Hey Kevin, just wanted to say: I really think the way you talk in general and when you cast games, the flow, the charisma, and the understanding of the game, yet the "expressing things so even non-players like me understand it" is something that I (and probably a lot of other people) really enjoy. Greetings from Germany~
@@OsefKincaid Zerg is the weakest race now. Going to get weaker next patch as toss and terran gets stronger. Minus Serral from the statistics and it'll show Zerg getting stomped. Also shows how strong Serral is. Serral's going to the Finnish military service so even those with no assessment skills will see just how beaten up Zerg is.
@@N0noy1989 You are right. I don't really care though, if you wanted me to care you should have made sure the game wasn't absolutely trash for a protoss audience for 5 years, then maybe I would care now.
@@OsefKincaidWell maybe than you should have become a professional Protoss player. As Max Pax shows here again, its not the race that is weak, its the playerbase.
What a monster battle! No gloves straight up brawl between these two trying to eek out each fight in there favor. And I 100% agree with ladder matches being the purest of fights. Comp, you can prepare and plan cause you know who you're gonna match against, but ladder you get that rush after seeing who it is and the 15ish seconds of planning. I really hope these two titans had as much fun and glee playing and reviewing the match as you did Harstem casting this treat.
@@sachib supposedly just wants to be a private guy who doesn't want to reveal his identity, but then why invest so much time into playing a game where winning offline tournaments is the ultimate goal, only to not play in them?
after the 10 min-ish mark, there were 4-7 blinking areas on the mini map at all times...how is that humanly possible? unreal edit: i find it hilarious they are both using barcodes at probably around 7k mmr..everyone knows who they are lol
I watched your cast for the first time. It's great when a caster has such a good knowledge of the game and what's going on in it. I'm subscribing, we'll see where this goes.
If you can get #2 in protoss, you've earned it. It's very different from a terran who gets a large number of wins because they can push T and get into medivacs. This is why a staggaring 50% of the top 16 are terran. Only 3 are protoss, so it's more than twice as easy to get into the top 16 as terran.
the ladder is like finding your favorite song in the radio, yeah I can play it forever on spotify, but it just has a special flavor when you find something in the wild
Do I know if ladder is such a special thing? Such a core of the game? It's more like preparation and hiding the real flavor. The full potential and spice can only be eaten in the finals. Hidden tactics and behavior, something we haven't seen before - this amazes us and motivates us to watch. And Ladder, on the other hand, is like a sandwich that we have for breakfast every day.
A few questions: 1) Why do they both play under barcodes? 2) Given that they play with barcodes, how can we be sure it is in fact Serral and MaxPax? 3) If we can be sure that they are in fact Serral and MaxPax, then why have barcodes?
the tempest accelaration buff, which I believe was to make protoss viable vs mass battlecruisers, has mattered in a number of pvz games. I actually haven't seen it matter in a pvt came, but most terrans aren't good enough to manage BC anyway.
I would take it as more of a quality of life improvement to make the tempest an actual unit instead of almost meme-tier like the old void ray. It never felt good to use with how clunky it was.
There is one thing Serral does way better than anybody else, and he's the only one who even really does this at all. Serral actually looks at this games and accurately finds the reasons he loses, and shores those up. There is actually no other player who has this approach. I don't think serral has quite the best unit control in the game, that would be Dark. Serral has the best analysis ability. I know you can point to other things, like maybe queen movement, but that's really shallow thinking.
@@JarmamStuff It's shallow thinking. They see that result, but they don't understand why we got to that result, and that is Serral looking at everything that ever causes him to lose and analyzing it until he figures it out. I'm sure other people have this approach, but they just aren't good at understanding the game and what actually made them lose.
feels like zerg late game is evolving towards what it was when Life was playing. Except instead of swarm hosts + spore crawler, it's lurker + spore crawler.
Harstem, I am not your dear friend; but if I was, your dear friend, I would have to tell you trying to make realistic eating or drinking noises on-cast, is not the move.
Serrals early game queen micro and placement against Protoss shades and oracles is a dead give away. He does it way better than pretty much anyone. Max would be a tough one to guess this early, one blink micro or there is a unit in the wall off it would become much clearer.
It's pretty disgusting to see zerg being nerfed so badly but protosses being so bad at later stages of the game that at times when protosses don't shit their beds, the zergs have no chance at all unless protosses fuck up multiple times. Like serral got most carriers at the mid game for free, he killed bases for P over and over and still the tempest/oracle/HT combo is just too much for zerg to fight.
