg just disappears below that doesn't look like balance. It looks like you have a few really good Zergs in quite an imbalanced game.
The whole ladder has been like this since ages even during the 2019 bl infestor meta (basically since the void ray patch iirc).
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Very happy for showtime i think he really deserved the spot with his recent form.
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ShowTime GG was too soon.
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United States33388 Posts
Perfect balance top 3 
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I wonder if it would be better in this meta to open up charge to force roaches.
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EPT
