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ok, this part is just a refresher, not yet the meat of the post. From what I have seen so far, this has been the long-standing meta in zvt,excluding cheese and early-game harass - zerg is technically weak early game, tries to even at lair to get 3rd up and macro, but still has a lot more to do than terran, and finally evens or wins at hive tech crackling + ultra + lurker + swarm. unless 3/3 terran gains superior position and close to equal econ, all things being equal, then its all about maneuvering, drops, and sometimes luck. In details: + Show Spoiler +- zerg goes pool or gas then expand, terran goes baracks then expand. equal game
- once expo are up, zerg is at a disadvantage, and needs to harass the terran stop the early marine push or damage economy for delay, while rushing tech to lair-tech lurkers
- at lair, the balance tips a bit for zerg, and terran - at this point either mm or some combination of mm + valk or vult must damage zerg econ and prevent it from getting third, until vessel arrives to deal with zerg lair tech lurkers or mutas. in some cases, zerg do hydra all in bust in this phase of the matchup, win or loss.
- terran denies 3rd and doesnt suffer much army loss, terran wins instantly. zerg gets third, game is equal but still a stiff climb to hive while terran can switch to mech or go full sk and still a threat if zerg slips.
- hive zerg ultra, crackling, lurker, swarm can win vs. 3/3 terran on most standard maps, unless map heavily favors terran or terran gained so much positional advantage with tanks, vultures and mines and turrets that its impossible to penetrate, then its a matter of starving the zerg.
- also at this phase, its all about tactics like drop, picking off stray units, angling, etc. to win the game.
So thats the meta, now to another part, which is still not the meat part of the discussion but a necessary premise to establish, the issue of "Tesagi". Races are more or less balanced, even the universally acknowledged T>Z>P>T holds a certain truth to it. But on the very bets level, when the features of the race are used to their best potential, terran has the most to offer. I emphasize, I am not saying terran is imbalanced or unfair, I am saying that the game is obviously designed to be balanced. Of all races however, since terran is designed to be a sort of in-the-middle race with plenty of average tools on defense and offense, when optimized, they can win the game with more consistency. + Show Spoiler +by optimization, i mean look at the mutalisk. when I offrace as zerg, my dozen of mutalisks is barely equal to two turrets and a few mm. if there is vessel and irradiate, then my mutas melt even before they can destroy a single turret. In the hands of progamers however, 6 or 8 mutas can wreck havoc on a terran base, even with 3 turrets. and they can micro irradiated mutas and snipe vessel in order to maximize mutas. I have even seen ai where 12 mutas fly in one by one is close succession, reducing individual damage, and killing 2 mm balls, turrets, and goliaths. but that micro capacity is beyond human limits, so we wont discuss that. point is, when optimized, terran is both defensively and offensively strong and flexible enough to be reliable for a win.
Ok, so now to the meat of this post: I have mentioned above that when the features of the race are used to their best potential, terran has the most to offer, and of all the players in all of history of starcraft, no other player has fully mazimized a race's potential that Flash has with terran. With zerg, we had july's aggression, savior's macro and control, and jaedong's combination of both, and with protoss, we have, im not sure, storks brute force, bisu's micro of inherently strong units, and jangbi's storm positioning. we get a glimpse of some potentials of the zergs in them, but with Flash, we see how terran is and is supposed to be play. The thing that can be improved are maybe have higher apm and more game information, but with Flash, we already see the full potential of the race because he plays is at a darn high optimal level. The titles speak for themselves about this.
Now, this are the questions that we can discuss: 1. How would an optimized zerg look like, specifically zvt and zvp? 2. How would an optimized protoss look like, specifically pvt and pvz? 3. And this is something I realized after the tournament that just concluded, so SPOILERS ON OGN SUPERMATCH, flash is practically unbeatable at tvz, but effort seems to dominate him easily. either its pure misjudgement by Flash due to mind games, or Effort just coming with the win in the end despite not having a really clear advantage to roll with. Even at his peak, Jaedong would apparently dominate and just suddenly loss the game. I dont mean literal suddenly but you get my point. Effort just does it with ease and confidence. So the question is What does Effort do in this matchup that allows him to consistently dominate Flash?
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+ Show Spoiler +I think the OGN matches of Effort vs Flash are a terrible representation of their matches and Flash's TvZ in general and the questions preceding it are so open ended that we could probably fund studies and release 100 page docs on what optimized Z and P look like but unfortunately there has been budget cuts to the education sector so it does not look like we're getting those grants.
