Photo by: WellPlayed.org
EG's Greg "Idra" Fields spoke to his team on a number of topics, including his training in Korea, his expectations of the MLG Winter Arena as well as the newest SC2 patch 1.4.3.
Idra returned to Korea recently as he acquired a Code S spot together with fellow foreign Zerg player SEn. As a member of team Evil Geniuses, Idra made use of his team's partnership and stayed and trained in the SlayerS house. How did that move affect Greg's play?
- " [My play has improved] massively so in a lot of ways, playing the Korean ladder forces you to be much cleaner and safer because everyone has such well designed aggressive builds. You can’t cut corners, at all. And then of course practicing with the SlayerS members just gets you used to playing against great players, which is the best way to practice and improve in general."
The conversation soon turns to the recent showmatch against Alive, where Idra controversially six-pooled twice in a row to give the community a heated to discuss. Asked about the reasoning behind this move and Alive himself, Idra gives the following statement:
- "He cheesed me successfully on two of the better zerg maps in the pool and it was just a showmatch I was asked to play a few hours beforehand. Alive is an excellent player and hes willing to take risks, a player like that is very hard to beat and given the map pool I didn’t think I had a realistic chance of coming back from down 0-2. The games weren’t gonna be entertaining if he just wanted to flip coins anyway, so I just 6 pooled to get it over, one way or the other."
Idra also takes the time to comment on his recent results, which, overall hasn't been too great. Greg was defeated both in Code S (by NesTea and Lucky) and in Code A (by Avenge) and, in addition, has been having troubles performing on top level in the various team leagues. In cool temper, Idra explains that "sometimes you just lose games", that practice needs time to effectively kick in and that "people shouldn’t read too much into a few losses".
Switching the topic to the currently ongoing MLG Winter Arena, Idra is asked who is the player he is most eager to face. It turns out that to be NesTea, to whom he lost both in the MLG Global Invitational and the Code S 2012 Season 1. Greg will have his wish fulfilled as he will go against the IM Zerg soon enough in the losers bracket round 1 of the Arena after he and NesTea lost, respectively, to Oz and DeMuslim.
Finally, Idra discusses in large the most recent patch 1.4.3, particularly the change to ghost's snipe and the new phoenix fleet beacon upgrade.
- "The ghost change is too much in that it will force bio based play to revolve around mid game allins. If zerg gets to broodlord infestor on a good economy while you’re playing bio, you will lose if zerg executes properly. However this will, sooner or later, cause terrans to rediscover turtle mech play which is even stronger on most maps than ghost based play.
The phoenix thing is fucking stupid and once again demonstrates that Blizzard either does not understand their game at all or is not balancing for competitive play. The problem with mutas is they give you mid game map control as the threat of a counter attack means any kind of protoss attack will be an allin. This allows zerg to expand and macro and tech with relative freedom, plus the mutas can be great harass in themselves and can usually just kill a protoss if you manage to get them off balance. If protoss gets to late game with a good economy cannon + templar defense and a blink stalker archon templar mothership army will destroy a zerg who is trying to stay on a muta based army, and that is the situation where the phoenix upgrade will come into play."
Source: MyEG
