On September 05 2022 03:58 swarminfestor wrote: It is obvious Maru TvZ just not good as it should be against Serral before. Definitely different class game he has shown before. He made uncharacteristic micro, also showing weird strategy by not having tone of mines or blue-flames hellbats against massive lings-run by.
Most probably he did not has good practice partner in Z as in older days.
And it was getting worst day by day having Rogue going for military, Solar and DRG still in stagnant mode, and Soo not the same as pre-military service. Only Dark, the top-tier left but he was in different teamgroup and may not helping him much for preparation.
Maybe, but thing is Maru still played much better than any terran in the world atm and it wasn't particularly close, so it does beg the question of where we go from here.
Cure can't play in any foreign event anymore and dosen't seem to really practice anyway, ByuN is like 30 and is too one dimensional, Bunny and Dream have never step up in big match in a decade long career, Gumi is just back from military and we keep telling ourself that HM and Clem can do it but they essentially never do. Protoss is even more intense, maybe herO can beat Serral if he plays well and Serral play worst than usual, and the list pretty much end there.
Serral zvp and zvt kind of are in a "Maru tvt" situation, where everyone that could challenge him retired, so he just win every time without really having to innovate or to get better. If you tell me that Serral dosen't have to play another zvz for the rest of the year I'd probably take 9 to 1 odd that he would win every single tournament he entered. Sure that's because Serral is a beast so he probably deserve it, but it's kind of borring to watch, especially since there's absolutely no indication that it will change in the future (to the contrary).
Anyway, I'll still enjoy Starcraft for as long as it last, and the production value was great and very fun, so thanks to the TSL crew!!!
Hmm while I think Serral is the overwhelming favorite against any non-Zerg player, I don't think he's anywhere near Maru TvT levels. He looked super shaky in HSC group stages (granted, those weren't do or die matches) and almost lost to Neeb, plus he's had a lot of losses to Clem (those were online, to be fair.)
But yeah, the ranks of "top players" are way too thin rn. If someone other than Reynor/Serral/Dark/Maru/herO wins a big tournament, I'd consider that a shocking result (rip Zest/Trap/Rogue/TY.) Even when someone like Showtime makes a magical run, it feels it always ends with "oh nice job, now get slaughtered by Serral." Sadly there isn't really a solution, other than maybe giving more prep time to allow for more upsets.
I say mix up the format, no more round robin, no more double elimination, make the series shorter (best of 3 instead of best of 5). We could even throw in best of 1 group of other thing like that.
I think the Queen still poses an issue balance wise, wonder if making it require like 25 gas or 1 queen per hatch or something. That would probably be an over correction. I think the game is in a better spot these days than it has been but its clear Zerg is the strongest race. No doubt.
Hope that doesn't take away from Serral though. Serral is a god. GG's and congrats.
Honestly, I am way more disappointed from the finale of TSL9. Making Serral cut a cake by himself and doing an interview at the same time? It looked very disjointed and not well thought out. A very fun event, but the cake/interview scene, and the balloon trophy, were.... odd.
Thank you SHopify and Team liquid for the event regardless. It was fantastic!
On September 05 2022 03:58 swarminfestor wrote: It is obvious Maru TvZ just not good as it should be against Serral before. Definitely different class game he has shown before. He made uncharacteristic micro, also showing weird strategy by not having tone of mines or blue-flames hellbats against massive lings-run by.
Most probably he did not has good practice partner in Z as in older days.
And it was getting worst day by day having Rogue going for military, Solar and DRG still in stagnant mode, and Soo not the same as pre-military service. Only Dark, the top-tier left but he was in different teamgroup and may not helping him much for preparation.
Maybe, but thing is Maru still played much better than any terran in the world atm and it wasn't particularly close, so it does beg the question of where we go from here.
Cure can't play in any foreign event anymore and dosen't seem to really practice anyway, ByuN is like 30 and is too one dimensional, Bunny and Dream have never step up in big match in a decade long career, Gumi is just back from military and we keep telling ourself that HM and Clem can do it but they essentially never do. Protoss is even more intense, maybe herO can beat Serral if he plays well and Serral play worst than usual, and the list pretty much end there.
Serral zvp and zvt kind of are in a "Maru tvt" situation, where everyone that could challenge him retired, so he just win every time without really having to innovate or to get better. If you tell me that Serral dosen't have to play another zvz for the rest of the year I'd probably take 9 to 1 odd that he would win every single tournament he entered. Sure that's because Serral is a beast so he probably deserve it, but it's kind of borring to watch, especially since there's absolutely no indication that it will change in the future (to the contrary).
Anyway, I'll still enjoy Starcraft for as long as it last, and the production value was great and very fun, so thanks to the TSL crew!!!
