Id actually love to see Harstem's opinion because Serral played that as close to perfect as humanly possible and still came out of the last fight 100 supply down.
Echo this. I had the same thought. As a Zerg main, battling through Skytoss is a particularly frustrating way to lose, because I just KNOW their APM is 1/4 mine and they'll win anyway. It feels like, even with theoretically perfect micro, there is just not a real answer to Skytoss for Zerg right now. God forbid I ever play vs a Skytoss whose APM is anywhere near mine, it would be even worse. Edit - I've heard the argument "don't let them get to carriers" and believe me, I do my best... but does that statement really sound like balance to you? It sure sounds like imbalance to me
@@aabrightlove I remember when infesters had infesters marines and zerg just said "just don't let them get infesters" Its time to update the balance and remove interceptors.
Its not even the carriers tho. Carriers havent changed for years, its the voids rays that won the fight mostly, by annihilating the corrupters. And tempesr also really good now, since it pretty much denies abduct
@@shayden6995 pretty sure it was the 8+ storms that decimated the corruptors, not so much the voids. One parasitic bomb had all the void rays at half hp btw, could have been much worse for showtime if he didn't quickly recall. Also takes some excellent control to feedback the infestors etc. Not a lot of good viper plays or neurals from serral this game either, Showtime didn't even need an oracle to tag the zerg air ball.
It was nice to hear commentary from Day9. Took me a minute to realize it was him but it’s refreshing to hear and old voice that actually knows what he’s talking about.
Crazy to think that a year or two ago, the tables were reversed with Zerg late game being practically unstoppable with infestor broodlord absolutely wreaking everything
@@fingerbottom God damn terran/protoss are hypersensitive, lol. Guy reflects on the state of the game a year ago and how it's changed, rando-protoss "HNNNGGGG WHINY ZERG!"
@@justinmanley8131 Ya this is a good point. Imo, the best players are the ones who are consistently strong regardless of the meta. The top players right now could fall off later on when the meta is more figured out, but who knows. Time will tell
TBH after how badly the drop queen attack went it's kind of insane that Serral managed to hold on for 37 minutes against the uphill battle that is protoss lategame.
Storm was pretty powerful in that last fight yes, but Serral also did bring nearly 40 supply of Ultralisks (I counted 6 ultras at start of battle, each being 6 supply, 36 total, might've missed one or two even) into a sky battle, while also being more than 20 total army supply down. Being outgunned by about 60 air supply in a sky battle, it would be hard to say any engagement would go well for him. And yes, there are ground armies for the Ultras to hit, and yes they are protecting the infestors, but the air force does the main damage and like they said earlier, ultras will never win versus carriers, they can only delay. All showtime had to do was storm the air force, feedback the casters, and a-move his far larger air force onto seral's and there would be nothing the ultras could do, and that is pretty much what happened. The ultras do end up doing more damage than anything else in the army, but only because they have a large amount of supply, and everything else got targeted down first. One or two ultras probably would have been enough to stall out, and the rest of that supply could've been 12 more corruptors, or anything else that shoots up. On another note, storm punishes people who keep their army clumped together, and one of Serral's (and many zerg's) strong points, have been surrounds. Surrounding a person who has too many templars would be the way to kill them off quickly, rather than taking a frontal engagement, the same way you don't march your zerglings through a widow-mine field or a tank battery. Being able to recall through fungal is a bit powerful though. And it's not as if showtime went all-in on carriers, he also had a large amount of void rays, and they destroy the ultras in seconds. In short, IMBA or not, showtime had a larger army, and would have won with numbers (and counters, such as void ray vs ultra/corruptor) in either case.
With the naming format here I thought again, Serral with his micro godness will outmatch maxed out protoss but what a surprise in the end. Protoss #1 !
Thoughts: after years of seeing Skytoss being more a liability than useful it is nice to see it strong. But I really think they made it strong the wrong way. Toss was supposed to have the big micro-intensive units that require babysitting. It’s why their early game has actual casters. But why is Skytoss lategame designed around making a big swarm and pushing forward in a horde? That’s supposed to be Zerg’s thing. But we see the late game Zerg microing more casters while Toss relies on one mid game caster the whole time.
