TotalBiscuit: 'The Warhound is one of the most<br>boring units I've ever seen
So we're in the second day of MLG and you've probably watched a ton of games. How does the tournament come out for you, do you like it, do you feel there's been a lot of upsets?
For the moment I think foreigners are doing really well. Surprisingly so, Thorzain isn't and a lot of people weren't expecting that. He made his way through the open bracket - wasn't really a hard one as he was very highly seeded, I believe he might have been #1 seed actually - and then he got stomped by Symbol and MarineKing. But we've seen a really good play from Grubby and from Socke. They've been playing extremely well, I mean Socke beats DRG and Oz - I'm sorry, what? - just incredible stuff. And Grubby has been doing so well too, I've been really impressed with his play.
Aside from that, we have our usual favourites, although I'm surprised Symbol isn't doing so well. He had an early 0-2 which was unfortunate and he did end up getting annihilated by MarineKing, someone who he's historically been able to beat. But apart from that it's so far, so standard.
About Socke, whom you just mentioned, it's now so peculiar and curious how at every MLG I sit with my colleagues and we watch him and he does extremely well always. And we just aren't used to seeing that from him. I mean, we know him as one of the better foreigners but now with these MLGs he's exploding...
Yeah! I think he has exceptional endurace and as a result he tends to perform really well at MLGs. He doesn't win them but I still think he's one of the most consistent foreigners and him and Grubby are certainly the most consistent foreign protosses when it comes to dealing with major tournaments. And Socke is consistently underestimated. Grubby isn't, Grubby has that flare that Socke doesn't really have but Socke I think is the more rounded player. And we constantly see surprises from him, for example the Spring Arena 2: his builds against DongRaeGu were very interesting, very aggressive and this time around he managed to nail him to the wall. So I'm eager to see more of him in the championship bracket.
I just hope his traditional Socke look doesn't come back and hit him in the face. So many times we've seen him do extremely well and then he loses the advantage. He's just so unlucky.
Do you think the foreigners can push their story up to the very end? Because with last MLGs, we've seen Stephano starting with an amazing pool play and then he stops in top four and gets beaten very hard. I remember Spring Arena 2, he got two ZvZs and got stopmed.
Yes, he did. I think he'd do better this time, though, his play in the groups has been incredible. He looks unbelievably dominant, untouchable, and I think we'll see him go very far in the championship bracket as a result. He's going to have great placing and seeding but what does that really mean? Will he still be able to advance? Well, that's a good question but regardless he has been doing incredibly well. I hope he doesn't get any more ZvZs - we've seen a lot of that since the latest patch swinged the things into their favor - and he doesn't seem to have quite nailed that down yet. And there are very few zergs that have, actually: Symbol, NesTea, Idra's ZvZ actually is quite good when he can keep his composure. But aside from that, very few players have that match-up mastered.
Are you looking forward to the KeSPA showmatches? The community is really split in the middle about how good the KeSPA guys are and the quality of the SPL matches are aiding this division. What is your personal take on this?
At the moment watching the KeSPA guys, especially based on the games you just mentioned, is watching really high APM monsters. It's weird because they don't quite understand the game - and why would they, they haven't got the chance to practice that much. What scares me is what they can do right now, their control is exceptional, but their mechanics and macro are somewhat behind I feel. They have some weird ideas about how the units should work and it's going to shift the meta-game one way or another. I'm intrested to see it from a novelty perspective.
For the tournament: I like it that it's here, it's very much a fanservice to the BroodWar fans. I'm interested in watching it, I'm glad I am not casting it, because compared to everything else we've been casting, it's a lot different experience and needs to be put in context, and I think to do that you need people that have been embedded into the BroodWar scene. So Tastosis will be handling that and I'm sure they'll do an amazing job.
Talking about novely, Heart of the Swarm has been all over the place. Did you get the chance to actually play it? There'll be new units coming out, new strategies along with them...
