EPTSerral Wins ESL Masters Summer '23 - Page 3
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Ciaus_Dronu
South Africa1848 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23930 Posts
On June 22 2023 02:45 Herringbone wrote: Didn't Reynor prove that Protoss is not under powered? I've never heard a reasonable explanation from someone who says Protoss needs a buff on that situation. He played the race casually and became a top 5 protoss in the world winning series' against solar and heromarine. I would find it shocking if hero or maxpax did the reverse and became a top 5 zerg. The amount of top level players capable of winning a major tournament is very small. Isn't it just obvious that at that level the best zerg and terran players are simply better sc2 players than the best protoss players? All data excluding the top 10-15 players in the world clearly supports this. Reynor is an exceptional talent but he took a few notable series and not much else. And he did this with sharp builds and timings rather than oppressive straight up macro dominance. Which is Protoss’ limitation in a nutshell. It’s relatively easy to get to a level you can take out players who are better than you. But if the top, top players can reliably sniff out your tricks it’s an incredibly brittle race. Case in point Classic just getting utterly dismantled by Serral in this tournament, if the Zerg reads you and is of Serral’s level it’s just fucking brutal. And like guys like Stats were legit solid solid Brood War A-teamers, an even more mechanically demanding game than SC2. A good chunk of the solid Protoss contingent from Kespa were all at worst promising players good enough to get Proleague games if that avenue wasn’t cut off prematurely. The idea that these guys just aren’t skillful is preposterous. There was a brief ray of sunshine when herO exhibited his PvZ style up to taking a GSL but even that style hasn’t actually proven particularly robust once top Zergs adjusted. PvT isn’t exactly fertile ground either. Protoss is almost impossible to satisfactorily balance. It’s designed around bandaids. Or alternatively the other races are overtooled to require Protoss needing bandaids. Either way Protoss usually ends up either strong, with a bunch of all-ins or turtle options that even if you’re hard-countering you still might not stop. See airtoss in LoTV for a period, immortal/sentry and blink allins in other eras. Or they don’t have go-to strong builds that don’t require much subterfuge and have to rely on continually faking out opponents. Fine on ladder, in top end tournament play the Serrals, Rogues and Darks of this world have consistently demonstrated that they’ll eviscerate you in tournament play as it’s not reliable. | ||
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Ciaus_Dronu
South Africa1848 Posts
On June 22 2023 06:00 WombaT wrote: Reynor is an exceptional talent but he took a few notable series and not much else. And he did this with sharp builds and timings rather than oppressive straight up macro dominance. It was a while ago, and I don't remember all his protoss tournament series (over months he played quite a few, of... varying quality), but I do not agree with the second bit. As best I remember he won by just being clearly better at making, splitting and using armies. He did more eco-cheese than I expect you could get away with long term, but in part because he was just really good once he had 4 bases mining and boatload of gateways. For example, the game 1 here vs Dark: As an aside: that's a solid 2 hours of series, in part because Reynor was not trying to dodge macro games. | ||
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Herringbone
29 Posts
On June 22 2023 06:00 WombaT wrote: Reynor is an exceptional talent but he took a few notable series and not much else. And he did this with sharp builds and timings rather than oppressive straight up macro dominance. Which is Protoss’ limitation in a nutshell. It’s relatively easy to get to a level you can take out players who are better than you. But if the top, top players can reliably sniff out your tricks it’s an incredibly brittle race. Case in point Classic just getting utterly dismantled by Serral in this tournament, if the Zerg reads you and is of Serral’s level it’s just fucking brutal. And like guys like Stats were legit solid solid Brood War A-teamers, an even more mechanically demanding game than SC2. A good chunk of the solid Protoss contingent from Kespa were all at worst promising players good enough to get Proleague games if that avenue wasn’t cut off prematurely. The idea that these guys just aren’t skillful is preposterous. There was a brief ray of sunshine when herO exhibited his PvZ style up to taking a GSL but even that style hasn’t actually proven particularly robust once top Zergs adjusted. PvT isn’t exactly fertile ground either. Protoss is almost impossible to satisfactorily balance. It’s designed around bandaids. Or alternatively the other races are overtooled to require Protoss needing bandaids. Either way Protoss usually ends up either strong, with a bunch of all-ins or turtle options that even if you’re hard-countering you still might not stop. See airtoss in LoTV for a period, immortal/sentry and blink allins in other eras. Or they don’t have go-to strong builds that don’t require much subterfuge and have to rely on continually faking out opponents. Fine on ladder, in top end tournament play the Serrals, Rogues and Darks of this world have consistently demonstrated that they’ll eviscerate you in tournament play as it’s not reliable. I feel like Stats proves my point. He absolutely WAS a top level player that was as skillful as the top players. But he's not at that level since his two year break. I don't know enough about him to know the reason. Serral and Classic are not the same level of player. The result of Serral dismantling Classic shouldn't be to buff protoss. That maxpax doesn't play offline and Stats, Trap, Zest not seriously participating or are retired, yeah, you can say the best protoss players in the current tournaments are not as good of sc2 players as the best zerg and terran players. | ||