@@LoQOpa Honestly, I always thought Terran were supposed to be a middle ground between Zerg and Protoss with a much higher emphasis on creating zones of control with their mines, tanks, liberators, and (to a lesser extent) Planetary Fortresses, Ravens and Vikings. Which again, isn't to say Protoss are supposed to be the only ones with micro-intensive units or Zerg are the only ones that focus more on big swarms or Terran are the only ones that create zones of control. They all do, just weighted in different measures. And I personally think the weighing in Skytoss is off at a design level.
@@oguzcanoguz5977 What? Only a few months ago, in Grandmaster and Professional level Toss had a negative winrate lategame against both Zerg and Terran. That was why Void Rays and Tempests got buffed in the first place. Skytoss could not engage over spore crawlers forests that good Zerg built. And teleporting Battlecruisers could beat the Skytoss units that were supposedly designed to beat them. Now where they always easy to control? Yeah definitely. Which is what I had hoped they would fix rather than just giving Skytoss buffs against the stuff they were weak against.
@@sepg5084 Zerg is as strong as it ever was. Zerg are just more volatile than the other two races (which kind of makes sense, according to lore). Zerg are at their strongest in fast, brutal games where they're able to put a lot of early game pressure on their opponent and cause said opponent to be behind the entire game. In games where that doesn't happen, Zerg can lose a lot of its momentum, because by that time the other two races also have their heavy hitters out and can now stand toe-to-toe with Zerg's bigger units. And for the record, Ultralisks are only really trash against Marauders or Immortals. Serral's idea to use them in an effort to cut down some of the High Templar was sound, he just wasn't distracting the sky army well enough for the Ultras to do the job he created them for.
Zerg is weaker lategame now compared to before. It's just a matter of time before the golden armada comes back on top. Zerg meta now is finish mid game if possible
Aaaaand this is why Serral tried to avoid a head-to-head fight all game :P he got the best engagement he could hope for, catching the void rays out of position, shredded their health with spells, forced the armada to split up, and still got completely annihilated. A year ago it was unwinnable for P with even control, now its the complete reverse :P
To be honest I think the army values were completly protoss favored. He had more army supply, serral had some broodlords not beeing part of this battle and more workers than showtime. Also those corruptors took so much splash damage that was disgusting :D Those Ultras also were sitting supply as the spellcasters of protoss all did their job before dying to them.
@@Darkbribe09 Yes and it wasn't even that many voids. So even though a few went down very quickly, the main part of the armada was untouched. And yea the corruptors.. its always been a problem in RTS when you have splash damage against much weaker units, suddenly it is entirely possible for 10x army value to get decimated. The other problem is the high health of each unit in the armada, meaning without good target fire it tanks a lot of damage before any unit actually goes down, whereas the zerg were constantly losing about 10 supply per second or more (it was epic to re-watch a few times and pay attention to the value down the bottom, zerg dropped like a stone lol..)
Its been a hot minute that I've seen late game protoss. I watch a ton of casts and its always a ZvZ, TvT, or TvZ. When protoss exists, its never a late game. So much that this is my first pro game seeing that Tempest Upgrade. Like I actually forgot it existed.
Is that Day9? That dude was the first commentator I ever heard back when I didn't even know esports could be a thing. Damn... It's great to hear him again. Nostalgic af right now.
after losing more than a few pvz matches in the diamond league, i came here looking for a possible answer to the skytoss army when playing the zerg; and lol imagine my surprise- it's literally unstoppable
You hit everything with fungals neural parasite half the carriers and take out the mothership and don't even kill a quarter of his army. That's a bit ridiculous.
If Serral, the greatest zerg player of all time (arguably) can play this well, can split his army, neural parasite some carriers, fungal the void rays twice, and still not even come close to destroying the army of protoss, I think we can say that late game PvZ is IMBA in favor of the protoss by a huge margin. May Zerg fungal needs a buff to compete with T-storm....?
