EPTAsk and you shall recive I guess
Esports World Cup 2025 - Page 39
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Lexender
Mexico2656 Posts
Ask and you shall recive I guess | ||
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Asha
United Kingdom38257 Posts
On July 25 2025 22:41 Topin wrote: was Cure vs Serral as brutal as the result tells? In a way it was worse given Cure had multiple winning positions but just couldn't get over the line. | ||
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Elentos
55570 Posts
On July 25 2025 22:41 Topin wrote: was Cure vs Serral as brutal as the result tells? Cure could (should) have realistically won games 2-4 but Serral was just better. It wasn't a beatdown. | ||
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Elentos
55570 Posts
On July 25 2025 22:46 Antithesis wrote: Classic handled this so much better than hero did yesterday. I cannot imagine Solar beating Classic if Classic plays as well as he did vs. Serral in recent series. herO really lost his mojo in time for the biggest tournament left in SC2. Brutal. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26566 Posts
On July 25 2025 22:48 Asha wrote: In a way it was worse given Cure had multiple winning positions but just couldn't get over the line. Yeah, probably more brutal than just being relentlessly stomped if you’re Cure. Cure had a realistic shot of winning some games, Serral went Serral mode and scraped back in. He played well, he potentially rides some of those positions to a series win if he’s not playing Serral. | ||
DarkPlasmaBall
United States45487 Posts
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Elentos
55570 Posts
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Captain Peabody
United States3128 Posts
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TheLordofAwesome
Korea (South)2655 Posts
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SHODAN
United Kingdom1153 Posts
On July 25 2025 16:05 MJG wrote: Khaydarian Amulet was infinite instant storms anywhere on the map, as long as you had resources to warp in more High Templar. In late game situations with both players banking resources, this was highly problematic. Energy Overcharge is two instant storms close to a Nexus, and then you have to wait for the cooldown. They're not the same. infinite storms, as long as you had infinite resources. well guess what? you had very finite resources in WoL. early WoL economy looked a lot closer to Warcraft 3 than it does to modern-day sc2 Khaydarian Amulet existed in a version of the game where you had, at best, 2 comfortable expansions within your sphere of control. you're talking about really old maps like Tal'Darim Altar and Xel'Naga Caverns, on which the 3rd base could be considered a lategame / endgame economy. in reality, protoss players of this era rarely ever reached a lategame of any description. the meta was instead dominated by gateway all-ins and aggressive terran all-ins. games were usually decided by breaking or holding a natural expansion. incredibly rare that you'd ever see 3-base vs 3-base this is what "infinite storm" looked like in lategame WoL: a casual review of era matches should persuade you that every high templar on the field is precious, even with the Amulet upgrade. I certainly don't remember seeing anypro or MC expending 6+ storms to kill a single pesky medivac floating in their deadspace. that would have been an extravagant waste of energy within the limits of a WoL economy. in modern-day sc2, it is no longer a "waste" to use high templars like that. it's completely legitimate to spend psi storm on tiny victories. high templar energy is not a precious resource that you have to think too long and hard about. apparently, it is also not game-ending to clump up your high templar and eat perfect EMPs. despite the fact that terran had robust counter-play in the shape of the old ghost, Amulet was still deemed too problematic to exist in the game. what is the counter-play to energy overcharge? sneak into your opponent's base with a ghost and EMP their nexus? On July 25 2025 08:51 WombaT wrote: Khaydarin Amulet was manly as fuck at least. Stupid, but manly.  I quite like the bio/templar dance of death, but it’s one of those that gets messier with scale, and absolutely brutal when the army comps get filled out. I think energy overcharge is looking overtuned, in both PvT and PvZ. I do, however like the general idea over battery overcharge. We do have to consider what it’s replacing, and why that exists too. Toss has long been the only faction that frequently needs static defence, or gimmicky abilities to hold pushes despite having their whole army at home. We’re perhaps not seeing or speaking about the negative impacts of that removal, because Toss are making hay with these heavy Templar styles, but they are there, and would be may more apparent if they get over-nerfed. So I’d generally be in favour of a recalibration, it’s really just a matter of where the sweet spot is and how to get there. The viability of reliably early stormy boy openers, halluc gathering info, I think are fine, just they’re currently, well, too much. It’s less the availability of some juicy storms, it’s storms for days. It’s seemingly a permanent hallucinated phoenix dandering around the place. I love my risk/reward mechanics, as anyone who’s ever read my many, many ‘gateways should be better than warpgates’ rants that usually segue into rants about Warpgate gimping Protoss can attest. But Why not nerf a unit that is overcharged in some way? Two possibilities could be (just spitballing), something like: 1. A unit that is overcharged has a debuff applied that causes it to lose, not gain energy for a period. 2. Alternatively a unit has a debuff applied that just causes it not to regenerate energy for a period. This could be a timer from when it’s recharged initially, or it could be from when it first expends mana. I think this potentially keeps it situationally very powerful, but weakness it as a catch-all solution. You want to recharge a Sentry to do some scouting, you can choose to do that, but you may not have that Guardian Shield at a critical moment. You can overcharge a bunch of temps to hold a push, but you might not be able to immediately counter-attack with your debuffed Temps. If you want to overcharge an Oracle or two to hunt some pesky workers, you can overcharge its pulsar beam and bring some pain. But maybe you aren’t quite as free to spam stasis traps around, or have as much for defensive holds. As I said, very early spitballing, in general I like potent mechanics, but in an RTS game I like them to have some kinda downside ideally. I don’t think the downside of expending Nexus energy is a particularly