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I remember when players like Innovation would dominate and everyone would talk about how much of a "macro machine" he was, and even way back when Idra was supposed to be a "macro machine" who would be unstoppable if you let him get rolling, but I don't see a lot of players with reputations like that nowadays, and there seems to be some consensus that the quality-of-life changes from Brood War to SC2 have narrowed the gap between players with god-level macro and everyone else.
How true is that sentiment? There do seem to be guys like Dark who run into supply blocks more than they should (I probably have only started noticing this once I started watching PiG's casts regularly, because he pays a lot of attention to the "little things" in games), some guys have to rely on F2s while other guys can keep everything neatly organized even at the most chaotic of moments, and there do seem to be guys like Serral who can keep everything running flawlessly while having the extra APM/brainpower left over to sneak out an extra scouting ling (or burrowed infestor, before it got nerfed), but past that I'm pretty clueless. I haven't really played the game in a long time, so I don't have the "eye" for this stuff and I'd be excited to hear from people who do -- little insights like "Maru's hotkey cams are so solid you almost never see him scroll on his FPV" are gold to me.
It was crazy to see just how big Serral was able to grow out of control in his recent HSC match against Spirit when he was basically "allowed to play single-player" for a bit, but I don't know if that was pure macro skill or optimization. I guess I'm not even sure what "pure macro skill" entails at this point in SC2's life.
What does god-level macro look like compared to "mere" starcraft 2 pro macro? Are there S-tier macro guys out there, and who are they? Are there guys that make it work with B or even C-tier macro, and who are they?
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
Interesting idea for a thread, I shall return but for now I’ll drop a few tidbits.
If you don’t suffer from epilepsy I’d recommend loading up YouTube and searching for ‘Serral stream’ or ‘Clem stream’ and just have a watch. Reynor is even faster than Serral but I don’t think his brain is quite as in sync. Or put another way Reynor’s slightly better mechanics and speed, which in fairness do help him specifically against Clem versus Serral’s efforts, don’t quite compensate for Serral being better strategically and tactically.
I feel F2ing is unfairly maligned, it can be a good option versus multiple control groups in certain scenarios. Holding an all-in, or doing a committed counter in a pseudo/full base race it probably is optimal to just grab everything.
I know Dark has it bound to either control/alt and caps lock. A binding which I think indicates he wants it to be ergonomically easy to use, but awkward enough to sort of train him to not over-use it.
A lot of god tier macro, or multitasking is order and not pure hand speed. You need a certain degree of hand speed obviously!
I think if you put a bunch of top thru middle tier pros into an empty map and set a bunch of benchmark goals, there won’t be a huge amount of difference. What separates a Serral or a Clem is they can keep their macro cycles going even under extreme pressure. If you watch some Clem FPV his internal clock when being aggressive is incredible. He’ll drop somewhere, see units are coming to intercept, go somewhere else briefly and bounce back right on time to pick up. Others can macro in a vacuum like Serral but he can hit all the right beats under extreme, extreme pressure like few can. He may be dealing with huge aggression but he can find space to hit his injects, spread creep, or hit his upgrade timings that others may delay until the threat is vanquished.
One interesting observation from watching many streams where control groups and hotkeys aren’t different is that there’s a huge variation in both. I like army to the lower numbers, CC/Nexus at 6 (I rebind build SCV to e to be consistent and it feels better), basic production + air production at 5 and robo or facs at 4, and rebind Q for army, usually some kind of specialist role. Initial worker scout, a harassment unit, obs or prism I usually have there. I hotkey my upgrades at 7, more useful as Toss because I can double tap to centre on forges, hit 6 for Nexus and chrono ups really quick.
But I’ve seen huge divergence. Some hotkey production to the lower numbers and have army hotkeys right of that. Some like to have upgrade buildings hotkeyed with their main and they tab through to them. Someone like MaxPax uses grid, IIRC Stephano also did, but most players go with standard with some bespoke tweaks.
So I guess while there are better and worse setups, it’s largely whatever you find comfortable.
One thing Serral does is he mouse scrolls, he doesn’t move the camera around by mousing to the edge of the screen (usually). There are real advantages to doing this, you have your camera centred, you can also keep your mouse centred and predictable. He’s not unique in this he’s just the one that springs to mind. I adopted it myself, I think it’s better if you can also be disciplined with camera hotkeys and double tapping hotkeyed armies. If you keep your mouse centred, then generally whatever the thing you want to do is, it’s already close to that action.
