Serral vs Classic - Epic Late Game MASTERCLASS! (StarCraft 2)

Epic match of StarCraft 2 from Gamers8 between Serral (Zerg) and Classic (Protoss). This match goes the distance as both players get dangerously close to 200 Army supply with the entire map of Gresvan mined out.
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StarCraft 2 is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment.
Kijkwijzer (Dutch viewer guide): 6, violence, fear
#StarCraft2 #SC2 #RTS
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[@hangover89]

Pretty cool that at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2971">49:31</a> you can see Serral neural'ing a couple carriers, and only at that moment do the carriers start producing interceptors, because Classic is out of money and Serral is loaded

[@tbird81]

What happens once the NP has finished? Do the interceptors become the Toss player's again?

[@hangover89]

I'd assume so. What would be interesting is what would happen if zerg NP's a carrier, starts building an interceptor, and cancels neural. Who gets the 15 minerals?

[@mso2013]

​@@hangover89who is asking? Are you from the tax department?

[@hangover89]

@@mso2013 the overmind just wants to make sure that serral's mineral contributions to the swarm are up to code

[@jakes.5206]

@@hangover89i believe there was a @feardragon 99% useless facts on this. I think the player who paid always gets it back, whether it's cancelled before or after the neural ends. She with any unit that can spend resources. Don't quote me though 😓

[@simonlindstrom2041]

Coming home to a new video from Lowko makes the whole day better. It being a serral video just makes it even better

[@japi08_official]

it being a serral late game video Chefs kiss

[@Candle45]

Better if it was dark

[@dominionemployee1188]

@@Candle45just wait a couple of hours

[@MAthCFH]

Better if it was reynor crashing a terran

[@emilybjoerk]

Dayum.... He's the goat for a reason I guess. The patience and stamina the man has on top of what seems like the most cool headed decision making I've seen...

[@ThatGuy01210101]

A Concave of Spore Crawlers: How I took credit for the Lowko maneuver The biography of Lowko

[@Daniel-Star]

I think there was a long time Serral could have gone in and ended the game, but it's why he's the best he left Classic with no outs and no vulnerabilities to exploit for a comeback.

[@bloodydove5718]

And with this being one game in a series, that fatigue is going to weigh in on the rest of the games.

[@arankoka]

nah, classic was strong+dangerous till the end. gotta bring down the giant with 100 needle stings.

[@Spartsou]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="658">10:58</a> Lowko: Another one Bites the Dust Me: I like your taste, Lowko, lol. *this'll be fun*

[@Boompiee]

So proud of you for getting the Lowko maneuver named after you, man. Though for me, the lowko maneuver will always be "HEEEEEEEEEEEELLO EFRYONE My name is LOOWKOO" 😉

[@morningcoffee4522]

Serral is still an absolute beast. Great to see

[@TubeTAG]

"Still"? When did he stop being a beast?

[@grey21hunter20]

@@TubeTAGur not very smart are you

[@TubeTAG]

@@grey21hunter20 Nah, not really. I'm pretty dumb.

[@marklebury]

@@TubeTAG "still" = "didn't stop"

[@kindlin]

@@TubeTAG Play to your strengths.

[@svengalt9546]

Huh, at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1491">24:51</a> you can see psionic storms animation is layered below the foliage of the map. Storm happening beneath the trees.

[@MauroDraco]

I was impressed how similar the banks were to each other and for how long, too!

[@daganholbrook4214]

Hey Lowko! Gotta finally quick thank you in the KZbin comments for casting these games I mostly listen in while I am cleaning the house and my wife is getting our kiddo in bed, thanks for giving me fun games to listen to.

[@mikewebsdale4777]

Great casting as always Lowko! Fine pace and cadence with fun near topic comments ! Loads of enthusiasm and constant information, it’s like you’ve done this for awhile.

