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On November 23 2019 21:24 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2019 17:30 Tyrhanius wrote:On November 22 2019 00:49 MockHamill wrote:
ZvP will still be Zerg favored, but less so than now.
How you come to this conclusion ? In HSC the winrate of Zerg in ZvP is 34.3%...And I haven't seen all the match, but from what i've seen soO and Serral weren't able to beat skytoss. The patch isn’t even live yet, it’s early. I didn’t see a huge amount of games just yet, I haven’t seen much lurker play or the ‘not dark swarm’ ability yet, which are at least meant to fill those gaps. Plus in groups there are some real real mismatches too. I don’t think Zerg beats skytoss playing the old way though for sure. Stats is a long term strategic genius. Wasn’t alone in watching many games going ‘why are you playing for the late game, you’ll will lose’ and he did a lot, but he’s got a hell of a lot of practice almost making it work so now he’s got a lot of practice in a patch where it’s going to be much more viable.
I dont think we'll see a serious strategy designed around the new infestor ability. Someone might get it for the meme value, but the very early consensus seems to be it's less than viable.
I still kinda think Zerg needs to double down on the old way, if it wants to go toe-to-toe in lategame, or just sidestep and try to end it in midgame/ get an insurmountable lead. I think it needs even more spores, less infestors, but some for chain fungals, vipers, some lurkers to bolster the spores and the rest just corruptors.
I dont see any "new way" of dealing with the improved Skytoss, like hydra-infestor or anything along those lines.
Obviously im no pro, it's still very early to call but that's how i see it.
Stats did very poorly for the past 4-5 months, not sure what's up, but he seems to be struggling past his ASUS win. Earlier this year he threw the IEM finals hardcore, by going for that super-weird, super-bad 3 stalker+warprism opening 4 times in a row, for reasons unknown.
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Part of this stems from frustration from what i would call the worst Blizzcon in known history. The way they forced all the SC2 into one day. The sheer amount of zvz's that turned away viewers. Sure, going to korea was hype. But at least devote 2 days in California.
Also, love the effort put into Mengsk. But really, without no new maps, i barely play co op anymore. The maps are just so easy and memorized on brutal. I can remember when a new commander meant also a new map with it.
Given this year's commander's choices, it looks like blizzard is actually trying to release obscure characters that no one sees coming. If mengsk isn't a hero unit i might get him. Assuming they put the effort and devote a map to patch in with him, which they should do.
Really can't stand these one vs map hero units that blizzard likes to force on co op. Seemingly intenionally brought in from moba games. Didn't invest or support tychus, zeratul and so on; these characters that are just so obviously broken and to me not fun to play as an rts.
Stetman was straight out of left field, but it seemed like some type of forced creep spread/pylon spread mechanic. Lagman definitely had co op alive as hell for a month or so. But again, no new map, which is a shame for such a big character. Nowadays, rarely get a stet ally.
Sure, they have fun aspects to them. And i've played them up thru level 5, getting the achievement and so on. Again, for chr1st sakes, please blizzard more new maps in co op it's just not fun on the same maps no matter how many commanders you do.
If I may make some suggestions for upcoming commanders @Blizzard, Kevin Dong and team. And again, this is assuming all of these will come with/include their own unique, strategic and well-thought out map with said commander:
Requested Commanders:
1. High Templar Karass. This guy is just such an absolute legend.
2. Tassadar. Been replaying SC1 and the campaign really takes me back. Tassadar is such a legend. Pretty sure the added High Templar attack in SC2 comes from this guy. Love how hallucinations work in SC1 as well. There's one mission in the campaign going against zerg where you have Tassadar.
Unit start out includes Tassadar and a shuttle. I eventually drop a stargate to make some scouts too. I had hallucinated scouts and shuttles flying everywhere on the map, scouting out zerg, absorbing scourge hits. Felt like harstem.
I could go on here but this guy would be such a good character. One i wouldn't have a problem with being a hero character; assuming: he has exact same stats/abilities that he does when given him during mission in the SC1 campaign. Again these commander requests assume these will be RTS, base-building releases.
