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Disclaimer:+ Show Spoiler +My only experience actually playing SC2 is less than 20 games played relatively early in the beta. Most of my thoughts about the game come from whatever GSL games I happen to watch and the commentary of those games. Also this, especially It's exactly, and for no other reason than, because SC2 is going to replace BW that we both hate it so much and want it to succeed so badly. It HAS to be as good as BW.
After watching some recent GSL TvZs, I have a few thoughts on the state of the matchup - especially, the local imbalances surrounding the marine.
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/9/9d/Marine.png/162px-Marine.png) here is a superfluous picture of a marine
so this post looks less like a wall of text
Local imbalance sounds like something you wouldn't want to have in a game, but it's actually what makes games interesting. If you've played BW I'm sure you've had thoughts like
"[choose some: irradiate, vultures, tanks, dark templar, carriers, arbiters, dark swarm, cracklings] are just bullshit." But even with every race having its own unique bullshit it all somehow comes together to make the most balanced RTS of all time. BroodWar's balance is maintained because of, not in spite of, its massive local imbalances.
So it is not an inherently bad thing if marines in SC2 are locally imbalanced against (lair tech) zerg armies. However, I believe that the strength of the marine against zerg is dictating how the matchup is played in an extreme way.
First of all we need to talk about what zerg can do against a marine based army. In SC2 ZvTs that I've seen, zerg responds to a marine based army with zerglings, banelings, maybe roaches, and either mutalisks or infestors. I'm going to talke about zergling/baneling/muta and zergling/baneling/infestor because I think those are zerg's best options. I'm going to mostly ignore hydras and roaches.
+ Show Spoiler +My impression: - Hydras are too fragile against marines.
- I haven't seen zerg go roaches against terran very recently and I think the reason we're seeing that as well as more pure marine instead of marine/marauder is that marauders are so good against roaches that zerg players just stop making roaches and so terran players stop making marauders.
- Both hydras and roaches are bad against tanks.
Banelings are clearly intended to be the counter to marines, and they do fulfill that role. But only if you can land them and use their splash damage effectively. The difficulty in landing them means that that barring a dramatic advantage in army size you can't really engage marines off of creep or without fungal or they'll just kite you. So banelings are most effective when used defensively, on creep, against clumped marines. But despite their drawbacks I don't think it is possible to deal with marines without them.
+ Show Spoiler +Leenock vs MarineKing on Shakuras Plateua is a good example of what happens when terran gets to spread his marines.
Ling/baneling is similar to ling/lurker in BW, but lost is the ability to hold positions. Whereas burrowed lurkers can dictate what marines do and marines can dictate what unburrowed lurkers do, marines are always at an advantage against banelings.
So now zerg must choose between infestors or mutalisks - there's not enough gas for both:
The strength of mutalisks in this matchup is their mobility. They're great for dealing with drops and perfect for harassment. They are not great for directly engaging the terran's army and a thor or two makes them a whole lot less useful.
Infestors are the exact opposite - great for engaging the terran's army, but immobile. Good luck dealing with drops, especially now that fungal growth no longer affects air units.
Once you end up with a zerg army that cannot engage the terran army off creep, the balance of this branch of the matchup depends enormously on the map. The greater the "expandability" of the map, the better for zerg. When terran gets a map like Scrap Station, he can move to a new branch entirely by doing something creative; e.g. Jinro vs Moon. But when a zerg gets a map like Jungle Basin...
![[image loading]](http://i642.photobucket.com/albums/uu142/Crunchums/untitled.jpg) hmmmmmm... ![[image loading]](http://209.85.48.16/4802/66/0/e5000309/e5000309.gif)
Zerg is dependent on staying a base ahead of terran. On Jungle Basin, if terran just plays safe and takes his third relatively quickly doing that is insanely hard. The map is so hard to expand on that zerg is lucky if he can hold a third, let alone a fourth, and good luck attacking into a stable terran position. Meanwhile it's extremely easy for terran to deny expos and defend his bases adequately.
TvP has a similar dynamic to it in that gateway units can't engage marine/marauder without forcefield but I haven't seen as many TvPs and I am less concerned about it. A couple games strike me as ridiculous:
- A game on Scrap Station where terran made marine/marauder, 1 raven, and 1 banshee, then uses a point defense drone to let his banshee kill all the sentries and then 1ta-clicks for the win.
- A recent GSL game (Rain vs Squirtle, I think) where terran EMP'd all of protoss' sentries and then 1ta-clicks for the win.
tl;dr version - - Right now in ZvT the big question is how the zerg fights against marines. In my opinion, zerg doesn't have a stable way of doing so.