[@davidholland4713]

Serral totally outplayed Classic. With less economy, he took more efficient trades and eventually Classic had no income despite trying to steal a Serral base. Carriers are paperweights if you have no minerals for interceptors. But no matter how often we see this, most zergs can't control and play well enough to do this. It's still pretty amazing to see.

[@TheRealMjb2k]

I always struggle against air-Protoss and air-Terran… I need to value corrupters a whole lot more with vipers and infestors but microing both vipers and infestors is so hard.

[@mso2013]

Do you have vipers and infestors in separate groups? I find having them in the same group and pressing tab is better for me. Not optimal but it is a group less to keep my mind on. (Just be carefull about presning alt at the same time lol.)

[@REgamesplayer]

I think that at this point Starcraft 2 community needs to just accept that Serral can''t be beaten in late game with a Protoss. This wasn't even close. Serral just dismantled Classic in brutally long game, one trade at the time.

[@AlexCatable]

Ummm... repeating it for the third time in this comments section because my glee just won't let me stop. This game was a part of Bo3. Which was won by Classic. All three games were fair macro oriented battles, Lowko just cherrypicked this one for some reason ))

[@REgamesplayer]

@@AlexCatable I see.

[@akagamino_moto]

Your content has a way of making the mundane feel extraordinary.

[@billl.2441]

Toss just wanna turtle and play defense. So Serral just let them draw it out and bleed them slowly. Exciting beginning to a stalled loss for toss. Its crazy to see 1 bank account go from 13k to 0 while the other still have 11k bleeding him out.

[@howie5697]

This was great Lowko!

[@OldDragon2A]

Like how it was over so fast that Lowko was still ramping up the vocals when all of the Protoss units that could attack were already dead.

[@DO-xw1zp]

That was insane. Thanks for the content.

[@husky964]

Oh lowko-san, I'm just about to say we miss serral's match, then this video! The perfect timung!!🎉

[@metapoic9420]

It was a movie, great to watch it, and thanks for the work that you have been doing to bring this to us ❤

[@dereklamont8998]

That was Crazy, Thanks Lowko!

[@markusspecht5041]

Without having watched the games, I’m gonna say Protoss loses, a late game air battle is gonna decide it

[@jeremyduke4938]

Yes. This game frustrated me to no end as a protoss player.

[@Name-ru1kt]

If protoss wants to win then they really need to be ontop of their ht micro and try to low the corruptors and manuaval around the spore forest with maybe a recall and a few zealots. One big thing is voidray bug thats been out for years which prevents them from chasing with the ability making them trash even against corruptors.

[@136iti]

Well they are playing against Serral who is crazy in ZvP. In the video Lowko gives us the stats for 2023. Going into this he has 96.9% win rate in ZvP.

[@henryviiifake8244]

Please tell me you didn't just use the #1 player on Aligulac (with the #1 rating vs Protoss), facing the #13 player on Aligulac (with the #12 rating vs Zerg) as an allegory for the general PvZ lategame situation. I'm pretty sure that in 2021, Serral and Stats had a 3-hour series (I think it should actually be somewhere on Lowkow's channel). I can't remember Stats' Aligulac rank at the time, but he was regularly in or near the top 10, and Classic isn't far behind that at the moment. Suffice to say, this is a showcase in the difference in skill between an excellent player (Classic) and an all-time great (Serral).

[@tbird81]

​@@jeremyduke4938How often do you have to play against Serral?

[@adamwinter8799]

I appreciate your commentary Lowko; it's great :) Btw.epic battle! ❤

[@Mykulveli]

I dont really think zerg is op in a vacuum, but wheres the threat in late game protoss? They just need some tools, Classic had to just wait to be picked apart. At the highest level there doesnt seem to be answers. Lowko is right, zerg is hard to control late game. Would you rather be a race with tools that are hard to control to win or the race with no tools so you can never do anything against the highest level zerg? Every race needs tools that are difficult to manage, but if you can help you win the game.