First, using a barcode isn't smurfing. Second, they don't want people to realize its them and potentially learn their tricks. Especially if they're practicing newer strategies. So they hide their identity.
Barcode != Smurf Smurfing is a GM rolling over plebs in metal leagues. Barcoding is playing at your genuine MMR and concealing your name to conceal strategies while practicing.
The biggest problem of starcraft is well represented when you say " A lot of players are complaining about Toss early game wich has super easy to kill drones, BUT NOT SERRAL !" As the game is balanced for pro, casual players (so most of the players) can just fo f*** themselves. Honeslty they should propose like Pro patch and casual patch.
I read it the opposite way: People that complain are generally too lazy to actually try to fix their gameplay leaks, so they whine to the Blizzard intern hoping he will fix it for them
in this case, it's caricature and wrong. I'm the perfect example. I'm a random player. I play(ed) all the races. I reach master with Toss easy peasy when I never reach D1 with Terran (and I honestly find myself better with Terran) I have no time and no envy to push my gameplay, to invest time in learning any more. I play for fun, casually. So for the same lvl of skills, I reach Master with Toss really easily , but never achieved that with Terran. This is the definition of unbalanced. @@JarmamStuff
I don't understand very well why zerg players use lurkers for this high tech protoss comps (inmortal, archon, storm + oracle). Usually they perform very inefficiently. maybe if they are complimented with vipers but them alone are crushed. Obviously not many protoss will use that comp as well as Maxpax.
They deal a tremendous amount of splash damage to the ground units, have long range and cut through mass Gateway units very easily. Zerg can't rely on Roaches and Ravagers in the late game as they don't scale well, Hydras are too fragile and Lings get cooked by anything with splash damage. Lurkers are a good choice, especially since they are a siege unit which works very well in defending.
@@kommisar. I understand that part but I think something relevant to pay attention is cost efficientcy. Serral has shown he knows how to carry cost efficient interactions based on unit management so I think something is lacking in that comp or strategy. I think vipers are crucial since they are the only unit able to disarm those high tech comps and bring them to the lurkers spines. Having lurkers just tank and die must have a counter part, maybe while the toss army is pushing the zerg can do split attacks, surround the army, maybe go for workers. Cost efficientcy is key on Sc2
@@mikesavagetv Zerg typically trades less efficiently, including in games they win, and if you don't use Lurkers, what the hell else are you going to use? I just listed the alternatives. Spellcasters are great and can really make a difference, but generally speaking spellcasters don't actually kill things. They allow the other non-spellcasters to kill them, like with Vipers and Abduct. Even Parasitic Bombs are more to damage the unit and force splitting, the latter of which effectively makes the units attack less. In the end, Maxpax was just able to outplay Serral here. His army comp didn't suck (though I think he might have been better off with more Infestors, but what do I know?) and he wouldn't have been better off without Lurkers. The Lurkers weren't there to tank, but to deal lots of damage and keep the units at range.
I wish League of legends was like this, granted G2 is good but I feel like Koreans dominated league far too long, even at best Chinese put up a fight but most of the winning teams are still carried by Koreans. If a european team or even a NA team would win it would bolster popularity again.
For me infestors and vipers are still to powerful, not by themselves but with an army. Thy can provide you many free kills anyway You can always enjoy PvT and PvP and TvT.
I think Neural just barely edges out ahead Abduct in the 'feels bad, man' metric for me, but I still totally agree. My reasoning being that abduct can only end up killing a single unit while Neural takes a unit from your army and gives it to your enemy. It swings the army value too much. With Toss, their entire army revolves around a smaller number of high value units. It's just too strong.
How is MxaPAx number 2 when I just saw Byun mess around and destroy Max.. those rankings make no sense.. Hero is best Protoss and Maru best Terran.. how do losers get these ranks?? smh
you should have saved this game for rank roulette
To be safe I’m going to say Masters 1
Gold 2? 😂
im going silver 3. Sloppy macro for sure, right?
Yeah i wonder if there are any masters players peaking at 900apm
While some participants did say that, this is too high in GM for anyone to not go GM I'm fairly sure.@@mylesunderwood979
Hey Kevin, just wanted to say:
I really think the way you talk in general and when you cast games, the flow, the charisma, and the understanding of the game, yet the "expressing things so even non-players like me understand it" is something that I (and probably a lot of other people) really enjoy.
