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This tournament had all the best SC2 players stacked into one tournament, you can't possibly get a higher and closer level of skill stacked into one single tournament then this. This should produce some quality games which it did specifically in TVZ.
One matchup however failed and it failed hard.
Protoss if you believe the recent vibe from everything to twitch chat, casters and pro gamer comments post void ray buff zergs keep getting protossed it would seem.
Ofcourse results have never really matched the usual vibes given by the community.
Now the results from this tournament is what made me want to sit down and write this post to see some opinions.
Of the nineteen maps played vs zerg in this tournament protoss managed to win only four maps against zerg.
Protoss came into this tournament with the best possible chance to do well, they had a total of 7 Protoss vs 4 Terrans and 5 Zergs.
Only one Protoss made it to the RO8, Dark stopped Zest 3-2. ( and it should be noted Zest came from group with no Zergs in it)
If you look at the current pro scene of SC2, take a look at the players in this tournament, the skill level of these players are just on another level compared to the rest of the SC2 pro scene and the results between them is where we should look for answers, not aligulac that uses 200 "pro players" to calculate overall winrates in all matchups. Aligulac creates a false image of results in sc2 because it records matches played by people with skill so low balance cannot be taken into consideration.
Only at tournaments like ASUS ROG FALL 2021 can you see close to the potential of all races unlocked through the skill and speed of the players controlling them.
Not talking balance but just watching PVZ it looks unnatural. you can clearly see their is no natural flow in PVZ, its either all inn by protoss or cut corners and go air and watch 20 slow queens march across the map. It looks bad, like it looks really really bad just from a viewer perspective. You can feel its a broken matchup where pro players have found the most efficient ways to play and it just looks really abusive and desperate.
TL recently made a poll if we need a patch, I would say yes we need one and we need one that is AIMED at finally making PVZ a good matchup because it has never been a good matchup.
These Blizzard patches where they say like yes this unit felt slightly to strong so we adjusted the damage or whatever. They have done this since sc2 was released and this is not just about balance its about game design time to fix this matchup because it has potential.
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We all want new patches/maps and better pvz/zvp meta, that's not the problem, the problem is, there is noone who could make that possible.
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Nothing you can learn from pro players they play years and hours a day to be pro,if you are not pro even you maybe 6000+ but 6500- no brain to choose Toss and A move units
User was warned for this post.
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Nobody cares about balance thats it
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Also toss is easy at almost every level(maybe not at 1-2 people's balance but I cant see why anyone will think toss is weak because of Trap and Parting they are top tosses are weak,Parting plays mobile games for years and Trap couldnt even had name back 2020(till this balance update)
Just see toss have majority in most tournaments with no name before this balance(Eg MAXPAX no macro/no micro
also every game =vs/canon or =gg
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I have hated ZvP from a viewer perspective ever since SCII was released. And at this point, I do not think it can be fixed. ZvT shows what a Zerg match up can look like. There are fights everywhere and all the time. In PvZ it‘s usually an all-in on either side, or a turtle snoozefest on both sides, where Toss usually ends up in a worse position. And if they get themselves into a good position, they fall asleep midgame and donate the game (hello, Zest)
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Yeah PvZ right now has no midgame which makes it a terrible matchup. Either an allin, sometimes one from Protoss, or a passive 30 minute snoozefest.
If I were to make a balance change I would revert the lurker range buff (before that Protoss seemed fine going ground toss) and nerf the Voidray (cost probably).
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On September 20 2021 17:11 Swisslink wrote:
I have hated ZvP from a viewer perspective ever since SCII was released. And at this point, I do not think it can be fixed. ZvT shows what a Zerg match up can look like. There are fights everywhere and all the time. In PvZ it‘s usually an all-in on either side, or a turtle snoozefest on both sides, where Toss usually ends up in a worse position. And if they get themselves into a good position, they fall asleep midgame and donate the game (hello, Zest)
it has not always been like that, remember Reynor vs Classic or Serral vs Stats in 2018?