However scrolling with the edge of the screen is probably better in two scenarios. Chasing a retreating army, or kiting back. Clem is as mechanically strong as they come and he uses this method, I think it’s probably the better option if you play T given how much they do the aforementioned.
Interested to hear the thoughts of others!
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I think if you put a bunch of top thru middle tier pros into an empty map and set a bunch of benchmark goals, there won’t be a huge amount of difference. What separates a Serral or a Clem is they can keep their macro cycles going even under extreme pressure.
That's the core difference.
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Reynor is even faster than Serral but I don’t think his brain is quite as in sync
damn that's funny.
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I second that:
The art is not to "macro like a machine" but to "macro like a machine while doing everything else"
Nobody is better than Serral at that IMO.
Clem is the best in the world at throwing wrenches in your macro while doing almost perfect macro himself.
Reynor is fast and everywhere but not as efficient as those two above
Maru is a mix of all 3. Lately he seems more focused on defending and macro to max though
Slower players with outstanding macro would be Spirit or Showtime. Both are great players but tend to fall apart when taxed too much.
Koreans seem more focused on attacking and macro, often getting gutted by runbys/ drops. GuMi, Byun, herO are in that category IMO
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On December 11 2024 09:31 zelevin wrote:Show nested quote +Reynor is even faster than Serral but I don’t think his brain is quite as in sync damn that's funny.
Wasn’t meant as a diss on Reynor at all, more as a compliment of Serral, who I think is maybe the best we’ve seen at scouting, reacting and making the correct calls consistently
Reynor’s got a very keen StarCraft brain on him too, but you can really see the difference in their respective ZvPs. Reynor dies to timings Serral largely does not die to, and struggles to navigate late game stalemates nearly as well too.
ZvClem, Reynor’s had more success recently as in a pure tempo slugfest his higher raw speed tends to see him be able to match Clem’s. Serral’s still broadly doing the correct things to do but takes more damage than against anyone else.
ZvMaru, Serral’s ability to methodically pick that defensive style apart sees him have the edge here. Reynor can and has, in big matches but he does sometimes struggle if Maru gets his brick wall set up
Styles make fights as they say, one of the cool things about SC is that it accommodates a lot of them.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On December 11 2024 19:30 Harris1st wrote:
I second that:
The art is not to "macro like a machine" but to "macro like a machine while doing everything else"
Nobody is better than Serral at that IMO.
Clem is the best in the world at throwing wrenches in your macro while doing almost perfect macro himself.
Reynor is fast and everywhere but not as efficient as those two above
Maru is a mix of all 3. Lately he seems more focused on defending and macro to max though
Slower players with outstanding macro would be Spirit or Showtime. Both are great players but tend to fall apart when taxed too much.
Koreans seem more focused on attacking and macro, often getting gutted by runbys/ drops. GuMi, Byun, herO are in that category IMO
Maru can still do it all, he just doesn’t seem to be able to do it as consistently
In terms of pure technical quality of StarCraft from both players I think Maru versus Serral at Katowice on Radhuset, game of the year for me. Maybe the best I’ve seen, ever. Maru pushed Serral on a map not suited to his style, to the absolute limit. Serral threw the veritable kitchen sink at him, including the (soon to be nerfed based mostly on this series) sharkfestors and Maru reciprocated.
A rare game I actually pulled the replay from and rewatched multiple times from different vantage points, truly staggering level.
If Maru could manage to play like that more often, he’s still basically untouchable. He’s not quite at that level now but even then I think people underrate how far ahead of the pack he was for a good while, he was much closer to Serral minus H2Hs, but versus the field than anyone else was to him.
It’s the difference between Clem now and Clem of a few years ago. He could blow anyone away, but his style requires him to be at least close to his A game, it’s the nature of a crazy tempo-based, high-risk, high-reward style where you’re trying to make a lot of small marginal gains all add up. If you’re slightly off it, rather than making a ton of risky trades all over the place pay off, you’re donating units a safer style wouldn’t.
Clem seems to have just hit another level execution wise. You can’t rely, or hell even hope for him making errors all that much. Interested to see what people come up with to try and deal with him.
