I asked Serral if he thinks 3 gas Roach Ravager is good against 3CC 2-1-1. He said he doesn't think it is but he saw Clem delaying his tanks quite abit against 2 base roach, so Clem looked killable with his specific response.
ah so serral scouted clem, had all the time required to make a strat against what clem was doing, and had to settle for something 'i don't think it's good, but i thought maybe i can kill him idk'. good job balancing the game when the best and smartest player who hates to gamble literally has no options against a basic build from his opponent other than some gamble all -in that he knows will fail! funny how the balance council are all failed pros tbh, i bet you would be a lot less happy to call out balance complainers if it was YOUR tournament winnings being stolen by blatant imbalance tbh.
@@verdibyrd I will pick this one to answer many of your whiny comments so here goes. You're wrong in just about everything you say, this goes for all the other balance whine comments, but includes this aswell. Serral went for this strategy not because it's good against 3cc 2-1-1, but rather because he thought it was a good counter to Clem's specific response to 2 base roach with 3cc 2-1-1 (delayed tanks). He then messed up the execution and lost because of that. He picked an all in he thought would work against his specific opponent on the 2 most terran favoured maps in the mappool (which he has to play since it's a bo9) , which is not all that surprising and happens all the time with all 3 races. The balance council are also not all failed pros, Serral is literally in it. Reynor, Dark, Shin, Solar and all the other Zergs are in there too, just like every other Progamer you can think of aside from Heromarine. Serral lost cause he played worse than Clem, you can ask him aswell if that makes you happier. I am sure he'll give you the same answer. I believe this mappool is very Terran favoured (surprisingly the only thing you didn't actually cry about), but it is so blatantly obvious that Clem played better in this series, that i can't believe you're in here whining about money being stolen in multiple comments.
@@LamboSC2 ah my bad dude! yeah am sure my 15 years+ of playing 10+ different rts at the high level ass just knows nothing at all and the balance in sc2 is perfect rn! am sure me and the other 70% of zergs that have quit this game in the last 2 years were just dumb afterall, thanks for clearing that up. its obvious to anyone with half a brain that the baneling nerf, distruptor nerf, cyclone buff, bio buff, medivac buff etc etc etc all made the game objectively worse for z and p, and easier for t, when the entire focus of the patch was to strengthen p vs t. blaming the mapmakers for this utter failure is a dirty move tbh mate.
@@LamboSC2 also how do you explain reynor saying the balance is broken rn? is he just wrong and whining too? or is it only whine when its someone from the 99.9990% of players that doesn't bring in views like usual? you think that 3:2 will be the same result without this trash balance patch? so yes, money did not go where it would have if not for the very strange balance decisions. now it isnt my place to talk about other ppl money, but reynor sure isnt gonna say it is he, one thing he talks about the imbalance but that would be too far. also i never said clem didn't play better, tbh that was obvious and nowhere have i ever pulled clem down. it was a deserved win, vs a serral that looked at about 20% of his best.
I would love it, if we could appreciate how well Clem played instead of balance whining. This man reached a new peak level of Terran gameplay, and he undoubtably played better than Serral in this series! The last thing we should do is try to discredit a performance like this, he was simply the best last week. Thank you :D
I don't completely agree with this statement because they are two different topics. 1. Clem He has been a consistently good player for years and has continued to improve. Unfortunately, his tournament performances often did not match his abilities and it is now all the nicer to see that he is finally rewarding himself with this result. He seems very likeable and so I am even more happy for him. 2. Balance If a player like Serral, in my opinion the best Zerg player at the moment, loses 0:5 in a final, then it must be possible to talk about the balance in this matchup. For me, that is a different topic and has nothing to do with Clem's consistently overwhelming quality for years.
@@andreashaase424 serral did not even practice as much as other players because he was in the military and still beat maru, dark, her0, in the other hand we have clem that went to south korea to practice and get ready for this tournament, the story ay the beggining on how clem would defend against the rouch queen shows how he study his opponent, so serral losing a tournament and saying the game is imbalanced is Just pure whining
@@andreashaase424Could make the same argument for how Serral almost always sweeps Maru. Maru, the all time best Terran player can't do jack against Serral most of the time.
The map pool is really good for Terran, BUT I’ve never seen anyone play better Terran than Clem in this series, actually insane and very well deserved. Thank you Lambo!
@@arkrou obviously he's exaggerating a bit, but players have seriously gotten a lot better in that time, they probly never thought this speed would be possible
@@arkrou It honestly feels like modern BW pros are slower than they were in the KESPA era and modern sc2 pros. soulkey only hits 300 apm during really intense fights, snow basically never hits 300. theyre just reallllly smart and efficient.
I hate all the comments that claim a specific race is imbalanced. Clem wins one championship and terran is imba? Serral has won A LOT more championships, so why isn't zerg imba? These silly comments just diminish the type of performance that Clem had at this tournament. Historically, Clem loses to Serral like 70% of the time (I'm guessing, I didn't check the stats). Then, at this huge tournament, Clem plays at his absolute peak performance, manages to achieve the impossible, and losers in the comments want to blame the balance of the game? Just shut up. The top 4 at the tournament were 2 zerg, 1 terran, and 1 toss. That sounds pretty balanced. All races have their annoying units and strategies that feel unfair sometimes, but honestly, the races are pretty balanced, and every race feels like they have the opportunity to win any game or series at any tournament if the player is playing really well (like Clem did here). So please, no more whining. Celebrate a great player getting a great win. Serral was just outmatched on this occasion, but if I know Serral, I'm certain he'll be back on top in the near future.
Because seral was always the outlier, he performed significantly above every other zergs. Also, zerg have been nerfed a lot specifically because of seral. This tournament had 9 terrans, 4 zergs and 3 protoss. This should give you an idea of the current game balance. Also, what could seral have done better? No seriously? I'm 2 games into the video and so far the only real thing Lambo pointed out was that seral's first overseer was maybe a few seconds too late, which didn't even change much. Heck, at 19 minutes Lambo directly said that there is no counter to the early game build clem is doing, even if you know what he's doing
A lot of people hold the "Serral GOAT" narrative because he's been the best player for a few years and think he's untouchable. If he loses it's imbalance because there has never been anyone, and never will be anyone better. It's just fanboyism.
@@Jet-ij9zc Well, from toss perspective, Maxpax don't go to offline tournaments, and a lot of Korean's toss players are either in military service or just came back from it not long ago. While A lot of Korean Terran's are playing from a long time now. I think Terran is a bit ahead, but certainly not "completly imbalance" right now. Clem played in a way nobody did before.
When Clem gets his speed on the road, he sometimes seems invincible. What a Performance. Maybe he was little lucky avoiding ever other Terran, but 8:0 Serral - That´s impressive.
I reckon Maru vs Clem would be an interesting match, nowadays. Maru has a good win record against Clem, but maybe Clem will figure a counter for mass Ravens 😅
@@strammerdetlef Maybe they underestimate that fact, because he beat the best competing Protoss two times, the (before that tournament considered) best Terran and the second best Zerg (besides Serral himself) 🤣
Wow, what an amazing performance from Clem throughout the whole tournament. He deserved this win, his Terran is the best Terran I have ever seen. My take on Clems Terran - quite long, but maybe somebody is interested. IMO in his hands Terran is almost unbeatable, because Terran combines everything you need in Starcraft: Bio-Terran has: - great mobility (medivacs) - insane DPS - great scouting tools with the reaper, the hellion and - of course - scans - low supply needed for a lot of dps (8 marines + medivac are only 10 army supply, but can deal huge amount of damage in short time) - high sustainability and regeneration (heal) - a perfect mix of high micro units (bio + medivac), combined with stuff that takes very little effort (mines + liberators), but that require a lot of attention from the opponent - none of his army becomes obsolete - marines are good early, mid and late game - compare that to roach/ravager which are just mid mid/lategame, so as Zerg you have to get rid of them. - Ghosts / Tanks / Libs and mines almost always guarantee you very good, very efficient trades - huge range (libs + tanks) - with the Ghost you counter almost every Zerg Unit: Ghost counter Ultras, Broodlords, Lurker and Hydras - and they do quite well against banes too - and even against zerglings they aren't bad. So they counter everything but do not get countered by anything. The only downside: Squishy. Bio Terran can get destroyed by AoE fast. But if you play as good as clem - and with the huge nerfs to banes + fungal - that just doesn't happen. And his stuff counters the AoE of the opponent very well: Banes + Infestors have been heavily nerfed. Marauders do very well against banes. Ghost do well against infestors. And against Toss it is even more heavy: Templar? NO chance against ghosts EMP (which btw reduce the HP of Toss armies by roughly 1/3 with 1 click!) The Colossi die against marauders and esp. vikings extremly fast Disruptors are great - if the Terran doesn't micro very good. Against Clem, the Disruptor does almost 0 damage. And on top of that the Terran has: - great map vision because of sensor towers - mid/late game almost unlimited Scans and this way he never has to go in unprepared and he always can check for burrowed threads - mules, which results in him needing at 15 workers less to mine the same. -> His army supply can be much bigger than the opponents and he still gets the same ressources - mules as a great comeback tool if he loses SCVs - SCVs are more resiliant to attacks than drones + probes. The Banshee 2-shots probes + drones. The Oracle 2-shots probes + drones. The SCV needs 3 hits. That is a HUGE difference, because a single oracle gets nothing done against terran. You have double the time to withdraw an SCV (it survies 2 shots compared to 1 shot like drone/probe) - Terran can wall off easily - High safety in the early game - Terran can play greedy. Or very safe. A banshee, a bunker - and there isn't much cheese the enemy can do. IF the Terran manages to micro his Bio-army like Clem, there is nothing that the other races can do against Terran. Because Terran is just perfect in everything, there isn't a single weakness. Well, despite bio being kind of squishy - but if you micro like Clem, this is not an issue. And that results in the perfect race that is in the hands of Clem in this shape and form unbeatable.
@@scroogietw6878 Uncle Scrooge, I love the picture you chose :) Big fan of all of the comics since many decades and have increasing problems to find enough room to store all those comics^^
When someone massively outplays their opponent game-in and game-out, they look unbeatable. It's insane to see the best SC2 we have ever seen and the first thing that pops into your mind is an unhinged manifesto about balance.
Seems like in the Goldenaura game, Serral threw away his chances when he dove into the planetary. All he did was turn a planetary into a CC at the cost of 40+ supply and his entire bank, he never got close to Clem's army supply after that and Clem ran over him.
13:45 getting the planetary was not a good trade since he was only trading banelings for a building plus 6 scvs. would have been better for the banelings to also get the rest of the mining spread.
Hi Lambo, thank you a lot for this great analysis and all credits to Clem for this groundbreaking performance. It seems he was finally able to bring his full potential to the table. If he plays like this he might only be stopped in a tournament in a TvT I think by a Terran by the likes of Maru. I would also love to see an analysis of the Clem vs. Reynor series. He was the only one able to play a close series against Clem. 😀
Clem played well, deserve every wins. What I think should have a small change in the game is 'SCAN', those unlimited scans on late game is insane. A skill attached to one of the toughest building in HP that can lift and fly around, mana base, accumulative, without a global CD, unblockable, last 12sec, reveal cloak and instant cast.
I was amazed to see Serral to begin with. Thought he was doing military service. Fact that he had time to prepare for a championship and got to the finals speaks volumes.
Did people forget that in IEM Katowice 2024, Serral 3-0ed Clem? I went back to the comment section during that time, and not once did I see anyone saying Terran was imbalanced... but when Clem wins, suddenly all Terrans are imbalanced. Like, what???
Yep, There has always been a Zerg bias in foreign SC2 -Scene. Most successful foreigners, most casters and most of the other popular community-figures/admins have always been Zerg players/fans. Terrans have mostly been associated with GSL and some kind of resistance. Before Clem it was most likely a Korean Terran that ended a good foreigners run. So it all make sense that the audience have a negative view on Terran.
They're all clowns who secretly hope their race loses in any big tournament because then they can cry imba. I mean just looking at the match history between serral and clem in the last 10 matches its 5-5.