- The GSL's current maps are awful.
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not going to lie but the maps for the gsl arnt exactly a zergs dream 
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TvZ is still a problem for Zergs seeing as how Z is forced to play predictable (12 hatch opening) while T still has a huge arsenal of options
I've been talking about this before too but I feel like the last two patches only forced T to play a more macro-orientated opening with the requirement of Supply before Rax. T still has an upper hand in advantage in terms of versatility, and unit power. Banelings are good but only if T goes mostly bio. I feel like Z has no real answer to T's army until Ultras come out. That's assuming Z will survive the harrass and have a fine mid-game econ.
Solutions: Reduce T opening options while opening up Z's opening options.
Give Z some-kind of mid-game strength (new unit, or anything)
EDIT: Banelings fulfill the same role as Lurkers in SC1. Both do splash damage and eat up marines, but when marines are combined with higher tier units like Tanks / Marauders OR simply micro, Banelings cannot do much to stop the T ball of death. And we all know what happened when Zerg stayed on Lurker tech for too long in SC1.
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I think you are wrong, and if you had played the game you'd think so too.
Maps are bad, most people don't like them so much.
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Marines are way too strong in the early game and extremely weak in the late game...that wouldn't be too much of a problem if it wasn't the only source of good GtA defense in all matchups and a source of DPS vs hordes of T1 units...
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The current ladder maps are HORRIBLE. Meta and LT and decent, but that's about it...
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On December 05 2010 03:52 HwangjaeTerran wrote:
I think you are wrong, and if you had played the game you'd think so too.
Maps are bad, most people don't like them so much.
Wrong about what, specifically?
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this is the best balancing threat i have EVER read ! i think you are right but i think time will solve problems with new openings.
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Please also look at the terran side. Spreading your marines is not as easy as it seems. Infestorplay shuts down marineplay completely. Terran has no lategame army in my opinion. I wouldn't be suprised to see GSL won by a zerg again. Zerg is hard to play, but it has so much potential. In the hands of a skilled player, it's the strongest race.
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lol pretty bad thread. Every game you show there where T is beating a Z is on a Zerg favored map with Terran winning before the 13 minute mark (some exceptions like jinro vs moon) or it's Terran winning decidedly on jungle/steppes/close positions meta.
You have it entirely backwards, marines are not a problem. Late game ZvT is the problem. Analyze the games you just cited, don't just blankly post showing "omg T won all these!" because it doesn't help point out any problems or even support your point.
Then go look at the games that are beyond the 13 minute mark. Look how many of them Zerg wins. Look at how many of them are on Zerg favored maps (most of them).
You yourself said you've played less than 20 games of SC2. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thread - you don't know what you're talking about, or have the experience to talk about it well enough.
There's a reason why Terrans do 2 base timing attacks on Zerg favored maps - hint: it's not because marines are mega OP...it's because if the game goes long enough, Zerg has a ridiculous advantage.
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On December 05 2010 07:44 avilo wrote:
lol pretty bad thread. Every game you show there where T is beating a Z is on a Zerg favored map with Terran winning before the 13 minute mark (some exceptions like jinro vs moon) or it's Terran winning decidedly on jungle/steppes/close positions meta.
You have it entirely backwards, marines are not a problem. Late game ZvT is the problem. Analyze the games you just cited, don't just blankly post showing "omg T won all these!" because it doesn't help point out any problems or even support your point.
Then go look at the games that are beyond the 13 minute mark. Look how many of them Zerg wins. Look at how many of them are on Zerg favored maps (most of them).
You yourself said you've played less than 20 games of SC2. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thread - you don't know what you're talking about, or have the experience to talk about it well enough.
There's a reason why Terrans do 2 base timing attacks on Zerg favored maps - hint: it's not because marines are mega OP...it's because if the game goes long enough, Zerg has a ridiculous advantage.
you're calling bullshit on a thread that actually cites stats (unlike yours)?
'look at the games that go beyond the 13 minute mark' so I just watched Drewbie annihilate TLO on Meta, then Kyhol (or whatever) do the same to Ret, on cross-position Meta. I also saw Jinro do some amazing play in the GSL. A
After watching a replay of you that got posted here I'll just say this: you don't have the room to talk about TvZ balance as if you understand the match in its entirety.
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On December 05 2010 04:38 Crunchums wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2010 03:52 HwangjaeTerran wrote:
I think you are wrong, and if you had played the game you'd think so too.
Maps are bad, most people don't like them so much. Wrong about what, specifically?
especially, the local imbalances surrounding the marine.