TvT is probably going to forever be a relative Achilles Heel, he’s not bad at it at all but it’s the one matchup where his raw speed isn’t quite as advantageous. It feels quite volatile now too in terms of the early game gambits. When it was last super stable and Maru could reliably get to midgame he was basically unbeatable
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On December 12 2024 06:31 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2024 19:30 Harris1st wrote:
I second that:
The art is not to "macro like a machine" but to "macro like a machine while doing everything else"
Nobody is better than Serral at that IMO.
Clem is the best in the world at throwing wrenches in your macro while doing almost perfect macro himself.
Reynor is fast and everywhere but not as efficient as those two above
Maru is a mix of all 3. Lately he seems more focused on defending and macro to max though
Slower players with outstanding macro would be Spirit or Showtime. Both are great players but tend to fall apart when taxed too much.
Koreans seem more focused on attacking and macro, often getting gutted by runbys/ drops. GuMi, Byun, herO are in that category IMO Maru can still do it all, he just doesn’t seem to be able to do it as consistently In terms of pure technical quality of StarCraft from both players I think Maru versus Serral at Katowice on Radhuset, game of the year for me. Maybe the best I’ve seen, ever. Maru pushed Serral on a map not suited to his style, to the absolute limit. Serral threw the veritable kitchen sink at him, including the (soon to be nerfed based mostly on this series) sharkfestors and Maru reciprocated. A rare game I actually pulled the replay from and rewatched multiple times from different vantage points, truly staggering level. If Maru could manage to play like that more often, he’s still basically untouchable. He’s not quite at that level now but even then I think people underrate how far ahead of the pack he was for a good while, he was much closer to Serral minus H2Hs, but versus the field than anyone else was to him. It’s the difference between Clem now and Clem of a few years ago. He could blow anyone away, but his style requires him to be at least close to his A game, it’s the nature of a crazy tempo-based, high-risk, high-reward style where you’re trying to make a lot of small marginal gains all add up. If you’re slightly off it, rather than making a ton of risky trades all over the place pay off, you’re donating units a safer style wouldn’t. Clem seems to have just hit another level execution wise. You can’t rely, or hell even hope for him making errors all that much. Interested to see what people come up with to try and deal with him. TvT is probably going to forever be a relative Achilles Heel, he’s not bad at it at all but it’s the one matchup where his raw speed isn’t quite as advantageous. It feels quite volatile now too in terms of the early game gambits. When it was last super stable and Maru could reliably get to midgame he was basically unbeatable
Even now I think Maru is a moderate to heavy favorite against anyone in the world other than Serral (granted, he's dropped more odd TvTs to Cure/Gumiho and lost to Dark a few times.)
Maru definitely can't match Clem in raw speed and play his insane aggro style, but Maru's style means he often doesn't need to. If you build the right units and position correctly, you don't need insane speed, and in mid to late game Maru almost always has the perfect composition. His problem with Serral is that Serral doesn't take real damage from him (perhaps because Serral is the best defensive Z and Maru just isn't fast enough) so he rolls over and dies against endless waves of Z.
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On December 12 2024 08:42 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2024 06:31 WombaT wrote:On December 11 2024 19:30 Harris1st wrote:
I second that:
The art is not to "macro like a machine" but to "macro like a machine while doing everything else"
Nobody is better than Serral at that IMO.
Clem is the best in the world at throwing wrenches in your macro while doing almost perfect macro himself.
Reynor is fast and everywhere but not as efficient as those two above
Maru is a mix of all 3. Lately he seems more focused on defending and macro to max though
Slower players with outstanding macro would be Spirit or Showtime. Both are great players but tend to fall apart when taxed too much.