@@vajrayana4504 I don't agree with this at all there is no secret zerg bias. Zerg wins a tournament people cry imba about zerg. Terran wins a tournament people cry imba about terran. It's how its been for the last 12 years. Different people crying, same story. Their race lost so the other must be imba!
terran isnt 'suddenly' imbalanced, its been imbalanced for a long time especially since the map pool, serral just wins anyway usually so people dont cry about it. take away serral and the last 20 tournaments would be won by t, except 1-2 by dark.
Terran in fact is imbalanced. Serral only wins when his opponent goes too passive in the opening. Clem is not a passive player like oliveirekt and marugarette
as a zerg main this series hurt to watch - but i was reminded of Flash in the good ol days and that was really awesome - watching the fighting on 3+ fronts was insane!
Also I think some thing clem did very well was not really engaging in the fights, he pokes endlessly so he barely loses any units, the medívacs poke and when Serral is coming he lifts off, and with the thors gosht the same he pokes and when the zerg is coming he backs off to tanks and lib and planetary
Clem got good at TvZ by playing Reynor all the time, eventually he overtook Reynor in their rivalry and he started beefing with Serral, and now it's looking like Clem might be overtaking Serral. Do we have a new StarCraft 2 bonjwa on the rise?
>spoiler alert, for those of you who havent seen it yet Wel im kinda bummed you spoiled it in the title (i was looking for the clem vs serral upper bracket day3 game and this popped up and spoiled the whole thing) but oh well
In regards to terran being imba, and me being a big clem fan, although it is true that this was perhaps the greatest terran gameplay seen to date, It just seems a bit unfair that there is literally NOWAY serral could’ve won late game vs terran. So I think people see it as in perfect zvt, terran ALWAYS wins, which is sad tbh
yea, i wouldnt even mind that. for that to be balanced then hypothetically zerg needs to sustain minimal losses early from harass and win mid game, before late game terran. but lambo says ´´yea so this 3cc 2-1-1 build has literally no counter and ensures a macro game.´´ and ´´yea i have no clue what he can do to win honestly´´. clem did play better but damn.
"NOWAY serral could’ve won late game vs terran" But he stills continue to win late game vs all other Terrans than Clem... Like Lambo said : "vs all other Terran than Clem, Serral would be good after this moove".
Clem plays like a young Maru on steroids. Some people forget that prior to this shift to a more defensive, turtling style, Maru was borderline psychotic in his aggression and control. I feel like Clem plays a similar way but more polished.
Really well described. I think Maru went to a more defensive style cause he got more comfortable with it, he could win with less risk, and we have seen ppl like serral adapted eat him bigtime. Crazy how Serral absolute destroyed Maru, and got absolute destroyed by Clem.
I think this emphasizes the true power of momentum and controlling your opponents, rather than a race specifically. I’ve watched a ton of Serral games and he’s at his most dominant when he’s in the driver’s seat and you have to play against what he wants to do. Similarly, Maru and Clem here used to favor hyper aggressive plays that were gambles but they destabilized a Zerg’s footing nearly from the start. It’s the same reason Protoss at the high level is so reliant on getting early economic damage, because you need to slow down your opponents and seize the initiative early, or you’ll lack any way to take it back.
@@PashaandDrosha Yes, basically every Korean Terran's carpal tunnels are completely shot by 21, really impressive by Clem to play this style for so long.
I had an idea about balance a couple months ago, when they were redesining the cyclone, might as well drop it here, maybe it'll get traction. My idea was to nerf mass snipes, by applying a buff on a unit thar was recently sniped (say 5 seconds). This buff would make the unit take less damage (let's say 70% less damage taken) from subsequent snipes during that periodof time. This would increase brood lord, corruptors, and mostly ultralisk survivability late game against mass snipes. The ghost would still be a useful addition, but not the backbone of late game terran. Numbers like duration of the buff and damage reduction against snipe are to be tested
i like that idea, something with the ghost needs to be done. trading energy for a 300mineral 250 gas for a tier 4 brood that has 0 dps is gross. while also being the most defensive and also aggressive race. but terran is insanely reliant on the ghost. its like a house being supported by a single beam, you need to remove it because its an unsafe flawed design, but the house will fall. there needs to be more beams, more t3 units that would encourage tech swapping or smart counters. building marine medivac tank/mine ghost every single game is absurd.
3 points on this matter: 1) Clem was better than Serral - and it was not even close (and this is coming from a big Serral fan-boy) 2) The current map pool is very unfriendly towards Zerg 3) Points 1 and 2 can co-exist
Absolutely! I don't quite understand why people are balance whining. It seemed pretty obvious to me that Clem was simply playing better than Serral the entire series.
I really feel that it is just too hard for zerg to push to planetaries. Terran can take 1-2medivacs full of tier1 units and shipe hatcheries while zerg cannot proceed even with 12k bank. Or saccing like 30 banelings
Really enjoyed the little bit of commentary you did at EWC, well done! After a long day with many games the 'play-by-play yelling' some (not all) of the other commentators offered got a bit old and monotonous, I would have appreciated more calm analysis, banter, and commentator rotation, and was a little bit disappointed when I didn't see your name on the commentary roster anymore (same for State tbh).
Agree Clem played amazingly. I will say as a poor Diamond 1 plebe, i run into the situation Serral found himself in in the second game you covered. A slow, but methodical push towards me and one i cant break despite having 2 or three bases ahead. I think that map specifically is too easy for terran to lock down because it is so thin. Both of the hyper thin maps just feel impossible as Zerg. Auto ban for me in matchmaking, but still a lot of sick tank positions in many current maps.
I’m a Z and the game is very balanced. Clem maximizes the potential of T with his endless APM so much that it looks broken vs Zerg who doesn’t have as much micro potential.
@@shadowpriest2574 It's crazy to you because you don't understand the game. It is easy to explain what Maru did wrong (being passive), it's not easy to explain what Serral did wrong. This is because TvZ is broken.
I was waiting for this analysis by lambo. Do you think borrowed bains, multi nydus, Drops, tlo Style creepspread is mandatory at this Level of play now?
I really wish Serral hadn't played while he is serving in the military. From what I hear that is the case. Which means he hasn't been able to practice as much. All I saw was him not having that finger tip feel, because he was.. not tapped in. Clem being better than ever equals a guaranteed loss. I just wish dark was better at zvz. I think dark could have taken Clem that night;). But congratulations to the new champion, Clem for the biggest sc2 tourney so far!(, may there be bigger ones to come!)
@@gkkgl5mkakhelt If you talk about the fourth game, Serral don't have enough larva anymore to spend his money. And clem was about to claim another of his bases, so yes it was pretty much over.
" hurts my zerg heart to listen "its already over" when both players was maxed out zerg had bigger bank." That is because that is just how the game is. How many games of SC2 have you even watched in order to be surprised by that? Zerg almost always wins as long as he mines more bases and in this case, the base distribution was somewhat equal. Equal bases = zerg loses every time, its basic TvZ at this point.
I am just a mere Diamond player, but i can have 15k in the bank and just realize the game is over at one point vs a turtly terran. It is not good game design.
lambo, why dont you think serral did his usual lurker late game grinding? there was some lurkers but it wasnt the same style he uses vs maru. i wonder if serral doesnt think it works vs clem
Clem is a great player, and i saw lambos post about recognizing that, however, terran has been very strong this patch. The bio balls are too powerful. With baneling nerfs there is not an easy counter.
every tier 3 zerg unit gets smashed by ghost and they all suck (except lurker but playing lurker is like tank wars in TvT, yuck) as well. so you need to completely outmine terran while trading 20 banelings for a planetary and they fly an orbital over instantly. in mid diamond, sure. but in the GM/pro scene what can you do? kill them early? they go 3cc 2-1-1.
Also.. well, Liquid was originally founded & formed through Starcraft before they opened more division and sign another player from other game. So for this victory, it's coming home for Liquid 🎉. Thanks, Clem for bring back the glory and put Liquid in a map at Starcraft scene again 🥳
Terran isnt Imba, its just a race that reward high APM and its pretty well balanced. Its just that clem with his playstyle is like an alien and can achieve something theorically impossible. I would say a race is imba only if at the same APM, a player is better than another. But with the APM performance of Clem during this tournament, no other player come even close, so its pretty deserved imho
@@vexienroe and dont say goldenaura, the map with a chokepoint ramp to every base and a ton of airspace. that map is perfectly fine for t and thats why serral loses on it vs oli at kato too.
On the Oceanborn game, it seems like Serral does do a lot of what you said he could have done better in the Goldenaura game. He gets to a really high drone count early, barely loses anything to the hellion/banshee, and cleans up Clem's 1/1 push and drops very well. He had good creep too except around his 5th (and maybe that's why he loses it? Though the fight itself seemed like it went better for Serral). He also takes a good fight in the middle of the map catching Clem unsieged at 10min. In my amateur eyes, it felt like Serral was outplaying Clem (who had a few late pickups and not the best tank positions) for the first 10 minutes of the Oceanborn game (and only that game), and yet Serral was still not ahead. Is not much creep around his 5th+a bit of macro slipping at 10min enough to get behind vs Terran even if Zerg had a near perfect early game? I feel like if you covered up the supplies, I would take Serral's first 10 minutes 100/100 times and be thrilled with it. After the 10min mark it feels like Clem really takes over and starts playing better than Serral, so all credit to him. But I feel like Serral still had the perfect early game with nothing really to show for it, and I'm not sure what Zerg can do.
Yea the first 9 or so minutes are good (the 10th minute is already rough thats close to when he loses the 5th for the first time). But let's keep in mind Serral isn't winning because he didn't take much damage in the first 9 minutes. That's literally how its supposed to be. You aren't supposed to lose your 4th to hellions. So not losing your 4th doesn't mean your ahead. It just means your even. So even if Serral takes almost 0 damage he shouldn't have anything to show for it. It's not like clem did some weird build, no clem played completely standard. And so did Serral. Clem isn't meant to do much damage. Honestly a weird take you have. "and I'm not sure what Zerg can do." Yea when playing against a better player there isn't much you can do. Clem was simply better. He caught Serral out of position and killed the 5th base when he obviously had an army that shouldn't have since it got cleaned up right after the 5th died. He then does another push towards the 5th and catches serral off guard killing it again. Again while having an army that just shouldn't have since serral cleaned it up right after. Then, Clem again catches Serral off position and kills the alternative 5th on the other side of the map. At this point clem has established his own 5th and is playing 5 base terran vs 4 base zerg. Since Zerg is repeatedly losing his bases when he shouldn't be. That's literally just getting outplayed.
@@noobzerg1990 I think I'm coming at it from the angle of like: 3CC hellion banshee on average kills a certain X number of drones, Y number of queens, and forces Z number of lings. Don't know exactly what those numbers are, but I feel like pretty commonly it's like 6 drones, 1 queen, and a bit more lings than Serral made on Oceanborn. If the Terran gets more damage than the average with 3CC, they should be ahead. If Zerg takes less damage than average, they should be ahead. I feel like this should be a reasonable assumption right? But it appears to me that yes definitely Serral's first 9 minutes is significantly better than the average, and yet it doesn't feel like he's ahead. Minute 9-10 is questionable. Serral clears a lot of Clem's army efficiently, but also loses the 5th. I'm not sure how good trades Zerg needs to get vs Terran to offset Terran killing the 5th. And maybe I should've been more clear, but my "not sure what Zerg can do" was just dictated towards the early game. I said that Clem clearly takes over after 10 min and is playing better than Serral, so of course he should win from there (as well as every other game in the series). Most of what you're saying Clem does well is already past the 10 min mark. I was just directing my question towards the early/early-mid game and wondering what Serral could have done differently to get ahead, since it felt like Serral did fix all his mistakes Lambo pointed out in the Goldenaura game.
