The IEM World Championships start in just a few short days, and I have a building excitement inside of me to watch them which I haven’t felt for a tournament in a long time. With this being the first “for realsies” tournament in HotS, it may seem obvious why. While that is obviously a great contributor, there is far, far more. The off season is over. Every year in eSports, we have an off season starting around December, and ending around March. While StarCraft is finally getting so big that you can see some action even then, there definitely was a lot of time off for progamers. With a giant lack of travel, and fewer events to prepare for, the most hard-working pros will benefit greatly from this time period. It’s a big enough block to reinvent key pieces of your play, and to get an edge on anyone who takes it easy. I just love seeing who put in some extra time and effort, and what change that has made to their play.

Group A

Hasuobs -

Hasuobs is patient. Very patient. He will work on his unit composition all game long, and set up a great end game for himself. HotS has made Protoss much better for his style, in my opinion. Between the addition of the Tempest as an end-game siege engine, and the removal of an unbeatable Zerg late game, I feel like Hasu’s career is going to get a facelift in HotS.

sLivko -

One of my absolute favourite Zergs in WoL, I have always viewed sLivko as a player that cannot lose if undisturbed in the early game. With the power of his signature composition of Broodlord/Infestor being greatly nerfed, I don’t think this will be his best IEM tournament.



PartinG -

PartinG came up much in part due to Squirtle’s amazing brain and build orders, as well as his own micro. While no one doubts his prowess in WoL, will he be able to dominate in a world full of new strategies? Are his new teammates Rain, Bisu, and BeSt up to the challenge of helping him figure everything out like Squirtle did before?

YongHwa -

This Protoss badass has been innovating Protoss for years already. While IM was known for its brainy tosses YongHwa and Seed before, now MC lives with them. Oh yeah, and Squirtle joined the team as well. The one thing that scares me for YongHwa though, is how well Seed seems to have been doing in the beta. They are both brilliant Protosses, but their styles don’t mesh well. The challenge for YongHwa might be retaining his own style while utilizing the brains of all the ridiculously smart Protosses on his team.

Nerchio -

Nerchio was considered one of the best Zergs in Europe, even during the WoL beta. That means something, as Zerg was incredibly weak back then. I haven’t seen too much of his play in HotS yet, but if any European Zerg is going to be able to hold off all the new early game P and T tricks while keeping their macro going, it could be him.

LucifroN -

Every single time LucifroN has popped up, he has preformed amazingly. With his own style. With his own strategies. Nowadays he uses a lot of aggressive macro play, but back in the very beginning of SC2, he was as 1 base focused and cheesey as the best of them. This means he has a full range of skills to utilize Terran’s new units. Oh yeah, and he’s playing full time now. This is really his chance to show what he can do against Koreans.

Predictions:

LucifroN and YongHwa advance, 3rd player is too close to call.

If enough people let me know they enjoyed this write-up, I will do the other groups as well in the coming days.