Well, the fact that Serral zvp and zvt are "Maru tvt" like suggests that there isn't necessarily something wrong with the match-ups. It could totally just be that Serral is that much better than everyone else, just the same way that Maru is clearly better than everyone else when it comes to tvt.
Well of course we can never really know for sure if Serral wins 100% because of his skill or because balance is also slightly favouring him but one indicator for me is that the gap between Serral and the 2nd best Zerg is smaller than the gap between Maru and the 2nd terran meaning Maru is actually the bigger outlier for his race but still can't win.
Of course it could just be that 4 out of the 5 best players in the world just happened to pick Zerg (and I really don't mean this sarcastically)
TY was kinda Maru's peer, he even had a positive TvT record vs him, looking at only the #2 player is really bad way of going about this, you should prob look at the median top player, maybe just sum the performance difference between each player up to #10 of each race, Im not sure Maru comes out on top on this comparison, maybe if you restrict your sample to top 4 players of each race.
Serral Reynor Dark Rogue are just stronger than what Terran has to offer after TY/Inno are gone and Byun/Gumi are not as good as before, then again maybe the T top10 is just stronger than the Z top10.
It's just Serral they say. In a year where Dark won a major international event and Rogue won a GSL. In a year where basically every major event has had disproportionate Zerg representation in the ro8+ including even GSL which used to be a bastion of Zerg not majorly overperforming even when they won it. Hell even this event had 3 Zergs in the top 6. It could have been worse too if Dark attended or even if all the good Zergs just weren't crammed into the same section of the bracket. All this after multiple years of Zerg dominance including several years where Serral did not have the best results among Zerg.
Jokes aside, great tournament. Steadfast did a better job than I thought he would, congrats on doing a finals cast of such a premiere tourney man. Feardragon as host was also a good move. Probably the highest production values of any tourney I’ve scene SC2, while also kept it casual in some areas.
Showtime put up a helluva fight vs Maru, went 4-5 match overall score.
On September 05 2022 06:05 shindiginit wrote: I think the Queen still poses an issue balance wise, wonder if making it require like 25 gas or 1 queen per hatch or something. That would probably be an over correction. I think the game is in a better spot these days than it has been but its clear Zerg is the strongest race. No doubt.
Hope that doesn't take away from Serral though. Serral is a god. GG's and congrats.
Honestly, I am way more disappointed from the finale of TSL9. Making Serral cut a cake by himself and doing an interview at the same time? It looked very disjointed and not well thought out. A very fun event, but the cake/interview scene, and the balloon trophy, were.... odd.
Thank you SHopify and Team liquid for the event regardless. It was fantastic!
I think it's very hard to correctly nerf the queen further without fundamentally redesigning zerg. Queens are absolutely essential for zerg to survive the early game against P or T, and any increase to their cost or limiting per hatchery will probably mean Z just dies to all-ins.
To me, I think that Zerg has a bunch of very very powerful tools that don't seem to be needed at all. For example:
1. Infestors. Neural is not essential to any match-up (as far as I know) because removing it wouldn't really destroy balance. However, it just offers a really powerful tool for zergs to almost instawin big fights (i.e. neural a ghost into emp the other ghosts, or nerualling 5 tempests). This is especially crazy when the infestor can be burrowed the whole duration of neural and immune to attack without detection. Add fungal on top of this and i really just wonder why this unit needs to be this strong.
2. Vipers. Why do these things have 3 strong abilities + the ability to regen energy from buildings. Abduct is super, super strong, parastic bomb is an anti-air AOE with a larger radius and more damage than psi storm, and blinding cloud is also useful situationally.
What's crazy to me is as strong as these units are, they aren't even used in every late game. There just seems to be a TON of compositions you can make out of (Lurkers, Ultras, Vipers, Infestors, Adrenalings, banelings, brood lords).
On September 05 2022 06:05 shindiginit wrote: I think the Queen still poses an issue balance wise, wonder if making it require like 25 gas or 1 queen per hatch or something. That would probably be an over correction. I think the game is in a better spot these days than it has been but its clear Zerg is the strongest race. No doubt.
Hope that doesn't take away from Serral though. Serral is a god. GG's and congrats.
Honestly, I am way more disappointed from the finale of TSL9. Making Serral cut a cake by himself and doing an interview at the same time? It looked very disjointed and not well thought out. A very fun event, but the cake/interview scene, and the balloon trophy, were.... odd.
Thank you SHopify and Team liquid for the event regardless. It was fantastic!
I think it's very hard to correctly nerf the queen further without fundamentally redesigning zerg. Queens are absolutely essential for zerg to survive the early game against P or T, and any increase to their cost or limiting per hatchery will probably mean Z just dies to all-ins.
