herO sat out cup competition for the second straight week, leading to a European sweep as Clem, Reynor, and MaxPax won the trio of competitions. Reynor's run in Monday Night Weeklies was especially laudable, as he looked to be close to peak form as he took down Solar, Classic, MaxPax, and Clem.
Reynor then gave us some information about players' EWC preparations in a post-tournament interview with Rotti, revealing that both he and Clem would be training in Korea ahead of the world championship.
The week began with an all-TvP rampage from Clem in WardiTV Mondays, as he defeated Lancer, ShoWTimE, Astrea, and Code S champion Classic on the way to the title. Astrea was the only player able to take a map off of Clem, winning a war of attrition through his passive, static-defense heavy PvT style. The finals against Classic was a fairly one-sided sweep, but was somewhat notable for Classic's use of Stargate openers. Classic and other top Protosses have heavily favored Robo openers in PvT, but perhaps they are searching for ways to keep the TvP king on his toes (VOD).
Reynor has been largely disappointing since returning to full-time StarCraft II, but his fantastic run in Monday Night Weeklies suggested he'll be back in world championship form by the time EWC comes around. Despite suffering an early ZvZ loss to Solar in the upper-bracket, Reynor made a tremendous lower-bracket run where he beat HeroMarine, Classic, Solar, MaxPax, and Clem to clinch the title (VOD).
Reynor's 4-0 sweep against Clem in the finals was his most impressive performance, overpowering Clem in three macro games before finishing him off with a Roach timing. Even though Reynor later said it didn't seem like Clem was at his best, he surely had to be pleased at being the first player to take a 4-0 sweep against Clem since… …he did it himself back in 2021!.
In terms of purely in-game content, Reynor's BO1 win against Classic may have been just as magnificent. Reynor managed to pierce the super-defensive style that even Serral struggled against, using BL-Infestor to outlast the Protoss deathball.
The trio of cups concluded with MaxPax winning the PiGosaur Cup, taking down Clem 3-1 in the finals. As with most Clem series (or most TvP series for that matter), much hinged on early game offense/defense. Clem managed to take game one easily after dizzying MaxPax with a Mine-drop and Banshees, but MaxPax shored up his defenses to take the next three games (VOD). .
Results aside, a particularity worth pointing out was Clem's one-time use of a Cyclone-mech strategy on Torches, showing us the kind of strategic experimentation that's going on ahead of EWC.
I consider lan to be a much better indicator of championship form, where there is no ping and all the best players are competing. Also, making it through with bo1s is comical. He lost 0-2 to solar but won the best of 1 so he gets to advance? Even I have taken maps off maxpax and clem before in tournament. I strongly disagree with this framing.
On June 30 2025 20:58 CicadaSC wrote: I consider lan to be a much better indicator of championship form, where there is no ping and all the best players are competing. Also, making it through with bo1s is comical. He lost 0-2 to solar but won the best of 1 so he gets to advance? Even I have taken maps off maxpax and clem before in tournament. I strongly disagree with this framing.
He 4-0ed Clem. It’s a pretty notable set of results for him, especially as Reynor hasn’t quite been in his best shape for a long time now.
It’s not like we have a bunch of stacked LANs to go off, indeed I think the lack of consistent high-stakes competition is part of why Reynor went to grind LoL for a period.
I wonder what Serral does in terms of preparation, if Clem and Reynor decamp to Korea almost all players who can reliably challenge him are over there.
On June 30 2025 20:58 CicadaSC wrote: I consider lan to be a much better indicator of championship form, where there is no ping and all the best players are competing. Also, making it through with bo1s is comical. He lost 0-2 to solar but won the best of 1 so he gets to advance? Even I have taken maps off maxpax and clem before in tournament. I strongly disagree with this framing.
Considering that the same 3 players win these cups 95% of the time (100% of the time when herO, MaxPax, and Clem are all competing at the same time), it's at least somewhat meaningful when anyone else wins.