I haven't really tried it but from what I've seen, I'm glad that they got rid of the shredder, it was a terrible unit. We don't need more passive units and I think the replacement in the widow mine is nice because although it seems like a passive unit, it really isn't. You can pick it up in a medivac, you can drop it at specific places, so it's a bit more active zone control than what terran currently has and you can micro against it - it's difficult, but it's doable.
The warhound is one of the most boring units I've ever seen. It really is dull. It's an anti-mech unit and it's got auto-aim rockets that once again makes you not have that many micro opportunities. It's nice that it's hopefully going to break the ridiculous tank wars so I like what it represents, I don't like it's implementation.
The protoss has nice stuff. I like the idea about the mothership core, it's nice to not have it removed but see it continuated somehow from a lore perspective and it's got a lot of nice abilities, we're going to see a lot more recall as a result. Which is great, I think recall is a very clutch spell that we rarely get to see because of lack of motherships and you have to save your energy for a vortex.
It's extremely late game as well...
Yeah, and in these matches you're not going to recall, are you. You have brood lords, I have vortex, GG.
The oracle looks great, I really like the idea of mining denial and it's a raider that doesn't kill things and that's what makes it interesting.
As for the zerg, the viper now just looks crazy. I imagine they're probably not going to let it move massive units as it just seems silly right now. As for silly: the tempest. 22 range, really? But as terran, I look forward to the possibility of playing sky terran against them, which is exciting as it means I get to use battlecruisers again.
They don't seem to do much dps, though. I tried them out, they attack very slow and shoot small balls of nothing.
Yes, they do. They seem to be easily overwhelmed by viking/raven and maybe BCs as well.
Swarm host is a really interesting unit, I like the idea that you have that perpetual siege going on which forces terran players to actually go out there and deal with it, you can't just sit there. As a terran player, I don't like that style of play and I've always thought the siege tank to be the most boring unit in the game. Many people will of course disagree with me - but it's iconic! - but it's dull. And any unit that makes tanks being used less is good.
So Heart of the Swarm is looked upon as something that will level the playing field and give a chance to many players to shine. Like the KeSPA pros for example, who don't know anything about the game but as HotS comes out, the "original" SC2 pros won't know anything about it too. There's also these lower-tier guys that used to be good in the beta but fell out of attention.
Yeah, it'd certainly be good to see players like Jinro, for example, to have a proper resurgence, because he's been battered to the ground so much and it's so sad to see because he's a great guy but he's in a slump that we don't see in any of the pros at the moment. Even Nony is doing better. So it was sad to watch, certainly. I think some creative players might get a brief resurgence before everything gets mixed up again.
What I can certainly tell you is that it will be a very clunky transition. There's gonna be imbalance problems, there's gonna be dominance of certain races no doubt, even with all the beta testing, to the point where I would be interested to see whether or not players decide to play only in WoL tournaments until everything's evened out.
Last question: Can you just give us a quick prediction on the three tournaments?
I think it's impossible to predict KeSPA at that time because we don't know how good they are, there's not big enough sample size. Everybody is like "Ooh, Flash" but he lost to Desrow at the end of the day. Not to say that Desrow is bad, but more to the point Flash lost to a mid-tier foreigner which is not something you expect from someone like him.
For the WCS, Vibe's been on a tear and if he gets another zerg in the final I would thoroughly expect him to dominate that. Admittedly, Daisuki is a bit unpredictable, cheesy and is willing to all-in which might give him some edge but in a longer series, especially with Vibe having the WB advantage, I don't see Vibe losing that.
In regard to the Spring Championship, it's really hard to predict because even the champions are taken down in pool play games. You can throw in the usuals such as DRG, MKP but right now Inori is looking pretty scary, oh my God, I don't know what happened. I would say that if he doesn't freak out, MKP has the chance to at least go to the grand final, especially based on what he did to Thorzain. It wasn't even close, he could've been afk and still win the game, it was a pretty dire thing. And of course, Stephano can make a deep run, maybe Socke, so it's all up for grabs at the moment.