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On December 05 2010 07:53 dreamend wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2010 07:44 avilo wrote:
lol pretty bad thread. Every game you show there where T is beating a Z is on a Zerg favored map with Terran winning before the 13 minute mark (some exceptions like jinro vs moon) or it's Terran winning decidedly on jungle/steppes/close positions meta.
You have it entirely backwards, marines are not a problem. Late game ZvT is the problem. Analyze the games you just cited, don't just blankly post showing "omg T won all these!" because it doesn't help point out any problems or even support your point.
Then go look at the games that are beyond the 13 minute mark. Look how many of them Zerg wins. Look at how many of them are on Zerg favored maps (most of them).
You yourself said you've played less than 20 games of SC2. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thread - you don't know what you're talking about, or have the experience to talk about it well enough.
There's a reason why Terrans do 2 base timing attacks on Zerg favored maps - hint: it's not because marines are mega OP...it's because if the game goes long enough, Zerg has a ridiculous advantage. you're calling bullshit on a thread that actually cites stats (unlike yours)? 'look at the games that go beyond the 13 minute mark' so I just watched Drewbie annihilate TLO on Meta, then Kyhol (or whatever) do the same to Ret, on cross-position Meta. I also saw Jinro do some amazing play in the GSL. A After watching a replay of you that got posted here I'll just say this: you don't have the room to talk about TvZ balance as if you understand the match in its entirety.
He cites GSL wins/losses without actually looking at the content of the games...which is a huge nono.
It's fine to use statistics, but there's such a thing as lying with statistics. What's not fine is just throwing up some win/loss records and making gigantic claims about something, especially if you yourself have only played 20 games of the game.
It's like if I only played 20 games of brood war and I start posting a picture of a lurker, claiming that in TvZ the lurker is "locally imba" (kids need to stop getting fancy). And then presenting you with a random stat sheet of Zergs owning Terrans.
You would have no idea what maps those were played on, how the game was at this point in time, etc. Also, I would have no idea what the fuck I am talking about making some huge claim that lurkers are imba when I'd have only played around 20 games of the actual game, whereas other players have played thousands.
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On December 05 2010 08:16 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2010 07:53 dreamend wrote:On December 05 2010 07:44 avilo wrote:
lol pretty bad thread. Every game you show there where T is beating a Z is on a Zerg favored map with Terran winning before the 13 minute mark (some exceptions like jinro vs moon) or it's Terran winning decidedly on jungle/steppes/close positions meta.
You have it entirely backwards, marines are not a problem. Late game ZvT is the problem. Analyze the games you just cited, don't just blankly post showing "omg T won all these!" because it doesn't help point out any problems or even support your point.
Then go look at the games that are beyond the 13 minute mark. Look how many of them Zerg wins. Look at how many of them are on Zerg favored maps (most of them).
You yourself said you've played less than 20 games of SC2. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thread - you don't know what you're talking about, or have the experience to talk about it well enough.
There's a reason why Terrans do 2 base timing attacks on Zerg favored maps - hint: it's not because marines are mega OP...it's because if the game goes long enough, Zerg has a ridiculous advantage. you're calling bullshit on a thread that actually cites stats (unlike yours)? 'look at the games that go beyond the 13 minute mark' so I just watched Drewbie annihilate TLO on Meta, then Kyhol (or whatever) do the same to Ret, on cross-position Meta. I also saw Jinro do some amazing play in the GSL. A After watching a replay of you that got posted here I'll just say this: you don't have the room to talk about TvZ balance as if you understand the match in its entirety. He cites GSL wins/losses without actually looking at the content of the games...which is a huge nono. It's fine to use statistics, but there's such a thing as lying with statistics. What's not fine is just throwing up some win/loss records and making gigantic claims about something, especially if you yourself have only played 20 games of the game. It's like if I only played 20 games of brood war and I start posting a picture of a lurker, claiming that in TvZ the lurker is "locally imba" (kids need to stop getting fancy). And then presenting you with a random stat sheet of Zergs owning Terrans. You would have no idea what maps those were played on, how the game was at this point in time, etc. Also, I would have no idea what the fuck I am talking about making some huge claim that lurkers are imba when I'd have only played around 20 games of the actual game, whereas other players have played thousands.
So when GSL statistics actually help your biased views (omg Zerg won GSL twice!) you decide to include them but when they actually even hint that Terran might be still too strong of a race, you call those stats worthless?
