StarCraft 2: THE EXTREME LATE GAME!

[@MrFlubber]

15:05 "the best units in protoss are usually the ones that have sparkles and lasers and stuff" XD

[@exitioregem8466]

He's not wrong

[@MrFlubber]

@@exitioregem8466 I'm not saying he is

[@newtubevector]

That every unit... right I meen from A to Z every protoss sparkles or has lazers Edit: or both

[@icaliu1]

Good profile photo matching this comment

[@jeromekhies4948]

pLanet 130 the epik anime worLd..

[@joshuafarrell879]

+1 for anyone who actually watched to the end.

[@ZeroChannal]

I think Nerchio was doing good but he wasn't confident enough to take down protoss fleet when they're attacking his spore(So many time that Nerchio can take down the Protoss fleet easily on top of his static defense). And I still don't see the point of seperating Brood lord and Corrupter. :[

[@wenboxu3302]

95% of the time, I have no doubt Nerchio is going to win, he's just playing around, unfortunately, he lost at the end

[@artanizsartre2231]

thats what 2 x speed is for

[@vorpal120]

So good i watched it twice!

[@szabolcsmate5254]

I didn't mean to, but...

[@Arlano76]

I think you haven't notiiced Lowko but a large part of why Nerchio lost this is that he lost his infestestion pit and didn't really noticed (21:03 ). He then lost all of his viper to feed back and tried to remake them to notice later that his order remained unobeyed. When he decided to remake the infestestion pit (41:44) , it was far too late and the Golden Armada was already on a rampage.

[@koohikoo]

@kommisar at the final battle there were a handful of infestors

[@Rath_9]

I feel like nerchio misplayed his broodlords the entire game. His viper snipes we’re quite good but if his broodlords were their rather than defending against zealot runbys I think he would have closed out the game while he had a major advantage and would have decreased the insane value DNS’s archons and Templar achieved. I understand I could never compete against these players but his broodlords were just a hugely expensive army that never really did anything until it was too late

[@George_K.]

Adam Henley the broodlords also put him at a strategic disadvantage due to their horrendous speed. I think they get morphed out of corruptors for a good reason - so you can quickly get anti ground to the frontlines and overwhelm your opponent after a fight - before he can scramble a defense, rather than flinging them around the map for half an hour.

[@Rath_9]

George K. I agree and one of the major differences in how Serral uses them to nerchio is Serral keeps them relatively close to his corruptor ball Incase the hit and run tactics of the vipers turns into an all out fight, and he uses terrain to his advantage to use them like a viper at times to snipe a few ground units. He utilizes his lings for effective harass usually putting pressure in the air army while hitting with the lings elsewhere. A lot of this game seemed like nerchio would take air fights that only helped the Protoss by bringing the protoss fleet closer to the run bys. Any number of small things could have closed this out for nerchio he really doesn’t have an excuse for this loss besides wasting too many resources and misplaying the game to a great extent which just seems really odd to me from someone of his caliber.

[@reddragon3132]

Definitely. He lost around 500 ling's in the game. That's over 12000 minerals that often just got killed by archons in a wall. If he'd done that with the broods he would have had so much more money

[@MrAdhito]

I still wonder why didint he commit the broodlords into destroying the stargate ?

[@Daniel-rd6st]

I also have the feeling Nerchio waited too long to close out the game. Before DNS started to build Voids, his carrierball was at a disadvantage vs the corruptor viper broods of Nerchio, especially when DNS was short on storm. And once destroyed, DNS would have needed a long time to rebuild.

[@travishurst2242]

wow! I'm just getting back into sc2 after 8 years and I love to see my favorite race pull off that slick late game steal! I honestly didn't think protoss could beat the abduct strategy! thanks lowko, your commentaries are so fun to watch

[@BrEAcHxROWDY]

"that does mean that DNS will be able to pylon the pressure"

[@vibingwiththewind2889]

9:04 When Alarak came on, having played Starcraft, then been on a Star Trek: TNG binge, I suddenly burst out 'What the hell its Q' before I realised 'oh shit its just Alarak my bad' since John de Lancie does both... wow.

[@westboy84]

Power Overwhelming!

