Welcome to Gaia! ::

Feels like forever since I've been able to get excited about a big sc2 tourny, I usually miss out on watching the majority of the non NA tournaments, due to work and stuff and just catch vods afterwards, but this weekend is MLG winter arena with the top 32 seeds.

I plan on watching the whole thing all weekend, what about you guys? Who are you rooting for and who do you think is going to win?

I'd like to see foreign hopes naniwa, idra or huk take it, but there's a lot of really good koreans playing with MC, Nestea, Leenock, MVP and a handful of others spread out through the brackets, it's going to be really hard to predict a winner.

leenock/drg/grubby are probably my favorites.

idra was up there too but now i'm kind of becoming less of a fan of his...

nah just his lack of results and inability to compete with koreans...

although I suppose I'm still a fan, just not as intensely as before.

I think he often shows respect, at least to Koreans. He is right about balance though 9 times out of 10 if not more, so.. eh

i would say yes, all ins are wayyyyyy too strong. immortal sentry all-ins on most maps are completeely retarded in the way they put it all in the hands of the forcefielder..

the fact that many weaker players can take games off of very strong, ie Code S, level players via all-ins is also a sign that all-ins in general are wayy too strong. It's true for Zerg "the most", but it's also true for all races -- all-ins are too strong in general, and that's why they're so tempting to use and frequently successful. It's just kind of lame because it weakens the possible gradient of skill there could be.

Problem with that is blizzard cannot forsee what sort of exploits people will come up with in order to design really powerful all in builds, and it's not easy to patch something like that. Adjustments made to prevent all in strategies that are too powerful could have an indirect unintended affect on various standard builds at the same time and what could fix a balance in one situation could cause a gross imbalance in another.

For instance, say terran was having problems dealing with a roach all in of some sort, and so blizzard decided to patch terran by helpnig them get marauders a little bit faster so that the roach rush would be voided. Well you've essentially fixed that roach rush all in, but now you have a new problem, what does protoss do against a fast marauder all in rush?

I don't doubt that a lot of the pro players, and even blizzard feel some all in builds are simply too powerful to really be considered balanced, but they take into account few other things as well.

1. Every race has a few all ins at their disposal that if properly executed can be exploited making it somewhat balanced in the sense that each race can do it.

2. It's not easy to simply patch things, there needs to be a lot experimentation to find fixes that will adjust to provide balance against certain strategies without negatively impacting the metagame in other areas.

3. Being aware of these all ins and how to properly counter them is a duty that falls on the player in order to react properly. There is no all in strategy that works 100% of the time, there is a solution to everything, they just require a lot of practice, control, and often times creativity to be properly executed.

Myself, since ill be competing in MLG dallas this winter