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People are gonna post dumb comments. Like the 2 people above me. But I liked your ideas. Especially I agree on the middle of the road race analogy.
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On October 15 2017 00:07 Alpha-NP- wrote: People are gonna post dumb comments. Like the 2 people above me. But I liked your ideas. Especially I agree on the middle of the road race analogy. thanks a lot, I appreciate it. I was hoping to have a serious discussion with this too. oh well, it's early in the thread's life and everyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion
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On October 14 2017 23:41 SCC-Faust wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I think the OGN matches of Effort vs Flash are a terrible representation of their matches and Flash's TvZ in general and the questions preceding it are so open ended that we could probably fund studies and release 100 page docs on what optimized Z and P look like but unfortunately there has been budget cuts to the education sector so it does not look like we're getting those grants. My bad faust I didn't look at your post. No offense.
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from all the vods ive seen, both larva and sk have been taking games off flash, and they've all been using queens late game.
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It's an awesome metagame shift. It is brilliant. Especially since Siege Tanks are one of the cheapest and gayest units in the game.
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Why do so many posts nowadays need to use bolding or CAPS LOCK to make their point? Is it because they need that extra srs presentation to make their points valid? Because it often seems that the people complaining about the new flavor of the month, fuck who am I kidding, it's almost always Terran or Vultures or Siege Tanks, anyway, it just seems that the people most vocal about tesagi are scrubs. Let's not forget that all of the questions are discussing some arbitrary level of skill that is attainable by humans, but says "not like AI-level though, that's not attainable." so even at its core this discussion is on shaky ground. Ultimately, the perfect Zerg would never miss a larva, have dank ling micro, always surround MnM with two or three flanks of Lurker/Ling, split Mutas perfectly, and have fastest possible Hive. Oh but wait, are some of those elements too good for hooman and too much like AI!? Discuss.
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Of all races however, since terran is designed to be a sort of in-the-middle race with plenty of average tools on defense and offense, when optimized, they can win the game with more consistency.
I've never thought of Terran as the "in the middle" race. With tanks/mines they clearly have the strongest positional/hard space control tools balanced by being the least mobile army in the game (vultures being limited as attack units). Marine armies give them a more mobile force but it's still much slower than even a dragoon army because they're anchored to medics. Probably the best evidence that Protoss is the middle race is that they traditionally take on a Terranish role in PvZ and a Zergish role in PvT.
In any case, I think people tend to underestimate the tactical power of having the mobility initiative, which Zerg has in leaps and bounds on Terran for most stages of ZvT. Terran has a lot of tools and generally the stronger 1v1 army, but until that slow army is at their front door Zerg gets to make most of the big choices about when engagements happen, while the risk of reactive counter-attack often gives Zerg a soft map control even without investment. This is why the matchup is so balanced and why Zerg often wins when It technically shouldn't if you reduce the matchup to X race having the advantage at various stages of the game.
"Optimized" Zerg probably looks like a genius level ability to see and capitalize on any and every opportunity no matter how small, and who knows what the unrealized possibilities of Defiler and crackling usage in the late game are.
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Personally what I think makes Effort effective as zerg is his erratic/awkward/unpredictable movement that completely catches an "optimized" guy like Flash off guard and snowballs that into victory. He has this heightened sense of movement and awareness that is very befitting to the zerg swarm-aggro type of play. Of course this is all on top of excellent macro and unit control.
For me, Flash v Effort is the one true rivalry of this post-kespa era. Their styles simply clash and produce very interesting games. As evident in spon matches Flash has solved vZ against other top zergs such as Soulkey and maybe Larva, except for Effort.
Anyway having digressed and said all that, I think the secret to playing Z or any race in Starcraft for that matter relates to your own personality. For Zerg, it's having this almost AD/HD-chaos-theory-like personality to be successful.
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Didn't that AI mutalisk micro demo require something like 700 apm?
Anyway, even in Kespa era, there was something about Effort vs. Flash that makes it more competitive vs. the traditional rivalry of Flash vs. Jaedong. In FvJ, Jaedong could very well secure the third and ball up to a hive advantage, but you always got the feeling that Flash could still pull out a win. Jaedong is conservative when he needs to attack, and tends to go aggressive with risky aggression even if Flash has the clear defensive or army advantage.