[@jruiz7117]

10:55 200 IQ play

[@apocalypse_march1499]

Just appericatr this play even he lost but damn that's some high lvl gameplay

[@BobaSkoba]

"That is Tassadar himself" I love it! En Taro Lowko

[@Catholic-Redpilled-Spaniard]

High Ground advantage in Broodwar: Only ranged attacks have a hit or miss detection. Melee units will always hit their target when attacking. There are four cases in which a miss can occur by a ranged attacker: 1. The target is underneath certain doodads which block a percentage of attacks. (Trees, signs, etc.) 2. The attacking unit is on low ground while the targeted unit is on high ground. 3. The attacking unit is attempting to attack a target underneath a Dark Swarm cloud. 4. With any ranged attack, there is a very slight chance of an "air shot" or miss for no apparent reason. It is likely programmed into the game. Units attempting to attack a target in the first two cases have a 53.125% chance to hit their target. The miss chance in those cases has been frequently but mistakenly reported to be 30% by several sources. Units attempting to attack a target under Dark Swarm have a 0% chance to hit their target until they move out from under the cloud or the cloud wears off. The chance of an "air shot" is 1/256; that is, with the two units on equal elevation, a ranged unit's chance to hit is 99.609375%.

[@UprisingAdmiralPit]

And we're starting off this year strong with an epic long game. Here's hoping the new year will bring us more amazing replays for us to watch.

[@si2foo]

i honestly think the broodlords were more of a hinderance then anything else

[@BlackMethos]

That unit composition Nerchio was playing there was just... ugly. I probably would've ragequit after the third mothership got abducted lol

[@Drako2k0]

23:00 Lowko blindess missed another big engagement of the main armies while staring at the sacrificial lurkers XD

[@TheOnlyEpsilonAlpha]

"Do not forget to smile" *smiles* :)

[@lobster838]

I'm not going to critique the overall balance, but does anyone feel that abduct is too strong? It seems like any mothership that gets built gets almost immediately destroyed.

[@wschmrdr]

Not if you can get the feedback off first.

[@asmylia9880]

It's not the abduct which kills the mothership, it's the corruptors. But at least, now you know how terrans feel against fungal/storm

[@lobster838]

@@asmylia9880 If battlecruisers become a thing you will feel our pain

[@Allure7TH]

I agree about 'abduct' being too strong. The mothership should be immune to abduct considering how long and how costly they are to make. I personally think that abduct should no longer be able to be cast on 'massive units'.

[@lobster838]

@@Allure7TH I think Terrans and Protosses would greatly appreciate this change. Though to make it still work on all siege-range units, I think it would be reasonable to make Tempests not massive. It would still work on them, siege tanks, and liberators, who are probably the only units that you might need abduct to break a position (corruptors can simply chase down carriers or bcs).

[@grenzviel4480]

It became a battle of attrition... amazing

[@TheAussieLeo]

Epic game.

[@georgiiivanov6512]

Lowko, I'm Russian in Germany now and met a Brazilian guy, who watches your StarCraft videos. Seems like you are popular in every corner of this planet!

[@lovelie1477]

Георгий Иванов France 🇫🇷 also supporting

[@Alexander_Sannikov]

I started a habit of watching lowko's casts while running on treadmill. 1 cast = 1 run. I'm just really glad these guys did not do a Bo7.

[@vetakousting]

31.29 "zerg usually has some gas left over in the bank. Same can be said about zerg aswell" thats so true lowko

[@zxn-hn4tv]

protos are really good end game

[@speedyturtle8434]

Lowko play age of empires the new one is releasing soon A family member of mine actually is developing the game

[@annunakiverz2286]

Is ther3 footage up of gameplay?

[@mrcleglaw256]

what?! i just looked up for any news regarding AoE but i didnt saw anything?! No way its gonna be released soon! Right???

[@Me-qn3bv]

Best news all year

[@Klokinator]

MY DAD WORKS FOR XBOX

[@aaaaaad6318]

Are you saying aoe 4 or will it be a remake of 3?

[@evernewb2073]

(at the 220 statement) there was a damage reduction in play too, like when firing at a moving unit...though if I'm remembering right it changed from unit to unit (also like when firing at moving). I can't remember which units got how much of a reduction though and a lot of units didn't care about any of that in the slightest (mostly just the fliers, can't remember the testing I did on any of this well enough to convince myself it's reliable) making their effective damage proportionately a lot better than it seemed from the numbers it showed the player...what else...kinda remember siege tanks suffering particularly badly from the lowground and moving target disadvantages while out of siege mode and not caring at all while sieged (except of course for their splash radius being set a bit behind moving units)...come to think of it if they did that the way I'm remembering them doing it they simply placed the shot behind it at time0 instead of making a delay before impact, so siege tanks actually hit slightly outside their max range when firing at incoming moving targets with full vision. to make all of this even more complicated the units just plain did different damage to different units in the same situation, those unsieged siege tanks for instance would deal heavily reduced damage to a moving marine but still hit a moving zergling for full, kinda like how the melee units had different attack speeds while facing at different angles (I found that one out when testing the sneaking suspicion that a single zergling outdamaged an ultralisk, they do with both at max upgrades but not at all angles, the lings had one really bad angle with the rest being decently similar and the ultralisk was all over the place)...kinda remember protoss units taking full damage on shields in all situations with the weirdness only coming into play on armor but again this was a long time ago.

