On May 05 2011 08:17 Kich wrote: This whole idea that zerg is grossly underpowered is asinine and worthless venting...people are hopping on this bandwagon because idra said it. Someone could make an equally asinine and meaningless claim like "BLAR! Protoss is underpowered in the early game because Zerg can make roaches which cost half as much as stalkers and can produce units faster than we can! How can we possibly beat Zerg if they can build 2 roaches to our 1 stalker and overrun us with cheap efficient units?!" It doesn't actually make sense and isn't a legitimate claim.
That claim was pretty common after the Roach range buff. But Protoss adapted.
On May 05 2011 04:57 Fourn wrote: As a Protoss player and a Day[9] fanboy, I somewhat agreed with Idra and Day[9] looked extremely silly in that argument.
Idra clearly knew what he was talking about, but all Day could do was say (as Idra pointed out) "I disagree." Then he proceeded to not give any ideas to Idra to fix the balance issues he pointed out and I almost thought Idra was going to call him stupid, because quite frankly he was making a fool of himself. Even Tasteless agreed with Idra.
But then again, Tyler actually did bring up a great point that Protoss' also must take risks and if they don't capitalize on their decisions then they will lose. Protoss pros often lose games on a single bad decision even when they are ahead such as in IPL, Kiwikaki attacking Idra at 160 food not waiting to max. Idra was behind that game and, like he said, the only reason he won is because Kiwikaki didn't wait to max.
I didn't agree with him calling Naniwa, who is arguably the best foreign Protoss player right now, bad. That was uncalled for.
I honestly feel idra just got frustrated and started saying things. I dont think he believes naniwa is bad but just has a bitter feeling towards the game in its current state and it's leaking into his comments about a lot of things now. It seems like he's just upset in regards to certain things because there's little parts of the game that just dont seem right and with how long him and all other progamers practice he feels they should have been ironed out a bit more by now. People saying to wait a couple years for things to organically fix themselves is also extremely frustrating for players as well...that's just my take on it.
I think day9 was caught a bit off guard and Idra already knew exactly what he wanted to say so he didnt look as sharp as usual. Day9 is a smart dude, bad days happen though and Tyler as well wasnt as articulate and clear as he usually is. No big deal, I just wish it didnt seem to have as heavy of an atmosphere as it did. I dont like the infighting when TL/SC has been a very close community.
Very entertaining SotG. It's interesting to hear Idra's get very specific on his views on balance, it's clear that he's put a lot of thought into it. However, Day[9] is just too far below his intellectual weight class regarding SC2 to have a good debate with, and it shows in that his views on the subject are simplistic, vacuous, and underdeveloped. They need someone as cerebral as Idra, like perhaps Artosis, to have this debate with.
On May 05 2011 06:29 Marzocchi wrote: That was a great SOTG.
I'd actually like to see Day[9] do two dailies addressing Idra's points:
1) Zerg Scouting Options - What have players done that consistently enable Zerg to scout, with enough time to react?
2) Countering a 200/200 Protoss - I'd realllllllly like Tyler to post some of the game's he's lost to Zerg once he's maxed at 200 so we (or Day9) can see/analyze how to beat a 200/200 Toss.
It would be nice for low level players surely, but Day9 cannot speak about high level play. He doesn't play it, and he refuses to discuss any real issue brought up. That being said, IdrA is entirely correct. Everything he said is fact, it's not debatable at all. Day9 should look for alternative ways for zerg to get ahead. Are there methods to stall pushes? can zerg incorporate more spine crawler pushes into their TVZ/TVP? Should zerg actively hunt down obs/ravens with Muta/Overseer? There's lots of meta game to be worked out.
But the point remains, zerg cannot scout these builds and will be beaten every time, even if they outplay their opponent if the zerg does not guess correctly. There is a significant difference between taking an offensive risk and a defensive risk. A defensive risk leaves you with no offensive opportunities if it fails. An Offensive risk, especially the protoss early pushes can still be pulled back and used to defend in the case of zerg guessing correctly. Zerg cannot take his defensive units and just go win the game, protoss can easily warp in and stall with sentries.
I think IdrA was on to something with his spine crawler push builds, this turns a defensive risk into an offensive one, albeit not a very good one, but it worked out in a number of games I'm sure many people here saw.