On your "optimized" questions, it is best if we characterize the races' advantages and discuss from there. Zerg is cheap and fast but weak. As such, you need to have more units that your enemy and you can never engage head on or your army will just evaporate. Zerg's need to engage tactically at all time, attacking from angles and capitalizing on mistakes. It cannot win in a direct engagement even at lategame hive 3/3 stage. Protoss is the strongest but the most expensive. Their strength is exponentially increased with their spell casters who are all mostly offensive in nature: cloak, stasis, and psionic storm. They compensate by having fewer and inflexible units.
Ideal ZvT: Late-Kespa era Zero and present Post-Kespa era Larva and NSK queen-style with the instincts and aggression of Effort and Jaedong. The problem is that as mentioned above, zerg needs to always be maxxed up, and this means zerg players will have to do with 20 or so hotkeys for this to work.
Ideal ZvP: No idea to be honest. Maybe peak Jaedong. But even then, Bisu has zerg figured out.
Ideal PvZ: Bisu.
Ideal PvT: Jangbi with Stork ballsy aggression.
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Watch game 1 of the Power Outage series between Jaedong and Flash on matchpoint.
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Tesagi is real, what are you talking about?! The problem with zvt is zerg can only ever attack in small groups and we all know Terran is designed to destroy zerg at all stages, so zerg has to stay one tech level ahead all the time. This is where the problem lies, zerg gets too risky, and terran can immediately punish him. He can play a perfect game and one slip and its all over vs. terran. if he is passive, terran can kill him with a decent army combination straight up or wait until 3/3 mech and zerg is butter. It takes a really special player to dominate zvt while a good enough terran can handle zvt just fine.
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On October 15 2017 20:10 yOngKIN wrote: Tesagi is real, what are you talking about?! The problem with zvt is zerg can only ever attack in small groups and we all know Terran is designed to destroy zerg at all stages, so zerg has to stay one tech level ahead all the time. This is where the problem lies, zerg gets too risky, and terran can immediately punish him. He can play a perfect game and one slip and its all over vs. terran. if he is passive, terran can kill him with a decent army combination straight up or wait until 3/3 mech and zerg is butter. It takes a really special player to dominate zvt while a good enough terran can handle zvt just fine. If Terran loses their first bio army carelessly or their first Tank, they are relatively fucked in TvZ/TvP respectively. Never forget.
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Russian Federation483 Posts
On October 15 2017 20:10 yOngKIN wrote: Tesagi is real, what are you talking about?! The problem with zvt is zerg can only ever attack in small groups and we all know Terran is designed to destroy zerg at all stages, so zerg has to stay one tech level ahead all the time. This is where the problem lies, zerg gets too risky, and terran can immediately punish him. He can play a perfect game and one slip and its all over vs. terran. if he is passive, terran can kill him with a decent army combination straight up or wait until 3/3 mech and zerg is butter. It takes a really special player to dominate zvt while a good enough terran can handle zvt just fine. 1 hour earlier in LR thread
On October 15 2017 19:21 yOngKIN wrote: BW tournament in 2017? Is this real? Can someone give me a rundown on this tournament? And it says 4, which means there have been 3 others? Welcome back, we are truly blessed to have you.
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The "tesagi" thing really needs to stop. It's the pure result of ignorance.
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On October 15 2017 21:34 Essbee wrote: The "tesagi" thing really needs to stop. It's the pure result of ignorance. Troll video session by Sea and other progamers was taken seriously by whiners. I mean as a zerg player I used to abhor terran and everything that they have that destroys erg, but thats the beauty of the matchup. Zergs cannot engage terrans directly and have to be crafty about it. I doubt even progamers really believe in tesagi although they surely use it jokingly all the time.
On October 15 2017 21:33 chuDr3t4 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2017 20:10 yOngKIN wrote: Tesagi is real, what are you talking about?! The problem with zvt is zerg can only ever attack in small groups and we all know Terran is designed to destroy zerg at all stages, so zerg has to stay one tech level ahead all the time. This is where the problem lies, zerg gets too risky, and terran can immediately punish him. He can play a perfect game and one slip and its all over vs. terran. if he is passive, terran can kill him with a decent army combination straight up or wait until 3/3 mech and zerg is butter. It takes a really special player to dominate zvt while a good enough terran can handle zvt just fine. 1 hour earlier in LR thread Show nested quote +On October 15 2017 19:21 yOngKIN wrote: BW tournament in 2017? Is this real? Can someone give me a rundown on this tournament? And it says 4, which means there have been 3 others? Welcome back, we are truly blessed to have you. You won't believe how much I binged in the last couple of hours lol. I'm mind blown with the ASL and all the random games progamers are having with each other. And I am so happy so see Larva come of age. I still can't believe I'd be seeing professional BW tournamets 5-6 years after Blizzard supposedly killed it.