Greetings from Germany~
There is noone able match the charisma and flow other than zombiegrub shoutcasting
legit don't play sc2 anymore, the only caster i still watch. Chill and nice to listen to
@@lauririisalo8455you mean screaming, destroying speakers and ears likewise
Maxpax has come so far, I remember watching Beasty play and talk about him way back
that earlier robot strat was insane.
bring back beastyqt pls
I was about to comment on this as well. He predicted serral vs maxpax and was right.
Serral is the kind of player who figures how the next 10 minutes of the game up to the end are going to play out, before it happens.
So a zerg player
@@OsefKincaid Zerg is the weakest race now. Going to get weaker next patch as toss and terran gets stronger. Minus Serral from the statistics and it'll show Zerg getting stomped. Also shows how strong Serral is.
Serral's going to the Finnish military service so even those with no assessment skills will see just how beaten up Zerg is.
@@N0noy1989 You are right. I don't really care though, if you wanted me to care you should have made sure the game wasn't absolutely trash for a protoss audience for 5 years, then maybe I would care now.
@@OsefKincaidLike a Zerg Overmind
@@OsefKincaidWell maybe than you should have become a professional Protoss player. As Max Pax shows here again, its not the race that is weak, its the playerbase.
What a monster battle! No gloves straight up brawl between these two trying to eek out each fight in there favor. And I 100% agree with ladder matches being the purest of fights. Comp, you can prepare and plan cause you know who you're gonna match against, but ladder you get that rush after seeing who it is and the 15ish seconds of planning. I really hope these two titans had as much fun and glee playing and reviewing the match as you did Harstem casting this treat.
'Can Serral deal with that triple Forge here, Im not so sure'
Words I never thought I'd hear
It's such a shame MaxPax doesn't play in tournaments
Is there any suspicion or speculation as to why he doesn't actually do this?
@@sachib supposedly just wants to be a private guy who doesn't want to reveal his identity, but then why invest so much time into playing a game where winning offline tournaments is the ultimate goal, only to not play in them?
@@thesoundofsilence77 Maybe he is famous already? Imagine if this is Trudeau or Trump :D
@@sachib Think Trump plays Hearthstone now.
@@thesoundofsilence77 I think he has some anxiety too
"there's a new king in town, and he's the danish king"
lol i see what you did there
Ahah, I didn't even notice. Shame on me.
Top tier Protoss, Zerg, and Casting. Thanks for the game!
watching serral never gets old
after the 10 min-ish mark, there were 4-7 blinking areas on the mini map at all times...how is that humanly possible? unreal
edit: i find it hilarious they are both using barcodes at probably around 7k mmr..everyone knows who they are lol
You know you can preset the zealots runs right?, not controling them like the zergs does with lings since allways.
It is like Serral has a task list in his mind and he can execute it perfectly.
I watched your cast for the first time. It's great when a caster has such a good knowledge of the game and what's going on in it. I'm subscribing, we'll see where this goes.
If you can get #2 in protoss, you've earned it. It's very different from a terran who gets a large number of wins because they can push T and get into medivacs. This is why a staggaring 50% of the top 16 are terran. Only 3 are protoss, so it's more than twice as easy to get into the top 16 as terran.
Which barcode sent you the save? :)
Must be Maxpax. Winning against serral is notable so thats a forsure save
@@nominatorchris5591 instant save. even as the #2 aligulac player haha
Yeah, probably Max. Serral doesnt look like the guy that shows you how he lost
P did just enough to contain the Z.
What a crazy composition though, pretty much using the entire tech tree
Serral not transfusing that hatch with 32 hp is the highest T play
the ladder is like finding your favorite song in the radio, yeah I can play it forever on spotify, but it just has a special flavor when you find something in the wild
Do I know if ladder is such a special thing? Such a core of the game? It's more like preparation and hiding the real flavor. The full potential and spice can only be eaten in the finals. Hidden tactics and behavior, something we haven't seen before - this amazes us and motivates us to watch. And Ladder, on the other hand, is like a sandwich that we have for breakfast every day.
A few questions:
1) Why do they both play under barcodes?
2) Given that they play with barcodes, how can we be sure it is in fact Serral and MaxPax?