To me, I think that Zerg has a bunch of very very powerful tools that don't seem to be needed at all. For example:
1. Infestors. Neural is not essential to any match-up (as far as I know) because removing it wouldn't really destroy balance. However, it just offers a really powerful tool for zergs to almost instawin big fights (i.e. neural a ghost into emp the other ghosts, or nerualling 5 tempests). This is especially crazy when the infestor can be burrowed the whole duration of neural and immune to attack without detection. Add fungal on top of this and i really just wonder why this unit needs to be this strong.
2. Vipers. Why do these things have 3 strong abilities + the ability to regen energy from buildings. Abduct is super, super strong, parastic bomb is an anti-air AOE with a larger radius and more damage than psi storm, and blinding cloud is also useful situationally.
What's crazy to me is as strong as these units are, they aren't even used in every late game. There just seems to be a TON of compositions you can make out of (Lurkers, Ultras, Vipers, Infestors, Adrenalings, banelings, brood lords).
This gets at one of the main problems with Zerg design in SC2: it's balanced around having a bigger economy and trading inefficiently, but then they also have most of the most cost-efficient units in the mid to late game with infinite free unit spawning (Brood Lords, Swarm Hosts) and extremely strong spellcasters (Vipers, Infestors).
Unfortunately, changing this would be a redesign just as, if not more unlikely to happen than fixing the Queen.
On September 05 2022 05:13 TossHeroes wrote: Maru fanboys are out in full force with the usual balance whines
Maru rekt every other Zergs including Reynor and no one said a word. But once Serral stomps Maru, all a sudden Zerg is too strong?
I get it if this was solar stomping Maru , then we need to take a look at the balance. But Serral has always been tbe superior player for years now
Like I said in my other post, talking about Maru TvZ against any other non-top Zerg is irrelevant. And we have seen Dark beating Maru this yeah with the same style, and Rogue also did in ST3 last year. And I can guarantee you that Reynor will be on fire when IEM come around, hes just not in the zone right now.
And it didnt take me to this Grand Final to say that Terran need a slight buff to make thing more interesting. The whole gameplan for Terran in current Meta is hope to do massive worker damage, or do an all-in fight to catch the opponent off-guard. If that doesnt happen, and things go to a full macro game, eventually Terran will be flooded with 3 different AoE and mass Zealot in PvT or mass LingbaneHydra jn ZvT.
This somehow look like the recent GSL Final between Maru and herO where herO play incredible and deseve to win, but at the same time you cant really point at Maru and say that other Terran can do better and have a better chance against such opponents.
On September 05 2022 09:42 tigera6 wrote: This somehow look like the recent GSL Final between Maru and herO where herO play incredible and deseve to win, but at the same time you cant really point at Maru and say that other Terran can do better and have a better chance against such opponents.
To be fair, Maru is the best Korean Terran and the only active Terran player who I would say is the best in all three match ups. ByuN and Bunny doesn't seem to play late game very well while Cure is back to being inconsistent. Clem and Heromarine are great but they still need to take another step to compete against the top Koreans. I honestly think we're past the golden years of SC2.
Just look at the LCS in League of Legends. EG vs TL was a banger of a series yesterday but compared to the LCK and LPL, man NA is going to suck once more at Worlds. I can't see NA getting past group stage and that's because the level of competition in NA simply isn't that high compared to EU, Korea, and China.
On September 05 2022 04:26 NotSoHappy wrote: The problem is with age of the players currently and no new players joining the pros. The base of the pros that can take the trophy is really slim. Many pros retired, are in the military or just simply getting old. This game is on its last stage. Enjoy it while it lasts. Sc2 was never balanced and never will be.
We do have new players. It's just hard for them to break into the top 16 in Korea and top 50 rest of the world (using Aligulac rankings). SC2 is that unforgiving of a game.
On September 05 2022 04:26 NotSoHappy wrote: The problem is with age of the players currently and no new players joining the pros. The base of the pros that can take the trophy is really slim. Many pros retired, are in the military or just simply getting old. This game is on its last stage. Enjoy it while it lasts. Sc2 was never balanced and never will be.