I think another issue here is that zerg have options they are not using. We never see contaminate play for instance. Maybe these options are not explored because they are simply not worth it, but I would think the meta game will change some more over time.
Protoss timing pushes are absolutely deadly. and if you sit at home with units specifically designed to mess up those timings or lock down units all together, I don't see how fair complaints can be made. An overseer is cheap compared to the units a single colossus will kill in battle for instance.
Tyler addresses this beautifully. SC is about how far you're willing to go to mitigate risks. You can put infinity spine crawlers and queens and be safe (hey spanishiwa!) or you can choose to cut corners and eventually be owned by a counter no matter how much of a better player you are. See Jinro vs MorroW on TSL3.
Again, you're missing the point. yes, you can win some games taking defensive risks, but it is factually imbalanced if the only way you can defened a risk you cannot possibly see coming is taking a risk when the opponent has many options, most branching, while they can scout you. If I see a bunch of spine crawlers coming up and I'm Protoss, I'm going to make that zerg hate his life because he wasted a bunch of minerals that will not help him.
If the zerg lets a 40hp probe see what he built, I'd consider the protoss advantage is deserved.
Obs? Hallucinated Phoenix? It is viable to get an observer out early. Lets not even begin to discuss zergs signification detection problems.
Protoss has those exact same detection problems, overseers are faster than obs and besides that you have spores and we have cannons, sounds pretty similair to me.
If actionjesus wins tournaments by 6pooling then he's figured out something totally awesome, and his zvx is indeed good.
Really? Then your definition of good is wrong. Good in sc2, especially as pros use it = solid. Not cheesy.
Er, ask any pro? Drops are far, far easier to execute than to defend. Rather amazed anyone would disagree with that.
It would probably depend on which pro you asked. The zerg also has to load up his drops depending on how well the toss is prepared as well. Look at idra vs kiwikaki game 5. This is how a toss should defend drops. Idra had 3 overlords full of units attack kiwi's third (which had 2 cannons and a portion of his army) while he dropped 2 overlod of units in kiwikaki's main, while at the same time poking in with roaches at kiwi's nat. It wasn't even close. Roaches suck vs cannons. Roaches suck vs cannons with stalker support. Idra had to do that, and load his drop sback into his ovies. How is positioning your army more demanding than what Idra is doing? At the nat, again you can have at least a cannon, with a good simcity. Roaches will not break that with some stalker support.
You seem to overrate cannons a little.
Or you underrate them?
If the toss splits his army up beforehand just attack the front.
So you think it's easy to pull probes from 2 mineral lines, warp in stalkers (gosh I hope my gates aren't in cooldown), and make sure I have sufficient army to win each fight cost effectively. Oh, and forcefield my front while you poke it. Okaay. Maybe you should try the grass on the other side sometime. You'll see it isn't nearly as green as it looks.
If you have cannons you don't need to pull probes.. Anyways my point is not that one strategy is harder to do than the other, it's that this strategy isn't as solid as it seems (And that Idra's zvp is not all of the sudden 10x better than it was before) . And as I've said, I play toss too. My pvz is as good as my zvp which is almost high masters now. Lastly the effectiveness of drops depends on maps (and spawn positions). It'll be much easier to defend on terminus RE and shakuras plateau than metalopolis.
On May 05 2011 05:52 KristianJS wrote: I have to say, listening to the argument between Idra and Day9, Idra was completely convincing and Day9 had no real counter.
Idra's fundamental point was: Zerg can't scout and there's no build that counters everything, so at best you're reduced to flipping coins when guessing what build the opponent is doing. It's a perfectly simple, understandable argument. Day9 was saying stuff like "I think there are a lot of things not explored" but that doesn't even make any difference, zerg would just have more possible coinflips to respond with at most. He had no meaningful counter.
I guess it comes down to whether or not the claim that zerg can't scout is completely true. And well, I'm inclined to believe Idra since he is one of the best zergs in the world....
The problem with saying that Zerg can't scout is that it is inherently untrue--a single marine, even a few marines, can't kill an unspeeded overlord from seeing most of someone's base before dying. This is evident by Idra himself in his own stream that he displayed throughout today. A zergling or two running up a ramp to scout the front can actually see a significant portion of someone's base.