Koreans seem more focused on attacking and macro, often getting gutted by runbys/ drops. GuMi, Byun, herO are in that category IMO Maru can still do it all, he just doesn’t seem to be able to do it as consistently In terms of pure technical quality of StarCraft from both players I think Maru versus Serral at Katowice on Radhuset, game of the year for me. Maybe the best I’ve seen, ever. Maru pushed Serral on a map not suited to his style, to the absolute limit. Serral threw the veritable kitchen sink at him, including the (soon to be nerfed based mostly on this series) sharkfestors and Maru reciprocated. A rare game I actually pulled the replay from and rewatched multiple times from different vantage points, truly staggering level. If Maru could manage to play like that more often, he’s still basically untouchable. He’s not quite at that level now but even then I think people underrate how far ahead of the pack he was for a good while, he was much closer to Serral minus H2Hs, but versus the field than anyone else was to him. It’s the difference between Clem now and Clem of a few years ago. He could blow anyone away, but his style requires him to be at least close to his A game, it’s the nature of a crazy tempo-based, high-risk, high-reward style where you’re trying to make a lot of small marginal gains all add up. If you’re slightly off it, rather than making a ton of risky trades all over the place pay off, you’re donating units a safer style wouldn’t. Clem seems to have just hit another level execution wise. You can’t rely, or hell even hope for him making errors all that much. Interested to see what people come up with to try and deal with him. TvT is probably going to forever be a relative Achilles Heel, he’s not bad at it at all but it’s the one matchup where his raw speed isn’t quite as advantageous. It feels quite volatile now too in terms of the early game gambits. When it was last super stable and Maru could reliably get to midgame he was basically unbeatable Even now I think Maru is a moderate to heavy favorite against anyone in the world other than Serral (granted, he's dropped more odd TvTs to Cure/Gumiho and lost to Dark a few times.) Maru definitely can't match Clem in raw speed and play his insane aggro style, but Maru's style means he often doesn't need to. If you build the right units and position correctly, you don't need insane speed, and in mid to late game Maru almost always has the perfect composition. His problem with Serral is that Serral doesn't take real damage from him (perhaps because Serral is the best defensive Z and Maru just isn't fast enough) so he rolls over and dies against endless waves of Z.
Wrong. Maru doesn't roll over and die vs endless waves from Z. That is the exact style Maru is good against. That's why he beats reynor much more often than he beats Serral. What Maru loses against is patient and good spellcasting by Z.
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Macro mechanics are crucial in professional StarCraft II, as they directly impact resource management, unit production, and overall game tempo. Mastery of macro allows players to maintain consistent army growth and adapt strategically, often determining the outcome of high-level matches.
User was banned for this post.
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Op asks "What does god-level macro look like compared to "mere" starcraft 2 pro macro"
Nothing. Macro is simplified and takes the form of micro. So, while base building how many attacks can you initiate or defend is where the skill expression from doing multiple things come from, if you consider that macro, then sure, but just purely base building and unit production in isolation any gm player could execute flawlessly. It's the micro and little skirmishes that throw players off below "God level"
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On December 11 2024 05:17 WombaT wrote:
I know Dark has it bound to either control/alt and caps lock. A binding which I think indicates he wants it to be ergonomically easy to use, but awkward enough to sort of train him to not over-use it.
He used to have it bound to CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+F11 (when he did a few twitch streams), and always manually click it, idk if that changed.
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United States1901 Posts
On December 11 2024 05:17 WombaT wrote:
Interesting idea for a thread, I shall return but for now I’ll drop a few tidbits.
If you don’t suffer from epilepsy I’d recommend loading up YouTube and searching for ‘Serral stream’ or ‘Clem stream’ and just have a watch. Reynor is even faster than Serral but I don’t think his brain is quite as in sync. Or put another way Reynor’s slightly better mechanics and speed, which in fairness do help him specifically against Clem versus Serral’s efforts, don’t quite compensate for Serral being better strategically and tactically.
I feel F2ing is unfairly maligned, it can be a good option versus multiple control groups in certain scenarios. Holding an all-in, or doing a committed counter in a pseudo/full base race it probably is optimal to just grab everything.
I know Dark has it bound to either control/alt and caps lock. A binding which I think indicates he wants it to be ergonomically easy to use, but awkward enough to sort of train him to not over-use it.
A lot of god tier macro, or multitasking is order and not pure hand speed. You need a certain degree of hand speed obviously!
I think if you put a bunch of top thru middle tier pros into an empty map and set a bunch of benchmark goals, there won’t be a huge amount of difference. What separates a Serral or a Clem is they can keep their macro cycles going even under extreme pressure. If you watch some Clem FPV his internal clock when being aggressive is incredible. He’ll drop somewhere, see units are coming to intercept, go somewhere else briefly and bounce back right on time to pick up. Others can macro in a vacuum like Serral but he can hit all the right beats under extreme, extreme pressure like few can. He may be dealing with huge aggression but he can find space to hit his injects, spread creep, or hit his upgrade timings that others may delay until the threat is vanquished.
