Season 2 replays are out. I think I found a slightly better way to visualize the data, but it doesn't tell us much.

Here's the same graph above - 2014 S3, Blizzcon, and 2015 S1 - instead showing cumulative winrate as you add in games of increasing length:



The x-axis is the game length cutoff, and the y-axis is the Zerg winrate in games of that length or shorter. The sample gets larger as you go from left to right, so changes become less drastic the farther out you go.

What this graph tells us: not a ton. Zerg is strong in the midgame, where there's a steady increase in winrate as you add in games from 14:45 up to 17:05, and then a steady decrease from 17:45 down to ~20:30, with no significant trends in the later stages of the game.

Here's that same graph, but for GSL/SSL season 2 after the swarm host patch (sample = 179 games):



Not a lot there, other than that
- Zerg's overall winrate drops from ~51.5% to ~47.4%
- Zerg is positive overall in games lasting under 18 minutes, at which point there's a pretty quick shift to being under 50% that the winrate doesn't recover from

Notable that in both graphs Zerg starts losing lots of games around the 18:00 mark. In a combined sample of ~450 games, that seems significant.

My unprofessional opinion is that Zerg loses the ultra-late game because Brood Lords are PAINFULLY slow. You almost can't even build them unless you're already ahead.

Brood Lords require so much babysitting, too. I see pro games where the late game BL-based Zerg army is all huddled up trying to find a vulnerable spot to push while their opponent just dances circles around them. Hellion/hellbats ****ing up remaining bases. DT/Zealot warp-ins.

But by that time, the Zerg is so invested in BL/Corruptor/Infestor type armies, that they can't even deal with those harassment units unless they have down a ****load of static defense. If they dare pull their infestors or other ground support units to go deal with the 8 hellions murdering dozens of drones, the opponent main army moves in for the kill on the hapless brood lords. God forbid you use your actual main Zerg force to go deal with it, because it'll take 12 minutes to fly back to your base, at which point the opponent withdraws, and then it'll take another 12 minutes to fly back toward the front lines.

**** Brood Lords.


That leaves Zerg trying to win 20min+ games with just pure Roach/Hydra/Viper or even these pro games where I'll see pure ling/bling/ultra, with maybe a couple infestors. Your entire army can't shoot up. What could possibly go wrong?

Blizz has confirmed that LotV will release in 2015, meaning this dog**** beta is under 5 months away from being a final product. Utterly terrifying. Imagine what a troll it will be if after spending all year qualifying by playing HotS, Blizzard makes Blizzcon into a LotV tournament.

lolz

so far in my plaecement matches

all zvz

kool?

I thought you said you haven't played the beta. It's not that bad.

Though, I haven't played since getting utterly shat upon the night of my Diamond promotion.

ZvZ too hard.

My 13 year old got into the beta and wants to play Archon mode. I'm not sure if I can handle it. I was playing Binding of Isaac co-op the other night with my youngest daughter, and may have sent her to bed early for throwing so many otherwise decent runs.

"Alright, your ONLY job on this boss is to not get hit. Go fly over that rock while I deal with him."

* she flies directly into Gurdy

"Sorry!"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand bedtime.

Standard.

I hope you like baneling micro, and lots of it.

i'm in gold

wat

So I'm way ahead of my opponent in a ZvZ. He has shown me mass hydra, and I have mostly mutas. So I go for the throat inside his natural, but because I think I'm cute, I load up 10 overlords with banelings. I think I'm going to bypass his own banelings and just end it with one glorious shower of green goo from the sky. I saw it done once. Easy, right?

Result:




FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL

He didn't even have any banelings. I watched the replay. I had 28 mutas, 39 banes, and 20 zerglings. I flew in on top of 19 hydras, 10 roaches, and 9 queens. He also had some spores. At the end of the "fight" I had literally zero army units left, and he had 5 hydras, 7 roaches, and 5 queens.

According to the Resources Lost tab, he lost 3450, and I lost 8750. I went from 175 supply to 80. He went from 130 to 108.

I still ultimately win because of how far ahead I was, but my baneling drop was YouTube fail montage quality.

I cannot believe how many idiots with names like IIIlllIlIIlll I'm playing in Diamond.

Really, kids? Someone gonna steal your l33t strats in Diamond league so you gotta hide your name?

I beat my first Masters player. It was a Terran and I killed 17 SCVs with an early 16 ling drop in his main on the huge map with like 24 bases. He also had a barcode name.

probably smurfs

GSL Group C spoiler (Stork/sOs/Life/Bbyong):

Been winning like crazy and climbing my Diamond ladder in LOTV. I went from 250+ points down around rank 70 to only 30 behind the top guy and rank 4. I then ran into a Terran player that was just straight up better than me at army control, and lost 3 straight to him.

I was way ahead on economy in each game, but I just got STOMPED during engagements. His marine splits were insane. The tank drop micro in game 1/2 was ridiculous. I ragequit after game 3 because he just went pure Marine/Medivac/Widow Mine and my dumb ass had a ball of 50 mutas and not enough banelings. My mutas did a ton of work on his economy and I kept sniping refineries left and right. He eventually had enough of my bull**** and just pushed out with like 13 medivacs and a ****load of marines. Marines are suuuuuuuuper good against mutas.

Hard life.

I really need to work on my scouting.

I've abandoned HOTS altogether because LOTV is just more fun.

GSL Group E spoiler

wrt Zerg vs mech discussion, even David Kim is like "okay this is bull****":

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/lega...date-august-14

They should think about decoupling the mech upgrades.

Make Swarm Hosts cheaper and cost 2 supply. **** yo mech.

So, swarm hosts were a problem, then they made them useless which created another problem, so their solution is to......go back to the swarm host?? WTF.

I think the question we need to ask now is, were swarm hosts really ever the problem against Terran? Or was it the only thing Zerg could do to respond to mech?

Like, the people who said "swarm host vs turtle mech is awful, need to delete swarm hosts to fix it" look really stupid right now.

No they don't. That's a false dilemma. The people that look really dumb are, well, David Kim and Blizzard. If they had just adequately fixed the problem instead of this idiocy we wouldn't be where we are.

The problem is they buffed Terran to deal with SH, then got rid of SH and didn't debuff Terran. If Terrans were trying to transition into 1/1 battlecruisers, it wouldn't be nearly as scary. It's the fact that they get 3/3 air for free at the end of the midgame when their ground mech upgrades finish.

They should also remove frenzy from BLs.

wat

Brood Lords already move at a glacial pace. You want to take away their CC immunity... why?

Preordered LOTV and got beta access. Still haven't tried it, but might stream some later on today.

I think battlecruisers are at a point where the upgrades being combined doesn't matter anymore. When you get late enough in the game that Terrans have made the BC transition, they've had 3/3 ground for a long time and have been building a bank - they could easily research 3/3 air by then too, it just means their bank at that stage is like 1k/1k smaller. It would make fights against vikings before that point easier, though.

Not sure what you mean about frenzy, doesn't that only matter against vipers and infestors?