In fact, throughout the entirety of today Idra commentating his stream he could accurately predict their build and unit composition most of the time just off of seeing a few units and knowing some timings. Which is something Day9 actually recommended to him and something he dismissed, despite doing it in every game he's ever played and effectively used that knowledge to win time and time again.
Furthermore, as people have mentioned, the fact that Zerg's can so easily reproduce and their economy is so much better than other races, tech switching is something they can do on a whim, if they had perfect scouting (whatever that means, as if it isn't just as easy to stop an observer from hitting your base and scans prevent valuable mules from being used and are only temporary (and hardly see as much as an observer)) then each opponent would essentially be facing armies perfectly sculpted to defeating their army every game all the time, this can't happen.
They can scout, they do scout, do you play zerg? Have you genuinely played every single one of your games completely void of any information as to what the opponent is doing?
Day9 even pointed out that when the first attack occurs you can see their unit composition--presumably with an easily placed zergling outside their base or overlords around the perimeter of the map in the event of a banshee. Idra's claim was that by then the attack comes and you roll over and die, Day9 pointed out that that's not true and Idra immediately tried to reiterate that it was, despite that it is an objectively untrue statement. This is where the conversation ended, it was abundantly clear that it was going to descend into a "But I'm right." sort of back and forth and, as Sean stated, such discussion isn't actual balance discussion but venting. Idra is pissed that he occasionally loses to cheese--everyone does, shit happens, that's it. Sometimes someone playing risky wins, that's inherent when considering Risk VS Reward.
And obviously there's no build that counters everything, no race has a build that counters everything, and it also takes going into what it is that is meant by "everything"--something that Idra never actually went into because you know, you can't. That's what Sean meant by this vagueness. To what is this build being created to stop? Banshee pressure, 2 rax all ins, proxy 2 gate, 4 gate, void / phoenix harass? How early is the early game? When is it that you can't actually scout? Is it in the early game or the mid-game? Zerg's can scout early game with drones and overlords so it can't be that, it has to be the mid-game, but everyone can scout in the mid-game they all have tools to do that, so which is it? Is it that zerg can't scout between the point where they finish their wall and when you get an overseer? Why is this problematic? No one can scout in that situation except for a Terran who burns a scan, would this actually help?
I watched Idra defend a 4 marine / 1 hellion push. He mentioned that he made too many lings and now couldn't be aggressive--I guess I don't understand why this is an issue, he defended a 300 mineral push with about ~350-400 minerals worth of units. What makes you think you can be aggressive after this? How is he so crippled over the loss of 300 minerals that you think you could do damage afterwards? Idra established map control with his lings, which is the best you could hope for.
This whole idea that zerg is grossly underpowered is asinine and worthless venting...people are hopping on this bandwagon because idra said it. Someone could make an equally asinine and meaningless claim like "BLAR! Protoss is underpowered in the early game because Zerg can make roaches which cost half as much as stalkers and can produce units faster than we can! How can we possibly beat Zerg if they can build 2 roaches to our 1 stalker and overrun us with cheap efficient units?!" It doesn't actually make sense and isn't a legitimate claim.
Before reading this post, I was siding with IdrA on this one but you bring up a lot of valid points. I think you have swayed my view! Great first post :p
On May 05 2011 08:28 Nakas wrote: Very entertaining SotG. It's interesting to hear Idra's get very specific on his views on balance, it's clear that he's put a lot of thought into it. However, Day[9] is just too far below his intellectual weight class regarding SC2 to have a good debate with, and it shows in that his views on the subject are simplistic, vacuous, and underdeveloped. They need someone as cerebral as Idra, like perhaps Artosis, to have this debate with.
Its more that Day[9] went at it from his game theory/design direction while Idra just came from a more pragmatic direction. Its like a human biologist vs a House M.D.
On May 05 2011 08:22 Whitewing wrote:Worried about a 4 gate? Send in two overlords into his base from two different directions at the proper timing, he'll only have one stalker, maybe 2 at most. He won't stop the scout. You can also get a good expectation of a four gate if you gas steal AND check his expansion, for example. Worried that he'll cancel the expo and then 4 gate you anyway? Pool some larva and get an overlord in position to make a run, and get overlord speed.