Hydra Ling Bane era also had some fun games
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I think a measure is needed to strengthen the early and mid-term and weaken the Protoss fleet. Otherwise, pvz is limited to progamer, which is too difficult for ordinary players.There are fewer and fewer Zerg players on the ladder, and they don't have a good micro-control to fight against the fleet.
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My main question would be if Protoss is actually incapable of fighting Zerg lategame armies at the top level with players like Serral being able control 5 hotkeys worth of units or if Protoss players aren't truly exploiting all the tools they have in their arsenal to find a solution. (i.e. Tempest oracle / Disruptors etc.)
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I've written this post before but basically:
1) Issues with PvZ are magnified because it's mainly a strategical matchup. If something is wrong with TvZ, the fact that it requires great execution can make for some good TvZ regardless. Usually if you're doing the right thing in ZvP, you're unlikely to lose unless your opponent is much better. This is why Serral can have a 95% winrate in ZvP and still be perceived to not be doing anything particularly impressive if you watch one of his ZvPs.
Because issues are magnified, it looks like it would need some huge redesign to fix, but not really.
2) As the reactive race in a mainly strategical match up, it should remain true that zerg ought to win at equal skill level if they know what they're playing against, otherwise it's unlikely that zerg can beat protoss in PvZ. What should change is that it shouldn't be that easy for top zergs to know what they're playing against. Right now as a zerg you can only get caught off guard if you fucked up quite largely, and this is why top zergs don't really lose, because they know what they're playing against all the time and they know the effective counters.
You want to reach a stage where it looks similar to alternative zerg play in PvZ (swarmhosts, mutas). We don't see it a lot because the standard play is superior so zergs aren't incentivized to play those, but they're quite strong. How they work is if an equally skilled player knows they're coming, that player is going to win most of the time. But that equally skilled player won't always know that the all-in is coming, because PvZ information isn't guaranteed just like ZvP information is.
Also if you've never liked PvZ you probably don't have the most valuable insight in how to fix it. I know we're a minority, but some people like strategy more than execution. Please don't fix PvZ by making it like TvZ.
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On September 20 2021 18:59 Aurora.ddd wrote:
My main question would be if Protoss is actually incapable of fighting Zerg lategame armies at the top level with players like Serral being able control 5 hotkeys worth of units or if Protoss players aren't truly exploiting all the tools they have in their arsenal to find a solution. (i.e. Tempest oracle / Disruptors etc.)
Whereas I'm not arguing that maybe there are ways for Protoss lategame to work (e.g. defensive Tempest / Shield Battery turtle style) I can hardly believe that this would be fun to play and especially to watch.
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Mexico1842 Posts
Part of me thinks that much of the "Protons IMBA" cries are more player perception rather than actual facts, as you say results show that's not really the case, but maybe the way Protoss is designed makes it seem unfair. One place where you can see it pretty clearly is people complaining about Protoss being a+click, which is straight up false, or that it requires less skill because it gives you less APM (I'll make a thread about it one of these days, but basically Zerg for example doesn't require more APM, it GIVES you more APM passively).
So yeah, I think in terms of balance the match up is pretty decent after the VR buff, though there's only like 3 viable protons Builds now.
On September 20 2021 20:18 Nebuchad wrote:
I've written this post before but basically:
1) Issues with PvZ are magnified because it's mainly a strategical matchup. If something is wrong with TvZ, the fact that it requires great execution can make for some good TvZ regardless. Usually if you're doing the right thing in ZvP, you're unlikely to lose unless your opponent is much better. This is why Serral can have a 95% winrate in ZvP and still be perceived to not be doing anything particularly impressive if you watch one of his ZvPs.
Because issues are magnified, it looks like it would need some huge redesign to fix, but not really.
2) As the reactive race in a mainly strategical match up, it should remain true that zerg ought to win at equal skill level if they know what they're playing against, otherwise it's unlikely that zerg can beat protoss in PvZ. What should change is that it shouldn't be that easy for top zergs to know what they're playing against. Right now as a zerg you can only get caught off guard if you fucked up quite largely, and this is why top zergs don't really lose, because they know what they're playing against all the time and they know the effective counters.
