VortiX: "If I play my very best, I can beat anyone."

Right now I feel I'm in very good form. It took me a while to get used to LotV and feel completely comfortable with my gameplay but right now I'm at that point where I feel if I play my very best I can beat anyone.

Anyone that I could meet in the regular tournaments. So basically foreigners and the "allowed" Koreans.

I think I popularized some champions that were considered bad back in the day like Lost Vikings. I think most people will just remember me as the "best lost vikings player". Not that I think I was necessarily the best, but most people seem to think that because I was the first one to play it in tournaments. It was "easier" for me to play them due to my Warcraft 3 / StarCraft 2 background.

Not really. Surprisingly, I don't think my mechanics got worse during the whole year. After 3-4 days playing StarCraft, it almost felt as if I had never quit, except for the strategical part of course, and maybe my multi-task was a bit weaker than it used to but overall I didn't find it too hard.

I followed WCS a bit, but only the playoffs and if there was any interesting Zerg match. I followed BlizzCon as well, and that's it I think.

Yeah, I think right now I'm more organised with my practice sessions. Like I tend to play every day at the same hours and I think it forces me to play a certain amount of games whereas before playing Heroes I just played whenever I felt like and most days I ended up slacking quite a lot. In Heroes you had to have a timetable due to having to play together with 4 other people, and I kinda just kept the timetable for StarCraft. Other than that, I don't think there's much else from Heroes that can translate into StarCraft.

I think most Heroes players wouldn't transition naturally into StarCraft II since there are a lot of things in StarCraft like macro, mechanics, etc. that are not part of MOBAs, but I always thought that if Happy had played any MOBA he would've been crazy good. He was already incredibly good with his heroes in Warcraft 3, and in StarCraft II it is crazy how well he can use his units individually.

I think so; I don't know if it's going to be for a long period since at some point I'll probably go full-time student (I don't know when yet). But I think after the break I took last year, it kinda gave me fresh air and I can definitely be on a very high level again. I actually expect to do better than before the Heroes switch.

Well, there are surely more than 8 players that probably think the same way I do about themselves. When you play at this level anything can happen: I could go and win the next big tournament or lose in the first round. That's how it goes. I definitely think I can take one of those 8 spots but there are so many different factors that will impact that... it's impossible to know. I will try, of course, and I have high hopes, but you never know.

HotS kinda forced me to play styles I didn't like (swarmhost camp against P, swarmhost camp against mech T, etc). I think in LotV all the styles are viable: if you're an aggressive player you will find a way to win as any race by playing aggressive, and if you want to turtle you can do that as well. Also, there is much more action, which makes the games more exciting even if they are shorter.

I played one game against the range-liberator build in dusk towers and I didn't even know liberators had an upgrade for range. I thought it was some hack or bug or something LOL, had to go to the hotkeys section to check there was actually an upgrade.

I think the matchup is very well balanced right now. In the beginning of LotV, most people were just playing ravager into ultra and it kinda felt the match was always the same, but right now people are realizing you can play a more HotS-like opening and mid-game and it's kinda cool to have different macro options in the match as opposed to only 1, like in HotS. It's much more fun too since most games are not just tier 2 units vs tier 2 as the matchup tends to reach the lategame with ghosts, liberators, ultras, broodlords etc, which is much nicer than muta ling bane vs MMM for 30 minutes.

Well obviously it's better for the spectator now that the swarmhost is gone (they might as well delete the unit if they are gonna leave it this way). In terms of balance, my personal opinion is that there are some maps where it's zerg-favoured but in others it's quite protoss-favoured. Overall I think protoss has advantage in late game, but I like the match though, it's very reactive and it's weird to see similar games all the time.

It's quite similar to be honest: ling-bane into roach-ravager most of the time with the option to go mutas first. Not much has changed, except now you can't just a-click, you also have to dodge bile.

I like to have 1-2 unique maps in the pool—if you dislike them you just ban them. But right now it feels way too excessive with Ulrena, Prion, Protocol, even Lerilak in some matchups. I would like more standard or macro-oriented maps.

Coming from Heroes, I can tell you it's terrible to have constant big patches. There was one point when they would make huge impacts in the meta like 2-3 days before big tournaments. Honestly I would just leave the game as it is for a long time unless a really unfair situation happens like the one with the swarmhost, the hellbat drops early in HotS, etc.

EU:
Zerg: there are too many in a very similar level... Snute, Nerchio, TLO, FireCake, SortOf, Bly, Serral and even more I'm forgetting, can't pick one over the others
Protoss: ShoWTimE, PtitDrogo, Lilbow, MaNa
Terran: Bunny, Happy, MarineLord

KR:
Zerg: Solar, soO
Protoss: Zest, sOs
Terran: ByuN, TY

Well they know each other so well so I think Snute knew very well that TLO would never go for an early pool, especially with a 2-2 score. I think the openers are a bit more coin-flippy now due to the map pool—Ulrena and 4 position maps just favour coin-flips too much.

I feel it's kinda risky to delay banelings for that, but on the other hand, if it goes unscouted it's so strong, since your opponent will probably not be aggressive if he hasn't seen that you don't have baneling nest.

Going straight for muta without roaches is normally very risky. You can die to roach bane timings, to nydus, etc. But if you can skip the roach warren of course it's kinda nice for your economy so if you manage to deny your opponent's scout like I think TLO did in that game it's very nice for him.

Yes, quite a lot.

I think he started the +1 before seeing the mutas, so it makes sense if you are gonna go for roaches yourself, but I guess he could've canceled it after he saw the mutas, or maybe he kept it for the queen damage, not sure. Queens are normally an important part of muta vs muta so maybe he just thought it'd be useful.

Yes, I think it was quite obvious he wouldn't catch up on ultra upgrades so maybe massing mutas and waiting for a mistake from TLO was the best he could do. I think it was impossible for Snute to try to go for ultras in a reasonable way, and his best bet was to just mass mutas, split them, and wait for his opponent to attack into an open area and try to surround with everything.

I think it requires too much time and resources to go for broodlords. In the situation Snute was in, it could've meant just dying outright to an attack. I guess he could've expanded in the left corner but overall I think once you are trapped with so many mutas with your oponent on tier 3, all you can hope for is just a big mistake from him.

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