@@Wizzer794 No 3cc hellion banshee should never kill more than 2 drones and it definitely never kills a queen. The only thing it forces out is lings and 3 spores. Thats normal. Serral lost about 5 drones or so to the banshees if iirc he didn’t lose a queen. Even if he only lost 2 drones. He’d still be even. It’d still be 50/50. Even if he lost 0 drones it really doesn’t matter 5 or so drones against a 66drone Zerg doesn’t matter. 3cc hellion banshee gaurantees a 50/50 middle game A lot of people surprisingly feel that early game for Zerg is bad and that Terran has it too easy. But that’s just not the case. Players like serral 99% of the time deal with hellions and banshees with 0 losses. That’s the standard. Losing stuff to the hellions is not. Therefore not losing stuff doesn’t mean you’re ahead. While losing stuff means you’re behind. Let’s put it like this losing things to hellions and banshees must mean you made a mistake. Because hellions and banshees have longer rotations than the queens. This means the queens in theory despite being slower will always be in time to defend hellion harass. If the hellions have killed drones this means the Zerg made a mistake. On the other hand a Zerg not making a mistake does not mean they’re ahead. But I agree that because of the nature of Zerg at some point if they never make a mistake they will be ahead of the Terran. Unfortunately that takes awhile way longer than simply defending hellion harass.
@@noobzerg1990 It's very obvious that 3cc hellion banshee in practice often kills more than 2 drones and sometimes kills a queen. Maybe in theory only 2 drones should be lost and the zergs are just playing bad when they lose anything more. On Oceanborn, Serral only loses 3 drones, (no queen) and much later than typical, he's already on 78 worker supply before he loses his first 2. From what you're saying, Terran still has the opportunity to get ahead with 3cc banshee at the current time/map pool (games where too many drones/a queen is lost, or the 4th get cancelled initially). But if Zerg defends perfectly, it's just 50/50.
@@noobzerg1990 not taking damage and not building too much army is on paper quite literally zergs win condition. they are, again, on paper the ´´do not let their economy go unchecked or you die´´ race. terran completely owns the map early game, is super hard to break mid game due to 3cc 2-1-1, and will win in an evenly matched late game. should serral worker pull 12 pool clem? 3cc 2-1-1 gives map control, decent aggression, early game safety, and comparable eco to zerg when factoring in resource efficiency.
In the Goldenaura game, why wasn't Serral spreading the creep on his southern 4th from around 8 to 12 minutes? There were a bunch of fresh tumors that didn't move. Seems like the marine tank push would've been easier to repel if he'd spread the creep tumors. Was Clem just pushing his multitasking too much?
Yes, whenever a Zerg doesn't spread the creep it's never on purpose, SC2 is simply a hard game and he wasn't quick enough to spread the creep while everything else was going on.
@@LamboSC2 Am I correct in thinking he also missed injects from time to time ? Serral is goat and the ultimate defensive macro player of all time, but it seems there was a few uncharacteristic macro slips this time around that added up over time. Definately felt the back breaking pressure of clem's death by 1000 cuts, it was almost faultless. I felt the golden aura game too, that 8 o clock siege, even though he broke it, it seemed to take a long time to dislodge the mine tank, where if you check the Reynor game that position never got a chance to setup, I think that played a factor too long term.
@@mlo4572 Clem is playing unironic 500APM Terran with roughly 300 EPM . Going to be a tough road regardless. I watched the replay on game 4. There was a pool of larva in the centre of the map that all were unused from a dead hatch, and serral almost never injected his out side hatches. But i think the main problem in the end clem swallwed the whole center of the map, serral was larva starved, but there was almost no breaking that position unless you go 200 200 corrupoters kill all the libs, then go 200 200 broods all without the ghosts killing everything
Very interesting breakdown and insightful analys. Clem has reached another level! Great Video Lambo. Just one minor thing though, You gotta stop spreading the myth that Ghosts have "so much hp" (30:28) Comapred to what? They just have 100HP which is for example only 10 more than the infestor. Otherwise Great as always!
Congrats to Clem for playing so well and I am pretty sure Serral will do great again. He 3-0 Maru in this same tournament. For the late game balance whinners, remind you one important thing. Balance in SC2 is not symetric. Zerg economy is the most explosive and the best if unchecked. That means that terran needs to be more cost efficient to be balanced. And if terran is more efficient, then in a late game in which the terran was able to defend the waves of zerg should have an advantage. If zerg unints where as efficient as terran, zerg would be extremely OP. So it is hard to find a perfect balance for these two races in any situation. Maybe the biggest issue here was the mappool, but Clem just played too well. And in the same mappool Serral defeated him before. So the balance whinning is unfair.
except terran does not 'defend waves of zerg'. zerg defends for its life against terran the whole game, just too lose in lategame to the untouchable terran army and the fact terran needs 50 workers to zergs 80 whilst zerg, is supposed to have the bigger army but physically can't because t has 150 army supply and 80 worker income at once.
somone with that much apm should focus on epm. If Clem has the ability to look at a screen, recognise the scenario, and establish thee best course of action. This should be implemented rather than microing 1 marine. The evolution is real.
Its really easy to prepare for serral, imo (not easy to beat) because you just have to find damage somewhere because you are probably not better than him in a standard macro game, and because of that you kinda know whats coming. Similarly its very hard to prep for clem, for all the same reasons but for clem, he has access to the absolute best units in the game that are usually only limited by control and you cannot find someone who can use the units as well as clem can. Clem really just did standard openings into standard macro games every game but his harass was just next level. Since zerg is the one who has to defend you cant really practice defending that harass because no one else is even capable of doing it
Reynor learned to defend this kind of thing by playing archon mode against GMs by himself. He came up with the split queens meta to address split hellions by this practice method. Clem also practices vs archon in a similar way. There were some recent games of him playing solo vs Maxpax+harstem+…
your first analysis RECAP: - Its even, serral is trading well into clem, Maybe even slightly ahead, BUT WAIT! Serral traded like 20 lings into scv's that maybe he shoulndt!!! and all of a sudden "its over for serral" Yeah idk man................... those 8-10 invincible ghosts that just murder everything they see might have played a role....not sure 20 more lings woulda made the difference there
In game 2 I think Serral could have used pure ling to take out siege tanks on the bottom path in the mid game. Also, I'd like to see Zerg figure out a way to use free supply units to win a mid-game fight. Like, build 20 overseers, deny all production, go for a fight, immediately REMAX and trade again. Or pre-send overlords with creep on to the Teran retreat path just before a fight. Or use mass changeling drops to. Obviously not cost effective, but there is 0 point holding a giant bank to the end game if Clem plays like this.
Looks like mass zergling would be good against the end game army, imagine attacking that middle position in the second game from every direction with 200 zerglings. Pretty much all high value units will die to ghosts but not zerglings
Ghost with any support are actually very good against Zerglings since they 2 shot them. So even if an army is lacking marines or hellbats, Ghost + Tank + Libs + Buildings always trades very well against lings, and if the ghost get overwhelmed you can lift them up.
@@LamboSC2 what in your professional opinion is actually the counter to ghosts with support? nerfed fungal and banes that get oneshot by tanks and outsped by ghosts even before they pick up?
Game 4, to me, showcases what I've been saying for years ever since we saw Maru pull off seemingly impossible wins against Dark and the other top zergs: ghosts are fundamentally overpowered against Zerg. But it also requires an absolute ton of mechanical skill - it's not like just anyone can do it. Zerg players made some strategic adjustments and, I think, just in general developed better mechanical skill to cope with Maru's ghost play. Can that be done again for Clem? Because Clem is almost certainly the most mechanically skilled player right now, to the point that he made Serral look like a complete chump in the way that Serral had just previously made Dark look like a chump. When you have that sheer speed and precision, Steady Shot is just fundamentally unfair against a race that is entirely comprised of biological units. EMP and Steady Shot match or out-range Zerg's most likely counters (Fungal Growth or Abduct, or I guess broodlord/lurker attack range) and it also means that any engagement that you don't decisively win is *hugely* costly for Zerg as the ghosts will happily snipe everything that's trying to pull back. The ghosts can also quickly kill the overseers needed to even see the ghosts if they are using cloaking, which presents a different challenge. I genuinely do not know what Zerg is supposed to do against a player of Clem's caliber and mechanical skill and I think that's what we were seeing on Serral's face in those last couple games - dude was just simply out of ideas. Serral had a 5-digit minerals bank and plenty of gas all stocked up in game 4 and it just simply didn't matter. Clem slowly pushed forward with siege and structures and utilized ghosts to ensure that any engagement would drastically favor him. And as you said, once he's perched in one of those places you're effectively cutting off a large part of Zerg production which makes it increasingly hard to dislodge the Terran. I don't know what the solution is. Giving Zerg casters more HP to survive a single snipe would potentially unbalance ZvP and ghosts don't need any changes in TvP (they are perfectly fine there.) But Zerg needs *something* to deal with snipe spam because as it stands, having literally every single unit be vulnerable to it is a huge design problem. Maybe make ultras take 25% less damage from spells? It wouldn't really affect ZvP meaningfully since Protoss doesn't really use spells to deal with ultras to begin with, but it would make snipe less effective at dealing with ultras, maybe making them a bit more viable in the matchup?
terran played at 100% is far stronger than the other races, people who think zerg is the high skill ceiling race don't understand the game outside of who has the most apm, and yes ghosts are stupidly op especially since the ONLY counters, fungal and banes, have been basically deleted from the game.
@@sirduckoufthenorth its not the change i would have made but its in the right direction, id prefer an auto attack dps reduction and a 10%- hp nerf so they are more like a specialist spellcaster than their current 'beats literally everything' role, also i think the supply change impacts z v t much more than p v t so yeah, thats not great
If serral also has flying units to kill those pesky medivacs, that could have been better. Ling bane muta is the key to clem's double pronged attacks. Ling bane muta, then switch to hydra once he attacks with widow mines. Use remaining muta to counter attack. Clem is Serral's weakness because he still thinks he can win with only ling bane against flying marines with tanks.
ling bane muta is literally useless vs bio/ghost/tank/medivac these days. the tanks oneshot the banes, the marines kill everything, the ghosts are too fast and the banes will never catch them, if you dont chase the ghosts then you might kill some marines with the banes but it will be cost inefective and the ghosts count will just grow to where the game is over. on top of that all clem has to do is start making a few mines and 5k res of muta will vanish to 500 res of mine in an instant.
Starcraft Brood War hasnt had a balance patch since 2001 and we have seen all sorts of champions from every playstyle from every race and a meta that is still evolving to this day. It's not a balance issue, it's a skill or creativity issue. Either that or SC2 is just not a deep enough RTS.
Sometimes players get creative, and it gets nerfed. Comes to mind when Dark started chaining broodlings, and it was insta-nerfed in the next patch. I don't see huge imbalances now. Just the current map pool is slightly terran favoured, and that gave Clem a little edge over Serral. And that Serral is doing his military service. If we go straight to "nerf terran!!1!" when the map pool changes to something more neutral and Serral is again fully focused, nobody will have a chance against him. As you say, let top zergs and protoss analyze Clem games and at least try something, before going to nerfs/buffs.
@@Rainnnny You defeat your argument. If the game is "completely imbalanced" there will be no way a map pool can favour the underpowered race so much as to win against the overpowered race. Races are more or less balanced, and the maps give a small edge here and there to some race. Maybe we need less fantasy on the map pools, more neutral maps. Pro players already prefer "boring" maps over gold bases, speed/slow zones, rich geysers, fancy layouts...
Honestly watching this I felt like Serral got unlucky in game 1 and 2, lost game 3 straight up, but then it seemed like he just threw the lategame in game 4... Attacking around those corners into planetaries just made no sense. This is past the point where you said the game is already lost.
I have two questions Lambo, I will be extremely happy if you could answer :) : - Do you think the outcome of the series between clem would have been more close without the nerf of fungal and banes? Or was this irrelevant? - I think Neural the Ghost an EMP is now more useful, I do not know why Serral doesn't do that. The emp can empty Ghost and Mediavec. Am I missing something?