[@gpierre13]

Awesome game Thanks Lowko

[@TurnOnTheBackburner]

this was painful to watch. Once Classic amassed his 25k resource bank, he literally just threw it away to gain little trades with Serral. All those Warp Prisms and zealot warp ins didn't really accomplish much. He took down upgrades and killed some hatcheries but Serral wasn't hurting for any resources. And he had all the time in the world to rebuild his Hive and upgrades. Of course, we were watching all this with perfect information, but Classic could have used other strategies

[@quwarq]

smooth jazz transition towards skytoss 51 probes have gone down on the Zerg side

[@John-vp1ej]

I would absolutely LOVE to see a a full-on fMRI scan of a pro SC2 player during a game. Thanks so much Lowko, always love to see a showcase of skill like that from Serral. Up until that first mothership went down I kinda wondered is Classic might have been able to pull it off!

[@yendayo]

I havent seen Serral be defensive in a very long time, and damn he is so good. Any other Zerg would have lost this.

[@sybro9786]

Excellent video

[@kashicherukushishe5410]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1385">23:05</a> the man's lady must be happy about it

[@chrisdaignault9845]

Hey at least “The Lowko Maneuver” isn’t like donating all your lurkers to a siege tank line or something.

[@glennpendleton9520]

It'd be cool if the Protoss could warp units out to salvage some value from spare units, or maybe just salvage probes like salvaging a bunker.

[@alekzanderor5489]

it would be nonsense) like, lore-wise, how and why exactly does cost is refunded after "warpingout"? either its not a "warp out", but disintegration with toss player collecting atoms for reusing, killing fellow war veterans in the process or after "warp out" they are disassembled/eisintegrated/sold into sexual slavery and toss manager from the other side send player payment. Fisrt doesnt fit beacuse "honor", second doesnt fit because "honor" and question "why protoss empire doesnt just send toss player a credit to crush enemies in early game to then mine out the map and pay interest?"

[@Howdy762]

wow about time we got a serral game. its been months

[@lorinctoth9402]

This was a beatiful game, so cool!

[@thewrongperson676]

I spent 80% of that game thinking Classic has this in the bag, then it feels like all of a sudden it was an insurmountable task for him. Serral is something else.

[@FindingMeaning]

THIS WAS SICK!!!

[@nmgaro2156]

The recipe for ZvP late game is in this match: DO NOT ATTACK as zerg. Sit there, do nothing, just learn when to take the fights, pick one unit here and there, and thats is, your opponet will eventually have to take a fight on you, and your corruptors+infestor will have an easy time

[@jameswashington4704]

sooooo boring

[@AndrejD303]

thats basically strategy in anything vs protoss... let shittier race run at us and lose cuz they cant win in same numbers battle

[@pnnnnnnnnnn1234]

Thx Lowko

[@435666]

Tricky Control groups or not. Zerg late game is op vs toss. The broods force the air game and the vipers with infestors are just op. The problem toss has is supply heavy units. That's all they have. Those get destroyed with vipers and Templar are not a solution regardless of range. I think the best fix would be to change the mothership so it can't be abducted. 97 percent win rate is not skill alone. It's taking advantage of the game . Needs balance

[@vitorh3568]

I still wonder, how Mama Ship is easily abducted like that? Does she weights the same of a marine? xD

[@404dne]

blizzard balancing lmao

[@CrowbarKogut]

Shouldnt have happend especially that im a newb and really wanted to see what that ship can do

[@KaliFortuna]

Marine sinks in air, mothership floats in air. Therefore mothership weighs less than a marine, checkmate! /jk

[@mrc112]

9 minutes in, after clearing some creep and still almost the entire map is Serral's canvas. He truly is the GOAT

[@alexanerose4820]

10 years later and the best thing the Mothership ever gave us was being a glorified toilet . Blizzard truly deserves all the hate they get today Not you though Lowko. Your casts are as entertaining as ever

[@brendonwang4177]

Serral's patience is a huge deciding factor in these alte game matches, it seems like once it hit late game classic was trying to do all these crazy multipronged attacks, butin doing so he just kept leaving his last base undefended and burning through his own bank. All he was able to get done was snipe some hatcheries and kill some workers which didn't accomplish anything when Serral already had a 10k bank. Meanwhile, Serral waited for the protoss fleet to slightly misposition and he was continually able to snipe protoss ships.

