On May 05 2011 07:02 Warrior Madness wrote: I always face palm when people say Idra's zvp is 10x better than it was 2 months ago. So he's been doing risky hydra builds, roach ling all ins, playing risky drop plays and he's 10x better now?... Yeah right. A solid build is a build that results in you being slightly behind, even, or slighty ahead despite what the opponent is doing, and even if he sees it coming.
The reason why this roach, hydra, early drop build is not solid is because you have to make a HUGE invesment (drop), and you MUST do damage to the protoss economy or you lose. And it's easily counterable when they see it coming. Sure you can drop 1 ovie full of roaches at his main mineral line, and at his nat while at the same time pushing towards his third. It works, if the toss doesn't know how to defend. A smart toss never ever makes zealots, he makes cannons... One cannon will make it really hard to drop. Two cannons will make it impossible to drop. So let's say that happens, the toss pulls his probes quickly enough (though he won't need to with 2 cannons), he expects it so he drops some cannons i.e. He's playing on terminus TE. The zerg's spire becomes late, the toss has secured his third, and he's got 3 collosus out now. You lose.
It is not a solid strategy.
such stupid theory crafting. can we keep this out of the damn thread? yah drop is a huge investment for zerg when they already have the overlords to drop... 300/300 huge investment. keep fucking crying.
I have a question: when a poker player all-in's his opponent in heads-up poker with a air, or calls a bet with a bad hand because the potential pay-off is worth the risk, are these cheesey plays? Or calculated risks?
If there was a way to play Starcraft 2 without assuming risk, or exposing yourself to some kind of vulnerablilty, it would a fundamentally different and much more boring game.
I would love to hear a pro's definition of solid play. I know Tyler has touched on it before, but I can't find his post.
This was acutally one of the most entertaining Episodes u ever made! Thx for that. I loved the balance discussion, because u kept quiet on topic, without trolling
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.
i agree with you in part. Idra is indeed the more intelligent person. however i belive that Day9 is the wiser person in the argument.
Idra spends a lot of time looking at the game and discussing how he things should be and he is probibly correct.
Day[9] is arguing that all that time and thought would be better directed at how things are.
so we can choose to either accept idra's analysis that against two equal players the zerg cannot win. which means you either change races, put all your time into getting blizzard to adress zerg balance or practice the same ineffective builds while you wait for blizzard to drop the patch that will make those builds work.
or we follow day[9]'s wisdom, accept the race as presented. and when stuck, do crazy stupid stuff. mass queen, instant tech switches, mass Nydus worm, mass overseer tech blocking, see a wall in? take 6 bases. take a queen, walk her to your opponents base, and creep tumor his natural so he has to fight zerg on creep to take his expansions, then clear the tumors. make ling/baneling while researching burrowing claws and hydra range to make a mid game switch to fully upgraded roach hydra. throw science at the wall and see what sticks.
life gives you lemons, I'm going to to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!
On May 05 2011 07:02 Warrior Madness wrote: I always face palm when people say Idra's zvp is 10x better than it was 2 months ago. So he's been doing risky hydra builds, roach ling all ins, playing risky drop plays and he's 10x better now?... Yeah right. A solid build is a build that results in you being slightly behind, even, or slighty ahead despite what the opponent is doing, and even if he sees it coming.
The reason why this roach, hydra, early drop build is not solid is because you have to make a HUGE invesment (drop), and you MUST do damage to the protoss economy or you lose. And it's easily counterable when they see it coming. Sure you can drop 1 ovie full of roaches at his main mineral line, and at his nat while at the same time pushing towards his third. It works, if the toss doesn't know how to defend. A smart toss never ever makes zealots, he makes cannons... One cannon will make it really hard to drop. Two cannons will make it impossible to drop. So let's say that happens, the toss pulls his probes quickly enough (though he won't need to with 2 cannons), he expects it so he drops some cannons i.e. He's playing on terminus TE. The zerg's spire becomes late, the toss has secured his third, and he's got 3 collosus out now. You lose.
It is not a solid strategy.
such stupid theory crafting. can we keep this out of the damn thread? yah drop is a huge investment for zerg when they already have the overlords to drop... 300/300 huge investment. keep fucking crying.
Psstttt. Idiot. Since you're having such a hard time reading I'm basing this off experience, I'm a high master zerg AND toss player. Roach/hydra drop is one of the main strategies I use. And as I've said I'm not arguing that zvp is imbalanced or that p is easier to play than z. I'm arguing that Idra's zvp isn't magically 10x better than it is now than it was before. He's just doing more cheeses and doing riskier things. He's said this himself on his podcast.