One interesting observation from watching many streams where control groups and hotkeys aren’t different is that there’s a huge variation in both. I like army to the lower numbers, CC/Nexus at 6 (I rebind build SCV to e to be consistent and it feels better), basic production + air production at 5 and robo or facs at 4, and rebind Q for army, usually some kind of specialist role. Initial worker scout, a harassment unit, obs or prism I usually have there. I hotkey my upgrades at 7, more useful as Toss because I can double tap to centre on forges, hit 6 for Nexus and chrono ups really quick.
But I’ve seen huge divergence. Some hotkey production to the lower numbers and have army hotkeys right of that. Some like to have upgrade buildings hotkeyed with their main and they tab through to them. Someone like MaxPax uses grid, IIRC Stephano also did, but most players go with standard with some bespoke tweaks.
So I guess while there are better and worse setups, it’s largely whatever you find comfortable.
One thing Serral does is he mouse scrolls, he doesn’t move the camera around by mousing to the edge of the screen (usually). There are real advantages to doing this, you have your camera centred, you can also keep your mouse centred and predictable. He’s not unique in this he’s just the one that springs to mind. I adopted it myself, I think it’s better if you can also be disciplined with camera hotkeys and double tapping hotkeyed armies. If you keep your mouse centred, then generally whatever the thing you want to do is, it’s already close to that action.
However scrolling with the edge of the screen is probably better in two scenarios. Chasing a retreating army, or kiting back. Clem is as mechanically strong as they come and he uses this method, I think it’s probably the better option if you play T given how much they do the aforementioned.
Interested to hear the thoughts of others!
If you think that's complicated you shouldn't try wow. I currently have over 53 keybinds for all the spells on my main character.
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Important? Very.
But every player is different.
Players that tend to play by "feel" are more prone to getting supply blocked. But they also tend to be better overall players in scrappy games, but poorer from behind.
This isn't true for every single case, but the overwhelming majority, myself included.
In a different light, at a certain level with current day zerg and inject stacking, you'll never see a player be larva starved beyond extreme late game situations where money is free, and even then it's uncommon. It's just a highlight of how easy/automatic a mechanic can be for some and detrimental for a lower level player.
"Macro" as most people would define it is insanely easy. What isn't easy is maintaining it while dealing with your opponent's distuption as well as countering with your own form of it.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On December 18 2024 08:58 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2024 05:17 WombaT wrote:
Interesting idea for a thread, I shall return but for now I’ll drop a few tidbits.
If you don’t suffer from epilepsy I’d recommend loading up YouTube and searching for ‘Serral stream’ or ‘Clem stream’ and just have a watch. Reynor is even faster than Serral but I don’t think his brain is quite as in sync. Or put another way Reynor’s slightly better mechanics and speed, which in fairness do help him specifically against Clem versus Serral’s efforts, don’t quite compensate for Serral being better strategically and tactically.
I feel F2ing is unfairly maligned, it can be a good option versus multiple control groups in certain scenarios. Holding an all-in, or doing a committed counter in a pseudo/full base race it probably is optimal to just grab everything.
I know Dark has it bound to either control/alt and caps lock. A binding which I think indicates he wants it to be ergonomically easy to use, but awkward enough to sort of train him to not over-use it.
A lot of god tier macro, or multitasking is order and not pure hand speed. You need a certain degree of hand speed obviously!
I think if you put a bunch of top thru middle tier pros into an empty map and set a bunch of benchmark goals, there won’t be a huge amount of difference. What separates a Serral or a Clem is they can keep their macro cycles going even under extreme pressure. If you watch some Clem FPV his internal clock when being aggressive is incredible. He’ll drop somewhere, see units are coming to intercept, go somewhere else briefly and bounce back right on time to pick up. Others can macro in a vacuum like Serral but he can hit all the right beats under extreme, extreme pressure like few can. He may be dealing with huge aggression but he can find space to hit his injects, spread creep, or hit his upgrade timings that others may delay until the threat is vanquished.
One interesting observation from watching many streams where control groups and hotkeys aren’t different is that there’s a huge variation in both. I like army to the lower numbers, CC/Nexus at 6 (I rebind build SCV to e to be consistent and it feels better), basic production + air production at 5 and robo or facs at 4, and rebind Q for army, usually some kind of specialist role. Initial worker scout, a harassment unit, obs or prism I usually have there. I hotkey my upgrades at 7, more useful as Toss because I can double tap to centre on forges, hit 6 for Nexus and chrono ups really quick.