Dude, sacking two Overlords to scout a 4-gate is like shoving a stick up your ass, not to mention that on a lot of maps you have no chance of getting two Overlords to his main in time to scout it. If you think he's 4-gating and you make two extra ovies just to sack two others then that's eight lings you're not making at an extremely crucial time when you need to be out on the map, not to mention that having eight lings less in the actual fight his a big disadvantage.
Also, Overlord speed is Lair tech. You might have a few Roaches for a 4-gate, you don't have a Lair, you haven't started a Lair and you certainly don't have ovie speed.
On May 05 2011 08:28 Nakas wrote: Very entertaining SotG. It's interesting to hear Idra's get very specific on his views on balance, it's clear that he's put a lot of thought into it. However, Day[9] is just too far below his intellectual weight class regarding SC2 to have a good debate with, and it shows in that his views on the subject are simplistic, vacuous, and underdeveloped. They need someone as cerebral as Idra, like perhaps Artosis, to have this debate with.
Ehhhhhhh. Day9 strikes me as a cerebral dude, just as much as IdrA if not more so. Writing a thesis and successfully defending it aren't rudimentary things. I'm only halfway through listening to the debate so I'll stay away from specifics but a blanket statement like that strikes me as at best lame and at worst fanboyish.
EDIT: I should add that I don't necessarily disagree with IdrA. As a Zerg, I enjoy entertaining the thought that maybe my race is a little underpowered. This is of course entirely self serving and probably not even relevent at my level of play. I just thought discounting Day9 as a "mental lightweight" was kinda meh.
On May 05 2011 05:52 KristianJS wrote: I have to say, listening to the argument between Idra and Day9, Idra was completely convincing and Day9 had no real counter.
Idra's fundamental point was: Zerg can't scout and there's no build that counters everything, so at best you're reduced to flipping coins when guessing what build the opponent is doing. It's a perfectly simple, understandable argument. Day9 was saying stuff like "I think there are a lot of things not explored" but that doesn't even make any difference, zerg would just have more possible coinflips to respond with at most. He had no meaningful counter.
I guess it comes down to whether or not the claim that zerg can't scout is completely true. And well, I'm inclined to believe Idra since he is one of the best zergs in the world....
The problem with saying that Zerg can't scout is that it is inherently untrue--a single marine, even a few marines, can't kill an unspeeded overlord from seeing most of someone's base before dying. This is evident by Idra himself in his own stream that he displayed throughout today. A zergling or two running up a ramp to scout the front can actually see a significant portion of someone's base.
In fact, throughout the entirety of today Idra commentating his stream he could accurately predict their build and unit composition most of the time just off of seeing a few units and knowing some timings. Which is something Day9 actually recommended to him and something he dismissed, despite doing it in every game he's ever played and effectively used that knowledge to win time and time again.
Furthermore, as people have mentioned, the fact that Zerg's can so easily reproduce and their economy is so much better than other races, tech switching is something they can do on a whim, if they had perfect scouting (whatever that means, as if it isn't just as easy to stop an observer from hitting your base and scans prevent valuable mules from being used and are only temporary (and hardly see as much as an observer)) then each opponent would essentially be facing armies perfectly sculpted to defeating their army every game all the time, this can't happen.
They can scout, they do scout, do you play zerg? Have you genuinely played every single one of your games completely void of any information as to what the opponent is doing?
Day9 even pointed out that when the first attack occurs you can see their unit composition--presumably with an easily placed zergling outside their base or overlords around the perimeter of the map in the event of a banshee. Idra's claim was that by then the attack comes and you roll over and die, Day9 pointed out that that's not true and Idra immediately tried to reiterate that it was, despite that it is an objectively untrue statement. This is where the conversation ended, it was abundantly clear that it was going to descend into a "But I'm right." sort of back and forth and, as Sean stated, such discussion isn't actual balance discussion but venting. Idra is pissed that he occasionally loses to cheese--everyone does, shit happens, that's it. Sometimes someone playing risky wins, that's inherent when considering Risk VS Reward.
