I've just started leaving vs protoss

General Discussion
84

You want to severely nerf a style that you don’t like, without evidence that it is actually a problem. Even if it was a problem (as in, strong enough that players couldn’t reasonably handle it), fixing that problem would not require nerfs anywhere near as severe as those that you have proposed.

When Bunker rushes were a problem back in WOL (and they were for a time), that specific problem was fixed by increasing the build time (which allowed people to hold it), and then nerfing the salvage ability (reducing Terran’s ability to transition out of it).
In short, increasing the build time of Photon Cannons, which I suggested as an alternative, is a valid method of weakening cannon rushes.

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85

The issue started when they deleted tge infested terran. Zerg has no efficiency based anti air. The only efficiency play zerg has is the swarm host, and it’s anti ground. That’s the fundamental issue of skytoss. They removed the I T and protoss has dominated gm since then. Infested terrans were an efficient anti air unit. Zerg has no efficiency options to counter air. But they are never going to give zerg the infested terran back. A better solution is to give microbial shroud a buff – MS now reduces storm damage by 50%. Zerg now has a way to counter protoss’s efficiency play (storms).

Another option is to simply reduce storm damage while on creep. Creep dampens storm damage by 10% or something like that. MS buff vs storm could be used offensively while a creep buff vs storm would be almost purely defensive. Maybe zerg could bring overlords for an attack but it’s still a big restriction.

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Thing was Grossly OP, though. It deleted air armies in an instant just for the cost of energy. They needed to give the Infestor a new, more balanced ability. Instead they gave you microbial shroud. By far the most useful ability in the game! #stopwhiningbatz

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87

Nah toss had a 55% win-rate in the late game in the pro scene vs zerg. So it was balanced. It could do to protoss what storm can do to zerg currently. Protoss has that option and zerg doesn’t. Protoss can trade energy only for resources and can melt entire armies for free, and that’s what the infested terran could do in combination with fungal. If infested terrans were op, then current storm is definitely op.

88

Maybe it was more of a TVZ thing.

Yeah, neither of those is good necessarily. The issue isn’t Zerg, the issue is that Protoss late game is way too easy to control. I’ve played multiple late games against my Zerg GM buddy so he could work on his late game control Dude literally couldn’t take a game off of me. 400 MMR lower and off race and he couldn’t beat me.

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I think it’s fine as long as there is counter play. Toss could storm the infested terran clusters or simply walk away from them. They could only melt a toss’s army if he misplayed. For example if the toss puts his army in a position where he couldn’t retreat. It also took a lot of skill from the zerg to choose the proper amount & timing. There are no significant counter play options vs storm carrier. You basically pray the protoss has absolutely zero clue on how to position his army, when to attack or not, and how to control it. Unironically, that’s very true for probably 1/3rd the protoss in grandmaster.

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After watching your famous game against Playa that is a definite lie. I counted 10 recalls in total after every IT dump. In todays meta zerg relies on the mobility of lurker nydus to get damage done otherwise you’re fighting through a wall of shield batteries and cannons. SoO is the only Zerg player I’ve seen pull it off with straight up engagements.

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You’d have to be more specific. I played him a ton. He was probably my most common protoss opponent. I ended up in his vods like a hundred times. Same for uthermal. I called uthermal a hacker once when he sent an scv directly to the location of a proxy hatch. The terran had no interest in that location at all. An scv went straight to it. No natural scout to see the nat was missing either. He won that game and I rematched him. He lost the second game, though :sunglasses:. Not hard to find in the vods.

Lurker nydus corruptor is a decent counter. It has a lot of weaknesses though. The biggest issue is doubling the upgrade cost. You need double spire & double evo. Otherwise you are fighting at an upgrade disadvantage vs a toss who can afford everything. Your ling runby also will be weaker because your lings won’t be upgraded. You basically have no choice except to mineral dump into a billion spores, make a few corruptors and 1 viper, and max on lurkers. Then you just spam nyduses and pray the protoss doesn’t have eyes. Another issue with it is that on most maps you basically never get a 5th base. You just can’t get the creep & spores forward vs a toss who camps his army at your 5th locations.

By the way the stream sniping is so flipping bad that I play a rando toss 5.6k and after the game the real and actual code s player messages me. Lmao. I am now getting stream sniped by code s players apparently. I play the same zerg 10 times in one night and he’s 4300 mmr and yet it feels like a 5500 zerg.

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HOPIUM on the Parting return. I think he’s having too much fun stomping face on Stormgate. I think it’s less about the sniping and more about your odd streaming session where you play on such an off peak time that you get all the koreans that go over for some EZ games.

On his Youtube? I’m feeling Uthermal wouldn’t post his losses or BM that doesn’t warrant a thumbnail. Maybe it’s a case that he’d get sued by Neuro for a copy right claim. :wink:

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That’s why I picked this time. Playing vs na is so flipping boring it’s basically a waste of time. I told him he has a tiny hammer & that I need a microscope in order to see it. Lmao.

Yeah, there is a 99% chance a youtuber won’t upload a game where you beat them. It’s just a fact of reality. Uthermal included that one because he was trying to troll me saying “yes, I am a hacker” etc to get a reaction. Then he just died to a 14/14 baneling allin. He included the game he lost because he wanted a reaction in the second game. Another interpretation is that he wanted to lose the second game to make the first game less sus. But I doubt that one is the case.