With 20 ghosts in the field they would snipe the investir, the infestor would need to Hunt a ghost and waste the fungel, that could be better, thats what i think
Not even bruh lol zerg as nerf time and time again because terrans complain and while clem played the games of his life, serral didnt even look remotely closed to putting up a fight against the oppresiveness, efficiency and cost of terran units and gameplay, if we gonna argue well serral 4-0 maru then i can tell you those games were very close... Sounds like balance whining but facts are facts... we gonna sit here and pretend the minute a terran feels somewhat oppressed they dont fire up the nerf cannon lolol
Serral was sloppy with his vipers use, against Clem. Compared with how masterfully he used them to snipe incredible value in siege tanks, medics and liberators against Maru
To counter the 3cc 2-1-1 there is a window where you can make extra lings to runby after the double drop leaves base as T will have nothing at home to deal with it
@@verdibyrd You don't have hellions with 2-1-1. Thats the whole point of it to have enough marines for the double drop. And you definitely don't have a mine 5 min into the game. Idk what nonsense you got that from. I'm telling you from experience from playing terran at a GM level and having a zergling runby 10 seconds after the double drop leaves the base always resulted in me losing a lot (cause you don't have anything at home defending during this time window).
@@grolg4793 a standard **3CC** 2-1-1 does infact have hellions, 2. (You don't have a mine at 5 minutes tho, for sure no way) At 5:25-5:30 when the ling runby would arrive, you easily have a completed full wall on the lowground (double ebay + double depot) with marine reinforcements and potentially even hellions behind that wall (maybe they would be on out the map, but still a super easy hold, you could even repair, or your drop could come back and you'd be ahead still.) The only thing that could possibly do anything is a 5 minute bane bust which is obviously not a thing and would be terribly easy to scout and hold. If your playing a 2-1-1 without a 3rd CC, then everything you said is true.
I appreciate how well Clem played, no doubts at this point he's way better than Serral. But I don't enjoy when a player spamming a single unit and having success with it. Look at this army of ghosts 25:46. As a viewer I'm not enjoying this unit abuse against Zerg. I think Zerg race having serious trouble dealing with mass ghosts. The same way I hated when Serral abused mass banelings before nerf. Whenever he started doing this I just switched off the game or ff to the next one. I think it's time for ghosts to get nerfed again and give Terran something else to play with in lategame.
Clem maxed out the advantage the T favored map pool gave him, lets face it. The years of nerfing Z and tilting map pool against Serrals dominance finally showed the result that was intended. Kudos to Clem though for playing awesome and punishing every tiny mistake Serral made while making much fewer mistakes himself compared to previous match-ups.
To make things more fair for the Zerb, I think Terrence’s shouldn’t be able to scan. Their or bottles just give them mules, but no more scans. Also, the range of the ghost snipe needs to be reduced.
Clem played better, and I'm happy to give him that. But he shouldn't have won 4-0, with only a couple of the games even being competitive. The ceiling that ghosts give to terrans is basically "unbeatable." I don't even play, but it's frustrating to watch.
You can't do anything. Terran played at this level (similar to Serral's Zerg) is literally unbeatable because of all the cheats they have. You can't go against a late game Terran army as a Zerg, they can counter everything. Clem just showed how broken the race is. Serral had a few great moments that should have got him at least 2 maps (even in this heavily Terran-favored map pool), but against a Terran of similar skill level, they are not enough. It's time for some massive and well-deserved balance changes for Terran. The rest of Terrans will just have to finally start playing better. Or you can just make Zerglings ranged units that can also attack air, it will be fun having similar T1 unit to the Terran.
People said the exact same thing about every race at various points, yet people rose above, figured out how to play better and solved the puzzle. Serral had a few ok moments, but overall was playing -extremely- sloppily(at least for him) and just making baffling decisions, G1 & 3 are not even worth discussing for how bad Serral's decision was, G2 he made mistake after mistake, never made static d, allowed himself to be picked to pieces while offering nothing back, G4 he started solid but very quickly gave up every advantage he had by making poor decisions and even worse engagements, etc... Serral's current style does not work against someone like Clem who won't give you an opening, he needed to change it up and adapt to what his opponent was doing instead of trying to treat him like Maru. Clem and Terran are far from unbeatable as Reynor very nearly took his series against him. So how about "The rest of Zergs will just have to finally start playing better", especially as Serral has literally won -half- of the premier tournaments this year, y'all are just knee-jerking way too hard.
@@Sam-up4ul zerg has been nerfed for winning tournaments every patch for the last 5+ years, why should it be different for t when we just had 70% t worlds and the second t worlds winner in a row?
@@verdibyrd Basing race balance on how many players shows up to a tournament is goofy af and I shouldn't really need to explain why. Even with 5 years of nerfs, Zerg is still winning the majority of premier tournaments, so genuinely sounds fine tbh.
Clem is awesome. Fast, smart and good looking. However, it seems to me there's a big fat elephant in the room. Terran race is too strong. Needs some decent nerfs. If you put best AI's to play perfect games one against each other, terran race would always win vs zerg. No1 in this univers could've predict 8 losses for GOAT Serral. The god of late game. Clem is awesome, fast, smart and good looking and he is using terran's power to the max; however a "zerg Clem" vs a "terran Clem" would never stand a change. Terran is OP and 8/0 vs Serral with such awesome plays he did, it's just not balanced. More talk about the elephant imho. :D
8 premier tournaments in 2024, 4 won by Zerg, 4 won by Terran, 3 by Serral, 2 by Maru, 2 by Clem, 1 by Dark - in what world is Terran supposedly overpowered? The actual reality is that the SC2 player pool is extremely shallow nowadays and that there's only a tiny handful of actual standout players, Protoss hasn't had a "great" player in a long while and Zerg just lost Dark, outside of Serral/Maru/Clem there's just no-one that's as well rounded and consistent that can go deep in a tournament, has nothing to do with race or balance.
Comparing Terran AI vs Zerg AI is stupid since most humans can never reach that level. And the fact is Zerg has been by far the most successful race at the top level for the past 7 years. If anything, it is Protoss that may be underpowered.
Your analysis makes it sound that the game is imbalanced and yet clem lost against dark 3-1, lost 2 maps to reynor, clem hasnt been able to beat maxpax in the kung fu cups, Serral even goin to his military service and not play as the other participants was still able to get to the grand finals, So if serral and clem play again and if serral wins, the races would not be inbalanced anymore? Or are we looking into a situation were clem needs to go a road similar as serral went? He needs to keep winning and get T nerfs and still be able to win, this is the only solution for the whiners to shut up about the imbalance in the game with terrans?
I don't recall calling this imbalanced at all, my intention here was to talk about how well clem played in this series and that he won with superior and more clean execution in mid to lategame. I tried to figure out what the mistakes of Serral were and outlined them, and talked about potential to play better. Also not sure what this has to do with Clem vs Maxpax lol
@@LamboSC2 thanks for taking the time to answer me, i loved seeing the grand final and have seen it 3 times now from different streamers, live, winter, steadfast, and others, and in the commentary section there are a lot of people talking about how terrans are OP and the game is imbalanced Just because serral lost 5-0 (which nobody in the world was expecting) and im pretty annoyed, so my argument about maxpax is regarding how the game is not imbalanced, or thats the point im triyng to make. Is there a good argument to proof to these people that complaint that the game is imbalanced? I hope i made my self more clear, (i'm a clem fan since he won the winter tournament in 2023 and i'm against the idea the game is imbalanced) have a great day and i love that you where in the tournament, by the way rotterdam did you dirty with the tempest in the demo game before the grand final started.
@@byrondanielvilladamagana5828 the fact there is one single protoss in the world that can sometimes beat clem is a very poor argument for tvp being balanced, it is very clearly the most imbalanced matchup by far which even the balance council recognizes and talks about. then they nerf distruptos and buff bio because fuck non-t races i guess.
the title ruined the entire tournament for me. i couldnt see it live but during rewatching all the games i saw this video popping on my screen. man you really hardcore fucked up with your title.
The final took place one week ago. You have either been diligently avoiding spoilers for a week or you barely look at SC2 content - in which case do you really care about spoilers?
@@oldoddjobs you know you could be really good working at Disney or the concord development team, “it’s the customers fault not mine!” Either way the do not recommend channel button has been pressed. Doesn’t really matter what you say does it. Not really my fault if a creator is too lazy to be creative with their titles
NErf Zergs please... here you see only way possible to beat this sewer race.. You needing 600 apm 3 multi attack at all time!! whilst zerg can sit comfy and make drones..
I asked Serral if he thinks 3 gas Roach Ravager is good against 3CC 2-1-1.
He said he doesn't think it is but he saw Clem delaying his tanks quite abit against 2 base roach, so Clem looked killable with his specific response.
Did Serral say why he thinks he lost so badly? Map pool, balance fatigue, etc.? Or Clem just reached another level of TvZ prowess?
ah so serral scouted clem, had all the time required to make a strat against what clem was doing, and had to settle for something 'i don't think it's good, but i thought maybe i can kill him idk'.
good job balancing the game when the best and smartest player who hates to gamble literally has no options against a basic build from his opponent other than some gamble all -in that he knows will fail!
funny how the balance council are all failed pros tbh, i bet you would be a lot less happy to call out balance complainers if it was YOUR tournament winnings being stolen by blatant imbalance tbh.
@@verdibyrd I will pick this one to answer many of your whiny comments so here goes.
You're wrong in just about everything you say, this goes for all the other balance whine comments, but includes this aswell.
Serral went for this strategy not because it's good against 3cc 2-1-1, but rather because he thought it was a good counter to Clem's specific response to 2 base roach with 3cc 2-1-1 (delayed tanks). He then messed up the execution and lost because of that. He picked an all in he thought would work against his specific opponent on the 2 most terran favoured maps in the mappool (which he has to play since it's a bo9) , which is not all that surprising and happens all the time with all 3 races.
The balance council are also not all failed pros, Serral is literally in it. Reynor, Dark, Shin, Solar and all the other Zergs are in there too, just like every other Progamer you can think of aside from Heromarine.
Serral lost cause he played worse than Clem, you can ask him aswell if that makes you happier. I am sure he'll give you the same answer.
I believe this mappool is very Terran favoured (surprisingly the only thing you didn't actually cry about), but it is so blatantly obvious that Clem played better in this series, that i can't believe you're in here whining about money being stolen in multiple comments.
@@LamboSC2 ah my bad dude! yeah am sure my 15 years+ of playing 10+ different rts at the high level ass just knows nothing at all and the balance in sc2 is perfect rn! am sure me and the other 70% of zergs that have quit this game in the last 2 years were just dumb afterall, thanks for clearing that up.
its obvious to anyone with half a brain that the baneling nerf, distruptor nerf, cyclone buff, bio buff, medivac buff etc etc etc all made the game objectively worse for z and p, and easier for t, when the entire focus of the patch was to strengthen p vs t. blaming the mapmakers for this utter failure is a dirty move tbh mate.
@@LamboSC2 also how do you explain reynor saying the balance is broken rn? is he just wrong and whining too? or is it only whine when its someone from the 99.9990% of players that doesn't bring in views like usual? you think that 3:2 will be the same result without this trash balance patch? so yes, money did not go where it would have if not for the very strange balance decisions. now it isnt my place to talk about other ppl money, but reynor sure isnt gonna say it is he, one thing he talks about the imbalance but that would be too far. also i never said clem didn't play better, tbh that was obvious and nowhere have i ever pulled clem down. it was a deserved win, vs a serral that looked at about 20% of his best.
I would love it, if we could appreciate how well Clem played instead of balance whining. This man reached a new peak level of Terran gameplay, and he undoubtably played better than Serral in this series! The last thing we should do is try to discredit a performance like this, he was simply the best last week. Thank you :D
Peak Terran gameplay. No one has played Terran better than Clem this tournament in my eyes, ever.
I don't completely agree with this statement because they are two different topics.
1. Clem
He has been a consistently good player for years and has continued to improve. Unfortunately, his tournament performances often did not match his abilities and it is now all the nicer to see that he is finally rewarding himself with this result. He seems very likeable and so I am even more happy for him.