And obviously there's no build that counters everything, no race has a build that counters everything, and it also takes going into what it is that is meant by "everything"--something that Idra never actually went into because you know, you can't. That's what Sean meant by this vagueness. To what is this build being created to stop? Banshee pressure, 2 rax all ins, proxy 2 gate, 4 gate, void / phoenix harass? How early is the early game? When is it that you can't actually scout? Is it in the early game or the mid-game? Zerg's can scout early game with drones and overlords so it can't be that, it has to be the mid-game, but everyone can scout in the mid-game they all have tools to do that, so which is it? Is it that zerg can't scout between the point where they finish their wall and when you get an overseer? Why is this problematic? No one can scout in that situation except for a Terran who burns a scan, would this actually help?
I watched Idra defend a 4 marine / 1 hellion push. He mentioned that he made too many lings and now couldn't be aggressive--I guess I don't understand why this is an issue, he defended a 300 mineral push with about ~350-400 minerals worth of units. What makes you think you can be aggressive after this? How is he so crippled over the loss of 300 minerals that you think you could do damage afterwards? Idra established map control with his lings, which is the best you could hope for.
This whole idea that zerg is grossly underpowered is asinine and worthless venting...people are hopping on this bandwagon because idra said it. Someone could make an equally asinine and meaningless claim like "BLAR! Protoss is underpowered in the early game because Zerg can make roaches which cost half as much as stalkers and can produce units faster than we can! How can we possibly beat Zerg if they can build 2 roaches to our 1 stalker and overrun us with cheap efficient units?!" It doesn't actually make sense and isn't a legitimate claim.
Before reading this post, I was siding with IdrA on this one but you bring up a lot of valid points. I think you have swayed my view! Great first post :p
IdrA is a smart guy, but he is an absolutist that thinks and speaks in a definitive way. He'll say that scouting Zerg is impossible, even though he's done it successfully himself a million, billion times.
Bear in mind this is the same guy that thinks his race is underpowered, but loses only 15% of his games. IdrA probably won't be satisfied with game balance until he wins 100% of his games, and somehow solves a game that is designed to be unsolvable.
I'll just say I think it's kind of unfortunate that the one day Tasteless gets on the show he's subject to sitting there while an argument between geoff and tyler takes way too long to wrap up. Maybe it's a discussion that needed to take place, but I don't know if this encourages tasteless to want to come back on ;d
On May 05 2011 08:28 Nakas wrote: Very entertaining SotG. It's interesting to hear Idra's get very specific on his views on balance, it's clear that he's put a lot of thought into it. However, Day[9] is just too far below his intellectual weight class regarding SC2 to have a good debate with, and it shows in that his views on the subject are simplistic, vacuous, and underdeveloped. They need someone as cerebral as Idra, like perhaps Artosis, to have this debate with.
So basically they need to have someone who will agree with every single word Idra says?
On May 05 2011 07:25 billyX333 wrote: wtf? i cant see a situation where you are fucked over by this realization that "he built spines and is playing defensively"
Protoss used to do a 2gate robo sort of build against Zerg, with a quick obs. We stopped because too often, we would fly our obs over to your base, and see like 50 drones. Needless to say, 50 drones vs 1base, that is quite bad yes? After that we tended to die to mutas while we tried to secure our natural. Or anything else really, our economy was just too far behind.
Anyways, fast forward to today. Now, we always FE. No more worrying about 50 drones, we can just make 50 probes hoho! Downside is we have no obs. Oh well. That's how we used to get fucked over by making an obs and seeing spines and tons of drones.
yeah, i wasn't aware we were bringing up hypothetical beta games into the discussion about early game scouting problems.
That's what happened when roach range got buffed but anyway.
You said you couldn't see how a realisation that they built spines and were whoring drones could fuck you over. That was how. The correct course of action was to simply not get the obs, and FE instead (at the time we had no idea how, roach rushes were owning us). There was nothing we could do once we had committed to the obs and found out they were just droning.
why on earth would you bring up a terrible opening that no body uses to attempt to create a counter argument?
Some Zerg or other was whining about their inability to scout the Protoss main without an unthinkable investment such as fast Overseer.