We do have new players. It's just hard for them to break into the top 16 in Korea and top 50 rest of the world (using Aligulac rankings). SC2 is that unforgiving of a game.
not even talking about top 16, how often do we see new names in the GSL qualifiers? I don't think korea is getting new high level players at all basically
it'd be a different game if top players from now had to compete with the deep player base from sc2's peak. now its really hard to get to paid places because its less tourneys and money all around, so there is no initiative for new players to get better. why are you surprised that most tourneys in the last 3 years were won by few players? does it even matter which race they play? I don't think so
wait 1-2 more years and you'll see reynor winning everything, because he'll mature enough to fix whatever problems he has now. when he stops fk around with protoss and sticks to one race haha
it is just how it is. the game is on its last stage
Serral consistency in defending harass with minimal damage and adapting to what his opponent is doing is unique among top Zergs. Other top Zergs do it all, but not with such a flawless and almost robotic consistency. His consistency highlights that with no significant mistake, Zerg pulls ahead in the midgame and beats Terran, at least on the vast majority of maps. There's so much to say about Zerg strengths (creep, queens, banelings, cost-efficient spell-casters with superior economy), but that's another debate. I'm convinced that if the SC2 player pool was bigger, we would have 1-2 additional Serral-like Zerg player, and the game would be patched.
On September 05 2022 19:45 Durnuu wrote: Guys it's not Zerg, it's just Serral, Reynor, soO, Lambo, Rogue, Ragnarok, Elazer, Scarlett, and Dark
Lambo, Ragnarok and Elazer are not winning anything yet. I think you should exclude them as putting them altogether meaning they are on par each other in their peak performance days.
On September 05 2022 18:44 sirokop wrote: Serral consistency in defending harass with minimal damage and adapting to what his opponent is doing is unique among top Zergs. Other top Zergs do it all, but not with such a flawless and almost robotic consistency. His consistency highlights that with no significant mistake, Zerg pulls ahead in the midgame and beats Terran, at least on the vast majority of maps. There's so much to say about Zerg strengths (creep, queens, banelings, cost-efficient spell-casters with superior economy), but that's another debate. I'm convinced that if the SC2 player pool was bigger, we would have 1-2 additional Serral-like Zerg player, and the game would be patched.
Yet Serral is not the only Zerg that win tournaments. There are Dark-Rogue-Reynor that share multiple premiere tournament wins as well as World Champion. Other Zerg might not be as efficient as Serral, but that doesnt stop them from winning all these years.
On September 05 2022 18:44 sirokop wrote: Serral consistency in defending harass with minimal damage and adapting to what his opponent is doing is unique among top Zergs. Other top Zergs do it all, but not with such a flawless and almost robotic consistency. His consistency highlights that with no significant mistake, Zerg pulls ahead in the midgame and beats Terran, at least on the vast majority of maps. There's so much to say about Zerg strengths (creep, queens, banelings, cost-efficient spell-casters with superior economy), but that's another debate. I'm convinced that if the SC2 player pool was bigger, we would have 1-2 additional Serral-like Zerg player, and the game would be patched.
Yet Serral is not the only Zerg that win tournaments. There are Dark-Rogue-Reynor that share multiple premiere tournament wins as well as World Champion. Other Zerg might not be as efficient as Serral, but that doesnt stop them from winning all these years.
And Maru isn’t the only Terran winning tournaments either
Let’s take a look at the previous GSL winners the past 2-4 years
Terran: Maru, Ty, cure Zerg: rogue and Dark Toss: herO
Fact: there are more terran players winning GSL than the other races
Zergs have been winning the last couple world championship simply because they are the better players
And not sure why it’s always the terran fans that always complain about balance. If anything it should be the toss fan base that has the right to complain since we been getting the shit end of the stick in every single patch for the past 4 years
On September 05 2022 18:44 sirokop wrote: Serral consistency in defending harass with minimal damage and adapting to what his opponent is doing is unique among top Zergs. Other top Zergs do it all, but not with such a flawless and almost robotic consistency. His consistency highlights that with no significant mistake, Zerg pulls ahead in the midgame and beats Terran, at least on the vast majority of maps. There's so much to say about Zerg strengths (creep, queens, banelings, cost-efficient spell-casters with superior economy), but that's another debate. I'm convinced that if the SC2 player pool was bigger, we would have 1-2 additional Serral-like Zerg player, and the game would be patched.
Yet Serral is not the only Zerg that win tournaments. There are Dark-Rogue-Reynor that share multiple premiere tournament wins as well as World Champion. Other Zerg might not be as efficient as Serral, but that doesnt stop them from winning all these years.
And Maru isn’t the only Terran winning tournaments either
Let’s take a look at the previous GSL winners the past 2-4 years
Terran: Maru, Ty, cure Zerg: rogue and Dark Toss: herO
Fact: there are more terran players winning GSL than the other races
Zergs have been winning the last couple world championship simply because they are the better players
And not sure why it’s always the terran fans that always complain about balance. If anything it should be the toss fan base that has the right to complain since we been getting the shit end of the stick in every single patch for the past 4 years
Oh, Toss players complain just as much... But this tournament their best player lost in PvT which nobody believes to be imbalanced so they had no reason to complain this time
EPT