BisuDagger
Bisutopia19158 Posts
On June 22 2023 06:35 Herringbone wrote: I feel like Stats proves my point. He absolutely WAS a top level player that was as skillful as the top players. But he's not at that level since his two year break. I don't know enough about him to know the reason. Serral and Classic are not the same level of player. The result of Serral dismantling Classic shouldn't be to buff protoss. That maxpax doesn't play offline and Stats, Trap, Zest not seriously participating or are retired, yeah, you can say the best protoss players in the current tournaments are not as good of sc2 players as the best zerg and terran players. Even though I agree with that statement, I also believe the Protoss player level isn’t as good because the race hasn’t been as good for about 6 years now. It’s gotta be hard trying to seriously compete for your race when you feel like you are at a disadvantage before the game has even started. I certainly would want to come back from the military with the same effort it no longer seemed fair or worth it. | ||
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dysenterymd
1168 Posts
On June 22 2023 06:35 Herringbone wrote: I feel like Stats proves my point. He absolutely WAS a top level player that was as skillful as the top players. But he's not at that level since his two year break. I don't know enough about him to know the reason. Serral and Classic are not the same level of player. The result of Serral dismantling Classic shouldn't be to buff protoss. That maxpax doesn't play offline and Stats, Trap, Zest not seriously participating or are retired, yeah, you can say the best protoss players in the current tournaments are not as good of sc2 players as the best zerg and terran players. Classic is a two time starleague champion, has a bunch of top 4's at world championships, and has won multiple other premier events, give him some respect. If you want to say that he should mostly lose to Serral because Serral is a top 3 player of all time I agree, but based on resume Classic should have a fighting chance at least. Top players sometimes stomp each other, but it often goes this way when it's a top Protoss against a top Zerg on a big stage. PvT used to be a little better for Protoss, but that's been a tough matchup for Protoss this patch too. Ultimately, from 2018-2021 Stats, Zest, Trap were all playing and Protoss won no GSL/world championships. Protoss has been more screwed over by retirements than Z/T, but Protoss struggling is also nothing new. | ||
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Herringbone
29 Posts
On June 22 2023 06:59 BisuDagger wrote: Even though I agree with that statement, I also believe the Protoss player level isn’t as good because the race hasn’t been as good for about 6 years now. It’s gotta be hard trying to seriously compete for your race when you feel like you are at a disadvantage before the game has even started. I certainly would want to come back from the military with the same effort it no longer seemed fair or worth it. Exept the newest player to reach top ten status is a protoss...... he just doens't play offline | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15869 Posts
On June 22 2023 02:45 Herringbone wrote: Didn't Reynor prove that Protoss is not under powered? I've never heard a reasonable explanation from someone who says Protoss needs a buff on that situation. He played the race casually and became a top 5 protoss in the world winning series' against solar and heromarine. I would find it shocking if hero or maxpax did the reverse and became a top 5 zerg. The amount of top level players capable of winning a major tournament is very small. Isn't it just obvious that at that level the best zerg and terran players are simply better sc2 players than the best protoss players? All data excluding the top 10-15 players in the world clearly supports this. He didn't prove anything... All he showed is that he can win some series vs top players with Protoss. But that's nothing new, tons of Protoss players can win series vs top players. Winning some series and winning a tournament are completely different things. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15869 Posts
On June 22 2023 05:20 Ciaus_Dronu wrote: Reynor narrowly lost a BO7 to one of the best PvZ players of LotV (and went 3-3 in the protoss games at that). I think the assertion that he could win tournaments as protoss is pretty fair. Zoun beat Dark plenty of times but he couldn't win tournaments. Beating a good player once doesn't mean anything | ||
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Glorfindelio
185 Posts
If anything, this speaks both to the problem of Protoss design and also to their overall talent pool gap with Zergs and Terran. Granted, having Serral and Maru respectively skews that a lot. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1311 Posts
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mintyminmus
Australia127 Posts
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Agh
United States896 Posts