[@matkaferlein]

Jeezus what a game

[@emmanuelburlayan6743]

Ohhhh YEAH ZERGGG GAMEEEEEE!!! WITH SERRRAAALLLLL

[@playermaxx1]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2231">37:11</a> Damn, man relived there some trauma.

[@Kapuz73]

what a nice game!

[@yosefshemesh5246]

What a game

[@L76_Official]

The Lowko maneuver is prevented with corruptors… uh, ok?😂

[@illiakuznietsov4162]

Looking at this game so much later... Im just shocked how much better did Serral get

[@hellangel28]

what a game! i haven't watched SC2 in quite some time, I realize i missed listening to your casts

[@Zoutsteen]

took the one second that it took, after those <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="3000">50:00</a> minutes to punch the like button.

[@thananbomb]

Epic one

[@tb34567]

I thought for sure he was gonna say to play lategame zerg you need 4 or 5 hands

[@joesong4413]

Serral is playing his food !!

[@ztp913]

lol right at <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="967">16:07</a> visual glitch where the spine is poking waaaaaaaaaaaay farther than it should

[@chainsawfreak]

the void rays were hanging behind spread out so that they would not be fungal+parasitic bombed = that combo is actually lethal to void rays, unlike to carriers and tempests. So after the infestor and vipers are dead they would come in to kill the corruptors

[@nmgaro2156]

Actually i would like to see that battle. The corruptors are ridiculous strong on numbers, the 2 supply is way to low. Easy to mass, and start one-shooting every air unit, even the void-rays that in teory should be the counter. But costig 4 supply, you never can compete against zerg air army

[@jesusbarrera6916]

@@nmgaro2156 problem is the Corruptor is the only viable anti air ZERG has, and it is only anti air as opposed to Void Rays and Vikings but yeah the Void Ray has needed a patch for quite a long time now

[@AndrejD303]

@@jesusbarrera6916 yeah unfortunately it felt too OP year ago so not allowed... here is your purple crystal pheonix have fun

[@leenverkade]

I think Lowko called correctly that High Templar are just inferior to Vipers and Infestors and that is a big problem in ZvP at high level. One slight tweak I would suggest is Vipers not being able to abduct Motherships, like it cant abduct Ultras. If it were only for the fact how ridiculous it feels to be able to joink a massive spaceship a considerable distance with your tongue 🙈

[@lukecraig4984]

That was a masterclass in ZvP

[@Kapuz73]

yeesssss

[@SaltpeterTaffy]

Super Saiyan 7, greenish hair, you basically described Broly.

[@RoulicisThe]

Weither it's Chess or Video games, it makes you wrack your brain quite a bit. And we often forget how power-hungry our brain is, it eats up 1/3 of our daily calory intake in what can be considered "healthy" lifestyle. So yes, it's surprising how much "brain work" eats energy.

[@lahancodon]

Is it true though? The bit that 99% zerg terrified of taking toss in late games? idk about other toss compositions but this one feels like carriers/tempests/ht have no chance against corruptors/infestors/bl. Like, what's the theoretical winning pathway for toss here, assuming for a second that their micro skills are equal?

[@Seageass01]

I'll try not to be biased here but I personally think it largely depends on a mix of factors,because unless you're not a Serral or a Reynor,pros whose skill level is insanely high even for most top players standards,you're very unlikely to be able to pull off their tactics with the same frequency and accuracy,if we leave out the high pro scene and take actual statistics into consideration in most instances Skytoss comes out as a very efficient army composition which doesn't even require an insane amount of micro to be effective,while the zerg usually needs at least three micro focused units in their army to counter it.

