On November 15 2017 20:29 niteReloaded wrote: Flash's 'signature move' is IMO attacking at weird timings. He invented 'half' of modern T timings I feel like.
He'll just recognize a window and attack. Or recognize a window, and make a BO around it. His timing sense is the best there ever was, and like I said, it's not about even just recognizing timings in current meta, it's recognizing timings that aren't meta yet, but he 'proves them' and they become meta.
And a bunch of situational timings that don't fall in the category of meta. And I feel he is fearless. I don't remember feeling fear in his play or insecurity. He goes for the move that feels best, and doesn't seem scared of being wrong. And he's usually right.
There's a reason why he also invented and can pull off 14cc.
I know your exaggerating just for effect, but your also a name in the community, do not spread falsehoods like that lol.
On November 15 2017 20:29 niteReloaded wrote: Flash's 'signature move' is IMO attacking at weird timings. He invented 'half' of modern T timings I feel like.
He'll just recognize a window and attack. Or recognize a window, and make a BO around it. His timing sense is the best there ever was, and like I said, it's not about even just recognizing timings in current meta, it's recognizing timings that aren't meta yet, but he 'proves them' and they become meta.
And a bunch of situational timings that don't fall in the category of meta. And I feel he is fearless. I don't remember feeling fear in his play or insecurity. He goes for the move that feels best, and doesn't seem scared of being wrong. And he's usually right.
Honestly, he's only able to do this because he's invested so much time into the game so he knows what he's able to get away with etc...
That would imply that Flash plays the game longer than anyone?
He's thinking out of the box, but instead of applying it to creative tactics, he's applying it to timings and build orders.
On November 15 2017 10:40 Letmelose wrote: I have always liked JangBi the best out of the more recent players, despite his huge flaws as a competitive gamer,
Hey Letmelose! Always a pleasure to read your thoughts on competitive Brood War. Can you elaborate on this point, please - both what separates JangBi and what his flaws are?
When I think of Micro + Protoss, I invariably think of Bisu, perhaps free playing second string. I think that many others here would agree; so, I am wondering why JangBi is your first choice here.
On November 15 2017 10:40 Letmelose wrote: I have always liked JangBi the best out of the more recent players, despite his huge flaws as a competitive gamer,
Hey Letmelose! Always a pleasure to read your thoughts on competitive Brood War. Can you elaborate on this point, please - both what separates JangBi and what his flaws are?
When I think of Micro + Protoss, I invariably think of Bisu, perhaps free playing second string. I think that many others here would agree; so, I am wondering why JangBi is your first choice here.
If you read closely he had said he likes when a player bring real life to the units on the screen. I favor Jangbi for the exact same reason, his spirit is strongly emanated by the units on the screen, also no other player had given me such dramatic and epic experience in a tournament runs as jangbi in both last OSL's. His jin air osl run where he barely made it out of ro16 while at the same time being the only Protoss from ro8 onward, with nobody expecting for that protoss to stand untill the end. Remember whole building up on their feet including his opponent side shouting his name at semifinal vs Zero after the astonishing dispay of his true warrior spirit even in facing defeat. Kim carry crying, the legend of the fall, beating both best current players, flash and fantasy. He made the most memorable period of my experience as a viewer. If i have to go into the lore it is as Jangbi was display of pure protoss soul. Il stop here and give the ball to letmelose to give you his answer Would like to add one more terran to that RPG aspect and thats Hwasin with his incredible bio control.
On November 15 2017 10:40 Letmelose wrote: I have always liked JangBi the best out of the more recent players, despite his huge flaws as a competitive gamer,
Hey Letmelose! Always a pleasure to read your thoughts on competitive Brood War. Can you elaborate on this point, please - both what separates JangBi and what his flaws are?
When I think of Micro + Protoss, I invariably think of Bisu, perhaps free playing second string. I think that many others here would agree; so, I am wondering why JangBi is your first choice here.
I actually had a recent private conversation regarding this subject, and why I did not personally appreciate Bisu as much as others in terms of this particular aspect of the game. I'll just leave parts of it I find relevant, it in the spoiler below:
First of all, there are two types of protoss players:
1) Those who focus on head-on large scale battles, and gain map control and get leverage over the resources that way.