[@AharicBouy]

Thanks for keeping SCII casting relevant.

[@hunterrandolph3769]

Hey new starcraft player here....i have tried all the races and have decided to play protoss so hell yeah

[@sandorzador2802]

I did watching till the end and i was l certainly hyped during the time of Nerchios abduction skirmishes. There was a lot of fun at the end watching those Carriers doing a tremendous amount of dmg. To be really honest, i was really curious about when the warp prisms come to effect in DNS army....and when he did that i knew he gonna win this.

[@czonerebel]

I've watched so many of these now I can hear you casting everyday, mundane things I do like making a sandwich or drafting an email... XD

[@aaaagamedev3524]

try doing these things with high skill, and be imaginative in the process, every time you display a new technique lowko will get excited in his commentary

[@ricex2]

36:34 just saying, an archon is the joint psyonic energy of 2 templars, so it cant be just tassadar himself :P

[@Kassidar]

In Broodwar shooting up (and also into trees or other vision blocking doodads) would make ranged units miss 30% and deal no damage. In Starcraft2 there is no miss chance. Long as you can see the highground, and therefore, shoot up at it then it's exactly the same as if there were no elevation difference.

[@KarolisBlazevicius]

There were two key moments/decisions to this win/loss: 1. The Broodlords getting too greedy in protos main base and the fight that broke our immediately after that on the other side of the map, which was heavily in favor of protoss. 2. Protoss adding some prisms to the eventual composition of his army.

[@schippes24]

18:00 yeah.. we had just recently a game of mana VS firecake which took a little bit over 3hours - kinda getting ridiculous at this point.. in hindsight, i think nerchio should have gone for like four less broodlords and use the supply for zergling runbys that only go for probes since it'd slowdown the mining of protoss and thus making those single carrier upducts even more painful. but as you always say: sc2 is easy in hindsight.

[@Strange_Boyyy]

I admire Nerchio's gameplay, which overall was quite methodical and meticulous, but what was he thinking by prolonging the match this long when at several points he could have finished and won.

[@SuperCK001]

The best SC2 commentator, love your videos lowko!

[@Artanis02sk]

Quote from Liquipedia: 'Units firing from the low ground have a ~47% chance to miss their shots entirely.'

[@tiburonpereze]

love your videos lowko!

[@TheArtanis7]

Wow, really what a game. As protoss, this game gives me a hope. DNS was under threat of defeat all game, but in the end he won.

[@Keln02]

The viper always felt way too strong to me :/ Huge sniping and control potential...

[@dstruction6330]

42:57 nerchio went over 1000 apm...

[@frostcop6693]

If you have eggs and minerals you can hold down the button for the unit you want, it quick castes the spawn and gives you a pick of more than 1000 APM, even doing quick cast on creep spread or on larva injection lets you go over 1000 APM.

[@dstruction6330]

@@frostcop6693sorry but i dont understand you

[@dstruction6330]

@@frostcop6693 ow wait im just dumb never mind:)

[@frostcop6693]

@@dstruction6330 You know, like Neuro said, Zerg players doesn't do 500 APM by hand, it's just a combination of creating troups with quick cast, then macro by hand, expanding creep with quick cast, then macro by hand, inject with quick cast, then macro by hand and also abilities like ravager corrosive biles or corruptors with quick cast give you over 1000 APM.

[@dstruction6330]

@@frostcop6693 what rank of a player are you?

[@anonymousnerd1017]

34:47 76 probes aaaand... 90 drones; counting all the lost structures

[@Xenotric]

honestly Im not sure about the new tempests, stats wise they are now far too similiar to voids overall that one or the other is sort of redundant. Voids have slight damage and cost advantage while tempests have the range and slight shield advantage but overall they both output similiar dps, move same speed have fairly similar hps and costs...

[@docteurpikachu6913]

Why work on my finals when I can watch a 47 minutes long video of Lowko?

[@hanswernerkoch]

insane game! loved it :)

[@Disgruntled_Old_Man]

OMFG!! That was a surprise ending.