3) If we can be sure that they are in fact Serral and MaxPax, then why have barcodes?
All us in the metal leagues are like "this looks like one of our games" *watches our games* "damn..... I suck"
Maxpax is just insane
Nice, was looking forward to a good game.
Magnifique game max pax le nouvelle espoir protoss❤❤❤
the tempest accelaration buff, which I believe was to make protoss viable vs mass battlecruisers, has mattered in a number of pvz games. I actually haven't seen it matter in a pvt came, but most terrans aren't good enough to manage BC anyway.
I would take it as more of a quality of life improvement to make the tempest an actual unit instead of almost meme-tier like the old void ray. It never felt good to use with how clunky it was.
Exciting action as always.
what a game
Harstem, you da man!
great game
After watching GSL 2024 S1 Ro8 Stats vs Shin, I wonder how would Stats vs Serral look like.
There is one thing Serral does way better than anybody else, and he's the only one who even really does this at all. Serral actually looks at this games and accurately finds the reasons he loses, and shores those up. There is actually no other player who has this approach. I don't think serral has quite the best unit control in the game, that would be Dark. Serral has the best analysis ability. I know you can point to other things, like maybe queen movement, but that's really shallow thinking.
Losing nothing to one of the best Adept harrassers in the game is not 'shallow thinking', its pretty impactful. One does not preclude the other
@@JarmamStuff It's shallow thinking. They see that result, but they don't understand why we got to that result, and that is Serral looking at everything that ever causes him to lose and analyzing it until he figures it out. I'm sure other people have this approach, but they just aren't good at understanding the game and what actually made them lose.
The rarity of the Serral vs Maxpax matchup makes this a special treat.
Yeah. Serral rarely plays online/weekly tournaments. Maxpax never plays any offline tournaments. Seeing them both against each other is a gem!
feels like zerg late game is evolving towards what it was when Life was playing. Except instead of swarm hosts + spore crawler, it's lurker + spore crawler.
Serral early game is just insane. Queen control and not losing much drones, any bronze would be GG by then lol
Can be fun to guess who are the players :)
anyone else surprised that Serral GGed so early? ;-) i certainly was... 😊
He was down to 170 supply with soon no mining and an army that can't attack, what exactly is he supposed to do other than gg?
@@mothrahlurker788 He won so many games from this down supply, no mining and can't attack thing.
@@sheeftz yeah but this just a ladder game i think
He knew he didn't have a good answer to the Tempests and Maxpax was pulling ahead too quickly.
@@mothrahlurker788 at least all-in as a last ditch effort: 170 supply is still a force to recon with...
The way you should guess proplayers based on playstyles is if you have a selective choice A.B or .C otherwise I find it too hard.
Harstem,
I am not your dear friend; but if I was, your dear friend, I would have to tell you trying to make realistic eating or drinking noises on-cast, is not the move.
Z v P is so competitive, its a damn shame that Terran just destroys Protoss with one broken unit: Ghosts & EMP.
I truly wish we knew my Max pax doesn’t do in person events
Let's fund a show match
Watch this actually be 2 barcode diamonds.
Serrals early game queen micro and placement against Protoss shades and oracles is a dead give away.
He does it way better than pretty much anyone.
Max would be a tough one to guess this early, one blink micro or there is a unit in the wall off it would become much clearer.
Queens need a heavy handed nerf
gg
YEA BABY!!!!'
MAXPAX! The 17 yr old E-Viking!😝🤘🏻
I'm a geriatric gamer. I've tried getting into SC2 but I just can't. Brood War is just light years in enjoyment level ahead for me
Balls
So he CAN bleed.
Ive seen alot of zergs struggle like crazy to beat Toss in the last few weeks on ladder.
Does barcode even do anything for Serral? everyone knows his MMR so when you see the win/loss screen you know its him
Serral!!!!
It's pretty disgusting to see zerg being nerfed so badly but protosses being so bad at later stages of the game that at times when protosses don't shit their beds, the zergs have no chance at all unless protosses fuck up multiple times. Like serral got most carriers at the mid game for free, he killed bases for P over and over and still the tempest/oracle/HT combo is just too much for zerg to fight.
This is your GOAT?
wow serral. was. outplayed in this game. perfect strat. from maxpax
Why are they using smurf accounts?