Yaotzin pointed out that Protoss can't scout the Zerg main either, without a potentially ruinous investment like fast obs.
Scouting information is expensive in that part of the game.
Have you ever even tried to research hallucinate or do you even know what that upgrade is? Your welcome for the pro advice here buddy. 100/100 for quicker/more efficient scouting than an obs, hardly a "potentially ruinous investment".
If you're skipping Warp Tech, or building a second Cybernetics Core, just to get Hallucination in the relevant time frame? Yes, that's a potentially ruinous investment.
If you're going Warp --> Hallucination, that doesn't apply since Hallucination certainly won't be ready to scout the Zerg any sooner than Overseers are ready to scout you.
I don't want to sound aggressive and antagonistic here but, my earlier post refers specifically to people like you: Have you ever even tried playing zerg? In a standard 3 gate opening you can get hallucinate out at 6-7 minutes depending on how you spend your chronoboost. No need to build a second core or skip warp... With a 14 pool opening you can pop out an overseer shortly after the 6 minute mark if you tech straight to lair after metabolic speed and skip getting a second queen or any roaches. So if I make some big adjustments to my play and basically rush to an overseer yea I can get one fairly quickly. And as IdrA pointed out, well placed units will still be likely to deny much scouting from that anyways.
On May 05 2011 05:52 KristianJS wrote: I have to say, listening to the argument between Idra and Day9, Idra was completely convincing and Day9 had no real counter.
Idra's fundamental point was: Zerg can't scout and there's no build that counters everything, so at best you're reduced to flipping coins when guessing what build the opponent is doing. It's a perfectly simple, understandable argument. Day9 was saying stuff like "I think there are a lot of things not explored" but that doesn't even make any difference, zerg would just have more possible coinflips to respond with at most. He had no meaningful counter.
I guess it comes down to whether or not the claim that zerg can't scout is completely true. And well, I'm inclined to believe Idra since he is one of the best zergs in the world....
The problem with saying that Zerg can't scout is that it is inherently untrue--a single marine, even a few marines, can't kill an unspeeded overlord from seeing most of someone's base before dying. This is evident by Idra himself in his own stream that he displayed throughout today. A zergling or two running up a ramp to scout the front can actually see a significant portion of someone's base.
In fact, throughout the entirety of today Idra commentating his stream he could accurately predict their build and unit composition most of the time just off of seeing a few units and knowing some timings. Which is something Day9 actually recommended to him and something he dismissed, despite doing it in every game he's ever played and effectively used that knowledge to win time and time again.
Furthermore, as people have mentioned, the fact that Zerg's can so easily reproduce and their economy is so much better than other races, tech switching is something they can do on a whim, if they had perfect scouting (whatever that means, as if it isn't just as easy to stop an observer from hitting your base and scans prevent valuable mules from being used and are only temporary (and hardly see as much as an observer)) then each opponent would essentially be facing armies perfectly sculpted to defeating their army every game all the time, this can't happen.
They can scout, they do scout, do you play zerg? Have you genuinely played every single one of your games completely void of any information as to what the opponent is doing?
Day9 even pointed out that when the first attack occurs you can see their unit composition--presumably with an easily placed zergling outside their base or overlords around the perimeter of the map in the event of a banshee. Idra's claim was that by then the attack comes and you roll over and die, Day9 pointed out that that's not true and Idra immediately tried to reiterate that it was, despite that it is an objectively untrue statement. This is where the conversation ended, it was abundantly clear that it was going to descend into a "But I'm right." sort of back and forth and, as Sean stated, such discussion isn't actual balance discussion but venting. Idra is pissed that he occasionally loses to cheese--everyone does, shit happens, that's it. Sometimes someone playing risky wins, that's inherent when considering Risk VS Reward.
And obviously there's no build that counters everything, no race has a build that counters everything, and it also takes going into what it is that is meant by "everything"--something that Idra never actually went into because you know, you can't. That's what Sean meant by this vagueness. To what is this build being created to stop? Banshee pressure, 2 rax all ins, proxy 2 gate, 4 gate, void / phoenix harass? How early is the early game? When is it that you can't actually scout? Is it in the early game or the mid-game? Zerg's can scout early game with drones and overlords so it can't be that, it has to be the mid-game, but everyone can scout in the mid-game they all have tools to do that, so which is it? Is it that zerg can't scout between the point where they finish their wall and when you get an overseer? Why is this problematic? No one can scout in that situation except for a Terran who burns a scan, would this actually help?