On May 05 2011 09:03 Defacer wrote: I would love to hear a pro's definition of solid play. I know Tyler has touched on it before, but I can't find his post.
This is Morrow's defitinion, I forget which thread its from but I usually write down whatever a good zerg player says. I think it's from the mass infestor thread:
and yes kiwikaki is not a solid and great player. when i say great player i talk about the level of losira, mc, mvp and those guys. if you wanna discuss strategy, the games you analyse should have players that play perfect or near perfect. and i think losira vs alicia series was not a good example of showing the potential of the build
and solid is something i rarely see in sc2
solid has nothing to do with how good you are
solid build means it has potential to end up equal or ahead or slightly behind vs anything the opponent does assuming both plays perfect or near perfect.
if you open with a solid build it means your ignoring the current medigame and who your playing against. you simply just play by the rules of all possibilities. the key is to scout to trim down possibilities and then you need sick preparation and plans for all scenarios possible
even if i look at the best players in the world they arent even playing like this more than 50% of their games simply because you cant in sc2 or they have not figured out yet how to do it. i promise you a player like idra wouldnt be playing non-solid in zvp every time i tune in to his stream if there was a possibility to do that in zvp. i bet he has tried to figure it out and find the solid for hundreds or even thousands of zvp games just to find it. but now it seems like all top zvp players have given up on trying to play solid because it usually puts you very behind or you die to some rush
so take a proper 3warpgate expo for example. its solid. worst case scenario is that zerg droned up more than is possible if he was following the rules so toss ends up slightly behind
On May 05 2011 07:02 Warrior Madness wrote: I always face palm when people say Idra's zvp is 10x better than it was 2 months ago. So he's been doing risky hydra builds, roach ling all ins, playing risky drop plays and he's 10x better now?... Yeah right. A solid build is a build that results in you being slightly behind, even, or slighty ahead despite what the opponent is doing, and even if he sees it coming.
The reason why this roach, hydra, early drop build is not solid is because you have to make a HUGE invesment (drop), and you MUST do damage to the protoss economy or you lose. And it's easily counterable when they see it coming. Sure you can drop 1 ovie full of roaches at his main mineral line, and at his nat while at the same time pushing towards his third. It works, if the toss doesn't know how to defend. A smart toss never ever makes zealots, he makes cannons... One cannon will make it really hard to drop. Two cannons will make it impossible to drop. So let's say that happens, the toss pulls his probes quickly enough (though he won't need to with 2 cannons), he expects it so he drops some cannons i.e. He's playing on terminus TE. The zerg's spire becomes late, the toss has secured his third, and he's got 3 collosus out now. You lose.
It is not a solid strategy.
such stupid theory crafting. can we keep this out of the damn thread? yah drop is a huge investment for zerg when they already have the overlords to drop... 300/300 huge investment. keep fucking crying.
When you need roach speed, burrow, burrow movement, infestor energy, infestors, upgrades, hydra range, and probably should be taking a 3rd and droning up if you don't want to be all-in witht he drop... ya, it's a pretty huge investment.
It never ceases to amaze me that people will come and argue on these forums when they have no credibility at all compared to a top player like IdrA.
Even Day[9] himself has less room to talk about current balance issues as he IS NOT a top level player. Sorry to break it to all you kiddies but he is nowhere near IdrA's level and spends much less time actually playing the game. I don't understand why people even take his opinion so seriously.
If Idra wasn't winning all the time, it might be easier to stomach his claims that zerg is unplayable. As it is, it just sounds like he just wants to be able to beat "bad" players by the simple virtue of being "better" than them...without having to actually react to what the the person on the other computer is doing.
He said he won that recent tournament because he changed the way he played. I can't see the problem with that. Isn't having to adapt to a given situation the whole purpose of a competitive RTS game?
Man that was a really wild episode. Between the discussion on the changes to idra vs day9, tyler vs incontrol, idra's general tirade about bad players.
Though I sometimes can't stand him, I was certainly in camp incontrol in the EG tournament issue. Tyler's argument was extremely baseless and he was in the wrong I think. I'll tell you what WON'T help e-sports, when e-sports professionals act unprofessionally. If there's any room for improvement in e-sports, it's certainly in the public image department. You see what happens when well known athletes act childish (T.O. comes to mind + Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21KLynZRnc4 or A.I is another gem
Idra is a much better Starcraft 2 player with a deeper understanding of what is really going on in high level Zerg matches. That doesn't change the fact that Day9 is a much better thinker with a deeper understanding of what really goes on in a game's competitive life style. Neither one can win that argument, they are coming at it in two different ways.