You want to reach a stage where it looks similar to alternative zerg play in PvZ (swarmhosts, mutas). We don't see it a lot because the standard play is superior so zergs aren't incentivized to play those, but they're quite strong. How they work is if an equally skilled player knows they're coming, that player is going to win most of the time. But that equally skilled player won't always know that the all-in is coming, because PvZ information isn't guaranteed just like ZvP information is.
Also if you've never liked PvZ you probably don't have the most valuable insight in how to fix it. I know we're a minority, but some people like strategy more than execution. Please don't fix PvZ by making it like TvZ.
And this is why I hate maps that have the invisible Overlord scouting spot in the natural  .
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On September 20 2021 14:15 Drahkn wrote:
If you look at the current pro scene of SC2, take a look at the players in this tournament, the skill level of these players are just on another level compared to the rest of the SC2 pro scene and the results between them is where we should look for answers, not aligulac that uses 200 "pro players" to calculate overall winrates in all matchups. Aligulac creates a false image of results in sc2 because it records matches played by people with skill so low balance cannot be taken into consideration.
Yet on the other hand, it's very hard to derive statistics and meaningful balance numbers from our very small sample of top players, especially for an ageing game like SC2...
I mean, just out of curiosity, I computed the percentage of player of each race in the RO16 of the 3 previous ESL open cups, all servers.
This gives 34%T but 12%Z and 54%P.
I'd argue this is a better level to get large enough numbers for stats while still considering only high - if not top - level.
Even accounting for the top zergs barely playing in those and the level, this is quite a scary picture.
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On September 20 2021 22:26 VladSlymor wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2021 14:15 Drahkn wrote:
If you look at the current pro scene of SC2, take a look at the players in this tournament, the skill level of these players are just on another level compared to the rest of the SC2 pro scene and the results between them is where we should look for answers, not aligulac that uses 200 "pro players" to calculate overall winrates in all matchups. Aligulac creates a false image of results in sc2 because it records matches played by people with skill so low balance cannot be taken into consideration.
Yet on the other hand, it's very hard to derive statistics and meaningful balance numbers from our very small sample of top players, especially for an ageing game like SC2... I mean, just out of curiosity, I computed the percentage of player of each race in the RO16 of the 3 previous ESL open cups, all servers. This gives 34%T but 12%Z and 54%P. I'd argue this is a better level to get large enough numbers for stats while still considering only high - if not top - level. Even accounting for the top zergs barely playing in those and the level, this is quite a scary picture.
It's because outside of the absolute top zergs everyone else is getting smashed.
Skytoss has killed the ladder/playing experience and everyone that plays knows it, it IS way harder to deal with than it is to play.
TvZ also being really hard doesn't help the zerg population, map pool doesn't help either.
Aligulac (i know its a bullshit metric) was at 64% PvZ the other day there, I imagine if it was the other way around it would be used a stick to beat zergs with.
Game is not that far away of having 15% Z in GM, thats kind of sad.
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On September 20 2021 18:59 Aurora.ddd wrote:
My main question would be if Protoss is actually incapable of fighting Zerg lategame armies at the top level with players like Serral being able control 5 hotkeys worth of units or if Protoss players aren't truly exploiting all the tools they have in their arsenal to find a solution. (i.e. Tempest oracle / Disruptors etc.)
Download the replay of Dark vs Zest on jaggannatha and watch the two main fights:
Zest : At 11:48 Zest put a revelation on dark's army, @ 11:49 he a moves his main army and selects his templar, from 11:49 to 11:59 the only selected group (that's a whole 10s) are his templar which he uses to storm 1 time, and feedback 7 or 8 times and then archon them.
@11:59 he selects his voidray and use Prismatic, he then select his warp prsime and move it back.
@12:01 he clics on the minimap and selects adepts and shade them,
He then goes back to his prism and warp 10 zealot @12:02 and watch for 3s.