Wow, we knew you were a heavily T biased but I'm surprised at how one sided you are
Your say in this thread should hold the least weight seeing as you made all those horrible blogs about T complaint, submitting a flawed replay as evidence (OMG roach range is too good, look it beat my marauders! I'm just not going to mention that I didn't get Concussive Shells in this replay to help prove my point)
I'm disgusted to see a Terran player complaining about balance :/
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On December 05 2010 10:07 lastmotion wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2010 08:16 avilo wrote:On December 05 2010 07:53 dreamend wrote:On December 05 2010 07:44 avilo wrote:
lol pretty bad thread. Every game you show there where T is beating a Z is on a Zerg favored map with Terran winning before the 13 minute mark (some exceptions like jinro vs moon) or it's Terran winning decidedly on jungle/steppes/close positions meta.
You have it entirely backwards, marines are not a problem. Late game ZvT is the problem. Analyze the games you just cited, don't just blankly post showing "omg T won all these!" because it doesn't help point out any problems or even support your point.
Then go look at the games that are beyond the 13 minute mark. Look how many of them Zerg wins. Look at how many of them are on Zerg favored maps (most of them).
You yourself said you've played less than 20 games of SC2. I'm calling bullshit on this entire thread - you don't know what you're talking about, or have the experience to talk about it well enough.
There's a reason why Terrans do 2 base timing attacks on Zerg favored maps - hint: it's not because marines are mega OP...it's because if the game goes long enough, Zerg has a ridiculous advantage. you're calling bullshit on a thread that actually cites stats (unlike yours)? 'look at the games that go beyond the 13 minute mark' so I just watched Drewbie annihilate TLO on Meta, then Kyhol (or whatever) do the same to Ret, on cross-position Meta. I also saw Jinro do some amazing play in the GSL. A After watching a replay of you that got posted here I'll just say this: you don't have the room to talk about TvZ balance as if you understand the match in its entirety. He cites GSL wins/losses without actually looking at the content of the games...which is a huge nono. It's fine to use statistics, but there's such a thing as lying with statistics. What's not fine is just throwing up some win/loss records and making gigantic claims about something, especially if you yourself have only played 20 games of the game. It's like if I only played 20 games of brood war and I start posting a picture of a lurker, claiming that in TvZ the lurker is "locally imba" (kids need to stop getting fancy). And then presenting you with a random stat sheet of Zergs owning Terrans. You would have no idea what maps those were played on, how the game was at this point in time, etc. Also, I would have no idea what the fuck I am talking about making some huge claim that lurkers are imba when I'd have only played around 20 games of the actual game, whereas other players have played thousands. So when GSL statistics actually help your biased views (omg Zerg won GSL twice!) you decide to include them but when they actually even hint that Terran might be still too strong of a race, you call those stats worthless? Wow, we knew you were a heavily T biased but I'm surprised at how one sided you are Your say in this thread should hold the least weight seeing as you made all those horrible blogs about T complaint, submitting a flawed replay as evidence (OMG roach range is too good, look it beat my marauders! I'm just not going to mention that I didn't get Concussive Shells in this replay to help prove my point) I'm disgusted to see a Terran player complaining about balance :/
You just spewed out the most bull I've seen in a while. Who ever mentioned GSL winners? Who submitted replays? What the heck are you talking about? Roach range, marauders? Um...what? I don't think anyone has complained about those things even in the past 3 months.
Seems like you just were throwing out random "T OP" words/phrases that people will trigger onto to make someone appear like they are biased and discredit their arguments. Who that is, I have no idea, because no one was even discussing roach range or shells.
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I never said TvZ was imbalanced, I didn't say a single thing about lategame TvZ, and I didn't intend the TvZ map stats on Jungle Basin to justify anything other than "Jungle Basin is hard map for ZvT". Please stop reading whining about imbalance instead of what I actually wrote.
I agree that lategame TvZ is hard for terran. I would also say that before the lategame, TvZ is hard for zerg. Both of those claims hinge upon the marine being weak in the lategame but strong before that.
Some specific responses:
On December 05 2010 05:47 Dente wrote:
Spreading your marines is not as easy as it seems. Infestorplay shuts down marineplay completely.
It doesn't matter how hard spreading is if top players can do it consistently. As for infestors, how many times does Foxer have to beat infestors with pure marine before people stop saying that? But my point was not that infestors aren't good against marines, rather that on a map like Jungle Basin they do not give you either the mobility needed to defend your expos from drops or the ability to attack into a static terran army.
avilo, I do not think you actually read what I wrote.
Here is a list of things you think I claimed that I did not actually claim:
- TvZ is imbalanced in favor of terran
- The GSL3 TvZ stats of a T>Z map support the previous statement
- I believe myself to be a source of authority on SC2 despite not actually playing the game
- Marines are imbalanced in TvZ
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EPT