On May 05 2011 07:27 MoonfireSpam wrote: Urgh, Idra fucks up another SotG. Day9's retort was totally correct and was pretty much all he could say back.
Kidding? Idra DESTROYED day9. He made him look like a fool.
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.
well done sir i couldnt actually say it any better myself. Idra's claims are so absolute and untrue yet its so much easier for a zerg to hop on the bandwagon and blame imbalance for their losses then it is to actually work on their own play and figure out what needs to be improved. Thats why you see so many zergs hold what he says as the ultimate truth. I guarantee you no zerg in agreement with idra will even touch this post , because honestly how could they argue against it? everything you said makes alot of sense.
So often in these forums we see players who are arguing just ignore posts of reason just so they can further their argument regardless of how many different ways they are proven wrong, they would prefer to think that their race is weak rather than face that their is something they could have done differently, this is true for all races but the difference is other races dont have an outspoken (extremely popular) pro player who constantly belittles other races and whines about balance more than bronze players on the B.net forums, lots of people look up to idra and because he is such a great player they think his narrow minded oppinions are correct suddenly we have a whole race complaining about an imbalance that simply isnt there. Its quite disheartening to have players try to invalidate any wins by a protoss simply due to imbalance. Right now zergs choose to pick on protoss players before it was terran basically whatever idra is currently complaining about =/
On May 05 2011 06:02 Soap wrote: I think no one brought this up in the cast out of respect for Tyler, but IdrA says he and ret are the only zergs winning tournaments because they are supposed to, out of their experience from BW. Tyler was his major rival, now plays the ez race, and he isn't winning shit. Case closed.
Zerg don't have many good players. This game is less than an year old and someone managed to switch from terran and become top 5 zerg in the world sans Korea, there are new players in the rise, I have to concur that this balance discussion is just silly and leads to nothing but Blizzard going back and forth with the game under "pro players" blessings.
Also, what is this "Zergs aren't winning shit" mentality...
Then when Zergs win, it's because they were either 10 times better or because the opponent played like shit...
HOW do we win this argument? If they lose, it's because their race is absolute trash, if they win, it's because their opponents were absolute trash compared to them.
Currently, every race is even on GSL wins, the tournament win rate for foreign races is about 50% for every race. What the fuck do we have to go on? IdrA made an if/then argument that doesn't work because if it were true, Zergs should never win a fucking game unless they're 10 times better than their opponents... So are the win rates close because every Zerg player just happens to be that much better and the race is holding them back just enough to keep it even?
I'm at a loss here.
I think IdrA was talking about tournament wins, rather than winrates in paticular. And he's right if you look specifically at the facts only, he and ret are the only two Zerg foreigners to take a major foreign tournament in a long time. Both of them were 2 of the top 3 best BW foreigners when they switched to SC2.
Obviously IdrA overexaggerates his complaints, but unlike both MVP or MC, his points are backed up by current tournament results, which until we can actually gauge skill effectively, are the only indicator of balance, because we have to assume they're players of equal skill spread evenly throughout the 3 races.
he makes the great point that if you look at zergs who win tournaments, they are super amazing players.
IdrA and Ret were by far the most skilled players in those tournaments. and NesTea is the best zerg in the world, so of course he won a GSL. also FruitDealer was something special when he won GSL 1. yet if you look at Ts or Ps that have won tournaments, they simply arent as skilled.
If you look at players like HuK NaNiwa SeleCT KiWiKaKi, sure they are some of the best players in the world, but if you look at their history before sc2, its hard to imagine them having any success compared to people like IdrA or Ret, who were two of the best foriegn BW players. and what do these players i listed have in common? they dont play zerg. Name one zerg who won a tournament that ISNT an exceptional gamer/player. Thats right, you cant
Actually, Naniwa and Kiwi were both extremely good WC3 players. And how can you immediately dismiss them as "unexceptional?" MC and MVP are much, much more skilled than Fruitdealer and I think even IdrA would admit that; after GSL he said he really disliked Fruitdealer's play. He also had some issues with Nestea's play at some points.
i know, i came from from wc3 before sc2.