2. Balance
If a player like Serral, in my opinion the best Zerg player at the moment, loses 0:5 in a final, then it must be possible to talk about the balance in this matchup. For me, that is a different topic and has nothing to do with Clem's consistently overwhelming quality for years.
@@andreashaase424 serral did not even practice as much as other players because he was in the military and still beat maru, dark, her0, in the other hand we have clem that went to south korea to practice and get ready for this tournament, the story ay the beggining on how clem would defend against the rouch queen shows how he study his opponent, so serral losing a tournament and saying the game is imbalanced is Just pure whining
Agreed
@@andreashaase424Could make the same argument for how Serral almost always sweeps Maru. Maru, the all time best Terran player can't do jack against Serral most of the time.
The map pool is really good for Terran, BUT I’ve never seen anyone play better Terran than Clem in this series, actually insane and very well deserved. Thank you Lambo!
Imagine a 2010 pro gamer see clem play these games. Their mind would explode. The speed that he operates is almost impossible to imagine.
yes between the 2010 and 2020 humans evolved to be faster than imaginable
@@arkrou obviously he's exaggerating a bit, but players have seriously gotten a lot better in that time, they probly never thought this speed would be possible
@@ataleofvalor This is ridiculous, BW players are just as fast
@@arkrou It honestly feels like modern BW pros are slower than they were in the KESPA era and modern sc2 pros. soulkey only hits 300 apm during really intense fights, snow basically never hits 300. theyre just reallllly smart and efficient.
Great casting and analysis all tournament long and thanks for this great video! Would love to see some analysis of the super close Reynor-Clem series!
Would you also review 2 maps that Reynor won against Clem? The only 2 maps Clem lost in the entire tournament, I'm pretty sure
I hate all the comments that claim a specific race is imbalanced. Clem wins one championship and terran is imba? Serral has won A LOT more championships, so why isn't zerg imba? These silly comments just diminish the type of performance that Clem had at this tournament. Historically, Clem loses to Serral like 70% of the time (I'm guessing, I didn't check the stats). Then, at this huge tournament, Clem plays at his absolute peak performance, manages to achieve the impossible, and losers in the comments want to blame the balance of the game? Just shut up. The top 4 at the tournament were 2 zerg, 1 terran, and 1 toss. That sounds pretty balanced. All races have their annoying units and strategies that feel unfair sometimes, but honestly, the races are pretty balanced, and every race feels like they have the opportunity to win any game or series at any tournament if the player is playing really well (like Clem did here). So please, no more whining. Celebrate a great player getting a great win. Serral was just outmatched on this occasion, but if I know Serral, I'm certain he'll be back on top in the near future.
Because seral was always the outlier, he performed significantly above every other zergs. Also, zerg have been nerfed a lot specifically because of seral.
This tournament had 9 terrans, 4 zergs and 3 protoss. This should give you an idea of the current game balance.
Also, what could seral have done better? No seriously? I'm 2 games into the video and so far the only real thing Lambo pointed out was that seral's first overseer was maybe a few seconds too late, which didn't even change much.
Heck, at 19 minutes Lambo directly said that there is no counter to the early game build clem is doing, even if you know what he's doing
A lot of people hold the "Serral GOAT" narrative because he's been the best player for a few years and think he's untouchable. If he loses it's imbalance because there has never been anyone, and never will be anyone better.
It's just fanboyism.
Lets face it, toss is the only race that deserves a boost.
Zerg is imba. It takes a genius on the level of Clem to win.
@@Jet-ij9zc Well, from toss perspective, Maxpax don't go to offline tournaments, and a lot of Korean's toss players are either in military service or just came back from it not long ago. While A lot of Korean Terran's are playing from a long time now. I think Terran is a bit ahead, but certainly not "completly imbalance" right now. Clem played in a way nobody did before.
When Clem gets his speed on the road, he sometimes seems invincible. What a Performance. Maybe he was little lucky avoiding ever other Terran, but 8:0 Serral - That´s impressive.
I reckon Maru vs Clem would be an interesting match, nowadays. Maru has a good win record against Clem, but maybe Clem will figure a counter for mass Ravens 😅
a serral out of half a year almost no practice... people underestimate that fact
@@strammerdetlef Maybe they underestimate that fact, because he beat the best competing Protoss two times, the (before that tournament considered) best Terran and the second best Zerg (besides Serral himself) 🤣
Clem played Terran Like every sc2 Fan dreams about. Truly goat of terran. The Multitasking was insane
Wow, what an amazing performance from Clem throughout the whole tournament.
He deserved this win, his Terran is the best Terran I have ever seen.
My take on Clems Terran - quite long, but maybe somebody is interested.
IMO in his hands Terran is almost unbeatable, because Terran combines everything you need in Starcraft:
Bio-Terran has:
- great mobility (medivacs)
- insane DPS
- great scouting tools with the reaper, the hellion and - of course - scans
- low supply needed for a lot of dps (8 marines + medivac are only 10 army supply, but can deal huge amount of damage in short time)
- high sustainability and regeneration (heal)
- a perfect mix of high micro units (bio + medivac), combined with stuff that takes very little effort (mines + liberators), but that require a lot of attention from the opponent
- none of his army becomes obsolete - marines are good early, mid and late game - compare that to roach/ravager which are just mid mid/lategame, so as Zerg you have to get rid of them.
- Ghosts / Tanks / Libs and mines almost always guarantee you very good, very efficient trades
- huge range (libs + tanks)
- with the Ghost you counter almost every Zerg Unit: Ghost counter Ultras, Broodlords, Lurker and Hydras - and they do quite well against banes too - and even against zerglings they aren't bad. So they counter everything but do not get countered by anything.
The only downside: Squishy. Bio Terran can get destroyed by AoE fast.
But if you play as good as clem - and with the huge nerfs to banes + fungal - that just doesn't happen.
And his stuff counters the AoE of the opponent very well:
Banes + Infestors have been heavily nerfed. Marauders do very well against banes. Ghost do well against infestors.
And against Toss it is even more heavy: Templar? NO chance against ghosts EMP (which btw reduce the HP of Toss armies by roughly 1/3 with 1 click!)
The Colossi die against marauders and esp. vikings extremly fast
Disruptors are great - if the Terran doesn't micro very good. Against Clem, the Disruptor does almost 0 damage.
And on top of that the Terran has:
- great map vision because of sensor towers
- mid/late game almost unlimited Scans and this way he never has to go in unprepared and he always can check for burrowed threads
- mules, which results in him needing at 15 workers less to mine the same. -> His army supply can be much bigger than the opponents and he still gets the same ressources
- mules as a great comeback tool if he loses SCVs
- SCVs are more resiliant to attacks than drones + probes. The Banshee 2-shots probes + drones. The Oracle 2-shots probes + drones. The SCV needs 3 hits. That is a HUGE difference, because a single oracle gets nothing done against terran. You have double the time to withdraw an SCV (it survies 2 shots compared to 1 shot like drone/probe)
- Terran can wall off easily
- High safety in the early game - Terran can play greedy. Or very safe. A banshee, a bunker - and there isn't much cheese the enemy can do.
IF the Terran manages to micro his Bio-army like Clem, there is nothing that the other races can do against Terran.
Because Terran is just perfect in everything, there isn't a single weakness.
Well, despite bio being kind of squishy - but if you micro like Clem, this is not an issue.
And that results in the perfect race that is in the hands of Clem in this shape and form unbeatable.
terran is just op
Nicely written together
@@scroogietw6878 Uncle Scrooge, I love the picture you chose :)
Big fan of all of the comics since many decades and have increasing problems to find enough room to store all those comics^^
Funny way of saying that Terran is extremely OP, they can circumvent all counters to their units with micro.
When someone massively outplays their opponent game-in and game-out, they look unbeatable. It's insane to see the best SC2 we have ever seen and the first thing that pops into your mind is an unhinged manifesto about balance.
Loving these analyses!
Clem making Terran look unfair the same way Serral so often made Zerg look unfair. Incredible performance
Seems like in the Goldenaura game, Serral threw away his chances when he dove into the planetary. All he did was turn a planetary into a CC at the cost of 40+ supply and his entire bank, he never got close to Clem's army supply after that and Clem ran over him.
Thanx!!
So, what Seral said?
probably serral said: 'thank god i was so bored of winning literally every final since 2019'
Clem did amazing stuff here on that day. Serral didn't look himself. I love this content keep it coming lambo.
I like how lambo says "spoilers if you haven't see the matches yet" but the title of the video is How Clem became a World Champion...
😂😂😂
13:45 getting the planetary was not a good trade since he was only trading banelings for a building plus 6 scvs. would have been better for the banelings to also get the rest of the mining spread.
Love the in-depth analysis! More please
Hi Lambo, thank you a lot for this great analysis and all credits to Clem for this groundbreaking performance. It seems he was finally able to bring his full potential to the table. If he plays like this he might only be stopped in a tournament in a TvT I think by a Terran by the likes of Maru. I would also love to see an analysis of the Clem vs. Reynor series. He was the only one able to play a close series against Clem. 😀
Clem played well, deserve every wins.
What I think should have a small change in the game is 'SCAN', those unlimited scans on late game is insane. A skill attached to one of the toughest building in HP that can lift and fly around, mana base, accumulative, without a global CD, unblockable, last 12sec, reveal cloak and instant cast.
I was amazed to see Serral to begin with. Thought he was doing military service. Fact that he had time to prepare for a championship and got to the finals speaks volumes.
Did people forget that in IEM Katowice 2024, Serral 3-0ed Clem? I went back to the comment section during that time, and not once did I see anyone saying Terran was imbalanced... but when Clem wins, suddenly all Terrans are imbalanced. Like, what???
Yep, There has always been a Zerg bias in foreign SC2 -Scene. Most successful foreigners, most casters and most of the other popular community-figures/admins have always been Zerg players/fans. Terrans have mostly been associated with GSL and some kind of resistance. Before Clem it was most likely a Korean Terran that ended a good foreigners run.
So it all make sense that the audience have a negative view on Terran.
They're all clowns who secretly hope their race loses in any big tournament because then they can cry imba. I mean just looking at the match history between serral and clem in the last 10 matches its 5-5.
@@vajrayana4504 I don't agree with this at all there is no secret zerg bias. Zerg wins a tournament people cry imba about zerg. Terran wins a tournament people cry imba about terran. It's how its been for the last 12 years. Different people crying, same story. Their race lost so the other must be imba!
terran isnt 'suddenly' imbalanced, its been imbalanced for a long time especially since the map pool, serral just wins anyway usually so people dont cry about it. take away serral and the last 20 tournaments would be won by t, except 1-2 by dark.
Terran in fact is imbalanced. Serral only wins when his opponent goes too passive in the opening. Clem is not a passive player like oliveirekt and marugarette
Thanks for the breakdown!
Clem played very ,very well! I hope he can keep it up like this.
What did Serral answer?
"s m d"
as a zerg main this series hurt to watch - but i was reminded of Flash in the good ol days and that was really awesome - watching the fighting on 3+ fronts was insane!
The accuracy of his clicks is off the charts.
Also I think some thing clem did very well was not really engaging in the fights, he pokes endlessly so he barely loses any units, the medívacs poke and when Serral is coming he lifts off, and with the thors gosht the same he pokes and when the zerg is coming he backs off to tanks and lib and planetary
Clem got good at TvZ by playing Reynor all the time, eventually he overtook Reynor in their rivalry and he started beefing with Serral, and now it's looking like Clem might be overtaking Serral. Do we have a new StarCraft 2 bonjwa on the rise?
>spoiler alert, for those of you who havent seen it yet
Wel im kinda bummed you spoiled it in the title (i was looking for the clem vs serral upper bracket day3 game and this popped up and spoiled the whole thing) but oh well
In regards to terran being imba, and me being a big clem fan, although it is true that this was perhaps the greatest terran gameplay seen to date, It just seems a bit unfair that there is literally NOWAY serral could’ve won late game vs terran.