3. Selendis. Many people have been asking for her. Me as well. Again, please reach back into SC1 and BW with these commanders for ideas. Just the amount of upgrades that were at Fleet Beacon, Templar Archives and Arbiter Tribunal alone. These could all be used and applied towards these commanders.
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Northern Ireland23754 Posts
On November 24 2019 17:02 Geo.Rion wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2019 21:24 Wombat_NI wrote:On November 23 2019 17:30 Tyrhanius wrote:On November 22 2019 00:49 MockHamill wrote:
ZvP will still be Zerg favored, but less so than now.
How you come to this conclusion ? In HSC the winrate of Zerg in ZvP is 34.3%...And I haven't seen all the match, but from what i've seen soO and Serral weren't able to beat skytoss. The patch isn’t even live yet, it’s early. I didn’t see a huge amount of games just yet, I haven’t seen much lurker play or the ‘not dark swarm’ ability yet, which are at least meant to fill those gaps. Plus in groups there are some real real mismatches too. I don’t think Zerg beats skytoss playing the old way though for sure. Stats is a long term strategic genius. Wasn’t alone in watching many games going ‘why are you playing for the late game, you’ll will lose’ and he did a lot, but he’s got a hell of a lot of practice almost making it work so now he’s got a lot of practice in a patch where it’s going to be much more viable. I dont think we'll see a serious strategy designed around the new infestor ability. Someone might get it for the meme value, but the very early consensus seems to be it's less than viable. I still kinda think Zerg needs to double down on the old way, if it wants to go toe-to-toe in lategame, or just sidestep and try to end it in midgame/ get an insurmountable lead. I think it needs even more spores, less infestors, but some for chain fungals, vipers, some lurkers to bolster the spores and the rest just corruptors. I dont see any "new way" of dealing with the improved Skytoss, like hydra-infestor or anything along those lines. Obviously im no pro, it's still very early to call but that's how i see it. Stats did very poorly for the past 4-5 months, not sure what's up, but he seems to be struggling past his ASUS win. Earlier this year he threw the IEM finals hardcore, by going for that super-weird, super-bad 3 stalker+warprism opening 4 times in a row, for reasons unknown.
That opening was legit damnit! Nah it was a cool build but one I’d see more value using once in a BoX not every game.
I think you might be right in scenarios where the game is relatively passive and Protoss can get there untouched, I’m just not sure how it’ll pan out but it seems that more aggressive styles may prosper.
Ideally (to my tastes anyway) we don’t see a huge amount of Skytoss or BL/Infestor or whatever and have more midgame and ground based gameplay but I’m not confident in predicting whether that’ll happen either way.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On November 21 2019 05:06 BabelFish1 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2019 04:47 Ben... wrote:On November 21 2019 04:41 BonitiilloO wrote:
So. After couple of days with this patch waht is the consensus? Are match more even or something got broken? How are matchups working out now? The patch isn't live yet. That will happen next Tuesday. Homestory Cup will be held on it this weekend so we'll see then. I'm convinced it's going to be massively Terran favored. TvZ might be balanced but TvP is looking like it's going to be hilariously broken in favor of Terran. Chargelots were needed to hold allins from the Terran. Without them and with 11 second Interference Matrix and with a massive buff to ranged Liberator production...I don't see what Protoss is going to do other than cheese every game or lose to Terran 2 base allins. HSC will show for sure.
And it really did. Not sure if you like what it shown, I certainly didn't.
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On November 24 2019 20:20 SC3:UED Returns wrote:
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I think what they could very easily do is to add a variety of macro maps. They are completely missing yet. All maps are built around 1 - 2 base play and doing certain tasks on the map.
In macromaps I want to see up to 3 - 4 or even 5 bases for each player and no other tasks on the map than kill all enemies and maybe an adequate bonus goal. Those enemies should involve variations of the cheater resource AIs from the regular Starcraft AIs that put players on a timer to win before they run out of ressources.
You could easily create 5 to 7 new maps with that concept to mix them into the existing pool without having the effort of creating 5 to 7 new singular concepts of special tasks.
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Let's see what the patch brings when it is live for a couple of weeks. Still quite worried about Toss being too bad after the latest changes, since PvT now seems to favour Terran and Nydus/SH in PvZ is still pretty big of a threat.
