This year group stages definitely delivers.

day 3:


bsball8806 predictions:

Aight just finished watching day 4


here's the finals bracket:



that is absolutely frightening

Anyone going to BlizzCon? I’m gonna try to catch some of these matches live. PM me if you wanna meet up.

Blizzard has no clue what they're doing anymore, so they're crowdsourcing balance from Reddit/TL/Twitch whiners.

I kinda like the changes they proposed today. (This is coming from a Protoss main). But I like the new adept changes, mothership change, and the nerf to Nydus, infestors, and BCs.

As best as I can tell, the reason Zerg is "OP" is because of infestors, yeah? Infested terrans remove the obstacles Zerg previously had with skytoss deathballs?

Seems like the balance will be restored and they'll go back to being the most underpowered race if Blizzard takes like two other things down with them.

Is this independent of ally/enemy? Like if my mutas and hydras are fighting your banshees and marines, do both types of air/ground units give and receive the modified damage? Or only the Zerg's?

lol that game 1
what a start for the finals!!

First series:

classic vs rogue

unbelievable game 5

1st semi finals:

1st semis

Watched a lot of this last weekend and this weekend even tho its been years since I've played a game of SC2

is there any hope of enjoying this game competitively without needing to hotkey everythign and micro every bit of the economy?

are there settings or mods that really simplify the actions?

i used to love these games but at a certain point it becomes more work than fun - watching the pros go is incredible seeing how they literally never have more than the bare minimum in resources - so amazingly efficient that i feel it sucks out any possibility for a casual player to have fun

nathanias' caster voice is so annoying - why doesn't he just talk normally?

RIP to this thread too i guess - anyone else watch?

Depends on your definition of fun or competitive is. This is pretty much how my annual experience with stepping back into the ladder goes: I play zerg and like to think I have fairly decent basic mechanics, but I prefer to do suboptimal things like mass zergling/muta or proxy hatch shenanigans. I assume MMR gets reset after long absences, so my first couple dozen games or so are great fun. Then once I hit the 4400ish MMR level, I run into a brick wall of meta builds and fun time is over.

I mean, I've also seen GM level players get back into GM on fresh accounts by drone rushing every game, so I suppose anything is possible. I have a highly competitive personality, but my old man fingers can't execute well enough to break into that Master tier with any consistency using my preferred playstyle.

You will need to use hotkeys no matter what. I can't imagine playing SC2 with just clicking.

Some of the most entertaining SC2 content is the casting of lower level games. Those kids are having fun, not running build simulators to see exactly how fast they can get 8 hellions and marauders into my base to **** **** up. Does anyone who play remember the era of the Cyclone? Good lord I lost so many games to 6 Cyclones and 12 SCVs showing up to my natural to melt everything in sight just as my third was going down.


I watched just about everything but the finals. I most enjoyed the series between Serral and Reynor that involved the guy who went mass muta inevitably losing because of spellcasters. I was like, "Hey, that's what I like to do, and they insta-lose the game to one solid fungal just like me!"

Each of them did it, but Serral did it in game 5 and paid the ultimate price. Poor Serral.

I do love me some mutalisks.

Yeah, watching serral lose that game was kinda awkward since it's basically how I lose games when ahead.

Dark looked unstoppable this year but zerg as a whole really did look super OP. We'll see what next year brings.

Is there any official word on WCS next year? I know they confirmed IEM but other than that...

Yeah I find this to be true for most games so I really can't enjoy them after reaching a certain level. It actually really wants me to develop a game that can't be solved ie there are randomizing elements in everything that there is no one size fits all build