First, using a barcode isn't smurfing. Second, they don't want people to realize its them and potentially learn their tricks. Especially if they're practicing newer strategies. So they hide their identity.
Barcode != Smurf
Smurfing is a GM rolling over plebs in metal leagues.
Barcoding is playing at your genuine MMR and concealing your name to conceal strategies while practicing.
*Spoiler Alert* ... Glad to see a Protoss win for a change :)
The biggest problem of starcraft is well represented when you say " A lot of players are complaining about Toss early game wich has super easy to kill drones, BUT NOT SERRAL !" As the game is balanced for pro, casual players (so most of the players) can just fo f*** themselves. Honeslty they should propose like Pro patch and casual patch.
I read it the opposite way: People that complain are generally too lazy to actually try to fix their gameplay leaks, so they whine to the Blizzard intern hoping he will fix it for them
in this case, it's caricature and wrong. I'm the perfect example. I'm a random player. I play(ed) all the races. I reach master with Toss easy peasy when I never reach D1 with Terran (and I honestly find myself better with Terran) I have no time and no envy to push my gameplay, to invest time in learning any more. I play for fun, casually. So for the same lvl of skills, I reach Master with Toss really easily , but never achieved that with Terran. This is the definition of unbalanced. @@JarmamStuff
I don't understand very well why zerg players use lurkers for this high tech protoss comps (inmortal, archon, storm + oracle). Usually they perform very inefficiently. maybe if they are complimented with vipers but them alone are crushed. Obviously not many protoss will use that comp as well as Maxpax.
They deal a tremendous amount of splash damage to the ground units, have long range and cut through mass Gateway units very easily. Zerg can't rely on Roaches and Ravagers in the late game as they don't scale well, Hydras are too fragile and Lings get cooked by anything with splash damage. Lurkers are a good choice, especially since they are a siege unit which works very well in defending.
@@kommisar. I understand that part but I think something relevant to pay attention is cost efficientcy. Serral has shown he knows how to carry cost efficient interactions based on unit management so I think something is lacking in that comp or strategy. I think vipers are crucial since they are the only unit able to disarm those high tech comps and bring them to the lurkers spines.
Having lurkers just tank and die must have a counter part, maybe while the toss army is pushing the zerg can do split attacks, surround the army, maybe go for workers.
Cost efficientcy is key on Sc2
@@mikesavagetv Zerg typically trades less efficiently, including in games they win, and if you don't use Lurkers, what the hell else are you going to use? I just listed the alternatives. Spellcasters are great and can really make a difference, but generally speaking spellcasters don't actually kill things. They allow the other non-spellcasters to kill them, like with Vipers and Abduct. Even Parasitic Bombs are more to damage the unit and force splitting, the latter of which effectively makes the units attack less.
In the end, Maxpax was just able to outplay Serral here. His army comp didn't suck (though I think he might have been better off with more Infestors, but what do I know?) and he wouldn't have been better off without Lurkers. The Lurkers weren't there to tank, but to deal lots of damage and keep the units at range.
map hackers cant play LAN
I wish League of legends was like this, granted G2 is good but I feel like Koreans dominated league far too long, even at best Chinese put up a fight but most of the winning teams are still carried by Koreans. If a european team or even a NA team would win it would bolster popularity again.
Serral is not 100% in this game
MapPax is top2 is kind of a joke :)
Over the years the abduct late game for zerg has killed my enjoyment of sc2.
For me infestors and vipers are still to powerful, not by themselves but with an army. Thy can provide you many free kills anyway You can always enjoy PvT and PvP and TvT.
I think Neural just barely edges out ahead Abduct in the 'feels bad, man' metric for me, but I still totally agree. My reasoning being that abduct can only end up killing a single unit while Neural takes a unit from your army and gives it to your enemy. It swings the army value too much. With Toss, their entire army revolves around a smaller number of high value units. It's just too strong.
@@nmgaro2156It is scientifically impossible to enjoy TvT
@@JarmamStuff yeah you got a point. I was autopiloting in the answer. After your comment i realized it
@@nmgaro2156 ghosts are also incredibly unbalanced
Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
yeah but no one cares about the scriptures. If you want to be a better person, be a vegan instead
I blame the Terrans.
How is MxaPAx number 2 when I just saw Byun mess around and destroy Max.. those rankings make no sense.. Hero is best Protoss and Maru best Terran.. how do losers get these ranks?? smh