In general, cups have been a good historical indicator of baseline skill level.
On June 30 2025 20:58 CicadaSC wrote: I consider lan to be a much better indicator of championship form, where there is no ping and all the best players are competing. Also, making it through with bo1s is comical. He lost 0-2 to solar but won the best of 1 so he gets to advance? Even I have taken maps off maxpax and clem before in tournament. I strongly disagree with this framing.
There is like 3 LAN tournaments a year.. how do you measure anything in between?
That’s how tournaments have always worked. Winning the more meaningful matches matters. This happens all of the time in GSL where a player wins 2-0 and then loses 1-2 to the same player. They are up 3-2 in map score but lost the more important decider matches.
This is a weekly. Adding double elimination adds so many matches if you don’t do BO1.
In terms of purely in-game content, Reynor's BO1 win against Classic may have been just as magnificent. Reynor managed to pierce the super-defensive style that even Serral struggled against, using BL-Infestor to outlast the Protoss deathball.
Reynor managed to pierce the super-defensive style that even Serral struggled against, using BL-Infestor to outlast the Protoss deathball.
using BL-Infestor to outlast the Protoss deathball.
BL-Infestor
PTSD activated.
Jokes aside, it was a good display of conservative Zerg from someone who YOLOs a little too frequently.
Not that doing well against Protoss matters. Protoss isn't allowed to win things, but Protoss has recently won THREE things, and such wrongthink will surely be punished by the righteous nerfhammer of the most holy Balance Council.
sorry i was a bit harsh with my comment, was having a bad day. im happy for reynor he had a good result and it makes EWC more exciting with so many players seemingly able to vie for the title.
On June 30 2025 20:30 SharkStarcraft wrote: How could Clem and Reynor win against the unbeatable Protoss race???? Could it be that the game is actually... BALANCED?!?
My usual semi-whine aside, thanks for the writeup, always enjoy reading these!
PvZ and TvZ both at 60% last period Aligulac and Zerg essentially absent from online cups and the top of ladder amid a sea of protoss. But hey Serral and Reynor can still win some series so we must be all good
On June 30 2025 20:30 SharkStarcraft wrote: How could Clem and Reynor win against the unbeatable Protoss race???? Could it be that the game is actually... BALANCED?!?
My usual semi-whine aside, thanks for the writeup, always enjoy reading these!
PvZ and TvZ both at 60% last period Aligulac and Zerg essentially absent from online cups and the top of ladder amid a sea of protoss. But hey Serral and Reynor can still win some series so we must be all good
Aligulac's data set includes all of the series from the early-stages of the weekly tournaments. These series often put pro players up against amateur players who are playing for fun. These series are not statistically useful and should be ignored.
Liquipedia's data set does not include games from the early-stages of the weekly tournaments. I'm not going to claim that the Liquipedia data set is perfect, but it's definitely more statistically useful than the Aligulac data set.
Win rate data from Season 2 from Liquipedia looks like this:
TvZ 55.4% ZvP 50.6% PvT 52.5%
But this obviously wouldn't fit your "woe is Zerg" narrative so feel free to ignore it.
On June 30 2025 20:30 SharkStarcraft wrote: How could Clem and Reynor win against the unbeatable Protoss race???? Could it be that the game is actually... BALANCED?!?
My usual semi-whine aside, thanks for the writeup, always enjoy reading these!
PvZ and TvZ both at 60% last period Aligulac and Zerg essentially absent from online cups and the top of ladder amid a sea of protoss. But hey Serral and Reynor can still win some series so we must be all good
Aligulac's data set includes all of the series from the early-stages of the weekly tournaments. These series often put pro players up against amateur players who are playing for fun. These series are not statistically useful and should be ignored.
Liquipedia's data set does not include games from the early-stages of the weekly tournaments. I'm not going to claim that the Liquipedia data set is perfect, but it's definitely more statistically useful than the Aligulac data set.
