Why should I play ladder any more? - Page 2

I started SC2 as my first RTS with its release, started in Bronze league and fought my way up to Masters. I played Terran from the first game because I knew it was the right race to play.
I did massive 1v1 sessions with average 8 games per day over one and a half years, and I liked it a lot. Recently, with the last change that have been made to the game, I lost the fun playing 1v1 to compete with others.

I always liked it and like it now, too. Even when there was the time of tankchess, I liked the positional battles. Like in every other matchup too, the metagame trend is going towards more bio and less tanks to be more aggressive, because, most of the times, you can not win a highlevel game with defense only.
Nothing more can be said about a mirror matchup because when both players start with the same conditions, the game is fair.

I bought SC2 because I liked the idea of micro and macro, and TvP is so much micro (on the Terran side at least; I don’t want to take anything away from Protosses, but in the late game, they have to micro so much less than the terran players.)
The TvP matchup is one of the fairest (non-mirror) matchups in my opinion, until it goes to the lategame. The Terran reward for microing perfectly all day is staying alive until the next warpin.
I loved this matchup so much because of the amount of micro I could do in the midgame, but nowadays the Protoss just turtles and a-moves his deathball. A few storms here and there, maybe some feedbacks, but these actions are the only ones you can call micro. Colossi don’t need to be microed, Zealots can not be microed.

The Terran has to focus the Colossi with his Vikings, stim and then micro the bioball against Zealots and storm, while dropping perfect EMPs. If one of these things is not perfect, you lose the game because the Zealots connect and deal too much damage; or the Collossi stay alive and deal too much damage; or the Templars stay alive and full of energy and storm everything, even your medivacs; and without them you can not kite the Zealots. Kiting is a central point in TvP because Zealots deal too much damage to your biounits and THEY JUST DO NOT DIE. when they are fully upgraded, they don’t care about EMPs or kiting, the only thing you can do is building Marines. Sadly, protosses do not only build zealots but units with splash damage, too, and everything kills marines so fast that you can not use marines to deal with zealots specifically without microing as if you had 17 hands. At this point, please remember I am a casual player and not a pro player, so I have only 2 hands.

Zealot warpins or runbys are so strong that I have to bring my entire army back for defense because I can’t micro my new units because I have more important things to do like microing my main army or macroing.

The army you build up as a Terran player is not scary at all: there is nothing Protoss has to react to: Terran has to react to Colossi with Vikings, to Templars with Ghosts. What has Terran that Protoss has to react to?

As the game goes to the lategame, the game becomes unfair for the Terran player. Blizzard knows that and says “you have to do damage in the midgame to stay even”. That is the same statement as mine, but said more nicely to not reveal the unfairness.

At the moment, I just allin every game and it works 80% of the time because that allin is so strong (One Barracks, two Factories, maybe I will make a guide someday) and Zerg players are greedier than ever with the recent changes.

I love the micro involved, that’s why i do it. Moreover, Blizzard wants us to allin:
Terran has no good lategame army except the “Skyterran” in the superlategame with Raven-Battlecruiser-Viking, which can be killed in seconds by chain fungal and is very hard to transition to because you have too few Starports and no upgrades for it. Other than that, the current metagame trend goes towards less Tanks, bio play is getting more popular: you need less upgrades, you are more mobile and you can replace your army faster when everything died because of chain fungal.
Tanks are getting replaced because it is easier to split your bio against marines than getting tanks in a good position to kill banelings and infestors, and here is why:

The maps are really big; with the recent queen change, the Zerg player gets more queens earlier on, therefore has more creep and because of the creep on the map the terran push is way slower and gets shut down more easily when he has Tanks. Tanks need to be sieged when the attack comes because the first seconds of a fight are the deciding point: when there are too many lings after the first few hits the terran just gets surrounded and killed.

I don’t say it is currently impossible to beat a zerg, but it is very hard when you want to do it after the midgame mark.

Infestors are also too strong: their “counter”, Ghosts, got nerfed so hard that not even pro players use them in this matchup any more. In my opinion, the Ghost or the Raven should always play a role in a Terran matchup because they are the only Terran spellcasters; but the Ghost is too slow and its range and EMP radius too small to do something against Infestors. Moreover, if you have energy left after you used your main spell as a Zerg player (fungal) you can use the rest of the energy for Infested Terrans. I like that idea, but as a Terran player, the spell you can use after EMP is snipe which deals 25 damage ( to Not-Infestor units). 2 snipes for a zergling seem more than unfair; it should be rewarding to be used on the big units like Broodlords and Ultralisks again, because that would be a good way to deal with the techswitches. And two snipes for a single Infestor is just too much, even Protoss has a better way to deal with them (just a single feedback).

When Ghosts were used in TvZ lategame, Zerg players said is was unfair that Terran can kill everything with them and I had to laugh; Terran is not the reactionary race. Terran can not techswitch as easy as Zerg can do and Terran needs extra upgrades for its lategame units.

The infestor can kill everything (like the Ghost did), too, and even better. It has area damage, detection, can burrow and - the unfairest attribute in the game - chain fungal: when you make one small mistake, you can be fungaled to death. Medivacs can not escape, Marine groups can not escape while not even being able to shoot at the Infestors at all and even Ghosts get detected and fungaled to death. Tanks also can not siege nor run away.

Again, like in TvP, the game becomes unfair when it goes to the lategame and “Terran did no damage in the midgame to stay even.”

You can not use a progamer as an example how to play, because it is a completly different game they play: much more apm they can use, specific timed builds strike at a timing and preparation to snipe a certain player on a certain map are things I can not use as a casual player on the ladder.