But I’ve seen huge divergence. Some hotkey production to the lower numbers and have army hotkeys right of that. Some like to have upgrade buildings hotkeyed with their main and they tab through to them. Someone like MaxPax uses grid, IIRC Stephano also did, but most players go with standard with some bespoke tweaks.
So I guess while there are better and worse setups, it’s largely whatever you find comfortable.
One thing Serral does is he mouse scrolls, he doesn’t move the camera around by mousing to the edge of the screen (usually). There are real advantages to doing this, you have your camera centred, you can also keep your mouse centred and predictable. He’s not unique in this he’s just the one that springs to mind. I adopted it myself, I think it’s better if you can also be disciplined with camera hotkeys and double tapping hotkeyed armies. If you keep your mouse centred, then generally whatever the thing you want to do is, it’s already close to that action.
However scrolling with the edge of the screen is probably better in two scenarios. Chasing a retreating army, or kiting back. Clem is as mechanically strong as they come and he uses this method, I think it’s probably the better option if you play T given how much they do the aforementioned.
Interested to hear the thoughts of others!
If you think that's complicated you shouldn't try wow. I currently have over 53 keybinds for all the spells on my main character.
If you’re doing all that shit manually, respect! I lost interest in WoW when you needed a ton of UI plugins and macros to raid. Always felt you should have had to eyeball it myself.
I don’t think SC2 is especially complicated there, the interesting part to me is that there is such divergence and no established ‘best’ setup and it’s quite personal. Which to me is intriguing.
On December 18 2024 22:37 Agh wrote:
Important? Very.
But every player is different.
Players that tend to play by "feel" are more prone to getting supply blocked. But they also tend to be better overall players in scrappy games, but poorer from behind.
This isn't true for every single case, but the overwhelming majority, myself included.
In a different light, at a certain level with current day zerg and inject stacking, you'll never see a player be larva starved beyond extreme late game situations where money is free, and even then it's uncommon. It's just a highlight of how easy/automatic a mechanic can be for some and detrimental for a lower level player.
"Macro" as most people would define it is insanely easy. What isn't easy is maintaining it while dealing with your opponent's distuption as well as countering with your own form of it.
You’re talking about Dark right? If a Serral game is a classical composition heavily informed by the greats, Dark is just playing free form jazz sometimes.
Which I love, I think the game is suffering a bit due to Dark being an outlying exception rather than something too common. Of current top guys who can conceivably make deep runs, it’s really only Dark and Gumiho, herO for me whose main strength isn’t pure mechanics and idiosyncracy or build/stylistic choices or tactical killer instinct are.
Not that those fine fellows are bad mechanically, but their gameplan isn’t to just play a straight macro game and hope to bludgeon their opponent with mechanical superiority
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[/QUOTE]
You’re talking about Dark right? If a Serral game is a classical composition heavily informed by the greats, Dark is just playing free form jazz sometimes.
Which I love, I think the game is suffering a bit due to Dark being an outlying exception rather than something too common. Of current top guys who can conceivably make deep runs, it’s really only Dark and Gumiho, herO for me whose main strength isn’t pure mechanics and idiosyncracy or build/stylistic choices or tactical killer instinct are.
Not that those fine fellows are bad mechanically, but their gameplan isn’t to just play a straight macro game and hope to bludgeon their opponent with mechanical superiority [/QUOTE]
I think the tail wags the dog at some point...when you have god-tier mechanics, it's not really in your interest to create asymmetrical situations or use builds that rely on deception. I thought Maru threw a lot of games away back when he was the best mechanical player in the world by going for too many wonky openings or all-ins when he could have beaten pretty much anyone in a straight-up game. Serral definitely has stretches where he mixes in strong timings, and he's run Maru (specifically) over with them more a few times.
I'd add Rogue to the list of guys capable of winning a tournament who uses a lot of tricks -- he hasn't gotten his pre-military form back, but when he's on his game nobody does mind games better than him. And recently SHIN has been having a lot of success with a distinct style -- I don't know if I'd call him a master strategist, but he definitely has his own approach to Zerg. But yes, I do miss having an honest-to-god mad scientist at or near the top level like sOs...you can argue that the 12-worker start took a lot of that away, and there might just be one guy capable of being that good and that insane simultaneously. And darn it all, I do miss Has pretty often.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On December 19 2024 17:59 ScrappyRabbit wrote:
You’re talking about Dark right? If a Serral game is a classical composition heavily informed by the greats, Dark is just playing free form jazz sometimes.