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On October 15 2017 21:14 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2017 20:10 yOngKIN wrote: Tesagi is real, what are you talking about?! The problem with zvt is zerg can only ever attack in small groups and we all know Terran is designed to destroy zerg at all stages, so zerg has to stay one tech level ahead all the time. This is where the problem lies, zerg gets too risky, and terran can immediately punish him. He can play a perfect game and one slip and its all over vs. terran. if he is passive, terran can kill him with a decent army combination straight up or wait until 3/3 mech and zerg is butter. It takes a really special player to dominate zvt while a good enough terran can handle zvt just fine. If Terran loses their first bio army carelessly or their first Tank, they are relatively fucked in TvZ/TvP respectively. Never forget.
"relatively". It's not the same though. There's still a chance Terran can make a comeback in TvZ, even after a disastrous early fight. They can block off their ramp with scvs, build bunkers, build firebats, etc to hold on, so Zerg usually still has to tech up and avoid major mistakes. But if Zerg makes a big early mistake, the Terran can usually just a-move in and finish them off effortlessly with their massive ranged firepower marines and medics making them invincible. That seems unfair. Sure, you can say "just don't make mistakes" but even the pros make mistakes sometimes.
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Effort games that I recall seem to always feel scrappy. He doesn't often seem to be cruising on autopilot, but 'every second' he's up to something no good. Engaging in small guerrilla attacks that are taxing the terrans apm and messing up the BO. He doesn't seem to go for 'synthetic' panned out timings, but almost as if he feels the zerg race, and grows organically, and attacks with these small attacks with what seem as slightly strange timings.
I guess my post sums up as: He's unpredictable and likes to dictate tempo.
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lol effort doesnt dominate flash. Hes just the pmly x who can take games off flash every now and then
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Why does Effort win consistently vs. Flash?
I guess to answer this, we must look at the JvF rivalry and how Flash plays against the best zerg play, which Jaedong offers. Jaedong plays zerg with maximum brutality and aggression, but he plays it within the meta and limits of the game. He plays the timing correctly, he does muta harass on schedule, and his hive tech ZvT is one you would imagine a high level player would play the race, with brute force of constant aggression that hits all the timings and sequences of the match up right.
Effort, on the other hand, plays it with awkward offbeat aggression. Watching him play zerg aggressively is like watching a left-handed person draw. It looks weird but the result is beautiful. He will never summon his ling lurkers together and attack the incoming bio tank ball under swarm. Instead, he will be hiding in the shadows, doing small raids or drops, and only then deal with the main army. I have even seen plenty of Effort vs. Flash where Effort streams and rallies his lings without gathering them before they reach the attack point, something that you never do as a zerg. So while Flash has mastered the zerg timings and tactics, against Effort, he cannot rely on this knowledge and instinct because Effort is always planning something sneaky.
If they were weapons, Jaedong would be high-grade titanium baseball bat, while Effort is a $10 junior baseball bat at Walmart wrapped in rusty barbed with with a grenade at the tip. Something like that
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United States4883 Posts
This is such a weird thread.
Anyways, I can't speak for Protoss, but I know that "optimal" Zerg play revolves around two basic principles:
1) Being able to snap between unit and drone production perfectly with no delay in decision making 2) Controlling micro-intensive units better (particularly lings)
Assuming everything else is fairly solid for a Zerg player, these two principles really propel them forward. Being able to get maximum value out of micro-intensive units like lings or mutas is what allows Zerg to drone like crazy and trade efficiently against armies that are typically much stronger. In a "perfect" scenario, lings would be able to split individually, perform perfect surrounds, and be kept at a perfect interval from enemy units at all time to scout and avoid damage.
The second idea, larva management, is something that no one has yet perfected. A lot of droning and unit production for the first 6-8 minutes has been mapped out over time, but it's still more or less a best guess based on the information provided, and often that critical thinking takes a little bit of time (even if it SEEMS instantaneous to us). Being able to determine when to drone without any hesitation would easily spike Zerg to the top of the races. We would see something like a 6+ increase in drones in the early game, especially if coupled with perfected micro like described above, which would result in a much more powerful mid and late game.