But actually we need to figure out how things work, HSC ain't too much of a sample since most guys likely relied on the common builds, even though they played test mod.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On November 25 2019 04:34 rasi86 wrote:
Let's see what the patch brings when it is live for a couple of weeks. Still quite worried about Toss being too bad after the latest changes, since PvT now seems to favour Terran and Nydus/SH in PvZ is still pretty big of a threat.
But actually we need to figure out how things work, HSC ain't too much of a sample since most guys likely relied on the common builds, even though they played test mod.
The issue is we don't have that many tournaments to affor to wait. Imagine Code S S1 being played on this and it would result in Z > P, T. T > P. As a Protoss player you just lost a season of Code S, you can't move out of the country because a region lock. What do you have to play in? GSL ST1 which may or may not be on another patch, S2 and S3, GSLvTW and ST2. That's not a good look into the future. As it appears this doesn't affect that much WCS as the RO8 is almost always the same no matter what's the patch so you still get at least some money. (also soft region lock of NA and EU)
We can't be as generous as we would like to be.
But ATM nothing was announced so we can wait few weeks 
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if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)
But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)
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On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)
But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)
It's just serral and reynor owning, all other 'top zergs' kinda got smacked around except for solar who managed to take out stats before being eliminated
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On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)
But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)
Historically, Terran have always been slow to adjust and on paper, Terran have a lot of imba options to use in allins vs Protoss.
To that end, I wouldn't take HSC XX seriously, it's a funsies tournament.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)
But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)
It was an example, I don't know, how about the example will be
P > Z, T; T> Z, zergs got fucked and don't have anything to play in Korea. It's literally the same, no matter what race. Currently people are mostly angry about ZErgs and the "patch fixing everything"(truly, yours zerg players)
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Well ZvZ finals until the end of the universe doesn't please everyone, sure.
The thing is, yes, it's probably not perfectly balanced 'now' (i.e on patchday). But was it (more) balanced before ? Hell no, not a all, for many it was the worst balance since years. (maybe bl/infestor or blink area imo).
One could argue that some people (koreans Terran ?) nearly got the entire year ruined by the balance.
So here we are in the eternal debate on patch frequency.
If only Real Premiers Tournament informs us decently about balance, then they are always some people getting screwed by balance at major event after a patch. Then either you patch fast, so less people get screwed by present imbalance, but you potentially introduce new imbalance.
Or you patch slowly so meta have the time to settle and people can create and optimize strategies that would last, etc, maybe finding solution to other race build/timing/unit/gameplay, etc, but maybe not. And sometime after 6months, well no meta evolution has got us back to balance, and well you go for the nerf and admit X race/units was super imba for last 6 months, sorry.
TBH there is no perfect solution. Patching every two weeks would be seen by everyone as stupid (except maybe new design-beta-phase or smth like that) because players can't create meta and evolve decent counter-gameplay (so blizzard literally decides meta and how to play )
But taking a year to address huge huge balance+designs issues like BL/infestor to current total Z domination (from early to end game, but mid too ^^) is just bonkers, and well, BL/infestor did more harm to this game than everything else ever combined. (even warhound or crazy reapers or ... )
So yeah no magic solution but a good approach is to have a good sense of how bad (for players/the game/the viewers) the current situation is, and how is it moving.
Very bad + not movement (or worsening) => rapid patch.
Decent, maybe some issues, meta evolving => wait.
Another good approach is to have a good sense of general principles RTS principles, like defenser advantage and risk-cost-benefit (nothing free, huge potential should come with risk, etc.). For example free invulnerable nydus => totally crazy idea.
The last thing, and not even totally Blizzard fault for this time, (and here HSC doesn't show it ) is the issue of map balance. Current map-pool is simply crazy pro-Z. each map is individually good, but way way too many pro-Z maps. That was imho the nail in the coffin.
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Sure it't only one tournament, but we can say for sure that Skytoss is absolutely still UP verse Zerg. I cannot believe people are still complaining about Toss when we literally have a ZvZ going on and not one toss in the top three even though they brought their best players.
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In my eyes, LotV fundamentally tilted the PvZ matchup in favor of the Zerg (even more than HotS PvZ was inherently Protoss-favored), and no nerf to whatever happens to be the current Zerg flavor of the month will change that.