2) Those who focus on battles on multiple fronts, and gain map control and deny resources from the opponent.
From a micro-management perspective, there is no way you can argue that Bisu has mastered the art of head-on battles. When both players are focusing on the same screen, Bisu's multi-tasking abilities are nullified, and it becomes a battle of who gets the better engagements, and the right ultilization of key units. This has never been Bisu's main strength, and has been a key weakness of his at times, especially in the match-up of protoss-versus-terran match-up.
In terms of simplifying matters and gaining advantages from pure micro-management abilities, Stork during his professional years was superior to Bisu. It is why Stork tended to do better than Bisu on notable two player maps, where the attack routes were more one dimensional in nature, and the ability to gain map control through battles with both players paying full attention was more vital to victory, rather than the multi-tasking warfare that was seen more often on four player maps.
Stork rarely had moments where it was his micro-management abilitiy that let him down, and even at his worst moments, Stork's actual manipulation of units to do the things he wanted was always top notch. Bisu was at his best when the game would boil down to a multi-tasking battle, and had numerous moments where you could actually pin point on his micro-management slip up as the key factor in his defeat.
Bisu actually had a tendency to get dragoon heavy compositions (which require less baby-sitting than more complex compositions) and concentrate more on good positioning, sending back-up with his flawless macro-management, as well as using his high eAPM to micro-manage key units separately from his main army to multi-task his opponents to death. I would strongly argue that it's actuality a philosophy of Bisu's to minimize painstakingly accurate micro-management within one screen, and make the game more chaotic and overcome his opponents by doing more things simultaneously, and denying his opponent the ability to overcome him through sheer micro-management ability by forcing his opponents to divide his attention.
Bisu's style in general relies far more on multi-tasking than micro-management, and it is one of the major reasons why he excels more at the protoss-versus-zerg match-up, due to the greater number of bases to be found in general.
With micro-management intensive builds such as the reaver-carrier, where nothing but your ability to maximize the raw micro-management potential of key units matters, and the number of bases are minimal (compared to the more conventional style of using arbiters), which amplifies the importance of micro-management even more so, the player that found the greatest success was Stork, not Bisu.
Further more, in case you believe that to be due to Bisu's lack of understanding of the protoss-versus-terran match-up, rather than his deficiencies in micro-managament, try watching builds that start off with one base versus the zerg race. Stork has been more successful than almost any other protoss players with this unconventional style, and much of it has to do with his manipulation of individual units to their maximum potential.
It is debatable whether Bisu was even the best micro-management user of his generation within his own race during his professional years. Players who somewhat were similar in overall approach to Stork were players such as Much, or DaezanG. These players were quite slow, but extremely potent in terms of head-on battles and fine control over their key units.
Bisu was more of a freak of nature, and there weren't many players like him, but I would point Kal as somewhat who was somewhat similar in nature. Kal also was known for his fast paced, multi-pronged attacks, but when the game boiled down to head-on battles with both players able to concentrate fully on micro-management, he wasn't quite as mesmerizing.
Bisu was a ungodly talent, and had good micro-management abilities, but to liken him to legends who relied heavily on their insane micro-management abilities, or to pretend that Bisu had both the greatest multi-tasking abilities on top of his supposed greatest ever micro-management abilities is intellectually dishonest in my opinion.
JangBi was always one of my favourite players, but I'm not sure whether I'll be able to do him justice here.
JangBi is one of the most enigmatic players to have ever graced the scene. He had elements of Stork, but was blessed with superior eAPM and raw reaction time. There are fast players, and there are technically proficient players. JangBi would be the kind of player that I'd define as mastering almost all aspects of protoss plays from a raw execution perspective. Whether it was getting the most out of small scale skirmishes or epic large scale battles, whether it was realizing the full potential of basic gateway units, as well as the more specialized high-tech units, JangBi had most of these skill-sets down to an artform.
JangBi was by no means the best at getting himself into favourable positions, but he was magnificent in terms of getting out of a sticky situation with nothing but raw play-making abilities to fall back on. There were numerous games where JangBi pro-actively forced the game about a specific outplay, or had nothing but his play-making skills to have a chance to win, and stood tall at the end of it.