So I think people see it as in perfect zvt, terran ALWAYS wins, which is sad tbh
yea, i wouldnt even mind that. for that to be balanced then hypothetically zerg needs to sustain minimal losses early from harass and win mid game, before late game terran. but lambo says ´´yea so this 3cc 2-1-1 build has literally no counter and ensures a macro game.´´ and ´´yea i have no clue what he can do to win honestly´´. clem did play better but damn.
"NOWAY serral could’ve won late game vs terran"
But he stills continue to win late game vs all other Terrans than Clem... Like Lambo said : "vs all other Terran than Clem, Serral would be good after this moove".
Clem plays like a young Maru on steroids. Some people forget that prior to this shift to a more defensive, turtling style, Maru was borderline psychotic in his aggression and control. I feel like Clem plays a similar way but more polished.
Really well described. I think Maru went to a more defensive style cause he got more comfortable with it, he could win with less risk, and we have seen ppl like serral adapted eat him bigtime.
Crazy how Serral absolute destroyed Maru, and got absolute destroyed by Clem.
Maru used proxies a lot, but arguably his default was always a macro focus, long game style
I think this emphasizes the true power of momentum and controlling your opponents, rather than a race specifically.
I’ve watched a ton of Serral games and he’s at his most dominant when he’s in the driver’s seat and you have to play against what he wants to do. Similarly, Maru and Clem here used to favor hyper aggressive plays that were gambles but they destabilized a Zerg’s footing nearly from the start.
It’s the same reason Protoss at the high level is so reliant on getting early economic damage, because you need to slow down your opponents and seize the initiative early, or you’ll lack any way to take it back.
@@Manocsak2 I think Maru also had wrist problems like all terrans, so he had to temper his play.
@@PashaandDrosha Yes, basically every Korean Terran's carpal tunnels are completely shot by 21, really impressive by Clem to play this style for so long.
I had an idea about balance a couple months ago, when they were redesining the cyclone, might as well drop it here, maybe it'll get traction.
My idea was to nerf mass snipes, by applying a buff on a unit thar was recently sniped (say 5 seconds). This buff would make the unit take less damage (let's say 70% less damage taken) from subsequent snipes during that periodof time. This would increase brood lord, corruptors, and mostly ultralisk survivability late game against mass snipes. The ghost would still be a useful addition, but not the backbone of late game terran. Numbers like duration of the buff and damage reduction against snipe are to be tested
i like that idea, something with the ghost needs to be done. trading energy for a 300mineral 250 gas for a tier 4 brood that has 0 dps is gross. while also being the most defensive and also aggressive race. but terran is insanely reliant on the ghost. its like a house being supported by a single beam, you need to remove it because its an unsafe flawed design, but the house will fall. there needs to be more beams, more t3 units that would encourage tech swapping or smart counters. building marine medivac tank/mine ghost every single game is absurd.
3 points on this matter:
1) Clem was better than Serral - and it was not even close (and this is coming from a big Serral fan-boy)
2) The current map pool is very unfriendly towards Zerg
3) Points 1 and 2 can co-exist
Absolutely! I don't quite understand why people are balance whining. It seemed pretty obvious to me that Clem was simply playing better than Serral the entire series.
I really feel that it is just too hard for zerg to push to planetaries. Terran can take 1-2medivacs full of tier1 units and shipe hatcheries while zerg cannot proceed even with 12k bank. Or saccing like 30 banelings
Clem absolutely deserved it - on another level (maybe 2)
Would Nydus play have helped Serral to keep breaking up Clem’s armies and concentration?
Longstory short --> He became a world champion by winning the grand finals.
Haha!
WOW, SPOILERS! 😢
IMO the best SC2 game that shows off pure mechanical skill
Really enjoyed the little bit of commentary you did at EWC, well done!
After a long day with many games the 'play-by-play yelling' some (not all) of the other commentators offered got a bit old and monotonous, I would have appreciated more calm analysis, banter, and commentator rotation, and was a little bit disappointed when I didn't see your name on the commentary roster anymore (same for State tbh).
Agree Clem played amazingly. I will say as a poor Diamond 1 plebe, i run into the situation Serral found himself in in the second game you covered. A slow, but methodical push towards me and one i cant break despite having 2 or three bases ahead. I think that map specifically is too easy for terran to lock down because it is so thin. Both of the hyper thin maps just feel impossible as Zerg. Auto ban for me in matchmaking, but still a lot of sick tank positions in many current maps.
Darn, the video wasn't even out long enough for anyone to watch it fully, but there already are two balance whiners.
Yeah, crazy how Serral getting 4-0 to Maru does not mean that Zerg is OP, but when Clem does it to Serral, then suddenly Terran is OP.
I’m a Z and the game is very balanced. Clem maximizes the potential of T with his endless APM so much that it looks broken vs Zerg who doesn’t have as much micro potential.
Watching Lambo at 3x speed 🤯
@@shadowpriest2574 It's crazy to you because you don't understand the game. It is easy to explain what Maru did wrong (being passive), it's not easy to explain what Serral did wrong. This is because TvZ is broken.
I don't need to watch the video to know that the matchup is broken.
Usain Bolts in Clems army 😂
Clems Marines are on diet, like Winter said: "1 baguette a day, no cheese"
I was waiting for this analysis by lambo. Do you think borrowed bains, multi nydus, Drops, tlo Style creepspread is mandatory at this Level of play now?
I really wish Serral hadn't played while he is serving in the military. From what I hear that is the case. Which means he hasn't been able to practice as much. All I saw was him not having that finger tip feel, because he was.. not tapped in. Clem being better than ever equals a guaranteed loss. I just wish dark was better at zvz. I think dark could have taken Clem that night;). But congratulations to the new champion, Clem for the biggest sc2 tourney so far!(, may there be bigger ones to come!)
that being said serral still won $150k and got a nice holiday from military to see his sc2 frens so im pretty sure hes perfectly happy he went tbh ^^
dark taking clem ? you are delusional.. last encounter at big tournament he got 1-4 against him..
What about the Clem Mistakes, hurts my zerg heart to listen "its already over" when both players was maxed out zerg had bigger bank.
This is definitely annoying. Like you get to "perfect" position but there is nothing you can do anymore and could just gg with that bank
Yeah this point of the analysis was pretty funny :D "Zerg is dead its nothing he can do". I am sure there is something
@@gkkgl5mkakhelt If you talk about the fourth game, Serral don't have enough larva anymore to spend his money. And clem was about to claim another of his bases, so yes it was pretty much over.
" hurts my zerg heart to listen "its already over" when both players was maxed out zerg had bigger bank."
That is because that is just how the game is. How many games of SC2 have you even watched in order to be surprised by that? Zerg almost always wins as long as he mines more bases and in this case, the base distribution was somewhat equal. Equal bases = zerg loses every time, its basic TvZ at this point.
I am just a mere Diamond player, but i can have 15k in the bank and just realize the game is over at one point vs a turtly terran.
It is not good game design.
lambo, why dont you think serral did his usual lurker late game grinding?
there was some lurkers but it wasnt the same style he uses vs maru. i wonder if serral doesnt think it works vs clem
Clem is a great player, and i saw lambos post about recognizing that, however, terran has been very strong this patch. The bio balls are too powerful. With baneling nerfs there is not an easy counter.
every tier 3 zerg unit gets smashed by ghost and they all suck (except lurker but playing lurker is like tank wars in TvT, yuck) as well. so you need to completely outmine terran while trading 20 banelings for a planetary and they fly an orbital over instantly. in mid diamond, sure. but in the GM/pro scene what can you do? kill them early? they go 3cc 2-1-1.
Also.. well, Liquid was originally founded & formed through Starcraft before they opened more division and sign another player from other game. So for this victory, it's coming home for Liquid 🎉. Thanks, Clem for bring back the glory and put Liquid in a map at Starcraft scene again 🥳
clem needs his own youtube channel, pls go ahead and tell him 💯
Terran isnt Imba, its just a race that reward high APM and its pretty well balanced. Its just that clem with his playstyle is like an alien and can achieve something theorically impossible. I would say a race is imba only if at the same APM, a player is better than another.
But with the APM performance of Clem during this tournament, no other player come even close, so its pretty deserved imho
Great analysis
good vid! make more - eg about Her0
So the answer is, just be better than serral. Looks like we have a new undisputed goat.
Eh, if he keeps it up for 1 year +, then he would be the goat. Right now? Its a bit too early.
if he can do it outside of the most t favoured map pool and patch since WoL and do it for 3+ years then maybe he's in the debate
@@verdibyrd he did it on the zerg favored maps, and yes thats the idea. Only thing that can stop him is terran nerfs.
@@vexienroe what zerg favoured map? name one lmfao
@@vexienroe and dont say goldenaura, the map with a chokepoint ramp to every base and a ton of airspace. that map is perfectly fine for t and thats why serral loses on it vs oli at kato too.
Serral deathballs and amoves when he gets flustered
more like he does that when he realizes there isn't any point playing properly anymore and the mapmakers and imbalance council already beat him.
On the Oceanborn game, it seems like Serral does do a lot of what you said he could have done better in the Goldenaura game. He gets to a really high drone count early, barely loses anything to the hellion/banshee, and cleans up Clem's 1/1 push and drops very well. He had good creep too except around his 5th (and maybe that's why he loses it? Though the fight itself seemed like it went better for Serral). He also takes a good fight in the middle of the map catching Clem unsieged at 10min.
In my amateur eyes, it felt like Serral was outplaying Clem (who had a few late pickups and not the best tank positions) for the first 10 minutes of the Oceanborn game (and only that game), and yet Serral was still not ahead.
Is not much creep around his 5th+a bit of macro slipping at 10min enough to get behind vs Terran even if Zerg had a near perfect early game? I feel like if you covered up the supplies, I would take Serral's first 10 minutes 100/100 times and be thrilled with it.
After the 10min mark it feels like Clem really takes over and starts playing better than Serral, so all credit to him. But I feel like Serral still had the perfect early game with nothing really to show for it, and I'm not sure what Zerg can do.
Yea the first 9 or so minutes are good (the 10th minute is already rough thats close to when he loses the 5th for the first time). But let's keep in mind Serral isn't winning because he didn't take much damage in the first 9 minutes. That's literally how its supposed to be. You aren't supposed to lose your 4th to hellions. So not losing your 4th doesn't mean your ahead. It just means your even. So even if Serral takes almost 0 damage he shouldn't have anything to show for it. It's not like clem did some weird build, no clem played completely standard. And so did Serral. Clem isn't meant to do much damage.
Honestly a weird take you have.
"and I'm not sure what Zerg can do." Yea when playing against a better player there isn't much you can do. Clem was simply better. He caught Serral out of position and killed the 5th base when he obviously had an army that shouldn't have since it got cleaned up right after the 5th died. He then does another push towards the 5th and catches serral off guard killing it again. Again while having an army that just shouldn't have since serral cleaned it up right after. Then, Clem again catches Serral off position and kills the alternative 5th on the other side of the map. At this point clem has established his own 5th and is playing 5 base terran vs 4 base zerg. Since Zerg is repeatedly losing his bases when he shouldn't be. That's literally just getting outplayed.
@@noobzerg1990 I think I'm coming at it from the angle of like: 3CC hellion banshee on average kills a certain X number of drones, Y number of queens, and forces Z number of lings. Don't know exactly what those numbers are, but I feel like pretty commonly it's like 6 drones, 1 queen, and a bit more lings than Serral made on Oceanborn.
If the Terran gets more damage than the average with 3CC, they should be ahead. If Zerg takes less damage than average, they should be ahead. I feel like this should be a reasonable assumption right? But it appears to me that yes definitely Serral's first 9 minutes is significantly better than the average, and yet it doesn't feel like he's ahead. Minute 9-10 is questionable. Serral clears a lot of Clem's army efficiently, but also loses the 5th. I'm not sure how good trades Zerg needs to get vs Terran to offset Terran killing the 5th.