In WoL and HotS, Protoss could
1) Compete economically on fewer bases
2) Trade cost-efficiently & beat a larger army with a smaller one
3) Keep the Zerg out of the Protoss base through the wall-off
4) Prevent Zerg greed just through the POTENTIAL of Protoss bullshit
In LotV:
1) Minerals per base reduced, benefiting the Zerg's ability to expand more
2) Ravagers, Banelings, Lurkers. In HotS, Protoss could handily win engagements where they were 30 supply or more down. Now that Zerg has a way to counter Force Fields and AoE damage of their own, even fights on even supply can sometimes be Zerg-favored.
3) Swarmhost, Nydus; also Overlord drops in early LotV.
4) To the top Zergs, Protoss bullshit just isn't scary anymore. The reason PvZ was more balanced in earlier LotV is because Glaive Adepts, mass Oracles, Immortal all-ins, etc. forced the Zerg to be less greedy. Now, all of those have been nerfed or figured out. Just look at game 2 between Serral and Zest, he took no damage from unscouted DTs with no Spores. In HotS, if Zerg didn't scout Protoss bullshit before it even moved out of their base, the Zerg was dead. Now, Protoss has to take risks with tech just to be even, never mind get ahead.
HotS PvZ was Protoss favored (also just SO much more FRUSTRATING for Zerg), so Blizzard had to do something, but imo things have just swung a bit too far in the other direction. This is coming from someone who plays both races, and generally enjoys the PvZ matchup the most for both races, no matter how well I do in it.
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On November 25 2019 05:17 Comedy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2019 05:09 xongnox wrote:
if i understand this correctly, we currently have :
- Mana is 3rd best performing foreigner at HSC, destroying way higer-ranked terans players (Special, Taeja, Heromarine, even doing 1-1 vs Innovation )
- PvT at 64% favouring protoss at HSC.
(-Z Still owning hard after a few days learning new meta ?)
But you guys already assume T > P ??? What do peoples smoke here ? (i want the same)
It's just serral and reynor owning, all other 'top zergs' kinda got smacked around except for solar who managed to take out stats before being eliminated
soO only lost in ZvZ, Serral and Reynor were both in finals, Solar got pretty far and beat Stats/Trap
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On November 25 2019 06:14 LTCM wrote:
Sure it't only one tournament, but we can say for sure that Skytoss is absolutely still UP verse Zerg. I cannot believe people are still complaining about Toss when we literally have a ZvZ going on and not one toss in the top three even though they brought their best players.
Who is complaining about protoss?
Zest and Trap did about as well as expected, but were a bit unfortunate to meet in the first winner's match. In general, fatigue seemed to get all the Koreans towards the end of the tournament, and the zergs among them were out pretty early.
MaNa had a very good run and Zest took out Solar. There were more protoss than zerg in the Ro16.
As expected, one would have to nerf zerg massively to keep Serral and Reynor out of finals, but it wasn't like they didn't drop any maps along the way!
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On November 25 2019 07:41 Aesto wrote:
In my eyes, LotV fundamentally tilted the PvZ matchup in favor of the Zerg (even more than HotS PvZ was inherently Protoss-favored), and no nerf to whatever happens to be the current Zerg flavor of the month will change that.
In WoL and HotS, Protoss could
1) Compete economically on fewer bases
2) Trade cost-efficiently & beat a larger army with a smaller one
3) Keep the Zerg out of the Protoss base through the wall-off
4) Prevent Zerg greed just through the POTENTIAL of Protoss bullshit
In LotV:
1) Minerals per base reduced, benefiting the Zerg's ability to expand more
2) Ravagers, Banelings, Lurkers. In HotS, Protoss could handily win engagements where they were 30 supply or more down. Now that Zerg has a way to counter Force Fields and AoE damage of their own, even fights on even supply can sometimes be Zerg-favored.
3) Swarmhost, Nydus; also Overlord drops in early LotV.
4) To the top Zergs, Protoss bullshit just isn't scary anymore. The reason PvZ was more balanced in earlier LotV is because Glaive Adepts, mass Oracles, Immortal all-ins, etc. forced the Zerg to be less greedy. Now, all of those have been nerfed or figured out. Just look at game 2 between Serral and Zest, he took no damage from unscouted DTs with no Spores. In HotS, if Zerg didn't scout Protoss bullshit before it even moved out of their base, the Zerg was dead. Now, Protoss has to take risks with tech just to be even, never mind get ahead.
