ASL Season 5 - Page 2

For a more thorough read I usually check what TL's Letmelose has to offer. Here's his perspective on the greatest BW players of all time: link.

After you posed the question I thought briefly about it and the names of iloveoov, savior, fantasy and July came to mind, but surely not Nada's. I admit I haven't personally put too much efforts into thoroughly exploring who might be considered better and why. At a first I thought Tastosis refer to it for their peak skill level reached. Having read the blog and the comments, maybe Artosis and Tasteless refer to TBLS just because of the term's general popularity and perceived easiness for the general audience to get accustomed to. They were topnotch preSC2 and are visible competitors now (although Bisu is now in the military, he competed in the last ASL). Fantasy, iloveoov, July, Boxer and NaDa aren't playing and streaming too much if at all and are close to nowhere to be seen in the competitive scene currently. Savior doesn't sound as a good BW topic to refer to. The Boxer-Nada era perhaps is thought to be "way back ago" and Tastosis think that the general audience might not really comprehend the importance of the players from that era. Perhaps this is why Artosis and Tasteless consider it might be easier on the broader audience to refer to Flash, Jaedong, Bisu and Stork, even though there might be several players that are better than Stork currently.

Letmelose's blog and comments made me lift an eyebrow why Fantasy is placed so low in the ranking and doesn't even appear in the top10 of the Pgr21 one (which is purely based on OSL and MSL performances). Maybe it is due to the fact that his career was relatively short (as mentioned in the comments below). After reading through the blogpost and the subsequent comments the central question might be "Why not NaDa?" and not "Why stork?" if we are to discuss the greatest of all time. To quote the author "One thing is clear to me though. No matter how you cut it. Most number of wins. Most number of titles. Most number of appearances. NaDa stands above all".

Letmelose's perspective seems mostly clearheaded to me. The topic has been updated by him very recently and it involves further discussion regarding stork's career. Overall a worthwhile read on the topic imo.

This season is so weird because of the maps.

Sparkle: Z >> T (remains to be seen if Flash can negate the edge), P >= Z, P >= T, although those matchups are closer.
Transistor: P >> T (remains to be seen if Flash can negate the edge), Z >> P. not sure about TvZ since Z has a huge edge during the muta harass portion of the game, but less mid game due to difficulty in stopping Terran from taking a few extra bases, but then possibly big edge late game with Terran probably not being able to go mech with the map setup.

I know nothing about Third World, and Gladiator seems more traditionally balanced (ZvT equal, Z > P, P > T). They are really testing Flash out with the maps. Terran is 1-8 in off race matchups, the only win was when Mind had the center spot on Transistor (easier to defend vs muta harass), Calm over made zerglings which did nothing, Mind had 10 turrets and picked off 3 muta, Calm never made sunkens or drones, and just got ran over. I think overall Zerg will beat Terran on Transistor and Flash is in for some tough matches. I'd guess he's maybe 15% to win the starleague with 16 left instead of 40-60% like usual. He's probably still the most likely person to win, but possible Stork (funny after the discussion about his place in the top 4 all time) or Larva are more likely due to large edges on certain maps.

I like the idea of the island map, but it's just so difficult to balance it. Zerg gets so much gas and Terran really struggles to produce a mobile air army that can counter a Zerg with Devourers and Zerg still struggles with anything Protoss does because max 3/0/0 Corsair is good even vs Devourers. Transistor just seems like a bad map, hard to predict that in advance though.

It seems like this 2-hatch fast-lair muta rushing zerg might be the new meta in ZvT. When Flash started doing the 1/1/1 build this is what I thought zergs should have done to counter it. Zerg's economy takes a hit because they're only mining minerals with a couple of drones at their natural as they use all of the resources to pump out as many mutas as early as they can, but a lot of times they can do devastating damage to the Terran. A lot of times they can win the game outright. I love it. Previously ZvT was just 15 straight minutes of Zergs trying to not die to 5-rax until they could secure a 3rd, get defilers, and maybe win a hard fought end-game. I felt so bad for Zergs.

On March 26 2018 01:42 blackjacki2 wrote: It seems like this 2-hatch fast-lair muta rushing zerg might be the new meta in ZvT. When Flash started doing the 1/1/1 build this is what I thought zergs should have done to counter it. Zerg's economy takes a hit because they're only mining minerals with a couple of drones at their natural as they use all of the resources to pump out as many mutas as early as they can, but a lot of times they can do devastating damage to the Terran. A lot of times they can win the game outright. I love it. Previously ZvT was just 15 straight minutes of Zergs trying to not die to 5-rax until they could secure a 3rd, get defilers, and maybe win a hard fought end-game. I felt so bad for Zergs.

It definitely seems like the best build on Transistor. I don't think it's as strong on a map as big as Gladiator or maps without large spaces behind both mineral patches to harass, but it puts a lot of pressure on Terran to both defend against speedlings early and to get 8+ turrets to defend main+natural by time mutas get there. But that said, if Terran can stabilize and get 4 rax marine/medic going quickly, zerg's economy might be shit rendering it somewhat of an all in. But if you drone a little harder early and parlay it into a 3-4 hatch ling/lurker while expanding after ~12 mutas, you can make it work anywhere.