And maybe I should've been more clear, but my "not sure what Zerg can do" was just dictated towards the early game. I said that Clem clearly takes over after 10 min and is playing better than Serral, so of course he should win from there (as well as every other game in the series). Most of what you're saying Clem does well is already past the 10 min mark. I was just directing my question towards the early/early-mid game and wondering what Serral could have done differently to get ahead, since it felt like Serral did fix all his mistakes Lambo pointed out in the Goldenaura game.
@@Wizzer794 No 3cc hellion banshee should never kill more than 2 drones and it definitely never kills a queen. The only thing it forces out is lings and 3 spores.
Thats normal. Serral lost about 5 drones or so to the banshees if iirc he didn’t lose a queen. Even if he only lost 2 drones. He’d still be even. It’d still be 50/50. Even if he lost 0 drones it really doesn’t matter 5 or so drones against a 66drone Zerg doesn’t matter. 3cc hellion banshee gaurantees a 50/50 middle game
A lot of people surprisingly feel that early game for Zerg is bad and that Terran has it too easy. But that’s just not the case. Players like serral 99% of the time deal with hellions and banshees with 0 losses. That’s the standard. Losing stuff to the hellions is not. Therefore not losing stuff doesn’t mean you’re ahead. While losing stuff means you’re behind.
Let’s put it like this losing things to hellions and banshees must mean you made a mistake. Because hellions and banshees have longer rotations than the queens. This means the queens in theory despite being slower will always be in time to defend hellion harass. If the hellions have killed drones this means the Zerg made a mistake.
On the other hand a Zerg not making a mistake does not mean they’re ahead.
But I agree that because of the nature of Zerg at some point if they never make a mistake they will be ahead of the Terran. Unfortunately that takes awhile way longer than simply defending hellion harass.
@@noobzerg1990 It's very obvious that 3cc hellion banshee in practice often kills more than 2 drones and sometimes kills a queen. Maybe in theory only 2 drones should be lost and the zergs are just playing bad when they lose anything more. On Oceanborn, Serral only loses 3 drones, (no queen) and much later than typical, he's already on 78 worker supply before he loses his first 2.
From what you're saying, Terran still has the opportunity to get ahead with 3cc banshee at the current time/map pool (games where too many drones/a queen is lost, or the 4th get cancelled initially). But if Zerg defends perfectly, it's just 50/50.
@@noobzerg1990 not taking damage and not building too much army is on paper quite literally zergs win condition. they are, again, on paper the ´´do not let their economy go unchecked or you die´´ race. terran completely owns the map early game, is super hard to break mid game due to 3cc 2-1-1, and will win in an evenly matched late game. should serral worker pull 12 pool clem? 3cc 2-1-1 gives map control, decent aggression, early game safety, and comparable eco to zerg when factoring in resource efficiency.
Feels like lack of creepspread is one of the biggest issues here?
Could Serral have neural parasited a ghost to emp the others, and push with broodlords?
only if he goes into emp/snipe range whilst clem has infinite maphacks at his command
@@verdibyrd Fair enough
@@verdibyrd I guess you'd have to pull off an infestor surround XD
Clem did extremely well.. my only complaint would be how much the meta punishes mech... Seems like the old m&m combo is Still the bread winner
In the Goldenaura game, why wasn't Serral spreading the creep on his southern 4th from around 8 to 12 minutes? There were a bunch of fresh tumors that didn't move. Seems like the marine tank push would've been easier to repel if he'd spread the creep tumors. Was Clem just pushing his multitasking too much?
Yes, whenever a Zerg doesn't spread the creep it's never on purpose, SC2 is simply a hard game and he wasn't quick enough to spread the creep while everything else was going on.
@@LamboSC2 Am I correct in thinking he also missed injects from time to time ? Serral is goat and the ultimate defensive macro player of all time, but it seems there was a few uncharacteristic macro slips this time around that added up over time.
Definately felt the back breaking pressure of clem's death by 1000 cuts, it was almost faultless. I felt the golden aura game too, that 8 o clock siege, even though he broke it, it seemed to take a long time to dislodge the mine tank, where if you check the Reynor game that position never got a chance to setup, I think that played a factor too long term.
He did miss injects this series a lot which is uncharacteristic but speaks to the pressure
@@mlo4572 Clem is playing unironic 500APM Terran with roughly 300 EPM . Going to be a tough road regardless. I watched the replay on game 4. There was a pool of larva in the centre of the map that all were unused from a dead hatch, and serral almost never injected his out side hatches. But i think the main problem in the end clem swallwed the whole center of the map, serral was larva starved, but there was almost no breaking that position unless you go 200 200 corrupoters kill all the libs, then go 200 200 broods all without the ghosts killing everything
Very interesting breakdown and insightful analys. Clem has reached another level! Great Video Lambo. Just one minor thing though, You gotta stop spreading the myth that Ghosts have "so much hp" (30:28) Comapred to what?
They just have 100HP which is for example only 10 more than the infestor.
Otherwise Great as always!
Congrats to Clem for playing so well and I am pretty sure Serral will do great again. He 3-0 Maru in this same tournament. For the late game balance whinners, remind you one important thing. Balance in SC2 is not symetric. Zerg economy is the most explosive and the best if unchecked. That means that terran needs to be more cost efficient to be balanced. And if terran is more efficient, then in a late game in which the terran was able to defend the waves of zerg should have an advantage. If zerg unints where as efficient as terran, zerg would be extremely OP. So it is hard to find a perfect balance for these two races in any situation. Maybe the biggest issue here was the mappool, but Clem just played too well. And in the same mappool Serral defeated him before. So the balance whinning is unfair.
except terran does not 'defend waves of zerg'. zerg defends for its life against terran the whole game, just too lose in lategame to the untouchable terran army and the fact terran needs 50 workers to zergs 80 whilst zerg, is supposed to have the bigger army but physically can't because t has 150 army supply and 80 worker income at once.
somone with that much apm should focus on epm. If Clem has the ability to look at a screen, recognise the scenario, and establish thee best course of action. This should be implemented rather than microing 1 marine.
The evolution is real.
Balance aside, Clem played amazing & the better player on the day won.
Its really easy to prepare for serral, imo (not easy to beat) because you just have to find damage somewhere because you are probably not better than him in a standard macro game, and because of that you kinda know whats coming.
Similarly its very hard to prep for clem, for all the same reasons but for clem, he has access to the absolute best units in the game that are usually only limited by control and you cannot find someone who can use the units as well as clem can. Clem really just did standard openings into standard macro games every game but his harass was just next level.
Since zerg is the one who has to defend you cant really practice defending that harass because no one else is even capable of doing it
Reynor learned to defend this kind of thing by playing archon mode against GMs by himself. He came up with the split queens meta to address split hellions by this practice method.
Clem also practices vs archon in a similar way. There were some recent games of him playing solo vs Maxpax+harstem+…
@@mlo4572 That is interesting
The only question I have is:
What if Lambo had coached Reynor?
Too bad, maybe at the next tournament.
i really like reynor, saw him playing LBM vs clem ànd winning. insane. why isnt he a stronger competitor?
in the end Clem had no gas bank, so if Serral had managed to get full limit again, there would have been a chance
except clem's best and most basic unit costs only minerals and counters everything
your first analysis RECAP: - Its even, serral is trading well into clem, Maybe even slightly ahead, BUT WAIT! Serral traded like 20 lings into scv's that maybe he shoulndt!!! and all of a sudden "its over for serral"
Yeah idk man................... those 8-10 invincible ghosts that just murder everything they see might have played a role....not sure 20 more lings woulda made the difference there
Maru or any other Terran have Ghosts too , yet they don't win against Serral.
In game 2 I think Serral could have used pure ling to take out siege tanks on the bottom path in the mid game. Also, I'd like to see Zerg figure out a way to use free supply units to win a mid-game fight. Like, build 20 overseers, deny all production, go for a fight, immediately REMAX and trade again. Or pre-send overlords with creep on to the Teran retreat path just before a fight. Or use mass changeling drops to. Obviously not cost effective, but there is 0 point holding a giant bank to the end game if Clem plays like this.
Did we get the scoop on what Serral was thinking in these comments?
he was thinking 'thank god i'm at least being paid a fortune to play this trash, imagine being a ladder pleb and actually playing zerg for 'fun''
Thanks for the giveaway title (d)
Seemed like an oversight to not talk about the bottom right in Game 4. Game 4 I think was the most important game.
Looks like mass zergling would be good against the end game army, imagine attacking that middle position in the second game from every direction with 200 zerglings. Pretty much all high value units will die to ghosts but not zerglings
Ghost with any support are actually very good against Zerglings since they 2 shot them. So even if an army is lacking marines or hellbats, Ghost + Tank + Libs + Buildings always trades very well against lings, and if the ghost get overwhelmed you can lift them up.
@@LamboSC2 what in your professional opinion is actually the counter to ghosts with support? nerfed fungal and banes that get oneshot by tanks and outsped by ghosts even before they pick up?
@@LamboSC2 ah no answer you can give, there's a shock. good job literally ruining sc2 along with your other imbalance council chums btw! wp.
Game 4, to me, showcases what I've been saying for years ever since we saw Maru pull off seemingly impossible wins against Dark and the other top zergs: ghosts are fundamentally overpowered against Zerg. But it also requires an absolute ton of mechanical skill - it's not like just anyone can do it. Zerg players made some strategic adjustments and, I think, just in general developed better mechanical skill to cope with Maru's ghost play. Can that be done again for Clem? Because Clem is almost certainly the most mechanically skilled player right now, to the point that he made Serral look like a complete chump in the way that Serral had just previously made Dark look like a chump.
When you have that sheer speed and precision, Steady Shot is just fundamentally unfair against a race that is entirely comprised of biological units. EMP and Steady Shot match or out-range Zerg's most likely counters (Fungal Growth or Abduct, or I guess broodlord/lurker attack range) and it also means that any engagement that you don't decisively win is *hugely* costly for Zerg as the ghosts will happily snipe everything that's trying to pull back. The ghosts can also quickly kill the overseers needed to even see the ghosts if they are using cloaking, which presents a different challenge.
I genuinely do not know what Zerg is supposed to do against a player of Clem's caliber and mechanical skill and I think that's what we were seeing on Serral's face in those last couple games - dude was just simply out of ideas. Serral had a 5-digit minerals bank and plenty of gas all stocked up in game 4 and it just simply didn't matter. Clem slowly pushed forward with siege and structures and utilized ghosts to ensure that any engagement would drastically favor him. And as you said, once he's perched in one of those places you're effectively cutting off a large part of Zerg production which makes it increasingly hard to dislodge the Terran.
I don't know what the solution is. Giving Zerg casters more HP to survive a single snipe would potentially unbalance ZvP and ghosts don't need any changes in TvP (they are perfectly fine there.) But Zerg needs *something* to deal with snipe spam because as it stands, having literally every single unit be vulnerable to it is a huge design problem. Maybe make ultras take 25% less damage from spells? It wouldn't really affect ZvP meaningfully since Protoss doesn't really use spells to deal with ultras to begin with, but it would make snipe less effective at dealing with ultras, maybe making them a bit more viable in the matchup?
terran played at 100% is far stronger than the other races, people who think zerg is the high skill ceiling race don't understand the game outside of who has the most apm, and yes ghosts are stupidly op especially since the ONLY counters, fungal and banes, have been basically deleted from the game.
@@verdibyrdwhaddya think about the new supply nerf for ghosts
@@sirduckoufthenorth its not the change i would have made but its in the right direction, id prefer an auto attack dps reduction and a 10%- hp nerf so they are more like a specialist spellcaster than their current 'beats literally everything' role, also i think the supply change impacts z v t much more than p v t so yeah, thats not great
If serral also has flying units to kill those pesky medivacs, that could have been better. Ling bane muta is the key to clem's double pronged attacks. Ling bane muta, then switch to hydra once he attacks with widow mines. Use remaining muta to counter attack. Clem is Serral's weakness because he still thinks he can win with only ling bane against flying marines with tanks.
ling bane muta is literally useless vs bio/ghost/tank/medivac these days. the tanks oneshot the banes, the marines kill everything, the ghosts are too fast and the banes will never catch them, if you dont chase the ghosts then you might kill some marines with the banes but it will be cost inefective and the ghosts count will just grow to where the game is over. on top of that all clem has to do is start making a few mines and 5k res of muta will vanish to 500 res of mine in an instant.