@ 12:05 he selects his nexi, and gates quiclky but does nothing, then select a neuraled archon then his nexi and gates multiple times (prod nothing) and the archon (neuraled, does nothing)until 12:07 where he selects his Carriers, moves them back, select sentry @ 12:10 and GS, selects back carriers to a move.
@12:12 f2 a move and the fight is basically over then and it's another round of nexis gates prism adepts etc. So he basically only a-moved his main army for 25s during the main fight (no focus fire).
Dark :At 11:48 dark NP an archon, select hatchery (does nothing), reselect infest and NP another archon, select Corrup+vipers and PB a carrier, selectt his queen and Amove them,
@ 11:50 he unburrows his infest and moves back, selects his queen and re amove them (useless), select his viper Corrup and move them back, reselect infest @ 11;53 and burrows them and unburrows them (useless), throw down 2 MBshroud and 1 fungal.
@11;55 he selects his queens and transfuses units,
@11;56 he select his corruptors and focus fire a Carrier.
still @11;56 he selects his infest throws 2 fungal on main army and MBShroud, and then 2 fungals on interceptors. @11:57 he selects his queens and transfuses, @11:58 he select his infest, moves them, @11:59 he NP 3 archons, @12:00 he selects his queens and transfuses,
@12:01 he select his corruptors and focus fire a Carrier, reselect queens and a move them,
@12:02 he selects his infest and NP an archon, @12:03 he transfuses with queens, @12:04 selects hatch larva and builds Ling +Ultras.
@12:05 he selects his queens and transfuses, @12:06 he select his corruptors shift A clic 2 carriers ( focus), @12:07 selects his queens and transfuses, selects his infest and tries to NP an archon but fails causes blocked, select his queens @12:08 and transfuses, @12:09 select infest and NP an Archon, and around @12:11 queen larva/macro
I'm not gonna do the other main fight cause I'm already tired of writing this shit, and I'm pretty sure there are soft that does it auto. The fight takes place at around 33min, but it's basically the same with a bit more micro from zest with a prism + HT, but no focus fire, everything hitting queens.
I think the main difficulty for Toss is to balance their comp, but Serral said himself that if there are no tempest he feels super confident. Without them there's no poke/pressure to force the zerg to do anything.
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Yup, PvZ is in a real bad place right now. The power of the Lurker has made the Protoss game plan either to all in (which are extremely difficult to scout and hold except at the top level where the pro Zerg's do it almost effortlessly) or play hyper defensively (boring) and then end up with a composition that takes the Zerg 10X more micro and positioning to fight evenly.
Solution?
Remove Adaptive Talons from the game, it is an upgrade from a bygone era to incentivize using a new unit. It had it's time and it's place, and now it's overpowered. The lurker holds ground too well to be so mobile and easily repositioned. Imagine if tanks had a similar upgrade, we would be renaming the game Terrancraft 2, Heart of the Siege.
Buff the Stalker's anti air capabilities, we all know that Gateway units are probably at their lowest point ever. The Stalker is probably the most skill cap/micro intensive unit in the Protoss arsenal. It's fun to watch, fun to use, and it's versatility is key. I don't think that buffing Stalker AA would break it vs Terran but it would give Protoss alot more security vs. Spire threats.
Adepts seem to be in a terrible place outside of all ins as well, another by product of Blizzards incompetence. "Hey guys instead of making this unit versatile and useful let's give it a super cool alien flashy ability that makes it impossible to balance!" I don't know what can even be done to help improve this unit, it's super strong early on and then useless, like Reapers but magnified.