HotS PvZ was Protoss favored (also just SO much more FRUSTRATING for Zerg), so Blizzard had to do something, but imo things have just swung a bit too far in the other direction. This is coming from someone who plays both races, and generally enjoys the PvZ matchup the most for both races, no matter how well I do in it.
Well in fact TvZ has fundamentally the same issue : with good players, most of the time, Zerg just simply begin too good in early and early-mid game.
- Then they can either go 90+drones Tier2+ (like tier2+viper+cracklings, or lurker/viper play, etc..) and multi-prong/attack/trade ban'rolling for 10 minutes, until exhaustion of their adversaries who can not take and defend a 5th/6th base. Creep and nydus helps a lot, but are not indispensable per se. Creep here is mostly useful for vision and slowing down opponent push while doing huge back-stabs.
- Or if they have a good T3 deathball in the matchup(+map), they can rush it on a weak mid-tier army (mostly ravagers/banes, or ling/banes vT ..) + 8 queens + mass reproduction if opponent attack, playing defensive on creep with light run-bys. Creep is super usefull first for defensive advantage if opponent commit to an attack, and than for speed+vision (mobility) + spores once you get Broods.
In either case, the play is strong thanks first to the early and early-mid game putting Z ahead. More drones, less infrastructure to pay, way more vision and scouting, capacity to react thanks to larvae+scouting, etc. So if you have a 'broken' death-ball you can go for it, but as we see more and more it's not even necessary, any semi-decently T2+ trading army can do the job fine when you begin the game with such an advantage.
So yes, while nerfing a bit nydus and infestors and BL seems good, Z still is super strong because nothing at all have changed early-game. Still we got way more dynamic and fun games, that's nice !....
....but not really balanced when Z can shift-click all the game dozens of perfectly defended banes in minerals lines (until at the 14th attempt even a Korean Starcraft God make one mistake and a +2 bane kills 22 probes and win the game ), but if T/P make half an error (i.e not perfect execution on prism/medivacs/anti-banes micro) and loose all chances to win.
Still it was the good way to go. Nerf design-horrors such as imba deathballs first. Then when people play a real game with real units we can adjust balance way more easily : one could try to nerf early-game Z (queens ? creep ? spores ? queen anti-air ? roach warren requiring 50 gaz ? they are many many ways), and maybe nerf some zerg units (the baneling ? maybe the +hp buff were a bit too much for same price ?) if it is not enough.
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On November 25 2019 08:47 Slydie wrote:
As expected, one would have to nerf zerg massively to keep Serral and Reynor out of finals, but it wasn't like they didn't drop any maps along the way!
When top koreans players are invited, a Serral vs Reynor finale is not a grantee at all in 2019. Or even a (Serral or Reynor) title. Or even (Reynor or Serral) in finale.
In fact 2019 mixed top premiers tournaments : 4 koreans titles (Stats, Dark, soO, Innovation) and two Serral titles (GSLvsWorld, HSC).
Interestingly (or not), Serral won the two less prized tourneys, Reynor only made two final appearance, and well 80%+ of the money went to Koreans pockets.
Arguably HSC had not all the best koreans (Maru, TY, Dark, ..) but so neither Blizzcon (TY, Inno, ...)
Arguably in a year where Z was by far the best race, and the best performing foreign players are by far zerg players (since, uh, a long long time), witch also have by far the best mirror foreigners vs koreans MU. (mainly meta things)
So, while they does not have dominated koreans in 2019, if the balance/meta/maps make koreans Terrans and Protoss strong again in 2020, it will probably be way harder for our 2 foreigners zergs superheroes.
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2020 is the last year for soo, zest and stats before army, 2021 for inno and sos.
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On November 25 2019 10:32 xongnox wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2019 07:41 Aesto wrote:
In my eyes, LotV fundamentally tilted the PvZ matchup in favor of the Zerg (even more than HotS PvZ was inherently Protoss-favored), and no nerf to whatever happens to be the current Zerg flavor of the month will change that.
