Esports Today 9/22/15: Preparation vs. Skill vs. Character

[Rob Zacny]

Esports Today September 22, 2015:



Preparation vs. Skill vs. Character
Cloud9 pour fuel on the flames of their Heroes of the Storm rivalry with Tempo Storm at the Heroes World Championship America Final in Las Vegas, and Rob and Andrew debate whether team drafts or in-game play determine victories. EnVyUs defeats Team SoloMid again in Counter-Strike at DreamHack: London, and Rob marvels at how every lucky break seemed to go Envy's way. Finally, the Job-like trials of ByuL continue in StarCraft as he loses the StarLeague final to herO in typically upsetting and heart-breaking fashion. Join Rob and Andrew as they savor the sweet agony of a great StarCraft player falling down against basic Protoss openings.

StarCraft 2, CS:GO, Heroes of the Storm

• Listen on the Episode Page
• Listen on Soundcloud
• Listen in iTunes

 

Opening Segment: Heroes of the Storm

13:23 - CS:GO

21:49 - StarCraft

36:52 - Esports Tomorrow

 

Cheat Sheet

 

EnVyUs vs. TSM

ByuL vs. herO VoDs

[AndrewGroen]

And here is

I've ever seen in my relatively short history with the game. EnvyUs was so good this weekend. 

[sclpls]

The park where that match between ByuL vs. herO was held looks like a really nice spot to watch some e-sports! Reminds me of this year's International where you could watch the games outside by the Secret Shop in the park (same park in Seattle where the Space Needle is), and it was a welcome relief to step outside to watch the games and get a bit of sunlight from time to time.

[Codicier]

The Hots meta certainly has a couple of problems at higher level play but I'm not sure the over representation of warriors is the biggest of them, because warrior's essentially have a three subclass. There is what are affectionately known as "bruisers" these have mainly dmg abilities but can gain some extra survivability through talents, then there's initiators they tend to have some combination of gap close/escape & a stun, and finally the traditional tanky tanks.  The three types obviously do very different things the problem only come when one tank can do multiple things which is exactly what's wrong with Leoric atm. He is not only is under tuned, but his baseline skill set allows him to be a traditional tank or initiator a problem made worse by early talents talents which make him more effective at both those roles, all of which is made worse by some of his best bruiser talents being on different tiers from his best survivability ones allowing him to further get the best of both.

 

Thankfully though there are enough maps and enough heroes that team comp is still not a solved problem, and allowing teams to have interesting pocket strat's ready to pull out something like this 0 warrior comp which looses the early game and then smashes their way back into the match in dramtic style.

 

 

if you want to skip to the good stuff go to 23 minutes in

[AndrewGroen]

The park where that match between ByuL vs. herO was held looks like a really nice spot to watch some e-sports! Reminds me of this year's International where you could watch the games outside by the Secret Shop in the park (same park in Seattle where the Space Needle is), and it was a welcome relief to step outside to watch the games and get a bit of sunlight from time to time.

I was thinking that same thing. I was really jealous of those folks that got to sit in a beautiful park and watch two of the best in the world play a wonderful match of SC2.

 

The Hots meta certainly has a couple of problems at higher level play but I'm not sure the over representation of warriors is the biggest of them, because warrior's essentially have a three subclass. There is what are affectionately known as "bruisers" these have mainly dmg abilities but can gain some extra survivability through talents, then there's initiators they tend to have some combination of gap close/escape & a stun, and finally the traditional tanky tanks.  The three types obviously do very different things the problem only come when one tank can do multiple things which is exactly what's wrong with Leoric atm. He is not only is under tuned, but his baseline skill set allows him to be a traditional tank or initiator a problem made worse by early talents talents which make him more effective at both those roles, all of which is made worse by some of his best bruiser talents being on different tiers from his best survivability ones allowing him to further get the best of both.

 

Thankfully though there are enough maps and enough heroes that team comp is still not a solved problem, and allowing teams to have interesting pocket strat's ready to pull out something like this 0 warrior comp which looses the early game and then smashes their way back into the match in dramtic style.

 

 

if you want to skip to the good stuff go to 23 minutes in

This is really interesting. I came away from the Americas Championship really excited for Blizzcon. I think we're really going to get a sense of where HotS is as a game both in terms of the meta and the international community. If we see even a little deviation from the Americas Championship meta then I'll be thrilled. All a game needs is a small amount of change and growth to stay interesting.

[Spud]

And here is

I've ever seen in my relatively short history with the game. EnvyUs was so good this weekend. 

 

After seeing that, I'm honestly kind of disappointed by the crowd reaction. I'm used to the madness you get at fighting game tournaments, or the noise of crowds like at TI.