[@mackfly8420]

Love your content Lowko and i appreciate when you check units lost lol

[@CrashAriMP5N2O]

12:37 This is how you know when you're way ahead. "He doesn't have to worry too much about too much" -- Lowko 2019

[@munumun]

low ground miss chance is a mechanic that carried over to dota 2

[@janbosak7351]

Best defense is attack.

[@elementbender1]

Ok wow that was an amazing game. At the start, I thought it was Nerchio's game to lose, especially with that massive clump of corruptor viper overseers, and with the nerf to feedback. But DNS' storms were on point for a lot of the game, forcing Nerchio to retreat with yellow health corruptors, and the transition to carriers worked far better than I was expecting. Nerchio with the big bank and 10 vipers, I thought DNS' lategame army was just going to get picked apart, especially when he transitioned to carriers, having his minerals burned out by interceptors costs, but it seems being frugal with cannons paid off, and he was able to bleed Nerchio's bank out and take the win. Side note- the double archon drop was retro af, love it- also the double archon guard against zergling run-bys was very cool too :D

[@WhoTheLoL]

Wow... I can't believe Protoss won in the end. How?? Nerchio was abducting and killing carriers, tempests and motherships in numbers while taking almost no losses at all, how was it possible that DnS' bank didn't just dry out? Amazing...

[@tomk887]

Awesome game awesome cast. Thanks for that

[@halonut96]

holy crap that was one of the best games ive seen in a long time

[@silaspierre1377]

Dns knows how important High Ground is ,he learned from the best Obi Wan Kenobi

[@sidakbari1628]

thanks for all the videos!!

[@AlphaSputnik]

It’s lowko time !

[@Bulkathoss]

hahahaha that high ground joke never gets old :´)

[@suppa3569]

Happy 2019 lowko i love your vids

[@spitezor]

Fucking amazing game. I thought Nerchio really had it for a long time, he seemed to have a big window of opportunity until the void rays appeared. Got a little too passive though, and I think you correctly identified him abandoning ground and not forcing Protoss to do enough splits.

[@curtiswilkerson8489]

After watching a bunch of your videos, i honestly think the vipers need nerfs........they rip apart any kind of strong army composition for terran or protoss by abducting all the high tier units and leaving the p/t players with nothing but a half army of easily countered units. And from everything i read the zerg can rapidly reapond to most actions from opponents in all 3 stages of the game. :/

[@ArgentumLunae]

I think DnS sniping the tech in the main ended up being very key to his victory. Nerchio lost his vipers and couldn't replace them for such a long time.

[@KeppyKep]

Damn. Was sure for half an hour that Nerchio would win. Great positioning at the end by DnS

[@stalwart56k]

Great game and great cast!

[@garretamiller]

Happy 2019!

[@L6901Malice]

I never see protoss win a late game like this

[@maquabear5242]

Great game. Great commentary !

[@Owlr4ider]

Nerchio had this game in the bag until he wasted too many lings on those archons and let a ton of spines and spores to die for free. If he just kept trading efficiently he would have eventuallly won but a single mistake against a Protoss death ball is all it takes to lose.

[@treygraphy8050]

Ooh my god.. I keeped screaming. At DNS to do that time warp to slow coruptors an do mass storm on them an then push an engage. The time warp will allow the coruptors to not escape. In the end he still won though. Loved the long videos.

[@mrsnowball599]

Love your videos

[@enjolraslechimiste]

It’s always felt stupidly cheap that Zerg can make an infinite number of units against Protoss (I.e. spore crawlers can be massed to negate any air army)

[@peppersaltman1805]

What a game!

[@TDBoedy]

I've watched so many of these videos and I must say that Abduct is a stupidly strong ability. That definitely needs a pass in terms of balance.

[@Thomas-zg6sf]

While Lowko is watching funny fights between Immortals and Lurker at 23:10, he completly misses a big engagement with a lot of obducts between the air armies. You know how you recently scream at viewer submitted replays? I felt that was a perfect moment to scream at the commentator - "Come on pay attention and show us where the action is at!" :P

[@derpderpington8331]

Okay, I’m new to the game. Can someone explain to me why when the Zerg gets so many corrupters/broodlords why the Protoss did switched to carriers instead of mass void-rays to counter. Like why wait so long into the game before switching?

[@floofybear4278]

It's a bit of an old game: numbers were different

[@hubertbernacki120]

Its nice to be able to watch ur vid 1 hour earlier ;)

[@foo8786]

"Make units that cost slot of gas" Only makes sentries

[@someguyonyt9270]

mass hallucination?