Seriously just run a full DE tourney with seeding and be done with it. The fact that heromarine, elazer, skillous, and lambo only got to lose one series and be eliminated is bogus. The results for this tournament outside of first and second are pretty meaningless. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15869 Posts
On June 22 2023 13:08 Glorfindelio wrote: People are a little too dismissive of what Reynor was able to accomplish in a short time with his Protoss, especially against Zerg. With a few months of semi-regular part-time practice, he was able to display PvZ on-par, if not better than a lot of full-time P players. Granted, he's a true mechanical monster, but I honestly can't imagine top Protoss pros playing as Zerg or Terran and taking games off the best Protoss players with a few months of practice. Or at least I haven't seen it in any tournaments so far. If anything, this speaks both to the problem of Protoss design and also to their overall talent pool gap with Zergs and Terran. Granted, having Serral and Maru respectively skews that a lot. I'm not dismissive, I think it's an unbelievable achievement, I just don't think it proves anything. Nobody can say if he would've continued improving to the level where he can consistently compete for championships or if he would've plateaued at the level where he can sometimes beat top Z/T players but not really be a consistent contender like all the other Protoss players. In the end he gave up on trying to offrace with Protoss | ||
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BisuDagger
Bisutopia19158 Posts
On June 22 2023 13:08 Glorfindelio wrote: People are a little too dismissive of what Reynor was able to accomplish in a short time with his Protoss, especially against Zerg. With a few months of semi-regular part-time practice, he was able to display PvZ on-par, if not better than a lot of full-time P players. Granted, he's a true mechanical monster, but I honestly can't imagine top Protoss pros playing as Zerg or Terran and taking games off the best Protoss players with a few months of practice. Or at least I haven't seen it in any tournaments so far. If anything, this speaks both to the problem of Protoss design and also to their overall talent pool gap with Zergs and Terran. Granted, having Serral and Maru respectively skews that a lot. What if Reynor became the #1 Protoss in the world but never won a tournament or made it to a finals again? Wouldn’t that prove our point? | ||
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Hildegard
Germany304 Posts
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Ciaus_Dronu
South Africa1848 Posts
On June 22 2023 08:28 Charoisaur wrote: Zoun beat Dark plenty of times but he couldn't win tournaments. Beating a good player once doesn't mean anything Given that he wasn't main racing, and he won multiple series against high level players, and it's a BO7 finals against Dark, I think it means something. I do think Protoss struggles at the very top level for some intrinsic reasons, but there's definitely a bit of a talent gap. And whatever issues exist for Protoss only really show up at literal top 5-10 player level. Below that, Protoss is fine, if not a bit too strong / straightforward. We've certainly never seen a Protoss do this kind of thing with Zerg or Terran - and I don't think that's pure coincidence. | ||
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Herringbone
29 Posts
It turned into a buff protoss conversation. If the goal is for protoss to win 1/3 of offline tournaments you better give them the biggest buff anyone has ever seen. Because Serral is going to be whipping protoss players for as long as there is a pro scene. Protoss doesn't have anyone close to his level. And when he's in top form, which he clearly is right now, good luck to the other zergs and terrans too. | ||
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Herringbone
29 Posts
On June 22 2023 19:53 Hildegard wrote: The bigger point, in my opinion, is that he stayed Zerg. If Protoss was the easier race to win tournaments with, he probably would have switched. Serral beat him 3:0 this time. Do you think he would have beaten him as Protoss? If this was a reasonable opinion, wouldn't by your logic all the protoss players switch to terran or zerg? Strange that protoss is extremely over represented in the number of pro and grand master players. | ||
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Hildegard
Germany304 Posts
On June 23 2023 01:03 Herringbone wrote: If this was a reasonable opinion, wouldn't by your logic all the protoss players switch to terran or zerg? Strange that protoss is extremely over represented in the number of pro and grand master players. No, because Protoss is obviously the easiest race to pick up and reach a high level. The discussion is about whether there is a ceiling for macro Protoss to win games. Showtime had some incredibly close series against Serral and took him to the absolute late game. If you watch these games, they don't look like Serral massively outplayed him. Showtime is underrated, in my opinion, because he plays a style that is simply not as strong as the trickier Protoss way with timing attacks and all-ins. But of course, Serral is an absolute monster, a master of all the play styles Zerg offers. The latest patch had small buffs for Zerg and Terran, but not for Protoss. The balance problem is that Protoss is too easy on all levels except the very top. The question is if it's possible at this stage of the game, when major overhauls are unlikely, to buff Protoss in a way that doesn't affect ladder. Maybe a combination of nerfs and buffs is necessary. | ||
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