I watched Idra defend a 4 marine / 1 hellion push. He mentioned that he made too many lings and now couldn't be aggressive--I guess I don't understand why this is an issue, he defended a 300 mineral push with about ~350-400 minerals worth of units. What makes you think you can be aggressive after this? How is he so crippled over the loss of 300 minerals that you think you could do damage afterwards? Idra established map control with his lings, which is the best you could hope for.
This whole idea that zerg is grossly underpowered is asinine and worthless venting...people are hopping on this bandwagon because idra said it. Someone could make an equally asinine and meaningless claim like "BLAR! Protoss is underpowered in the early game because Zerg can make roaches which cost half as much as stalkers and can produce units faster than we can! How can we possibly beat Zerg if they can build 2 roaches to our 1 stalker and overrun us with cheap efficient units?!" It doesn't actually make sense and isn't a legitimate claim.
Before reading this post, I was siding with IdrA on this one but you bring up a lot of valid points. I think you have swayed my view! Great first post :p
No its actually not a good post, as he kind of misunderstood what Idra was trying to say. Obv you can try to guess based on limited information on what your opp is trying to do. But its still a guessing game. And if your limited to a guessing game you need solid allroud BO, that let you not die and at the same die not let you get far behind.
On May 05 2011 08:31 Warrior Madness wrote: Really? Then your definition of good is wrong. Good in sc2, especially as pros use it = solid. Not cheesy.
If cheese is getting results, then it is solid. Solid is that which consistently delivers wins. If IdrA can consistenly win with some allin, then that allin is solid.
It would probably depend on which pro you asked.
Drewbie (Terran) was the one saying he can shift queue some medivacs and you need 400apm to stop them. I can't imagine how you can think shift queueing some drops is harder than defending them all....
The zerg also has to load up his drops depending on how well the toss is prepared as well. Look at idra vs kiwikaki game 5. This is how a toss should defend drops. Idra had 3 overlords full of units attack kiwi's third (which had 2 cannons and a portion of his army) while he dropped 2 overlod of units in kiwikaki's main, while at the same time poking in with roaches at kiwi's nat. It wasn't even close. Roaches suck vs cannons. Roaches suck vs cannons with stalker support. Idra had to do that, and load his drop sback into his ovies. How is positioning your army more demanding than what Idra is doing? At the nat, again you can have at least a cannon, with a good simcity. Roaches will not break that with some stalker support.
Ok...? So if your opponent prepares well, you need to be really careful and precise with your drops? No idea what your point is.
Or you underrate them?
Nope, use them all the time, love them. They're just stallers though, stopping you a-moving my probies while my army waddles over. If there's just cannons defending, just snipe them and bail, or ignore them and hold position in the mineral line and laugh at dead probes.
If you have cannons you don't need to pull probes..
Depends on the drop size shrug. 8 roaches = pull or lose. Even 4 can do some painful damage if they just suicide in your mineral line, and 4 roaches isn't exactly a huge cost to suicide. Roaches take quite a while to die to cannons and/or stalkers.
Anyways my point is not that one strategy is harder to do than the other (And that Idra's zvp is not all of the sudden 10x better than it was before). It's that this strategy isn't as solid as it seems. And as I've said, I play toss too. My pvz is as good as my zvp which is almost high masters now. Lastly the effectiveness of drops depends on maps (and spawn positions). It'll be much easier to defend on terminus RE and shakuras plateau than metalopolis.
Dropping is solid if properly executed. Obviously if you botch it or just do it on a really bad map for it, then you'll probably lose for it. It's a high risk high reward tactic for any race. That doesn't mean it isn't solid.
On May 05 2011 05:52 KristianJS wrote: I have to say, listening to the argument between Idra and Day9, Idra was completely convincing and Day9 had no real counter.
Idra's fundamental point was: Zerg can't scout and there's no build that counters everything, so at best you're reduced to flipping coins when guessing what build the opponent is doing. It's a perfectly simple, understandable argument. Day9 was saying stuff like "I think there are a lot of things not explored" but that doesn't even make any difference, zerg would just have more possible coinflips to respond with at most. He had no meaningful counter.