These principles hold up in both ZvT and ZvP where Zerg typically has a bit of difficulty in the mid game securing a 4th base against the power spikes of the other races.
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oh my god postmodernism has reached starcraft
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FlaSh is the only player that can consistently rape top players. Its not a Terran problem its a Flash problem.
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On October 16 2017 15:29 XERX wrote: FlaSh is the only player that can consistently rape top players. Its not a Terran problem its a Flash problem. Exactly. FlaSh, not Terran, is tesagi. There are no top professionals that lament not being able to beat Terran. They lament not being able to beat FlaSh (and Last).
People only want to focus on Terran strengths when discussing them, never their weakness or the strengths of the other races.
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If AI played the game optimally with 10,000 apm zerg would be the best race by far and never lose a game.
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Effor vs Flash
In the recent games Effort has been winning, hes done so by crippling and disturbing flash earlier in the game. Earlier than when flash can set set it up to a divided map scenario al a macro game. Effort is simply not playing the game right into Flash's hands like many other zergs that think they can out macro Flash
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Too bad we can't clone another couple of flashes to demonstrate that p and z are also insane in his hands. Guess we'll just have to believe in god. I see what I did there.
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On October 17 2017 03:33 traxamillion wrote: If AI played the game optimally with 10,000 apm zerg would be the best race by far and never lose a game. I disagree, because 10,000 apm Terran can drop every base at the same time and perfectly dance dropship to avoid scourge and target them with marines. Then he'd perfectly multitask 3 drops at the same time and kill everything because Zerg can't kill marines behind minerals when you can pop each individual marine into the dropship and pop it out the other side. Remember, scourge are useless because the AI can perfectly target them down. Lurkers are useless because you can actually avoid the spines perfectly.
In fact, 3 lurkers at the top of the ramp won't stop marines because they can dodge spines without taking any damage.
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TLADT24917 Posts
On October 17 2017 07:53 iopq wrote:Show nested quote +On October 17 2017 03:33 traxamillion wrote: If AI played the game optimally with 10,000 apm zerg would be the best race by far and never lose a game. I disagree, because 10,000 apm Terran can drop every base at the same time and perfectly dance dropship to avoid scourge and target them with marines. Then he'd perfectly multitask 3 drops at the same time and kill everything because Zerg can't kill marines behind minerals when you can pop each individual marine into the dropship and pop it out the other side. Remember, scourge are useless because the AI can perfectly target them down. Lurkers are useless because you can actually avoid the spines perfectly. In fact, 3 lurkers at the top of the ramp won't stop marines because they can dodge spines without taking any damage. or the AI 4 pools every game and perfectly micro every zergling to minimize damage and take out the terran before we even get to that stage
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On October 15 2017 07:03 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: Anyway, even in Kespa era, there was something about Effort vs. Flash that makes it more competitive vs. the traditional rivalry of Flash vs. Jaedong. In FvJ, Jaedong could very well secure the third and ball up to a hive advantage, but you always got the feeling that Flash could still pull out a win. Jaedong is conservative when he needs to attack, and tends to go aggressive with risky aggression even if Flash has the clear defensive or army advantage.
What? It didn't look like that to me at all. I won't deny that Flash won more than his share of Bo5s against Jaedong, but that was largely because of mind games and unique strategies rather than because he could just cruise to victory in the late game. I remember him mixing it up with valkonic, mech-to-bio switches, and all-in sunken busts in the various Bo5s they played during KeSPA. I also remember some resounding victories by Jaedong once the game got to defiler tech. Jaedong won on Odd-Eye (power outage MSL), on Tau Cross (WCG), on Rush Hour (proleague)... To me it always seemed that each player somewhat feared the other in the late-game battle of standard play, with Flash possibly fearing Jaedong more, and each tried to mind-game the other to get an easier win (with economic "cheese" like 14CC or regular cheese like BBS or 5 pool). Some of their Bo5s were actually pretty disappointing to watch, with all of the weird mind games going on.
Nowadays, I think it's much more true to say that Flash can cruise to victory in the late game. It wasn't true back then.
Edit: Conversely, in the OSL where Effort beat Flash, Effort won with weird stuff in games 3--5, but Flash won with the "cruise to victory in the late game" approach in games 1 and 2. In game 2 of that series in particular, Effort looked like he had zero chance against Flash's late game. (I watched this series live though, in California, so it went from like 3:30am to 5:30am... so I could be misremembering something since I was so sleepy!)
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