[@Nova_Jan]

@@Seageass01 exactly, people don't realize how hard it is to micro against late game toss and Terran. The apm requirement is insane and the chance of error is just as high, the average player can't do it. That's why protoss and Terran have higher win rates on the ladder in until the highest skilled players, then you see zerg pick up.

[@bigprank3964]

Assuming their micro skills are equal, zerg wins 100% of the time vs protoss at pro level. In your scenario there is no theoretical winning pathway, unfortunately

[@rafaelwoitzuck3186]

@@bigprank3964 Assuming their micro skills are equally perfect the templars feedback basically stops any zerg spellcasters in their track. So, if anything, it isn't the theoretical winning path but the practical.

[@Komatik_]

This is in good part just Serral being a monster. To underline how insane Serral's winrate is, in Aligulac's balance report, there has been a grand total of ONE month within the last 2,5 YEARS when PvZ hasn't been Protoss favoured, and out of the non-mirror matchups it's consistently the most lopsided one in Aligulac's stats - again, in the favour of Protoss. PvZ is the one matchup that has gone over a 55-45 imbalance at all, and has done so multiple times. And then Serral just comes and makes the game's most imabalanced matchup look like child's play.

[@MemoriAeni]

Certified classic

[@DanielCosta-zp6jl]

The raid boss of all raid bosses showing how its done.

[@shybard]

If you're going to study from the masters, you might as well start with Serral.

[@calculatorade]

Classic played the hell out of this. But Serral... what do you even do versus him?

[@vietnamabc2290]

Pick Z, Z vs Z is Serral weak spot

[@louel9272]

Question: do you think it's a worthwhile tactic if Zerg just use zerglings with adrenal glands to just try to destroy the Protoss structures at the 20 plus minute mark onwards? Like a sort of base trade instead of waiting to engage armies? Cuz the sky toss is also slow it won't be able to keep up.

I wish a similar game to SC2 but no hard supply limit, units would require more concrete supply and would start breaking down without supplies, air units should collide more to prevent stacking them on top of each other, make ranges longer in general, make accuracy a factor.

[@tigrankato]

Wow zerg destroyed skytoss in a long game in one big final battle with huge efficiency even without remaxing, what a surprise

[@Erebus2075]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2343">39:03</a> hahaha funny yer :D

[@statuszero865]

Zerg air late game is just so effecient while protoss air is not... protoss is on a clock in the late game and zerg knows it,so Serral just needed to be patient and slowly use his more efficient spell casters to slowly eat the bank of his opponent... clearly imba...

[@sokatsoi]

Too much calories for sure. My hearth beat rate was above 120 for the entirety of the late game of the first match!

[@Seraphimthong]

Good game.

[@sloanNYC]

Carriers just costing money constantly makes losing those last few bases a death knell... so close!

[@RogueNinjaa]

I'm always disappointed when mother ships get instantly deleted. I feel like it never gets any use because it's too easy to kill

[@FirstLast-gk6lg]

God i hate being a Protoss fan, it's just too painful

[@gustavokusdradepinho3613]

Lowko, could you please cast a Serral vs Dark video?

[@sentinel501]

Babe wake up! New serral video just dropped!!!

[@cxrunner1178]

Lowkow makes me Laugh with his commentary alleyways fan boys over the really good player's.

[@HackSawSees]

I feel like Classic was leaving a lot on the table with Voidrays hanging back and disruptors just kind of sitting around. Maybe he was just worn out?

[@yosefshemesh5246]

classic is making you look so smart in this game, so many good calls

[@userasdf]

I know it's a joke but there is basically a super saiyan 7. Super saiyan god super saiyan ultra instinct. :P

[@eastonSE16]

Hopefully the balance patch helps Protoss in these late games. Absolutely brutal watching how easy Zerg has it.