big one. If Chrono scaled better, then we’re really talking trade offs but I don’t think we’re going to ever see my proposed Chrono buffs :p the previous balance council seemed to be filled with knowledgeable characters. problem is, they didn't earn any of that knowledge for themselves. Harstem, Pig and others weren't in the room for legacy balance discussions from the game's long history, and therefore lacked some of the hindsight and wisdom that had been realized under the long-standing Blizzard dev team. to paraphrase Malcolm from Jurassic Park: their power didn't require any discipline to attain. who among the balance council would have noticed that some West African frogs are known to spontaneously change sex in a single sex environment? "protoss bullshit... finds a way." competitive sc2 has outgrown the fundamentals that it was built on. as you say: burst damage and AoE damage abilities get messier with scale, and absolutely brutal when the army comps get filled out. I also think the same messy scaling applies to things like map control. once you have a map covered in creep, or (the old) widow mines, or swarming with high templars, it feels almost impossible to do anything about it. the explosiveness and one-sidedness of sc2 is part of the game's identity. I also believe it's the reason why it fell off so sharply. sc2 burned way too brightly for its own good. watching cracked bio balls + widow mines melting an army (or a worker line) in a micro-second was fun in the beginning. watching storms melt armies (or worker lines) in a micro-second is fun for a while. but it gets old real fast, and I feel that the current storm meta is another chapter of sc2's long sickness: the chronic "terrible, terrible damage" fatigue. I'm completely desensitized to psi storm, to the point psi storms fill me with the same level of excitement as watching a peon chop wood. I think anyone who truly has their ear to the ground in the sc2 community can sense the negativity towards the state of the game - one that goes far beyond the usual balance whining. have you noticed the unprecedented levels of visible frustration from the pros during this EWC? every time I look at Reynor, Byun or Clem on cam, they are grimly muttering to themselves, grimacing or rolling their eyes. Astrea also seemed to be tilted out of his mind. a few of the typically stoic Korean pros have taken to twitter to vent about their least favourite units to play against. an outside observer might easily assume that they aren't having much fun, except that the casters do a phenomenal job of painting a calm veneer over the proceedings. competition is the ecstasy of victory and the agony of defeat. when the game stops feeling competitive, then both of those feelings are lost and replaced with tedium. the skillfulness of your opponent's efforts should be plain, obvious and satisfying. when the outcome start to feel "too easy" (as it has constantly been throughout this EWC), or when the games seem to be decided long before gg is called, then it's no fun for anyone. there have been way too many one-sided stomps in this tournament. I have long been in favour of a radical re-calibration of competitive 1v1. a heavily modded version of sc2 is the best way to secure sc2's future. one idea that I don't see mentioned often is the implementation of a formation toggle. that in itself would completely change the way sc2 is played. imagine how much easier it would be to accommodate powerful AoE damage abilities if players had a 1-button control to automatically spread their army into Brood War style clumps? of course, there should be upsides and downsides to using it. with formation enabled, all units in the control group might take a movement speed debuff. I also agree with radical changes to stuff like warp gate that introduces a penalty (or risk / reward) for using it. sc2 needs a more robust decision-making tree in order to have any integrity as an actual strategy game. for now, it's stuck being an explosive real-time shooter wrapped in a real-time strategy game skin. | ||
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Gescom
Canada3510 Posts
On July 25 2025 23:10 SHODAN wrote: I look at Reynor, Byun or Clem on cam, they are grimly muttering to themselves, grimacing or rolling their eyes. Astrea also seemed to be tilted out of his mind All three races tilted? Sounds like proper Starcraft balance. Heh. I don't really get your point mate. They're playing for ~100 grand in possibly the last big tourney ever. Of course the players care more than (respectfully) if they were losing at HomeStory or Wardi Weekly. Same thing with Koreans trolling in twitter. They're all sponsored by random international small teams now. They're not beholden to kespa corp rules. They get to act like people. It's not some newfangled conspiracy. | ||
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SHODAN
United Kingdom1153 Posts
On July 25 2025 23:13 Gescom wrote: All three races tilted? Sounds like proper Starcraft balance. Heh. I don't really get your point mate. They're playing for ~100 grand in possibly the last big tourney ever. Of course the players care more than (respectfully) if they were losing at HomeStory or Wardi Weekly. Same thing with Koreans trolling in twitter. They're all sponsored by random international small teams now. They're not beholden to kespa corp rules. They get to act like people. It's not some newfangled conspiracy. I recall Clem being so frustrated by TvP that he sent all his army home, turtled up in his main, then went AFK to make a sandwich during a match against Astrea in a WardiTV Monday cup only a few weeks ago | ||
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Elentos
55570 Posts
On July 25 2025 23:07 Elentos wrote: I have no idea what Solar's plan was but it didn't work. Can only repeat myself. | ||
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Asha
United Kingdom38257 Posts
Can't see him beat Serral's oppressive individual unit usage over such a big series though. | ||
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Gescom
Canada3510 Posts
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goswser
United States3548 Posts
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Argonauta
Spain4967 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26566 Posts
Serral will probably butcher him though, but the Protoss hope is alive! | ||
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dedede
United States116 Posts
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TeamMamba
203 Posts
Just to shows Serral’s greatness. Since he is the only one thwt can beat classic style and win any zvt in this tournament | ||
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