The game has been destroyed for a long time. I realized that whenever I turn a tournament on, I just minimize it on a second browser tab and barely even watch the game. It’s the same thing over and over. Wow 30 lings attacking a third nexus with 2 adepts and an oracle tucked into a mineral slot! Exciting! OMG HE CANCELLED 100 minerals! They are still both on 5 bases at 10 minutes in.
The whole concept of Protoss is (should be) a methodical and thinking race (low apm with some theorycraft) that relies heavily on micro and positioning. Instead, they neutered Protosses gameplay feel to give them shield batteries and super boring units like Disruptors. No, it’s not exciting to watch Disruptor explosions. Just rework them and call them Reavers and make their explosions cost minerals. ‘’
These units have spoiled Protoss players to the point where they have fallen in other parts of the game.
Except now SC2 is a 5 base game at 10 minutes. You rarely have time to micro blink stalkers, and even if you do, now there is such a huge defenders advantage there is no point.
However, Protoss professional players are also playing quite stupidly. Rarely do I see any type of army movement with mass blink stalkers near a zergs/terrans third where they blink and then instantly recall home. By the time the zerg/terran can come punish them, they now have a techy deathball. Instead, Protosses have defaulted to being lazy and using disruptors 24/7 and waiting around like wallflowers at prom until they have 2-6 disruptors. The funny thing is, Void Ray/Colossus[or HT]/Stalker/Sentry is still an incredibly powerful tool against zerg, but Protoss players have lost their balls so to speak after becoming accustomed to shield batteries and Disruptors.
Protoss players just suck and have been too spoiled by shield batteries to the point they’ve lost their marbles. Protoss players have also chosen to not abuse simple techniques like spamming Dts on the map with a warp prism DT harass, which even if stopped with scans destroys the terrans army and removes scouting potential, allowing a storm or colossus transition to be well hidden.
I say all this AS an ex Protoss grandmaster (when it counted and the game was still an RTS). I logged in recently to play a few games as Protoss, the race just isn’t the same. You’re forced to play a horribly boring and timid game. Can’t be aggressive with stalkers and do some cool micro tricks because if a widow mine drop comes in now I’m behind. Liberator comes in I’m behind. Cloaked banshee comes in I’m behind.
It used to be, you scouted earliesh and got a read on their gas, and the better player would make the better read and get ahead. Starcraft 2 you could scout the terran with 0 gasses and all of a sudden 2 widow mines are in your mineral line. Not that it’s hard to stop that, but it takes a certain part of the game away. There’s no more of those amazing moments where MC would be on the map with some stalkers and do some crazy micro ending the game before 6 minutes. There’s no more ‘haha I read you like a book’ moments where you pop a couple guardian shields and force fields and manhandle that Terran you are considerably better than. Now, that terran build 1-2 cyclones and presses ‘back up’ 2-3x and your push is gone and you’re behind.
That’s the ‘weird’ thing about strategy. You’d think with more units, on paper, there’d be more strategies overall. But in fact it just pidgeonholes the game. “He could be doing 1 of 3 different harasses, so now I have to camp at home for each one of them”. In fact, all of the ‘new’ units have dumbed down and ruined the game. Lurkers have no place in SC2 and were never needed. They simply demolish most deathball compositions at a 5-1 cost ratio and have 1 more range than they should. They should not have upgrades for burrowing faster either.
Do you really think a Lurker should have half the HP as a Thor? The game is dead for a reason.
The hilarious thing is, they took all the strategy and skill out of the game (other than being super fast and building counter units), to increase Esports profits. Instead, it killed the strategy and spectator elements of the game, and the game is now dead.
Koreans hate watching SC2. More koreans would rather watch a B-tier Starcraft Progamer with a double chin and low-T than GSL Finals on stream. More Americans would rather watch Artosis pretend he doesn’t hate his life getting weird text donations than watching the ‘best’ in the world play rock paper scissors. I mean Starcraft, whoops.
That’s the last point about the state of this trash game. There used to be a term for the game that was used when inferior players could beat superior players, and these terms rarely existed in Brood War. “Patchtoss, Patchzerg”. Right now, any random European Zerg who is second tier has a pretty solid chance of winning a best of five series vs a player like Maru, Clem, etc. Now you can’t even call these players Patchzergs or Patchtosses. It’s just Starcraft. The state of the game where you have 5 bases at 10 minutes and being in a random spot with your deathball and simply getting lucky a couple times will win you a best of three vs a korean pro. There are a few exciting situations, but watching 10+ hours of tournament play for 3 seconds of notable micro is just not worth it.
The most ‘pimp’ play in the past 10 years is Serral trapping a probe with his spawning pool. This is how boring Sc2 is to watch.
. HerO: He wins vs Keen I see no upset, he loses to Cure, herO is below Maru and with Cure they are about even, and loses to Solar who is Z. Balance is closer than ever in TvP for T to not be UP, idk how PvZ is.