Win rate data from Season 2 from Liquipedia looks like this:
TvZ 55.4% ZvP 50.6% PvT 52.5%
But this obviously wouldn't fit your "woe is Zerg" narrative so feel free to ignore it.
In that same link we have that Protoss has won more than double the number of tournaments that Zerg has in almost every tournament tier (S, B and C), nearly double the total prize money for the year, and if I open an SC2 tournament stream on any given day I am watching mostly PvP and PvT. You can pretend this is alright for the game because a few top Zergs can still make the work (ish), but don't tell me the yellow snow is lemonade because you can find one statistic (of the many on the very link you sent) that makes things look balanced.
On June 30 2025 20:30 SharkStarcraft wrote: How could Clem and Reynor win against the unbeatable Protoss race???? Could it be that the game is actually... BALANCED?!?
My usual semi-whine aside, thanks for the writeup, always enjoy reading these!
PvZ and TvZ both at 60% last period Aligulac and Zerg essentially absent from online cups and the top of ladder amid a sea of protoss. But hey Serral and Reynor can still win some series so we must be all good
Aligulac's data set includes all of the series from the early-stages of the weekly tournaments. These series often put pro players up against amateur players who are playing for fun. These series are not statistically useful and should be ignored.
Liquipedia's data set does not include games from the early-stages of the weekly tournaments. I'm not going to claim that the Liquipedia data set is perfect, but it's definitely more statistically useful than the Aligulac data set.
Win rate data from Season 2 from Liquipedia looks like this:
TvZ 55.4% ZvP 50.6% PvT 52.5%
But this obviously wouldn't fit your "woe is Zerg" narrative so feel free to ignore it.
In that same link we have that Protoss has won more than double the number of tournaments that Zerg has in almost every tournament tier (S, B and C), nearly double the total prize money for the year, and if I open an SC2 tournament stream on any given day I am watching mostly PvP and PvT. You can pretend this is alright for the game because a few top Zergs can still make the work (ish), but don't tell me the yellow snow is lemonade because you can find one statistic (of the many on the very link you sent) that makes things look balanced.
You're the one that brought up win rates. All I wanted to do is show that Aligulac isn't a great source for such data. If the minimal filtering performed by Liquipedia (i.e. removing the early rounds of tournaments in which most stomps occur) is enough for the win rates to look much more reasonable then you should probably reconsider using Aligulac's win rates to bolster your frustrations.
But if you really want to look at tournament wins, then let's consider that there have only been four S-tier tournaments since the last Zerg winner, and three (75%) of those tournaments have featured a Zerg in the grand final. There were twenty S-tier tournaments between the Protoss wins in 2022 and 2025, and only five (25%) of those featured a Protoss in the grand final. So there's some way to go before I'd panic about the possibility of Zerg winning a top-tier tournament.
EDIT:
I agree that Zerg participation in lower-tier tournaments is a problem, but it's been a problem for many balance patches and many map pools over many years and so I don't think it's indicative of anything. It would be great if you could convince Serral and Reynor to show up on a consistent basis so that we can see what happens if all three races have their best representatives present. Until that happens, it will continue being no surprise that Terran Clem and Protoss herO and MaxPax dominate lower-tier tournaments such as the weeklies that this thread is about.
EPT
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/comcups734.jpg)
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/wardimon041.png)
Clem in WardiTV Mondays, as he defeated Lancer, ShoWTimE, Astrea, and Code S champion Classic on the way to the title. Astrea was the only player able to take a map off of Clem, winning a war of attrition through his passive, static-defense heavy PvT style. The finals against Classic was a fairly one-sided sweep, but was somewhat notable for Classic's use of Stargate openers. Classic and other top Protosses have heavily favored Robo openers in PvT, but perhaps they are searching for ways to keep the TvP king on his toes (VOD).![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/mnw19.png)
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/misc/weeklies/pig037.png)
