Code S Season 2 is guaranteed to have at least one Protoss player in the finals as Classic and Trap are set to face off in the semifinals after defeating soO and INnoVation on the first day of playoff matches.
The first quarterfinal match saw Classic live up to his reputation as a cunning strategist against soO, dizzying his opponent with wildly different looks. While soO was able to sniff out and defend against an Immortal-Chargelot all-in in game two, he didn't have any answers for any of Classic's other moves: Glaive-Adepts, an inside-the-main Cannon rush, and a vexing 2-Stargate Phoenix followed by Immortal-push strategy (this particularly nasty move even baited a Spire).
The other quarterfinal match between Trap and INnoVation took on a completely different tone as the two players squared up against each other in a straight-forward macro showdown. The two looked closely matched in production and army control as they split the first four maps 2-2, leading them to a final showdown in game five.
There, the series finally took a more chaotic turn, with INnoVation's discovery and shutdown of Trap's hidden Templar Archives (for a fast Storm drop) triggering a series of hectic events. With this early advantage, INnoVation finally saw an opening to finish Trap with an early attack, only to find himself on the back foot after Trap defended brilliantly splitting by his forces between defending and counter-attacking. Yet, when Trap went on the offensive, INnoVation responded with a desperate counter-attack of his own. The move nearly worked—at least until he clumped his precious Liberators as easy targets for psi storm. From there, the game snowballed out of control, forcing INnoVation to surrender the 3-2 victory to Trap.
Day two of the quarterfinals will take place on Saturday, Jun 08 4:00am GMT (GMT+00:00), featuring Hurricane vs PartinG and herO vs Dark.
Shame soO and INnoVation lost wanted a ZvT so bad Classic just played pedal to the medal hyper aggressive and soO just wasn't ready oh well go Dark I believe it's time to finally take a GSL.
I'm just so tired of watching toss win games at this point. Not to add to the waves of toss hate; obviously I'm not the only one who's jaded. It reminds me of the period of time back in HotS when there was a lot of discussion about how the fundamental design of Protoss might need changing/tweaking.
Classic is no ordinary Protoss he is obviously a top five player overall. I feel like INnoVation should have won but he made some silly mistakes down the stretch so you can’t blame Trap for taking advantage of all those stacked liberators. This really hurts Inno because despite the year he’s having he is still locked under the BlizzCon line at #11 and he’s clearly in potential top 5 form this year. It would be a shame if he doesn’t make it. But this wasn’t Protoss winning, as much as this was INnoVation losing. I’ll be very surprised if it’s not a Classic vs Dark final based on the kind of play I’ve seen from the remaining players. But that’s why they play the game....
Could honestly see Parting going to the finals, he should beat hurricane pretty easily and have a decent shot against Dark. His PvZ has been looking pretty good and I feel like its pretty P favored at this point in the meta. Mostly just about immortal all ins / cannon rushes, phoenix fakes into all ins and putting your opponent on the back foot and second guessing whether your macroing or going all in.
P is the least interesting race to watch for me. This makes this current period a rough time for me. Been watching every major Korean SC2 tournament for years (including the group selections, etc), but I've really just been watching highly recommended series the past few months. Even watching more WCS since they don't seem to have this protoss domination problem nearly as bad.
When every non-toss win in the round of 8 onward seems like an upset, it looks like a problem to me. Classic & Stats are definitely in the top 5 or 6 players in the world, but when you see top 5 players falling to a maybe 15th-20th best player (Hurricane, Parting), consistently.. meh.
I know it's not a huge advantage, because the best of the best are overcoming it, but not as often as they should.
On June 07 2019 01:57 Jimmon wrote: Too much Protoss hate, yet I still think it's still a balanced match up over-all though..
Even if we all agree that PvZ was balanced, I personally believe it is very un-enjoyable to watch especially in the Korean Pro Scene. The games are short and there is no back in forth in the game. One side always seems to just roll over the other or fail miserably in a push and just GG. And while 50 different ways to rush/cheese/proxy/allin to mass kill drones is fun to watch when a player produces a new version unseen before it all gets old very fast. Screw the balance talk, that matchup just simply isn't fun as a spectator this year.
On June 06 2019 13:56 machinus wrote: Warp Prism seems way too good.
This is my take as well. Would like to see a pickup range nerf and a power field size nerf.
Need to be careful with prism nerf since its so critical to balance. Protoss is dominating now but with such a drastic nerf some of the other openings like archon drops would also get completely shut down. A small change might be that when in warp in mode it cannot pick up units and when in prism mode with units inside it, it cannot switch to warp. It will stop the abuse where players are still reinforcing their army while juggling immortals in the prism.
EPT
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