On March 26 2018 01:50 Daut wrote: Show nested quote + On March 26 2018 01:42 blackjacki2 wrote: It seems like this 2-hatch fast-lair muta rushing zerg might be the new meta in ZvT. When Flash started doing the 1/1/1 build this is what I thought zergs should have done to counter it. Zerg's economy takes a hit because they're only mining minerals with a couple of drones at their natural as they use all of the resources to pump out as many mutas as early as they can, but a lot of times they can do devastating damage to the Terran. A lot of times they can win the game outright. I love it. Previously ZvT was just 15 straight minutes of Zergs trying to not die to 5-rax until they could secure a 3rd, get defilers, and maybe win a hard fought end-game. I felt so bad for Zergs. It definitely seems like the best build on Transistor. I don't think it's as strong on a map as big as Gladiator or maps without large spaces behind both mineral patches to harass, but it puts a lot of pressure on Terran to both defend against speedlings early and to get 8+ turrets to defend main+natural by time mutas get there. But that said, if Terran can stabilize and get 4 rax marine/medic going quickly, zerg's economy might be shit rendering it somewhat of an all in. But if you drone a little harder early and parlay it into a 3-4 hatch ling/lurker while expanding after ~12 mutas, you can make it work anywhere.

Yeah it's somewhat of an all-in because it puts a huge onus on the Zerg to do significant damage because if Terran stabilizes without a lot of damage sustained then it's game over.

I feel like this season we might have a Protoss champion. So many strong Toss's in the Ro16 - stork, shuttle, rain, best, snow, and I think this map pool favors Toss. I think Third World will end up being a Protoss map, too. I think they have an advantage on that map because Gateways are really really cheap compared to hatcheries/factories. Zerg/Terran will have to rely on drops to ferry their armies from either side of the warp gates whereas Protoss can throw down a shit ton of gateways on both sides and produce units as they see fit. Also I think Carriers will be very strong vs Terran on that map. I'm mostly guessing though as I've only seen a couple games played on that map.

On the other hand... if Flash wins this tournament with all these anti-terran maps and while seeing almost all other Terrans getting shut out of even the top 16... holy shit...

Can someone explain the format of ASL in groups cause I really don't get it? There should be 6 matches
not 5

1 & 2 First 2 matches
3. Winners
4. Losers
5. Loser of Winners vs Winner of Losers
6. Winner of Winner vs Winner of 5


Currently there is no point 5. which is kind of ridiculous as the guy that loses number 3. just gets out of the tournament with a score of 1-1 while someone who lost his first match and wins his 2nd could go to the final, dafuck?

when jaedong?

On March 26 2018 12:38 Spitfiree wrote: Can someone explain the format of ASL in groups cause I really don't get it? There should be 6 matches not 5 1 & 2 First 2 matches 3. Winners 4. Losers 5. Loser of Winners vs Winner of Losers 6. Winner of Winner vs Winner of 5 Currently there is no point 5. which is kind of ridiculous as the guy that loses number 3. just gets out of the tournament with a score of 1-1 while someone who lost his first match and wins his 2nd could go to the final, dafuck?

Its like this:

1 & 2 First 2 matches
3. Winners (one classifies)
4. Losers
5. Loser of Winners vs Winner of Losers (second classified)

This is not necessary -> 6. Winner of Winner vs Winner of 5

On March 26 2018 15:04 lucky331 wrote: when jaedong?

In 14 h 37 m

On March 26 2018 12:38 Spitfiree wrote: Can someone explain the format of ASL in groups cause I really don't get it? There should be 6 matches not 5 1 & 2 First 2 matches 3. Winners 4. Losers 5. Loser of Winners vs Winner of Losers 6. Winner of Winner vs Winner of 5 Currently there is no point 5. which is kind of ridiculous as the guy that loses number 3. just gets out of the tournament with a score of 1-1 while someone who lost his first match and wins his 2nd could go to the final, dafuck?

There is a point 5. If there was no 5 then how could there be a 6 in your post since match 6 is "winner of 5"?

You have the format exactly right except there is no match 6 that you added in. The loser of "number 3" is not out of the tournament. He plays in match number 5. The winners of matches 3 and 5 go through to the next round. The losers of matches 4 and 5 are out. This format creates 2 players with 2 wins and 2 players with 2 losses. The players with the 2 wins go through and the players with the 2 losses are out.

Ahhh so its 2 people that pass the group stage, I thought its just 1 guy. Thanks

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Flash picks Mind for his group lol, poor Terran

I like the trash talk, Larva first picking JD what a legend. :D

Couple questions:
1. Is the map order for ro16 going to be different? We didn't get to see Third World once, and Transistor is a completely dogshit map
2. Is the playing order random for ro16? Or does 1 play 2 and 3 play 4? i.e. does Larva play JD because he chose him?

Asking these because I'm not really in agreement with Larva picking JD and think he should have picked a bad protoss, especially given what we saw in group F. ZvP is probably pretty fair on sparkle (maybe even tilted towards zerg), zerg is definitely favored on gladiator, and the other two maps are unclear. Whereas a zvz is probably just flipping coins, it's how he went out of the last starleague...

jaedong is the underdog against larva? how did that happen?

going by win rates in sponsored matches I think sparkle is more p >> z than any other. It was like 81% protoss win for a while at least. It not looking like it during asl matches so far is because jaedong played way, way better than mind (also kinda lucked out getting the cybernetics core right before +2 air attack was done - which is a game deciding move in air wars) and because of a risky allin barely working. Imo it should be strongly z >> t strongly p >> z and slightly p > t.

that said they're not playing sparkle in the ro16. They're bringing it back for ro8 - but ro16 is gonna be transistor, third world and gladiator. I think I saw somewhere that it was transistor first then third world then gladiator - but I can't find whatever place that was, so I can't confirm it. Gladiator last for sure though.

From some small amount of stream watching, third world seems really difficult for terran, and good for sair reaver pvz.

I really like Larva but now I have to root against him -.-