IEM Katowice Ro24 concludes, Playoff Bracket Set - Page 4

On March 03 2019 01:31 Xain0n wrote:
Maru is not gosu because of his proxying skills. They were his bane at BlizzCon, in the end!

On March 03 2019 00:15 General_Winter wrote:
IM Nestea won multiple GSLs when the balance was vastly more unfavorable to Zerg than it is to Terran right now. For players that are good enough, a shocking level of balance disparity can be overcome. But maybe no one today is as much better than everyone else as Nestea was back then.

I’ll say it’s a smallish sample but it certainly doesn’t look good for Terran now.

On March 02 2019 09:23 BerserkSword wrote:


soO has an nice ZvZ but Serral is a completely different beast....i think soO would get eviscerated. Serral has already dismantled the premier Zergs in Dark and Rogue en route to his GSL vs the WCS finals i dont think soO is as good as they are at this level.

TY is interesting but recently he can barely hang with the Dark's and Rogue's....there is nothing that makes me think he can beat Serral.

meanwhile Stats met him in the GSL vs world and WCS finals and took games off of him

On March 03 2019 05:49 K5 wrote:



You can't compare the 2010/2011 era with today. Back then, the game was not as figured out as it is today, and the mechanical skill of all players was vastly inferior to the one today. The game has evolved into a monstrosity where players are so good and every situation is so figured out that a smallest mistake can cost you the game, while in NesTea's time there was a lot more potential for comebacks and the mistakes were not as punishing. NesTea won the games not by mechanics, but by outthinking his opponents, but today, with the game being a lot more fast paced, you need extremely good mechanics just to have a fighting chance.

And on the Maru note, he won as much last year because of proxying, and he did the proxies because Terran could not go toe to toe with the Protoss in a standard macro game. He overcame that with all ins, but that doesn't mean the matchup was balanced. Also, Terran players have a tough time in weekend toruneys like IEAM and WCS, because to play Terran on the highest level, one needs a lot more preparation, because the smallest mistake in any situation can be game-ending, so Terrans need to practice the perfect response for every situation (the most notable example of this is holding all ins as Terran, if your response isn't PERFECT, you die, or at least take too much damage).

On March 03 2019 06:56 machinus wrote:


Blizzard has been trying to fix this "late game" crisis since the beginning of SC2 when they completely nerfed siege tanks and never brought them back. The development team designed the game "for esports" which means instead of making it balanced and even (like BW), they made it fast. But that wasn't enough speed for Blizzard, so they start the game with huge mineral income now to shorten the window of time where a race which relies on tier 1 and 2 units can succeed. Terran has always had to use harassment and timing attacks to win before losing to the tier 3 threats of Zerg and Protoss that it can't match.

But they keep removing all these attacks, even though they are not willing to make Tier 3 units as powerful as those in the other races. Fast Barracks, SCV health, Pre-Igniter damage, Reapers, and Cyclones (they still don't know what to do with Cyclones), to name a few, all got changed because a few players (or even only one player) used them too effectively. But Terrans didn't win with Thors and Battlecruisers instead; they lost until they could find the next abusive Tier 1 strategy or fast timing attack. Currently this means building one to three proxy Barracks in 50% of games, because Terran does not have any better choices for winning. The game has been pushed to be so fast that "late game" units show up at 8 minutes, at which point Terran has to 1) have godlike multitasking and speed to survive or 2) accept strategic loss. Terran tactics are based on defense, which was ok in Brood War where holding territory had great value, and control was so complex that bad unit AI allowed defense to be good. But SC2 is too fast for defense. Unit concentration and speed mean that defensive tactics are just weaker than other tactics like warping on the front line, or building units with 6 (or 7...) armor to lead attacks. Terran players build more bunkers outside hatcheries than they do in their own bases because SC2 is designed to only reward offense.

Katowice is only one tournament, but it is hard to see TY playing perfect 400 APM triple-harassment and being ahead in workers all game and still lose.