I can think of several off the top of my head:
1) JangBi versus NaDa in Shinhan 2008 ProLeague
JangBi is playing on Othello, a ridiculously terran favoured map, and looks to be on the brink of being swept away by the huge terran army, but plays the battle to perfection and secures the victory for his team.
3) JangBi versus Really in Shinhan 2008/2009 ProLeague
JangBi makes things a living hell for Really, once again pro-actively seeking out potential holes in his opponents micro-managements with his early game aggression.
4) JangBi versus Ruby in Shinhan 2010/2011 ProLeague
JangBi does an artful outplay by making Ruby unsiege his tanks with some clean shuttle zealot play, then swoops in with his dragoons to swing the game way into his favour.
5) JangBi versus ZerO in Shinhan 2010/2011 ProLeague
JangBi loses his natural, and has little chance of clawing his way back without a superlative out-play. JangBi concentrates his entire mental capacities to this monumental harassment, where he baits ZerO to move his drones around with a zealot and single high templar, and waits for the perfect moment to annihilate his entire drone count with the second high templar.
JangBi pulls off another master class of how to stop a well upgraded, massive terran army, by flanking his zealots, spreading his dragoons in an arc formation, and minimizing the chance of an EMP outplay by sending his arbiters from the left, and his high templars from the right.
8) JangBi versus FanTaSy in Jin Air OGN StarLeague
JangBi does his patented two shuttle harassment, but FanTaSy prepares for it somewhat with multiple goliaths already on stand-by. JangBi wrecks havoc with his reavers, and makes a fool out of FanTaSy despite being dealt with on a strategic level.
9) JangBi versus FanTaSy in Jin Air OGN StarLeague
JangBi's build is countered, and looks to be on the verge of losing the fifth game to FanTaSy, but JangBi manages to make heroes out of his carriers in a manner that was somewhat reminiscent of his teammate Stork.
JangBi was a player that was heavily reliant on being able to outplay the opponent, and was quite lacking in numerous aspects, both as a gamer, and as a professional competitor. Aesthetically speaking, JangBi on-form was my favourite protoss, and that has nothing to do with raw overall ability, but the ability to bring to life the RPG element of Brood War, in what is usually a hectic management game that often decided by a non-stop series of smart decisions, or being able to keep up with managing everything while also being clear headed. Bisu was mesmerizing, no doubt about it, but like I mentioned before, his plays were focused more on the multi-tasking side of things.
The "this is what I can do with my units, let's see what you can do with yours" mindset, and the confidence to build an entire career around that sole ability, is something I find extremely appealing on a personal level. In a game that heavily rewards good management, and constant real-time decisions, successful game changing micro-management out-plays are what draws me in the most, especially if is a clash of contrasting styles versus a more conserved player who seeks to gain victories through other means.
At the risk of over-simplifying things, some of the best rivalries in history were battles of skill versus wits. Reach (skill) versus iloveoov (wits). BoxeR (skill) versus YellOw (wits). Jaedong (skill) versus Flash (wits). NaDa (skill) versus GoRush (wits). NaDa (skill) versus Nal_rA (wits). July (skill) versus iloveoov (wits). Evenly matched battles between players with fundamentally contrasting philosophies towards the game was what I found the most interesting about this competitive scene, and I tended to root for the player with what I perceived to be superior skill.
Now skill is a whole collection of different abilities such as micro-management, and multi-tasking. The thing that made me giddy was unreal levels of micro-management, and appreciated it more if it was pulled off by a somebody who would keep up the tempo with other demands from the game. Bisu has hints of what I find appealing in a player, but after a certain point tends to switch to auto-pilot and tries to purely multi-task his opponent to death. Stork was an artisan at maximizing the potential of his units, but lacks tempo. JangBi firing all cylinders had both.
I could attempt to point out what I perceive to be the short comings JangBi had, but I have to eat lunch, and that particular topic needs way more thought and reading up on various material.