Starcraft Brood War hasnt had a balance patch since 2001 and we have seen all sorts of champions from every playstyle from every race and a meta that is still evolving to this day.
It's not a balance issue, it's a skill or creativity issue. Either that or SC2 is just not a deep enough RTS.
Sometimes players get creative, and it gets nerfed. Comes to mind when Dark started chaining broodlings, and it was insta-nerfed in the next patch.
I don't see huge imbalances now. Just the current map pool is slightly terran favoured, and that gave Clem a little edge over Serral. And that Serral is doing his military service. If we go straight to "nerf terran!!1!" when the map pool changes to something more neutral and Serral is again fully focused, nobody will have a chance against him.
As you say, let top zergs and protoss analyze Clem games and at least try something, before going to nerfs/buffs.
@@XabiBelloThis. Give it time. Clem is far from unbeatable as 2 Reynor games showed.
Brood War is completely imbalanced, the reason why you get different races win is because they make maps that favor one race or the other.
@@Rainnnny yup. Broodwar isn't inherently better balanced than SC2. It's the maps that are designed in a way to favor one race or the other.
@@Rainnnny You defeat your argument. If the game is "completely imbalanced" there will be no way a map pool can favour the underpowered race so much as to win against the overpowered race. Races are more or less balanced, and the maps give a small edge here and there to some race. Maybe we need less fantasy on the map pools, more neutral maps. Pro players already prefer "boring" maps over gold bases, speed/slow zones, rich geysers, fancy layouts...
serral, if you read this, pls send an IODIS form to harstem
Honestly watching this I felt like Serral got unlucky in game 1 and 2, lost game 3 straight up, but then it seemed like he just threw the lategame in game 4... Attacking around those corners into planetaries just made no sense. This is past the point where you said the game is already lost.
I have two questions Lambo, I will be extremely happy if you could answer :) :
- Do you think the outcome of the series between clem would have been more close without the nerf of fungal and banes? Or was this irrelevant?
- I think Neural the Ghost an EMP is now more useful, I do not know why Serral doesn't do that. The emp can empty Ghost and Mediavec. Am I missing something?
With 20 ghosts in the field they would snipe the investir, the infestor would need to Hunt a ghost and waste the fungel, that could be better, thats what i think
Not even bruh lol zerg as nerf time and time again because terrans complain and while clem played the games of his life, serral didnt even look remotely closed to putting up a fight against the oppresiveness, efficiency and cost of terran units and gameplay, if we gonna argue well serral 4-0 maru then i can tell you those games were very close... Sounds like balance whining but facts are facts... we gonna sit here and pretend the minute a terran feels somewhat oppressed they dont fire up the nerf cannon lolol
Your info is obv top notch, educational and entertaining af, just the camera movement makes it really hard to watch the video.
Serral was sloppy with his vipers use, against Clem. Compared with how masterfully he used them to snipe incredible value in siege tanks, medics and liberators against Maru
To counter the 3cc 2-1-1 there is a window where you can make extra lings to runby after the double drop leaves base as T will have nothing at home to deal with it
one hellion behind the wall with one mine says no to your whole zergling army
@@verdibyrd You don't have hellions with 2-1-1. Thats the whole point of it to have enough marines for the double drop. And you definitely don't have a mine 5 min into the game. Idk what nonsense you got that from. I'm telling you from experience from playing terran at a GM level and having a zergling runby 10 seconds after the double drop leaves the base always resulted in me losing a lot (cause you don't have anything at home defending during this time window).
@@grolg4793gm terran has solved the game, someone get this guy into the next ewc
@@grolg4793 a standard **3CC** 2-1-1 does infact have hellions, 2. (You don't have a mine at 5 minutes tho, for sure no way)
At 5:25-5:30 when the ling runby would arrive, you easily have a completed full wall on the lowground (double ebay + double depot) with marine reinforcements and potentially even hellions behind that wall (maybe they would be on out the map, but still a super easy hold, you could even repair, or your drop could come back and you'd be ahead still.) The only thing that could possibly do anything is a 5 minute bane bust which is obviously not a thing and would be terribly easy to scout and hold.
If your playing a 2-1-1 without a 3rd CC, then everything you said is true.
I appreciate how well Clem played, no doubts at this point he's way better than Serral. But I don't enjoy when a player spamming a single unit and having success with it. Look at this army of ghosts 25:46. As a viewer I'm not enjoying this unit abuse against Zerg. I think Zerg race having serious trouble dealing with mass ghosts. The same way I hated when Serral abused mass banelings before nerf. Whenever he started doing this I just switched off the game or ff to the next one. I think it's time for ghosts to get nerfed again and give Terran something else to play with in lategame.
wrong balance. MMM too fast. How it possible to marins runs same speed with dogs ? Stupid game
Thanks for spoiling the results with the title
Just do not lose😊
You can train a life time and you cant beat clem unless you started as young
Clem maxed out the advantage the T favored map pool gave him, lets face it.
The years of nerfing Z and tilting map pool against Serrals dominance finally showed the result that was intended.
Kudos to Clem though for playing awesome and punishing every tiny mistake Serral made while making much fewer mistakes himself compared to previous match-ups.
To make things more fair for the Zerb, I think Terrence’s shouldn’t be able to scan. Their or bottles just give them mules, but no more scans. Also, the range of the ghost snipe needs to be reduced.
They nerfed Zerg, including sharkfesters until Serral lost? Mmmk thanks for your take.
don forget they also buffed terran medivacs and bio timings because bio was 'so weak' before 🙄
finally, terran will be nerfed
Clem played better, and I'm happy to give him that. But he shouldn't have won 4-0, with only a couple of the games even being competitive. The ceiling that ghosts give to terrans is basically "unbeatable." I don't even play, but it's frustrating to watch.
You can't do anything.
Terran played at this level (similar to Serral's Zerg) is literally unbeatable because of all the cheats they have. You can't go against a late game Terran army as a Zerg, they can counter everything.
Clem just showed how broken the race is. Serral had a few great moments that should have got him at least 2 maps (even in this heavily Terran-favored map pool), but against a Terran of similar skill level, they are not enough.
It's time for some massive and well-deserved balance changes for Terran. The rest of Terrans will just have to finally start playing better.
Or you can just make Zerglings ranged units that can also attack air, it will be fun having similar T1 unit to the Terran.
People said the exact same thing about every race at various points, yet people rose above, figured out how to play better and solved the puzzle. Serral had a few ok moments, but overall was playing -extremely- sloppily(at least for him) and just making baffling decisions, G1 & 3 are not even worth discussing for how bad Serral's decision was, G2 he made mistake after mistake, never made static d, allowed himself to be picked to pieces while offering nothing back, G4 he started solid but very quickly gave up every advantage he had by making poor decisions and even worse engagements, etc...
Serral's current style does not work against someone like Clem who won't give you an opening, he needed to change it up and adapt to what his opponent was doing instead of trying to treat him like Maru. Clem and Terran are far from unbeatable as Reynor very nearly took his series against him. So how about "The rest of Zergs will just have to finally start playing better", especially as Serral has literally won -half- of the premier tournaments this year, y'all are just knee-jerking way too hard.
So.... Basically make Terran unplayable for everyone else thst isn't Clem and then the race would be "balanced". Gotcha
@@Sam-up4ul zerg has been nerfed for winning tournaments every patch for the last 5+ years, why should it be different for t when we just had 70% t worlds and the second t worlds winner in a row?
@@verdibyrd Basing race balance on how many players shows up to a tournament is goofy af and I shouldn't really need to explain why. Even with 5 years of nerfs, Zerg is still winning the majority of premier tournaments, so genuinely sounds fine tbh.
@@Sam-up4ul but it's not 'how many showed up' though, it's how many qualified, despite 50% of GM being protoss there are 3x as many terrans in worlds.
Clem is awesome. Fast, smart and good looking. However, it seems to me there's a big fat elephant in the room. Terran race is too strong. Needs some decent nerfs. If you put best AI's to play perfect games one against each other, terran race would always win vs zerg. No1 in this univers could've predict 8 losses for GOAT Serral. The god of late game. Clem is awesome, fast, smart and good looking and he is using terran's power to the max; however a "zerg Clem" vs a "terran Clem" would never stand a change. Terran is OP and 8/0 vs Serral with such awesome plays he did, it's just not balanced. More talk about the elephant imho. :D
You have never seen an AI SC2 battle and it tells.
8 premier tournaments in 2024, 4 won by Zerg, 4 won by Terran, 3 by Serral, 2 by Maru, 2 by Clem, 1 by Dark - in what world is Terran supposedly overpowered? The actual reality is that the SC2 player pool is extremely shallow nowadays and that there's only a tiny handful of actual standout players, Protoss hasn't had a "great" player in a long while and Zerg just lost Dark, outside of Serral/Maru/Clem there's just no-one that's as well rounded and consistent that can go deep in a tournament, has nothing to do with race or balance.
Comparing Terran AI vs Zerg AI is stupid since most humans can never reach that level. And the fact is Zerg has been by far the most successful race at the top level for the past 7 years.
If anything, it is Protoss that may be underpowered.
Your analysis makes it sound that the game is imbalanced and yet clem lost against dark 3-1, lost 2 maps to reynor, clem hasnt been able to beat maxpax in the kung fu cups,
Serral even goin to his military service and not play as the other participants was still able to get to the grand finals,
So if serral and clem play again and if serral wins, the races would not be inbalanced anymore? Or are we looking into a situation were clem needs to go a road similar as serral went? He needs to keep winning and get T nerfs and still be able to win, this is the only solution for the whiners to shut up about the imbalance in the game with terrans?
I don't recall calling this imbalanced at all, my intention here was to talk about how well clem played in this series and that he won with superior and more clean execution in mid to lategame. I tried to figure out what the mistakes of Serral were and outlined them, and talked about potential to play better.
Also not sure what this has to do with Clem vs Maxpax lol
@@LamboSC2 thanks for taking the time to answer me, i loved seeing the grand final and have seen it 3 times now from different streamers, live, winter, steadfast, and others, and in the commentary section there are a lot of people talking about how terrans are OP and the game is imbalanced Just because serral lost 5-0 (which nobody in the world was expecting) and im pretty annoyed, so my argument about maxpax is regarding how the game is not imbalanced, or thats the point im triyng to make.
Is there a good argument to proof to these people that complaint that the game is imbalanced? I hope i made my self more clear, (i'm a clem fan since he won the winter tournament in 2023 and i'm against the idea the game is imbalanced) have a great day and i love that you where in the tournament, by the way rotterdam did you dirty with the tempest in the demo game before the grand final started.
@@byrondanielvilladamagana5828 the fact there is one single protoss in the world that can sometimes beat clem is a very poor argument for tvp being balanced, it is very clearly the most imbalanced matchup by far which even the balance council recognizes and talks about. then they nerf distruptos and buff bio because fuck non-t races i guess.
@@verdibyrd terrans got nerf too, stop whining.
@@byrondanielvilladamagana5828 that faster upgrade timing and way better medivac 'nerf'
the title ruined the entire tournament for me. i couldnt see it live but during rewatching all the games i saw this video popping on my screen. man you really hardcore fucked up with your title.
Love pressing the don’t recommend this channel button when I see spoilers in titles
The final took place one week ago. You have either been diligently avoiding spoilers for a week or you barely look at SC2 content - in which case do you really care about spoilers?
@@oldoddjobs you know you could be really good working at Disney or the concord development team, “it’s the customers fault not mine!” Either way the do not recommend channel button has been pressed. Doesn’t really matter what you say does it. Not really my fault if a creator is too lazy to be creative with their titles
Because Terran is imbalanced Hero is better
NErf Zergs please... here you see only way possible to beat this sewer race.. You needing 600 apm 3 multi attack at all time!! whilst zerg can sit comfy and make drones..
lol