[@arankoka]

usually protoss late is so much superior. serral is just serral.

[@Knightpiecerules]

yup, the problem is he's just serral man@@arankoka

[@elephantoslsd]

Serral is the best currently yes. But I think any Toss playing at this level is playing with a broken wing these days in the current balance. especially against a zerg. Toss has some cheeky timings that if they arn't scouted will defeat the opponent quickly early on but after that they are somewhat screwed. They have to hope the zerg makes a mistake. And all the zerg has to do is scout well which is easy at this level. I have watched so many of these PvZ late game air wars of attrition and the zerg can use and trade their resources so much easier and more efficiently. I mean you said it here, drones can just become infinite spore crawlers when there are too many, one out of placement encounter by the toss and all their tier three air units and high templars are deleted by tier 2 corruptors, fungals, lings/bans, and abductions. While the protoss has what? Motherships move like shit. Feedback to only PREVENT this from happening. No way for the protoss to have an engagement that destructive in that little amount of time. Not even with perfect storms and archons. This is why the balance council is trying to figure out how to buff toss without just pumping numbers up.

[@kostadinbiserkov3551]

In a near perfect micro (as these two showed for the most part), it will always be zerg winning the 200v200.. the amount of things you can do to react to anything coming in with your 3 spellcasters is just unparalleled. GG though, Serral is cray cray

[@louel9272]

It's not just the physical stamina that makes Serral the GOAT, it's also the mental stamina to keep focused even to the very end...a lot of players during a long drawn out game just give up mentally in the end and lose focus.

[@tombrowning6541]

Why don’t Zerg players make better use of burrowing? It seems like a huge advantage not to use all the time

[@juztina7346]

Aww i already saw this match with the chinese youtube caster.. thought was a new match for me

[@rustytaco8412]

I don't care protoss won this series or not, but it once again showed how underpowered protoss really is. It demonstrates once again, that Zerg can play sloppy and socan Taryn. Protoss has to play on God level in order to come out on top. This game demonstrates once again that protoss never actually win game. Their opponents just lose them. What I mean by this is that protoss only wins their games if Zerg or Terran players lose by making too many mistakes. Whereas, Zerg and Terran when their games if they play well regardless of how protoss plays.

[@bigprank3964]

Everything you said is true and it has been this way for the past 6 years at pro level

[@Komatik_]

This is in good part just Serral being a monster. To underline how insane Serral's winrate is, in Aligulac's balance report, there has been a grand total of ONE month within the last 2,5 YEARS when PvZ hasn't been Protoss favoured, and out of the non-mirror matchups it's consistently the most lopsided one in Aligulac's stats - again, in the favour of Protoss. PvZ is the one matchup that has gone over a 55-45 imbalance at all, and has done so multiple times. And then Serral just comes and makes the game's most imabalanced matchup look like child's play.

[@jesusbarrera6916]

except CLASSIC played badly here.... spent twice as much on ZEALOTs than ZERG did on zerglings

[@AndrejD303]

@@jesusbarrera6916 to be honest i think classic is just doing desperate attemts as he knows he cant face zerg in battle

[@Komatik_]

To underline how insane Serral's winrate is, in Aligulac's balance report, there has been a grand total of ONE month within the last 2,5 YEARS when PvZ hasn't been Protoss favoured, and out of all the matchups it's consistently the most lopsided one in Aligulac's stats - again, in the favour of Protoss.

[@user-ew9mh9qr2y]

Its true a starcraft game can sometimes make me lay in bed

[@ricorommeldumaplin4822]

Serral's Zerg Swarm reigns supreme against Classic's Golden Armada

[@eujinkim6082]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="2398">39:58</a>

[@cole3062]

i do not understand why serral does not get carapace upgrades.

[@heavenlyvibes7102]

so miuch better tthen Pig lowko is the OG

[@alexw4482]

Anyone know when we get zest back? Miss watching his games.

[@viktorhillar5145]

Serral is too good