I guess it comes down to whether or not the claim that zerg can't scout is completely true. And well, I'm inclined to believe Idra since he is one of the best zergs in the world....
The problem with saying that Zerg can't scout is that it is inherently untrue--a single marine, even a few marines, can't kill an unspeeded overlord from seeing most of someone's base before dying. This is evident by Idra himself in his own stream that he displayed throughout today. A zergling or two running up a ramp to scout the front can actually see a significant portion of someone's base.
In fact, throughout the entirety of today Idra commentating his stream he could accurately predict their build and unit composition most of the time just off of seeing a few units and knowing some timings. Which is something Day9 actually recommended to him and something he dismissed, despite doing it in every game he's ever played and effectively used that knowledge to win time and time again.
Furthermore, as people have mentioned, the fact that Zerg's can so easily reproduce and their economy is so much better than other races, tech switching is something they can do on a whim, if they had perfect scouting (whatever that means, as if it isn't just as easy to stop an observer from hitting your base and scans prevent valuable mules from being used and are only temporary (and hardly see as much as an observer)) then each opponent would essentially be facing armies perfectly sculpted to defeating their army every game all the time, this can't happen.
They can scout, they do scout, do you play zerg? Have you genuinely played every single one of your games completely void of any information as to what the opponent is doing?
Day9 even pointed out that when the first attack occurs you can see their unit composition--presumably with an easily placed zergling outside their base or overlords around the perimeter of the map in the event of a banshee. Idra's claim was that by then the attack comes and you roll over and die, Day9 pointed out that that's not true and Idra immediately tried to reiterate that it was, despite that it is an objectively untrue statement. This is where the conversation ended, it was abundantly clear that it was going to descend into a "But I'm right." sort of back and forth and, as Sean stated, such discussion isn't actual balance discussion but venting. Idra is pissed that he occasionally loses to cheese--everyone does, shit happens, that's it. Sometimes someone playing risky wins, that's inherent when considering Risk VS Reward.
And obviously there's no build that counters everything, no race has a build that counters everything, and it also takes going into what it is that is meant by "everything"--something that Idra never actually went into because you know, you can't. That's what Sean meant by this vagueness. To what is this build being created to stop? Banshee pressure, 2 rax all ins, proxy 2 gate, 4 gate, void / phoenix harass? How early is the early game? When is it that you can't actually scout? Is it in the early game or the mid-game? Zerg's can scout early game with drones and overlords so it can't be that, it has to be the mid-game, but everyone can scout in the mid-game they all have tools to do that, so which is it? Is it that zerg can't scout between the point where they finish their wall and when you get an overseer? Why is this problematic? No one can scout in that situation except for a Terran who burns a scan, would this actually help?
I watched Idra defend a 4 marine / 1 hellion push. He mentioned that he made too many lings and now couldn't be aggressive--I guess I don't understand why this is an issue, he defended a 300 mineral push with about ~350-400 minerals worth of units. What makes you think you can be aggressive after this? How is he so crippled over the loss of 300 minerals that you think you could do damage afterwards? Idra established map control with his lings, which is the best you could hope for.
This whole idea that zerg is grossly underpowered is asinine and worthless venting...people are hopping on this bandwagon because idra said it. Someone could make an equally asinine and meaningless claim like "BLAR! Protoss is underpowered in the early game because Zerg can make roaches which cost half as much as stalkers and can produce units faster than we can! How can we possibly beat Zerg if they can build 2 roaches to our 1 stalker and overrun us with cheap efficient units?!" It doesn't actually make sense and isn't a legitimate claim.
It's not so much that zerg have bad scouting option but it's due to the effectiveness of 1 base all-ins/cheeses. These weren't as big issues in bw where it wasn't much different except that overlords had detection.
On the other hand I think protoss scouting options are way too good. Hallucinated Phoenixes and a 25/75 cloaked observer, compared with a 150/100 overseer with no cloak. Hallucination can't be countered either, the phoenix will easily see your entire bases and expansions and your army before it goes down to queens.
EPT