In WoL and HotS, Protoss could
1) Compete economically on fewer bases
2) Trade cost-efficiently & beat a larger army with a smaller one
3) Keep the Zerg out of the Protoss base through the wall-off
4) Prevent Zerg greed just through the POTENTIAL of Protoss bullshit
In LotV:
1) Minerals per base reduced, benefiting the Zerg's ability to expand more
2) Ravagers, Banelings, Lurkers. In HotS, Protoss could handily win engagements where they were 30 supply or more down. Now that Zerg has a way to counter Force Fields and AoE damage of their own, even fights on even supply can sometimes be Zerg-favored.
3) Swarmhost, Nydus; also Overlord drops in early LotV.
4) To the top Zergs, Protoss bullshit just isn't scary anymore. The reason PvZ was more balanced in earlier LotV is because Glaive Adepts, mass Oracles, Immortal all-ins, etc. forced the Zerg to be less greedy. Now, all of those have been nerfed or figured out. Just look at game 2 between Serral and Zest, he took no damage from unscouted DTs with no Spores. In HotS, if Zerg didn't scout Protoss bullshit before it even moved out of their base, the Zerg was dead. Now, Protoss has to take risks with tech just to be even, never mind get ahead.
HotS PvZ was Protoss favored (also just SO much more FRUSTRATING for Zerg), so Blizzard had to do something, but imo things have just swung a bit too far in the other direction. This is coming from someone who plays both races, and generally enjoys the PvZ matchup the most for both races, no matter how well I do in it. Well in fact TvZ has fundamentally the same issue : with good players, most of the time, Zerg just simply begin too good in early and early-mid game. - Then they can either go 90+drones Tier2+ (like tier2+viper+cracklings, or lurker/viper play, etc..) and multi-prong/attack/trade ban'rolling for 10 minutes, until exhaustion of their adversaries who can not take and defend a 5th/6th base. Creep and nydus helps a lot, but are not indispensable per se. Creep here is mostly useful for vision and slowing down opponent push while doing huge back-stabs.
- Or if they have a good T3 deathball in the matchup(+map), they can rush it on a weak mid-tier army (mostly ravagers/banes, or ling/banes vT ..) + 8 queens + mass reproduction if opponent attack, playing defensive on creep with light run-bys. Creep is super usefull first for defensive advantage if opponent commit to an attack, and than for speed+vision (mobility) + spores once you get Broods.
In either case, the play is strong thanks first to the early and early-mid game putting Z ahead. More drones, less infrastructure to pay, way more vision and scouting, capacity to react thanks to larvae+scouting, etc. So if you have a 'broken' death-ball you can go for it, but as we see more and more it's not even necessary, any semi-decently T2+ trading army can do the job fine when you begin the game with such an advantage. So yes, while nerfing a bit nydus and infestors and BL seems good, Z still is super strong because nothing at all have changed early-game. Still we got way more dynamic and fun games, that's nice !.... ....but not really balanced when Z can shift-click all the game dozens of perfectly defended banes in minerals lines (until at the 14th attempt even a Korean Starcraft God make one mistake and a +2 bane kills 22 probes and win the game ), but if T/P make half an error (i.e not perfect execution on prism/medivacs/anti-banes micro) and loose all chances to win. Still it was the good way to go. Nerf design-horrors such as imba deathballs first. Then when people play a real game with real units we can adjust balance way more easily : one could try to nerf early-game Z (queens ? creep ? spores ? queen anti-air ? roach warren requiring 50 gaz ? they are many many ways), and maybe nerf some zerg units (the baneling ? maybe the +hp buff were a bit too much for same price ?) if it is not enough.
Nice post! But, as only 4 of 16 of the Ro16 at Homestory cup were zergs, I don't think all hope is out. Stronger T and P players can pull Zergs apart with multipronged harassment, the quicker zealots is a new good tool for that. Both Innovation and Zest did not look good in their last series, so I would not read too much into the fact we had another zvz final.
The real question of balance is who wins if both players have a similar skill level and do about the same amount of mistakes and awesome plays. The Cure mech split push on Acropolis vs Reynor was an awesome Terran moment, for example.
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EPT