Which I love, I think the game is suffering a bit due to Dark being an outlying exception rather than something too common. Of current top guys who can conceivably make deep runs, it’s really only Dark and Gumiho, herO for me whose main strength isn’t pure mechanics and idiosyncracy or build/stylistic choices or tactical killer instinct are.
Not that those fine fellows are bad mechanically, but their gameplan isn’t to just play a straight macro game and hope to bludgeon their opponent with mechanical superiority [/QUOTE]
I think the tail wags the dog at some point...when you have god-tier mechanics, it's not really in your interest to create asymmetrical situations or use builds that rely on deception. I thought Maru threw a lot of games away back when he was the best mechanical player in the world by going for too many wonky openings or all-ins when he could have beaten pretty much anyone in a straight-up game. Serral definitely has stretches where he mixes in strong timings, and he's run Maru (specifically) over with them more a few times.
I'd add Rogue to the list of guys capable of winning a tournament who uses a lot of tricks -- he hasn't gotten his pre-military form back, but when he's on his game nobody does mind games better than him. And recently SHIN has been having a lot of success with a distinct style -- I don't know if I'd call him a master strategist, but he definitely has his own approach to Zerg. But yes, I do miss having an honest-to-god mad scientist at or near the top level like sOs...you can argue that the 12-worker start took a lot of that away, and there might just be one guy capable of being that good and that insane simultaneously. And darn it all, I do miss Has pretty often. [/QUOTE]
Yeah fair points, it’s not quite as samey and mechanically dominated as some would say. Gumiho is definitely a player who’s got a certain style and approach and maybe isn’t as mechanically solid as some of his peers.
I wonder if Brood War being more mechanically difficult almost counter-intuitively makes it less dominated by the best mechanical players.
Obviously the top tier aren’t exactly lacking mechanically, but as the ceiling is so high, nobody can really be the outright best at everything you need to do. And because the game speed and eco/tech ramp-up is slower, you’ve more varied maps etc, so you can find angles and gambits to beat a mechanically stronger opponent.
Outside of perhaps Flash in his pomp most of the field have some kind of weakness, at least in the ASL era. Best has his macro, Bisu has the whole mechanical package, but both frequently lose games through bad tactical decision-making. Stork still has a great StarCraft brain but he’s not got the mechanical chops of some of his peers. Not picking on those players particularly, just a few examples.
Whereas SC2 still has a huge, gigantic mechanical ceiling but it’s lower. Serral has basically both the best macro and micro amongst Zergs, a Clem or Maru amongst Terrans. While I think his Aligulac rating is inflated and he’s not the tournament player herO is, MaxPax is the best Toss mechanically currently too and he’s putting in results too. Add to that a quite stable meta of straight macro games, generally reliable scouting based on 2 player maps.
You’re often left with two players going for a straight-up macro slugfest, which is always going to favour a macro monster with the micro to trade well.
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[QUOTE]On December 19 2024 19:41 WombaT wrote:
[QUOTE]On December 19 2024 17:59 ScrappyRabbit wrote:
[/QUOTE]
You’re talking about Dark right? If a Serral game is a classical composition heavily informed by the greats, Dark is just playing free form jazz sometimes.
Man, your analogy of Serral and Dark's style is spot on. I could not agree more. I always felt if you had a spectrum of zerg players, Serral and Dark are polar opposites. I just never quite put it in the words you just did.
Great analogy. Serral is so on rails and just super clean, super efficient etc, almost boring at times. Dark on the other hand, he's so whacky and chaotic.
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Northern Ireland26058 Posts
On December 20 2024 01:09 allmotor1 wrote:
Man, your analogy of Serral and Dark's style is spot on. I could not agree more. I always felt if you had a spectrum of zerg players, Serral and Dark are polar opposites. I just never quite put it in the words you just did.
Great analogy. Serral is so on rails and just super clean, super efficient etc, almost boring at times. Dark on the other hand, he's so whacky and chaotic.
Glad someone liked it!
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EPT