tldr Lurkers are way overpowered and Gateway unit could probably use a little love
Oh, I'm a Zerg fwiw
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On September 20 2021 21:47 [Phantom] wrote:Part of me thinks that much of the "Protons IMBA" cries are more player perception rather than actual facts, as you say results show that's not really the case, but maybe the way Protoss is designed makes it seem unfair. One place where you can see it pretty clearly is people complaining about Protoss being a+click, which is straight up false, or that it requires less skill because it gives you less APM (I'll make a thread about it one of these days, but basically Zerg for example doesn't require more APM, it GIVES you more APM passively). So yeah, I think in terms of balance the match up is pretty decent after the VR buff, though there's only like 3 viable protons Builds now. Show nested quote +On September 20 2021 20:18 Nebuchad wrote:
I've written this post before but basically:
1) Issues with PvZ are magnified because it's mainly a strategical matchup. If something is wrong with TvZ, the fact that it requires great execution can make for some good TvZ regardless. Usually if you're doing the right thing in ZvP, you're unlikely to lose unless your opponent is much better. This is why Serral can have a 95% winrate in ZvP and still be perceived to not be doing anything particularly impressive if you watch one of his ZvPs.
Because issues are magnified, it looks like it would need some huge redesign to fix, but not really.
2) As the reactive race in a mainly strategical match up, it should remain true that zerg ought to win at equal skill level if they know what they're playing against, otherwise it's unlikely that zerg can beat protoss in PvZ. What should change is that it shouldn't be that easy for top zergs to know what they're playing against. Right now as a zerg you can only get caught off guard if you fucked up quite largely, and this is why top zergs don't really lose, because they know what they're playing against all the time and they know the effective counters.
You want to reach a stage where it looks similar to alternative zerg play in PvZ (swarmhosts, mutas). We don't see it a lot because the standard play is superior so zergs aren't incentivized to play those, but they're quite strong. How they work is if an equally skilled player knows they're coming, that player is going to win most of the time. But that equally skilled player won't always know that the all-in is coming, because PvZ information isn't guaranteed just like ZvP information is.
Also if you've never liked PvZ you probably don't have the most valuable insight in how to fix it. I know we're a minority, but some people like strategy more than execution. Please don't fix PvZ by making it like TvZ. And this is why I hate maps that have the invisible Overlord scouting spot in the natural .
I think alot of the protoss imba cries stems from the pure frustration of playing vs airtoss. And once airtoss gets out of hand and you don't have Dark/Serral level of micro and skill, you typically get rolled over.
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On September 20 2021 14:15 Drahkn wrote:
This tournament had all the best SC2 players stacked into one tournament, you can't possibly get a higher and closer level of skill stacked into one single tournament then this. This should produce some quality games which it did specifically in TVZ.
One matchup however failed and it failed hard.
Protoss if you believe the recent vibe from everything to twitch chat, casters and pro gamer comments post void ray buff zergs keep getting protossed it would seem.
Ofcourse results have never really matched the usual vibes given by the community.
Now the results from this tournament is what made me want to sit down and write this post to see some opinions.
Of the nineteen maps played vs zerg in this tournament protoss managed to win only four maps against zerg.
Protoss came into this tournament with the best possible chance to do well, they had a total of 7 Protoss vs 4 Terrans and 5 Zergs.
Only one Protoss made it to the RO8, Dark stopped Zest 3-2. ( and it should be noted Zest came from group with no Zergs in it)
If you look at the current pro scene of SC2, take a look at the players in this tournament, the skill level of these players are just on another level compared to the rest of the SC2 pro scene and the results between them is where we should look for answers, not aligulac that uses 200 "pro players" to calculate overall winrates in all matchups. Aligulac creates a false image of results in sc2 because it records matches played by people with skill so low balance cannot be taken into consideration.
Only at tournaments like ASUS ROG FALL 2021 can you see close to the potential of all races unlocked through the skill and speed of the players controlling them.
Not talking balance but just watching PVZ it looks unnatural. you can clearly see their is no natural flow in PVZ, its either all inn by protoss or cut corners and go air and watch 20 slow queens march across the map. It looks bad, like it looks really really bad just from a viewer perspective. You can feel its a broken matchup where pro players have found the most efficient ways to play and it just looks really abusive and desperate.
TL recently made a poll if we need a patch, I would say yes we need one and we need one that is AIMED at finally making PVZ a good matchup because it has never been a good matchup.