I agree to a certain extent, but that is also ignoring some key components of what happened here. Showtime's army was 20% larger than serral's (~180 supply to ~150). Also, in an asymmetrically balanced game, one race is always going to have a stronger late game army than the other, there's simply no way around it. When you couple a 20% supply advantage with the race simply having stronger late game units, the outcome can look a lot more exaggerated than if the supplies were equal. Think Muta vs Voidray fights. 20% supply advantage one way or the other before the fight starts can lead to one army completely wiping the other while taking minimal losses. As far as design goes, the protoss army is just too easy to control mostly. You get up to carriers and storm and tempest and just let them do their thing. Only unit you actually need to control is the HT, maybe focus fire with tempest but that isn't really all that difficult. Zerg late game units are also exceptionally bad right now, which is frustrating in many ways, but I think that maybe if they built a little faster or were a little cheaper this could be mitigated. After all, zerg is supposed to swarm. Pretty weird that zerg late game units are big and slow and also weak and build really slowly. HT also outrange all zerg caster units, small fungal range buff could be a big help.
@@ZiaurRahman-up2ii serral is also the best zvp player in the world, so he shouldn't really be dropping series' against protoss. not to say that there is imbalance one way or the other, but your anecdotal evidence doesn't really apply here.
@@nonstandard5492 Even after current balance update the Z v P winrate is still well in favour of Zerg. I don't remember when a professional protoss player last won a major tournament. Either all the top protoss players have suddenly lost their skills since 2018 or there are still game balance issue - against protoss. So serral lost only one late game against show time, so what? I don't get this constant whining from zerg players.
I think a lot of people complaining about PVZ skytoss vs skyzerg late game aren't understanding the big picture. Zerg is very dependent on quick expanding, harassing, and being able to surround its enemy. If left unchecked, they'll snowball and become extremely oppressive to a point where their numbers can't really be beaten since the enemy will lack army size/economy/control of land/etc. Showtime did a pretty decent job making sure that Serral didn't go out of control and came out evenly with a zerg in terms of economy/army size/bank/etc. This condition for zerg is highly unfavorable as their units aren't that effective. I personally believe this about Starcraft's game design: Zerg: Don't let it get out of control early/mid game. Protoss: Don't let it get to late game Terran: It doesn't matter if it's early/mid/or late, they'll find ground anywhere.
Despite Skytoss being very strong, Serral having like 6 ultra's as pretty dead supply didnt really aid his cause. Also massively clumping up his corrupters meant that the storm rekt them before they had a chance to do much.
Ну да. Раскидать микозы, паразитические бомбы и заневралить батоны, при этом выдернуть мазхершип и зафокусить его перед всем этим, прожать по шифту коррпаторов на атаку, чтобы за интерсепторами не летали и при этом даже с таким контролем, как у Серрала слиться вхламину это мощно. Конечно у Серрала был бы второй вариант, если бы Шаутайм тупо пер бы на атаке, изматывать на отходе на слизи пуская бомбы, кидая микозы и выдергивая при возможности по батончику и фокусить по одному, как Блай вывез в одном бою с одним скайтосом (правда улетев все равно на массовом варпе тосса с 10+ гейтов), но это далеко не всегда получается. И надо сказать Шоутайму спасибо, что грелок зареколил в той ситуации, а не тупо прожал у них прогрев и атаку, пока реколил терял на них хп (бомбы оказывается во время рекола тоже действуют как и после рекола остаются на юнитах) и грелки дикое время простаивали. А хотя могли бы мгновенно выщелкивать по корраптору в таких количествах. Некоторые ПРО игроки еще скажут, что надо было когда коррапторами влетел в гущу событий кинуть еще паразитическую бомбу (хоть в своего дамаг не получит, если умрет облачко останется) и микоз (на своих опять же не действует), чтобы интерсепторы убить и на бомбе и микозах батоны и грелки тоже получат урон, но это уже полный изврат, который простому смертному сделать невозможно. А так болел за Серрала как за родного, ожидая, что воздух развалит.