Suffice to say, I personally think JangBi was more of a winner of great matches, than being overwhelmingly great at actually winning matches in general. JangBi simply didn't have a lot of recourses to win games if he had trouble out-right schooling his oppenents with superior play-making, whether it was due to his own ever fluctuating form, or the fact that his opponents were somtimes able to match him blow for blow in terms of raw execution.
For example, I believe JangBi's lack of flexibility, and over-reliance on his one superlative strength is one of the main reasons why JangBi was such a catastrophic failure against Jaedong (a career record of 1-11). Jaedong, in my mind, was literally the worst player to stand up to mano-a-mano in a micro-management duel, and that speaks to JangBi's failures as a competitor, despite the huge upside he had from a spectator's perspective.
There's something about players of a very similar nature coming up against one another, that leads to really one sided results. For example, Leta was another micro-management centric player who struggled massively versus Jaedong (a career record of 2-8) due to his strongest assets being nullified by Jaedong's strengths. Over to the other side of the spectrum, Sea is basically a poor man's version of Flash: a player who has an excellent mind for the game. Sea basically was totally stomped by Flash throughout his professional career (a career record of 1-8) despite being a very respectable in the match-up otherwise.
On the other hand, JangBi was famous for being ruthless versus protoss players notorious for their excellent battling prowess such as free (a career record of 6-1), and Stork (a career record of 5-0), both of whom were quite capable of bringing down Bisu due to their tendency to ignore all that silly multi-tasking non-sense from Bisu, and just win through well executed centralized battles.
Just a couple of thoughts I had in terms of drawing conclusions from head-to-head records, which is far from perfect due to limited data, and various other factors (such as individual form, map pool, type of competition, and match-up specific tendencies) that come into play on top of things being a stylistic mismatches or not.
Another great post by letmelose, damn I love me some jangbang, we need another protoss who can play the late game engagements just as well as him, I do miss him a lot. Protosses these days seem to only be good in one or two matchups, but prime jangbi was good at everything.
1) Lack of motivation/professionalism/drive/mentality of a champion
JangBi was not a hard working player like Bisu, and would literally go months without practicing at all, especially if he was not content with the status quo. He just has no intensity about him, and doesn't want things from life as much as some of the all-time greats. It's not enough to be good at the game if you don't will yourself to succeed with the talent you have. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but JangBi was not one of them. Without the drive to excel beyond what you are given with initially, true greatness is next to impossible to achieve.
2) Stage fright
This was something JangBi overcame eventually, but JangBi was a nervous wreck when he first made his debut. He was already a beast during practice (JangBi's first game upon arriving at the Samsung Khan house was against Stork who had the highest protoss-versus-protoss career win rate at the time, if I remember correctly, and JangBi ended up owning his ass), but was actually terrible in some of his televised games. Hwaseung Oz members tended to practice a lot versus Samsung Khan members, and most of them had nothing but praise for JangBi's gaming talents. Jaedong is the one exception, who seems to rate Stork more highly, but I think that's mostly a stylistic mismatch at the works more than anything else.
Streamers have gone on the record saying JangBi during practice was no joke, but that didn't seem to translate into results for the most part, apart from the few occasions JangBi managed to break out of his cage. Erase a few select tournaments from history, and JangBi's legacy as a professional literally becomes next to meaningless. As a Brood War gamer, I think JangBi was superior to his teammate Stork, but as a competitive player of Brood War, Stork was head and shoulders above JangBi in my opinion.
3) Weak mentality
JangBi often crumbled mentally when the pressure of the moment became too great, when he was discontent with his salaries, when he felt that the community was too harsh on him for being a failed talent, or when things were not going right for him in general. It seemed like every little thing could affect JangBi in some sort of a negative manner.
To this day, one of the most frequently mentioned epithet that the Korean communities associate with JangBi, was the day that JangBi had an outburst against his fans on social media which was later mentioned on one of his televised games by a respected commentator, who seemed to be genuinely worried that JangBi might be having a mental breakdown after going through a rough patch in his career. On the upside, JangBi created an internet meme that exists in Korea to this date years after JangBi retired from professional play.