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I’ll link mine if you link yours.

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I’d have to find it. It’s a pretty old video. Easiest to spot it by looking for the map thumbnail in the video description.

Here you go. He put it in the thumbnail, lmao.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsmyUu4DwD4&t=150s

The dude sends his scv to the third even though there is no reason to. He doesn’t bother doing that same scv scout, to the third, in the second game, but in the second game I didn’t go for the proxy hatch. Interesting, huh. Then he tries to justify the scv scout by saying he saw there was no nat but the replay showed he sent the scv to the third before his nat scv saw no nat. I had no clue it was uthermal at the time, but it SCREAMED maphacking.

Just wait, abs will be here shortly to explain how this barcode couldn’t possibly be me because I’ve never been above 4.9k in my life.

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96

I think the problem is that you made roaches against marauders. Marauders are a hard counter silly. It’s alright though because I had inside information to Uthermals build before the game so my thought process was denying the DT followup but it turned out to not be the case.

h ttps://youtu.be/JQIUrRJaRVc?t=1093

It’s definitely sus. When I think I’m playing a map hacker I have a 3 strikes rule, if they do a singular thing I can just deduct that it was lucked based. I’ve only really ran into 1 known map hacker on NA.

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That’s another thing that was highly sus about the game. He went marauders when it could’ve easily been a ling bane allin. 99.9% the terran immediately scouts the main to confirm a roach warran but he didn’t. Not sufficient scouting to justify the decisions. Game 2 he magically guesses right again, going factory hellion in preparation for lings.

That’s 4 strikes. Sends an SCV to the hatch, magically knows it’s roach, doesn’t send scv to the hatch when there is no hatch, magically knows it’s ling bane. It could’ve been lair. It could’ve been roach. It could’ve been burrow. It could’ve been a fast +1 carapace. There’s a million options there. Did he prep for 2 base muta? Nope, pinpoint precise counters.

Knowing it’s uthermal, he obviously just got lucky, but anyone else it would be a hacker practically guaranteed.

They are rare. I know a thing or two about hacking as a software engineer. For a software security class we had to pick our favorite piece of software & find a bug in it to exploit. I picked SC broodwar. At the time, there was a mineral exploit bug for zerg that gave you 500 minerals for free. It took me an afternoon to figure out how that one worked. I got an A on the assignment. I could’ve picked maphacking, but those are unbelievably easy to do and I wanted to impress my professor. The first thing was to find a video of it happening. That’s easy. We can see what happens. The larva is turned into a drone, cancelled, but when cancelled it gives 500 minerals. Ok, so there is something about making and then immediately cancelling drone that gives you 500 minerals for free. The only thing I could think of was the speed. If you queue the actions faster than a human could, it might trigger the game into doing some undefined behavior. Boom, that was it. Easy. BIG :brain:. The hardest part was finding a video of it happening so I could see what it was doing. It’s simply pattern recognition. It’s the same thing that allowed me to remember that Innovation beat Serral years ago vs similar build that Maru lost to at iem. Innovation is the goat.

But anyway my brain is a highly tuned hack spotting machine. It’s just part of being a software engineer. So when a dude magically pulls 4 rabbits out of a hat, my brain explodes.

Thanks for sharing, but I already knew about that one. ;). Well, I knew of that game, I wasn’t certain if it was you because you never know, for sure, based on name alone because anyone can pick any name.

Yeah, bunkers aren’t great vs adepts when the adepts are in your main. Nowadays you make a cyclone and collect your mmr. People say the modern cyclone is trash but they forget that it prevents a toss from going 3 nexus on the back of recalling adepts into your main. The cyclone is a pretty flipping good unit.

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98

He was probably Proxy rushing you HAHAHA

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Nah it was his build where he lifts his main cc and moves it to his third before playing the game out normally. But yeah he’s proxied me a million times. A lot of people would say to me “Oh you are that guy. I remember you from uthermal’s channel.” If you run into a 4800 terran who plays insanely try hard and feels like a 5500 terran, it’s probably uthermal on an alt account. He tried mass marines on me awhile back and I nydused ultras into his main off 2 base.

Some of the styles that he does are so insanely bad that the only possible advantage they have is that nobody would ever do them because they are so bad. So they have an element of surprise. There is no way you could pull them off while streaming or playing on a known account. I suspect he plays on 20 different accounts, doing a random build or style each game, and then stitches the games together into a series. If a GM knew the possibility of mass marines is there then there is no way it will ever work. They will scout for it & hard counter it. Same for most other builds. He does mass banelings in a nydus for example. You just open 3 gate blink & it’s a free win. Randomizing accounts & builds is the only way to make it happen. He’s doing everything that professional protoss should be doing when they ladder.

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IIRC I remember a game similar to that where he just serendipitously walked an SCV out into the map (I think to proxy) and a guy called him a hacker and he was like “that was a pretty sus move.”

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101

can you post these numbers? either you have not a lot of games, or these are exaggerated.

102

If ZvP is imbalanced in favor of P, then explain Serral’s win rate in ZvP at the pro level.

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103

That’s an easy one. PvZ favors protoss at +300 mmr. Serral’s skill relative to his nearest protoss is >=300 mmr.