Tournament winners since release - Page 23

Perfection is very hard to achieve when the matchup involves such a high degree of guessing for zerg. Even when you scout a certain tech path from the terran, you still cannot be sure what is coming. Yesterday for example (one out of a thousand examples), I scouted a very fast tech starport tech lab switch from brat_ok in a tournament game, and I began making spore crawlers and queens while massing drones. I was sure I was going to come out far ahead. What happens next? He only uses the starport to build 1 banshee. Switches his strat around instantly, builds 1 medivac and 1 thor, drops it on my cliff, completely shuts down mining and easily takes out my expansion hatchery.

There is no way a zerg can account for all these possibilities at the same time. Every terran is unique. Every terran has got their own specialized (and often retarded) transition. Banshee doesn't have to mean banshee. 2 rax doesn't have to mean aggressive infantry build. It might as well mean a nonsensical delayed 2 or 1 port banshee with cloak.

You have all these idiot terrans scoring easy instant wins vs zergs everywhere, because even if you scout their production buildings, half of the time you've still got no fucking clue what they're doing. You scout a barrack constantly producing marines and a starport without addons? Maybe he'll use it for 1 viking and then medivacs. Maybe he'll use it for a fast medivac dropping 8 marines straight into your base. Maybe he's the kind of terran that built another rax in his base and waits for 2 medivacs before dropping you. Maybe he's the kind of retarded terran that waits for so long, that eventually you start making drones again, and in flies 3medivacs fully loaded with units. Sometimes they make a medivac and don't even use it for anything, they just expand and pretend it's a logical strategy.

You make drones and go for the early spire vs the 1 medivac 8 marine drop? You'll take sick damage. You start making units too late vs the 2 medivac drop and even hint at making the spire? You die. You start making units too early vs the 3 medivac drop instead of making the spire, and then suddenly think the coast is clear and proceed into making a round of drones because the drop never seems to come? You die.

You make too many units vs the nonsensical terran that went a 1-1-1 build into an 11-minute mark expand with medivacs and lots of marines before expanding but didn't even drop you ? You die from mining 600 less minerals per minute every subsequent minute.

Even when watching Sen's stream - who I consider to be 20x better than me and a complete monster ZvT - you see him losing instantly to noob terrans after overdroning vs a 3rax or 2rax/hellion all-in, or making too many units vs a faked aggression into fast expand build, or upgrading ling speed before lair and subsequently dying to 2port banshee without even having a fighting chance.

The main reason you see so many zergs getting eliminated so early, is because you have to have sick amount of LUCK to beat 5-6 terrans in a row. It doesn't matter how good and how skilled you are. Beating that many terrans in a row will require more luck than it will require skill.

The point is, there is too much of an element of randomness for zerg in the matchup depending on which tech path they opt for. And it cannot be fixed by simply "scouting better". The difference in win rate from playing a terran ranked #60 as opposed to a terran ranked #5 isn't that great. There's still the ~20% of games where you instantly lose due to a build order/tech path loss, no matter how good/bad your terran opponent is.

Then there are the truly good terrans. The ones of equal skill to you. The ones who'll win at least 50% of the games that reach beyond the "zerg guesses wrong instantly loses" phase.

The win ratio against those terrans won't ever be 50% for zergs. Much like the scrub terrans, the good terrans too will instantly win about ~20% of their games on pure build order errors from zerg. If they win half of the rest of games that puts them at 60% vs the zergs.

For a good terran facing a scrub zerg. There's perhaps a 1% chance of a build order loss. Again, number pulled out of my ass, but I should really think it's single digit, and amongst the lower single digits. You don't see morrow, brat_ok or demuslim losing to scrub zergs, EVER.

TvP, they might lose a higher percentage of games against no name protosses. But not nearly as high as zergs vs terran and protoss.

So what you end up with (poker analogy) is top zergs having to fight their way through 5-6 top pocket pair vs lower pocket pair preflop all-ins without getting drawn out one single time! And of course a couple of other key hands that actually reach the flop, turn and river (normal games where the zerg had some influence on the outcome and didn't instantly lose).

This post was written as a rant from start from finish. Forgive me if it's very incoherent.