For the moment I think foreigners are doing really well. Surprisingly so, Thorzain isn't and a lot of people weren't expecting that. He made his way through the open bracket - wasn't really a hard one as he was very highly seeded, I believe he might have been #1 seed actually - and then he got stomped by Symbol and MarineKing. But we've seen a really good play from Grubby and from Socke. They've been playing extremely well, I mean Socke beats DRG and Oz - I'm sorry, what? - just incredible stuff. And Grubby has been doing so well too, I've been really impressed with his play.
Aside from that, we have our usual favourites, although I'm surprised Symbol isn't doing so well. He had an early 0-2 which was unfortunate and he did end up getting annihilated by MarineKing, someone who he's historically been able to beat. But apart from that it's so far, so standard.
About Socke, whom you just mentioned, it's now so peculiar and curious how at every MLG I sit with my colleagues and we watch him and he does extremely well always. And we just aren't used to seeing that from him. I mean, we know him as one of the better foreigners but now with these MLGs he's exploding...
Yeah! I think he has exceptional endurace and as a result he tends to perform really well at MLGs. He doesn't win them but I still think he's one of the most consistent foreigners and him and Grubby are certainly the most consistent foreign protosses when it comes to dealing with major tournaments. And Socke is consistently underestimated. Grubby isn't, Grubby has that flare that Socke doesn't really have but Socke I think is the more rounded player. And we constantly see surprises from him, for example the Spring Arena 2: his builds against DongRaeGu were very interesting, very aggressive and this time around he managed to nail him to the wall. So I'm eager to see more of him in the championship bracket.
I just hope his traditional Socke look doesn't come back and hit him in the face. So many times we've seen him do extremely well and then he loses the advantage. He's just so unlucky.
Do you think the foreigners can push their story up to the very end? Because with last MLGs, we've seen Stephano starting with an amazing pool play and then he stops in top four and gets beaten very hard. I remember Spring Arena 2, he got two ZvZs and got stopmed.
Yes, he did. I think he'd do better this time, though, his play in the groups has been incredible. He looks unbelievably dominant, untouchable, and I think we'll see him go very far in the championship bracket as a result. He's going to have great placing and seeding but what does that really mean? Will he still be able to advance? Well, that's a good question but regardless he has been doing incredibly well. I hope he doesn't get any more ZvZs - we've seen a lot of that since the latest patch swinged the things into their favor - and he doesn't seem to have quite nailed that down yet. And there are very few zergs that have, actually: Symbol, NesTea, Idra's ZvZ actually is quite good when he can keep his composure. But aside from that, very few players have that match-up mastered.
Are you looking forward to the KeSPA showmatches? The community is really split in the middle about how good the KeSPA guys are and the quality of the SPL matches are aiding this division. What is your personal take on this?
At the moment watching the KeSPA guys, especially based on the games you just mentioned, is watching really high APM monsters. It's weird because they don't quite understand the game - and why would they, they haven't got the chance to practice that much. What scares me is what they can do right now, their control is exceptional, but their mechanics and macro are somewhat behind I feel. They have some weird ideas about how the units should work and it's going to shift the meta-game one way or another. I'm intrested to see it from a novelty perspective.
For the tournament: I like it that it's here, it's very much a fanservice to the BroodWar fans. I'm interested in watching it, I'm glad I am not casting it, because compared to everything else we've been casting, it's a lot different experience and needs to be put in context, and I think to do that you need people that have been embedded into the BroodWar scene. So Tastosis will be handling that and I'm sure they'll do an amazing job.
Talking about novely, Heart of the Swarm has been all over the place. Did you get the chance to actually play it? There'll be new units coming out, new strategies along with them...