@@insanelion8288 я так же за него болел. Но тоссы имба. Кто бы что не говорил. И бассет правильно сказал, что уровень прилагаемых усилий за каждую расу разный. Потому они и тащат, а зерги, увы и ах сосо.
@@GigaChad-nj5ql блядь, почти все последние финалы про это ЗвЗ, хуле вы тут ноете. Уровень прилагаемых усилий у ПРО игроков примерно равный. посмотрите воды и апм мару и серала, например. На бронзе, да, спору нет, а клик тоса решает. А на про сцене почему-то никто не обращает внимания что ебучий мазершип который надо контролить осторожнее клитора девушки потому что ЛЮБОЙ клик ближе нужного и он через пол карты литить на гидру или корапторов. 3 клика зерга = -30 лимита тоса. А вы ,суки ноете, один раз серала кто-то в лейте убил.
@@romanz2361 я не про игроков говорю, а про сами расы. Про то, что практически любой игрок средней руки играя за протоссов, может вынести про игрока, играющего за зергов, используя тупо те же грелки с батарейками на старте. При этом не обладая диким АПМом от слова вообще.
protoss literally just a-move and press storm a couple times and win any fight, and if they fuck up they just recall. Its a joke how much zerg has to do to even have a chance at winning late game
finally some game where the capital ships of protoss come into play and are not decimated by smaller units on the ground. The only way the zerg could've won was to make more anti-air instead of the ground zerg force that always wins. With 2 clumps of corruptors Serral could have won it. But again, a game where we see the REAL power of capital ships of protoss. This is how it should have been with the big anti air of all races. Because zerg it is so OP, now when we see this, we think something it's not right. We see that zerg is OP on the ground and smaller units, but lacks capital anti-air. Something needs to change with all capital ships, something like for the Zerg, from mutalisks to have 2 strains and from them to make other anti air for zerg, you could make a corruptors an equivalent of Void Rays or that old Brood War Devourer and make it bigger just like capital ships of Protoss and Terran. Protoss needs to add that spell for the interceptors back. Or something. Terran are good.
Carriers are actually very shitty units. They die to every other capital ship, marines, thors, cyclones,vikings, corruptors,stalkers. If hydras were a little stronger, i bet they’d fk up carriers too. Only saving grace for them is psi-storm. They are by far the shittiest capital ship.
Carriers weren'T the MVP there, it was the psi storms from the high templars. Carriers, especially in that fight, serve as a diversion cloud and tank more than anything, because around half of them got controlled immediately. With no psi storm decimating Serral's army there wouldve been no way for the carriers to pull the game back by themselves
@@screwed8182 I didn't said it were the MPV. It still helped to have an army of 165+ with a majority of big ships no ? The zerg stole some,but didn't stole all of them because it had that much more. It helped to have that much more capital ships in this game than other games.
I don't like this. Basically if you let Protoss reach a max supply of golden armada that's it there's no way you're going to win. No other race has that kind of advantage. All strategies have counters except this one, it's so frustrating. I don't think I've ever won a fight against a max golden armada army as a Terran.
zerg AA is laughable. those fugus land perfectly but still not enough. even without the voidray, showtime army dash out more dmg then serral's. honestly, i don't know what is the ans of zerg to the golden armada. But as players, we have to think of a strategy in late game, or just avoid late game at all cost.
Probably the best answer is multiple angle attacks. Carriers, mamaship and tempests are kinda slow, recall is 90 sec cd if I am correct. Also, +3 attack fastlings with adrenal can reap bases very quickly. In the process, hiding infestors ready to neuro or hydra or corruptor patrols can deal with splited carriers. I don't think that it is too hard to execute. Nevertheless, we're talking about top players, no strategy is easy or insta win.
Showtime was able to win bcs he was so far ahead that game especially since Serral lost like 6-7 Queens and his 5th base that early. Zergs have the Viper, a unit that insta-kills anything for 100 mana. In a normal game, Serral would have just grinded the skytoss army out by boxing them in, abducting and counter-attacking the whole time. That is how you beat skytoss, not in a straight up fight but by squeezing them out over time.