As a gamer:
1) Over-reliance on micro-management based outplays
JangBi does have a high eAPM in general, but if my issue with Bisu is that he shifts too much of his focus on matters outside of pure micro-management, JangBi's fault would be that he puts way too much focus on a single screen looking for a potential outplay. JangBi does create more outplays as a result of this, but more often than not, competent players who can divide their mental resources more efficiently can simply deflect JangBi's attempts to outplay them, while JangBi misses out on a potential window to get additional gateways at the opportune timing, or set-up an expansion earlier than his opponents would expect.
You simply cannot win a game of Brood War all the time through sheer execution-based outplays alone. It's a luxury to have when built on top of your already fantastic arsenal of weaponry to take down your fellow competitor, but JangBi tends to tunnel-vision on these sorts of plays at the cost of his other duties to fulfill as a top level Brood War gamer.
2) Style over substance
Jaedong and Flash both commented on having always wanted watch JangBi's first person view on stream, saying JangBi had an flamboyant playstyle. To make another footballing reference, Dennis Bergkamp was a scorer of wonderful goals, but he necessarily wasn't the most efficient goalscorer, despite his otherwordly technique with the ball that allowed him to score all those beautiful goals. JangBi would have games where he got too intoxicated in his own plays, then lose sight over what actually wins him games, and lose after looking good. Everything he does revolves around how successful his playmaking is, and he is in fact quite average at winning with good understanding of the game itself.
3) Putting his own expansions at risk by making stupid, unnecessary army movements
JangBi's map movements are often quite illogical, and although JangBi is absolutely fantastic at making something magical happen when battles are the only logical course of action, JangBi does have a tendency to put himself into stupid positions. It's the reason why JangBi does quite poorly in late-game situations versus the zerg race, not because he lacks the raw multi-tasking ability to protect his expansions in time, but because he keeps moving around looking for fights when he shouldn't, being in positions he shouldn't be in.
It is especially is a problem that he struggled to fix in the protoss-verus-zerg match-up, but it happens in the protoss-verus-protoss match-ups as well, and it is as if JangBi doesn't realize that you can get favourable battles by thinking things through, not mindless dexterity.
In conclusion, although I loved watching JangBi play, I think both Bisu and Stork were way ahead of him as a competitive player, and I actually think that if I was personally managing a professional Brood War team, I might have hired Kal instead. Kal may have sucked ass versus the very top end players, but with Kal you could guarantee stable results across multiple seasons, across multiple platforms of competition. JangBi's credentials as a professional Brood War player was closer to Kal's than the likes of Bisu, or Stork, in my personal opinion. A couple of unforgettable tournaments, amazing potential, and easy-on-the-eyes play-style doesn't erase literally months, or maybe perhaps even years of being a total non-factor as a top end professional.
There's a reason why JangBi ended his career with less ProLeague victories than literally all five other members of the Six Dragons, and had qualified for the round of sixteen in major individual leagues only eight times, which is less than what TheROCK managed during his career. JangBi's entire professional career is a few unforgettable epic moments of glory strung together by a whole bunch of epic failures and disappointments.
Letmelose, who would you say are the closest analogues to Jangbi of the other races? This could be defined in a bunch of ways - two that especially come to mind are:
1) Under-performing one's extremely high raw talent. Bonus points if a player had "all time great" potential. Many players under-perform their talent, but it's more notable when a player could have been a top 5-10 all time player. As an example, I'm not sure his raw talent was as high as Jangbi's, but Sea comes to mind for Terran.
2) Being the most "spectacular" on the battlefield. In this sense, Sea is not an analog of Jangbi. Jaedong is an obvious answer, though I wonder which less successful Zerg players especially stand out to you.
On November 16 2017 17:58 Letmelose wrote: On the upside, JangBi created an internet meme that exists in Korea to this date years after JangBi retired from professional play.
Does this meme translate well into English? If so, would you mind sharing it?
all hail letmelose -- even for just writing this much in such a concise and well-presented manner you'd deserve stars but the fact that the content is engaging as well makes your posts always one of the greatest pleasures of visiting TL.