But NaNiwa and KiWi were nothing in wc3 compared to what IdrA is to BW. IdrA was one of, if not the, top foreigner. IdrA's skill in BW is far and beyond Nani or KiWi's skill in wc3
This is a completely fruitless discussion. Without knowing how much time Naniwa and KiWi practice the game, and how efficient their methods are, we cannot possibly say anything about whether or not IdrA "ought to be" more skilled, and thus winning against them. Also, as for KiWi, he clearly has quite a knack for learning new things, and is very talented. I mean, so is IdrA, but his claims that "I was in Korea, ergo, I deserve to win" is just preposterous.
Players who have been playing for less time, but perhaps have other advantages like passion, dedication, attitude, etc., routinely outperform players who have more time commited to a game. This happens in everything from sports to chess to academics, and so on. I understand that this isn't his entire argument, I am only addressing the particular comments about this topic.
The fact he was in Korea for so long counts for a lot. Koreans know how to train, and IdrA learnt from them. He put in 10hours a day or more to sc2 for such a long time, and being in the atmosphere of Korea he talked to great sc2 minds very often. He had lunch with dan and nic almost every day iirc, and im sure they discussed sc2 regularly. He also got the chance to compete in many GSL's, placing decently quite a few times (ro16/ro8).
I dont know about KiWiKaKi's training, but almost nothing can compare to IdrA's training.
On May 05 2011 09:15 s_bushido wrote: If Idra wasn't winning all the time, it might be easier to stomach his claims that zerg is unplayable. As it is, it just sounds like he just wants to be able to beat "bad" players by the simple virtue of being "better" than them...without having to actually react to what the the person on the other computer is doing.
He said he won that recent tournament because he changed the way he played. I can't see the problem with that. Isn't having to adapt to a given situation the whole purpose of a competitive RTS game?
It seems that IdrA's words went right over your head. He said he doesn't want to lose to bad players because of coin flip situations. And he said that he's been winning ZvP recently because players metagame him and do not prepare for early aggression even though if they did it would be a coinflip at best for IdrA. You did a good job of twisting his words to suit your post.
On May 05 2011 09:15 Swagasaurus wrote: It never ceases to amaze me that people will come and argue on these forums when they have no credibility at all compared to a top player like IdrA.
Even Day[9] himself has less room to talk about current balance issues as he IS NOT a top level player. Sorry to break it to all you kiddies but he is nowhere near IdrA's level and spends much less time actually playing the game. I don't understand why people even take his opinion so seriously.
I somewhat trust Day9 over IdrA because Day9's point has nothing to do with how much he plays the game and everything to do with how IdrA reacts to balance discussions. IdrA uses balance discussions as a way to vent; you can tell that from how wildly what he was talking about veered during his conversation from ZvP to ZvT to Z in general. IdrA plays, and discusses, very emotionally. That doesn't mean his points aren't valid, though.
Day9 is just saying that he doesn't think IdrA is qualified to say that every build that could possibly be safe has been tried by Zerg players. And, considering he'd never tried the Spanishiwa style until Spanishiwa came up with it, I'd say there's evidence for that.
Moreover, every pro opinion should be taken with a grain of salt since they will always underrate their own race if they're thinking about it. For one, there's the human bias that causes them to remember and emphasize unfavorable situations and bad outcomes over good ones. For another, complaining that their race should be buffed will always be good for their career (unless they are terrible in the mirror, I guess, which IdrA certainly isn't).
Can a zerg explain to me why they can't get a lair straight after ling speed, then get overlord speed.. and use that to scout?
I mean, I know it must be awful for them to spend 200 gas on the ability to scout and spread overlords out faster (as well as set themselves up for dropping later).. But surely thats viable? It doesn't even take larvae.
On May 05 2011 09:31 Arcanewinds wrote: Can a zerg explain to me why they can't get a lair straight after ling speed, then get overlord speed.. and use that to scout?
I mean, I know it must be awful for them to spend 200 gas on the ability to scout and spread overlords out faster (as well as set themselves up for dropping later).. But surely thats viable? It doesn't even take larvae.
Ling speed + lair + upgrade, costs a lot of gas.
It costs less than sentries, but protoss takes 2 gas WAY faster than zerg does.
Gas that you need for roaches to defend or mutas to harass, usually.
For example, in the IdrA vs Cruncher series on game 3, IdrA got overlord speed, but only after making 8-10 roaches to defend from any pokes. This lost him the game, because he did not see the 6gate in time, but if he got overlord speed fist and Cruncher poked sooner with a few stalkers/sentries against only zerglings you also lose.
EPT