I haven't really tried it but from what I've seen, I'm glad that they got rid of the shredder, it was a terrible unit. We don't need more passive units and I think the replacement in the widow mine is nice because although it seems like a passive unit, it really isn't. You can pick it up in a medivac, you can drop it at specific places, so it's a bit more active zone control than what terran currently has and you can micro against it - it's difficult, but it's doable.
The warhound is one of the most boring units I've ever seen. It really is dull. It's an anti-mech unit and it's got auto-aim rockets that once again makes you not have that many micro opportunities. It's nice that it's hopefully going to break the ridiculous tank wars so I like what it represents, I don't like it's implementation.
The protoss has nice stuff. I like the idea about the mothership core, it's nice to not have it removed but see it continuated somehow from a lore perspective and it's got a lot of nice abilities, we're going to see a lot more recall as a result. Which is great, I think recall is a very clutch spell that we rarely get to see because of lack of motherships and you have to save your energy for a vortex.
It's extremely late game as well...
Yeah, and in these matches you're not going to recall, are you. You have brood lords, I have vortex, GG.
The oracle looks great, I really like the idea of mining denial and it's a raider that doesn't kill things and that's what makes it interesting.
As for the zerg, the viper now just looks crazy. I imagine they're probably not going to let it move massive units as it just seems silly right now. As for silly: the tempest. 22 range, really? But as terran, I look forward to the possibility of playing sky terran against them, which is exciting as it means I get to use battlecruisers again.
They don't seem to do much dps, though. I tried them out, they attack very slow and shoot small balls of nothing.
Yes, they do. They seem to be easily overwhelmed by viking/raven and maybe BCs as well.
Swarm host is a really interesting unit, I like the idea that you have that perpetual siege going on which forces terran players to actually go out there and deal with it, you can't just sit there. As a terran player, I don't like that style of play and I've always thought the siege tank to be the most boring unit in the game. Many people will of course disagree with me - but it's iconic! - but it's dull. And any unit that makes tanks being used less is good.
So Heart of the Swarm is looked upon as something that will level the playing field and give a chance to many players to shine. Like the KeSPA pros for example, who don't know anything about the game but as HotS comes out, the "original" SC2 pros won't know anything about it too. There's also these lower-tier guys that used to be good in the beta but fell out of attention.
Yeah, it'd certainly be good to see players like Jinro, for example, to have a proper resurgence, because he's been battered to the ground so much and it's so sad to see because he's a great guy but he's in a slump that we don't see in any of the pros at the moment. Even Nony is doing better. So it was sad to watch, certainly. I think some creative players might get a brief resurgence before everything gets mixed up again.
What I can certainly tell you is that it will be a very clunky transition. There's gonna be imbalance problems, there's gonna be dominance of certain races no doubt, even with all the beta testing, to the point where I would be interested to see whether or not players decide to play only in WoL tournaments until everything's evened out.
Last question: Can you just give us a quick prediction on the three tournaments?
I think it's impossible to predict KeSPA at that time because we don't know how good they are, there's not big enough sample size. Everybody is like "Ooh, Flash" but he lost to Desrow at the end of the day. Not to say that Desrow is bad, but more to the point Flash lost to a mid-tier foreigner which is not something you expect from someone like him.
For the WCS, Vibe's been on a tear and if he gets another zerg in the final I would thoroughly expect him to dominate that. Admittedly, Daisuki is a bit unpredictable, cheesy and is willing to all-in which might give him some edge but in a longer series, especially with Vibe having the WB advantage, I don't see Vibe losing that.
In regard to the Spring Championship, it's really hard to predict because even the champions are taken down in pool play games. You can throw in the usuals such as DRG, MKP but right now Inori is looking pretty scary, oh my God, I don't know what happened. I would say that if he doesn't freak out, MKP has the chance to at least go to the grand final, especially based on what he did to Thorzain. It wasn't even close, he could've been afk and still win the game, it was a pretty dire thing. And of course, Stephano can make a deep run, maybe Socke, so it's all up for grabs at the moment.