[@VanguardDetonados]

the hit chance on starcraft 1 from low to high ground is 53.125%, some sources say it's 70%. We will never know for sure i guess.

[@Sg-df9zm]

Part of the Zerg being OP is in the small details, precisely that they have "static" defenses that in reallity are not and they do not require energy from... lets say a Protoss Pylon

[@davidkevin03]

Damn this was one of the greatest games I've seen in a while.

[@AlphaSputnik]

Sick game for sure, the air to air switch using only ground for scouting or little hits is really interesting... Playing Terran i feel so lost when fighting against Carriers I can’t beat them !

[@michaelgonzalez216]

I feel like the protoss air comp needed phoenixes or stalkers. The vipers, like most zerg fliers, are faster than the more valuable protoss air units. The carriers and tempests have range enough, but aren't fast enough to keep a zerg air force in sight long enough to effectively give pursuit.

[@Whalery]

Pheonixs really doesn't counter anything aside from Mutalisks cause they deal bonus damage against Light. Viper, Corruptor, Overseer and Brood Lords are all armored so it isn't very effective as Void Ray. Also, you can be easily ran-by Zergling if you build too many Pheonixs.

[@michaelgonzalez216]

@@Whalery Stalkers it is then

[@Dark89Avenger]

Huh, interesting, I am a protoss player, but really did not like DNS winning this game. Nerchio played better overall and he had a lot of chances winning this game(i think)but decided not to take any chances and that cost him the game. Of course in retrospect is easy to judge

[@Festeral]

Well it was a well deserved win in the end. DnS was quite cost efficient in the second part of the game also his positioning was better and nerchio played as if he was scared. Just imagine sending those broodlords on the protoss production that many buildings are irreplaceable and he had enough spores to slow the skytoss army for quite a while. That being said the zerg was not showing the swarming style.

[@Dark89Avenger]

@@Festeral Bulgarian :D ?

[@Festeral]

@@Dark89Avenger Pretty sure you can't find my name in another country :P

[@Dark89Avenger]

@@Festeral Бем аз да питам за всеки случай. Всеки път се учудвам като разбера, че някой в България изобщо следи старкрафт

[@marmer1327]

That was amazing!

[@UnsoberIdiot]

3K gas bank is, apparently, not enough for Lowko. Tsk-tsk.

[@petkofuchalski9809]

If i didn't know the players in this game were pros, i was gonna bet my life that this is a viewer match.

[@Bumpki]

Hey lowko can you make a distinction between replay commentaries and live games in the thumbnails? I prefer your live games only. Love your content

[@Jed1ah]

That was a Great game!

[@Juice-chan]

Nice one!

[@Frostnburn]

Why did DnS kill the pylon that's still under construction (when his archons were walled in) rather than just cancelling it?

[@SawyerKnight]

the patient Hunter gets the prey

[@cryler9215]

Nice, it's been a while since we saw DnS !

[@AndrewMartin600]

Honestly I think that abduct needs a big nerf. The ability to just pull away and one shot such an expensive unit is obscene.

[@russellquandt4050]

Cost efficiency

[@CorwinTheOneAndOnly]

When the other races so effectively hard counter zerg lategame that it takes incredible micro and attention to not just get rolled, and you can somehow kill several thousands worth of resources of the protoss, including like a bajillion motherships, and still be behind in the game. I wish serral didn't exist so we could get some better lategame zerg stuff :(

[@WyandWombat]

If ZvP is one of your "favourite match ups" and there are only 6 in the game, does that mean that like half the match ups are your favourite ones?

[@kevinm3751]

Incredible game, thanks for sharing this! As Well...

[@zanejewett8373]

You know there is a 3 hours long pro game of star craft already.

[@lovelie1477]

For the Horde i saw that game, it was lame... they just avoided eachothers, having the biggest bank zerg’s SH were op before But you got to admit it, these casters kept it entertaining for 3hours

[@zanejewett8373]

@@lovelie1477 truth they tried their hardest to make it not seem like there was a whole lotta nothing going on.

[@yazdani4879]

Zerg could have used the vipers to mass kill the interceptors and carriers with their spells but oh well, can't say much since the game pressure is high

[@heartofeden67]

You know how when you hear a song that is so good it gives you goosebumps? I get that when Lowko says "Helloooooo everyone!! My name is Lowko!"

[@elementbender1]

Ok, I know Nerchio is only dropping changelings mainly to get rid of excess energy, but that many changelings is SO annoying, because you know DNS would have to shift click on every single one- no wonder he wastes storms on them