On November 16 2017 20:39 darktreb wrote: Letmelose, who would you say are the closest analogues to Jangbi of the other races? This could be defined in a bunch of ways - two that especially come to mind are:
1) Under-performing one's extremely high raw talent. Bonus points if a player had "all time great" potential. Many players under-perform their talent, but it's more notable when a player could have been a top 5-10 all time player. As an example, I'm not sure his raw talent was as high as Jangbi's, but Sea comes to mind for Terran.
2) Being the most "spectacular" on the battlefield. In this sense, Sea is not an analog of Jangbi. Jaedong is an obvious answer, though I wonder which less successful Zerg players especially stand out to you.
Potential is hard to gauge. For all we know, the greatest Brood War talent of all-time may have never touched the game. It is quite hard to draw parallels to a player with such clearly defined characteristics, and combine that with potential greatness.
The main characteristics of JangBi as a gamer would be:
1) High eAPM 2) Great mastery of numerous styles of micro-management warfare 3) Unhealthy levels of preference of using micro-management warfare to win matches 4) Mediocre in terms of other vital skill-sets, which means no well rounded players with acute micro-management abilities
Out of the more contemporary players (meaning I'll rule out players such as July), the player that came to mind was HiyA for the terran race, and Jaedong for the zerg race.
From a historical perspective, each race had its dimwits who relied heavily on miraculous outplays. Reach's entire legacy consisted of forcing himself into impossible situations with the most spineless, uninspiring decision making, then pulling himself out of it with glorious out-plays that looked great in the highlight reels. July's entire game plan centered around his level of execution of numerous zerg plays being approximately one to two years ahead of his time. Hwasin, mentioned by a previous post in this thread, was a bit of special case of a great one-dimensional player who relied on greedy builds to hit a specific hard-to-stop timing, then executing that push to absolute perfection, but literally being able to do nothing noteworthy outside of that.
On a personal level, I found it hard it quite difficult to be amazed by sheer mechanical prowess after I witnessed NaDa during his prime. From a raw unit manipulation stand-point, I think I saw pretty much all there was to see from the terran race from NaDa before Flash even made his professional debut. As far as I'm concerned, NaDa was the last terran to truly blow my mind with raw mechanical ability.
NaDa's clean execution of late-game battlecruiser warfare.
Flash's execution of the exact same play more than three years later, isn't exactly putting NaDa's plays to shame, if anything, it is the reverse. For all that other stuff, such as micro-management of bionic units, you can argue that Flash is spending his mental resources on more important matters, but this is the one situation where nothing but micro-management matters.
Taking into consideration the kind of micro-management advancements for the other two races, it is not quite the case. For example, the level of mutalisk micro-management, or stutter stepping dragoons versus mines were improved significantly.
Case in point. This is sAviOr, the best zerg in the world at the pinnacle of his career showcasing his mutalisk micro-management.
Of course, advancements cannot be simply judged simply from straightforward micro-management improvements. However, this is why I have never been thoroughly impressed by Flash from a sheer micro-management perspective. People such as Leta, and FanTaSy were able to take me by surprise with their fluidity when it came to the unit of their liking, but with Flash, it was more an appreciation of his solid fundamentals, rather than being blown away.
Haven't logged in forever. But I'm happy Flash won, and that Bisu is in such good form!
Now while I really like these posts by Letmelose, I do think he's underestimating Bisu's flashiness (pun intended) in terms of micro especially with difficult-to-micro units such as Dragoons. And of course, Probe micro will forever be a Bisu signature move. As well as Sair-DT. And these moments, while not exactly massive battles (more like extended skirmishes), make or break games. I mean, even just dodging scourge well is something I've seen Bisu do more consistently than any other protoss.
But lest I be misunderstood, I do agree that Stork is the better micro player. His reaver play is just so beautiful. I just don't think Bisu loses too much in that department to him or to Jangbi. Or maybe my point is, he is just as enjoyable to watch as the other two in terms of micro, though his strengths are with different units.
PS: Also, Light TvZ micro was such a delight to watch
^ Light TvZ best TvZ. I honestly liked it more than Flash's when they were both near their peak. I'd love to hear Letmelose weigh in on that as well, but I feel like I've already asked and received so much haha ♡