These Blizzard patches where they say like yes this unit felt slightly to strong so we adjusted the damage or whatever. They have done this since sc2 was released and this is not just about balance its about game design time to fix this matchup because it has potential.
I agree with your statement about pvz looking unnatural. It's also getting real boring to watch as well.
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On September 20 2021 23:03 youaremysin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2021 18:59 Aurora.ddd wrote:
My main question would be if Protoss is actually incapable of fighting Zerg lategame armies at the top level with players like Serral being able control 5 hotkeys worth of units or if Protoss players aren't truly exploiting all the tools they have in their arsenal to find a solution. (i.e. Tempest oracle / Disruptors etc.) Download the replay of Dark vs Zest on jaggannatha and watch the two main fights: Zest : At 11:48 Zest put a revelation on dark's army, @ 11:49 he a moves his main army and selects his templar, from 11:49 to 11:59 the only selected group (that's a whole 10s) are his templar which he uses to storm 1 time, and feedback 7 or 8 times and then archon them. @11:59 he selects his voidray and use Prismatic, he then select his warp prsime and move it back. @12:01 he clics on the minimap and selects adepts and shade them, He then goes back to his prism and warp 10 zealot @12:02 and watch for 3s. @ 12:05 he selects his nexi, and gates quiclky but does nothing, then select a neuraled archon then his nexi and gates multiple times (prod nothing) and the archon (neuraled, does nothing)until 12:07 where he selects his Carriers, moves them back, select sentry @ 12:10 and GS, selects back carriers to a move. @12:12 f2 a move and the fight is basically over then and it's another round of nexis gates prism adepts etc. So he basically only a-moved his main army for 25s during the main fight (no focus fire). Dark :At 11:48 dark NP an archon, select hatchery (does nothing), reselect infest and NP another archon, select Corrup+vipers and PB a carrier, selectt his queen and Amove them, @ 11:50 he unburrows his infest and moves back, selects his queen and re amove them (useless), select his viper Corrup and move them back, reselect infest @ 11;53 and burrows them and unburrows them (useless), throw down 2 MBshroud and 1 fungal. @11;55 he selects his queens and transfuses units, @11;56 he select his corruptors and focus fire a Carrier. still @11;56 he selects his infest throws 2 fungal on main army and MBShroud, and then 2 fungals on interceptors. @11:57 he selects his queens and transfuses, @11:58 he select his infest, moves them, @11:59 he NP 3 archons, @12:00 he selects his queens and transfuses, @12:01 he select his corruptors and focus fire a Carrier, reselect queens and a move them, @12:02 he selects his infest and NP an archon, @12:03 he transfuses with queens, @12:04 selects hatch larva and builds Ling +Ultras. @12:05 he selects his queens and transfuses, @12:06 he select his corruptors shift A clic 2 carriers ( focus), @12:07 selects his queens and transfuses, selects his infest and tries to NP an archon but fails causes blocked, select his queens @12:08 and transfuses, @12:09 select infest and NP an Archon, and around @12:11 queen larva/macro I'm not gonna do the other main fight cause I'm already tired of writing this shit, and I'm pretty sure there are soft that does it auto. The fight takes place at around 33min, but it's basically the same with a bit more micro from zest with a prism + HT, but no focus fire, everything hitting queens. I think the main difficulty for Toss is to balance their comp, but Serral said himself that if there are no tempest he feels super confident. Without them there's no poke/pressure to force the zerg to do anything.
Dark's play is visibly amazing in big fights, but it's quite wild to see it broken down like that.
I may just be super biased, but I really don't feel like what the protoss do with their lategame armies ever looks as impressive or impossible-for-mere-mortals as what Dark / Rogue / Serral do in those lategames. Stats sometimes really impressed me with mixed use of HTs, disruptors and focus fire, but I rarely see a lategame skytoss engagement from Zest or Trap and think that what they just did looks totally impossible for anyone but them the way it is with top Zerg vs skytoss engagements (I've seen them do crazy engagements in other situations, not an indictment of their overall play, just in these scenarios).
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EPT
