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"I wish I could all in, not win, and still be in the game like StarCraft II players"
- random Poker players
Over the years, the term "all in" has been extremely deflated in StarCraft, I remember when I was scoffed for saying that 4gates had an "all innish caracter" because you stopped worker production, delayed tech and an expansion and was in a need to do very heavy damage once you commited to it. But you didn't bring your workers along so it wasn't all in right? Well, it wasn't, it was 'all innish'. The meaning of the word "all" should be transparent to anyone enjoyed any education in English. When you put it all in that attack it means you have considered absolutely no follow up plan.
I've seen a lot of comments talking about how it is ridiculous how someone can still win after a failed "all in", well, then it's not an all in is it? Especially when it happens repeatedly. I've been bitched at a lot on the ladder for my repeated habit of 10pooling Terrans, forcing a cancel on a CC on the low ground (totally worth a 10pool by the way) and then still winning. There's currently a mentality with a lot of people that the moment you make a single blink stalker in PvT before storm or colossi you are "all in", empirical evidence seems to strongly disagree with this idea. There have been plenty of games where people still win despite not killing their opponent with it.
Now, the obvious point you gravitate towards is "Is it fair that Protoss can kill Terran with such an attack if Terran is not ready but can transition when they are easily?", well, no, not really, but this is called assymetric balance. Is it fair that Terran can fly three dropships in and do cripling damage to a Protoss that is not ready but just boost in the opposite direction when stalkers are waiting? Is it fair that a ling runby can absolutely kill a Terran or Protoss who is not walled off, but if they are, the lings can just go do something else?
If the rule "In order to kill someone with an attack you have to put yourself behind if you don'tkill that person" actually existed in this game, it would be a stale game where no one had any incentive ever to be aggressive and every attack that could do damage would be all in. It's essential to encourage aggression that there exists potential in timing windows to kill your oppponent without significant investment. As long as the potential exists in different timing windows for both sides the overal metagame is still balanced.
Currently the 'blink stalker timing' (different from the 1base blink all in) seems to be a timing window on 2 bases in PvT which is not unlike the medivac timing which follows in reverse. It's a timing you have where you might as well move out with your army because the potential outweighs the risk. In both cases you can loose your army yes if you fuck up. But if you don't, you don't really lose anything of value and you always have the potential to do game ending damage.
It ultimately reminds me of what David Kim said about the oracle and medivac speed boost. Initially people said it was impossible to deal with, but it became so common because of that that people got so good at dealing with it that it since has become very reasonable to deal with. Which is ultimately the self-balancing nature of this game. If a strat is powerful it happens often and people get good training against it, and motivation to figure out a solution. The standard TvP meta currently is to scout for that blink timing and build bunkers appropropriately, then the PvT meta in reverse when the medivacs come is to place obeservers properly and get stalkers ready in good drop spots.
  
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I haven't played SC2 in a while, so I don't know if TvP is balanced or not, but your reasoning seems good. Nice post.
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On February 16 2014 23:06 vOdToasT wrote:
I haven't played SC2 in a while, so I don't know if TvP is balanced or not, but your reasoning seems good. Nice post. In my opinion the balance is acceptable. THere used to be a slight Protoss favour but the ghost buff pulled through recently should at the very least even if it. There are a lot of Terrans exaggerating whatever problems that may exist in TvP though. You see a lot of people saying that TvP was "impossible" in january, this was with a 52% overall PvT winrate over almost 1 500 games so I don't buy it.
What definitely exists is that Protoss has far more options early game than Terran. But I don't think this is too much of a problem, it's something that has plagued ZvT since forever, there was a time where the only real option Z had was 15 hatch and Terran held all the options.
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Its good reasoning but I really feel that there's a missing classification between timing attack / push and all in, we just don't really have a word for it. This also adds to the obscurity as to where an all in ends and cheese starts.
For the other point, yea PvT is really messed up with the amount of super powerful low risk attacks protoss can do. Not gunna comment on the balance but its definitely a design problem and I know its extremely frustrating for terrans; having to scout exactly which attack it is, react to it perfectly due to the massive strength of all the builds discussed, often still losing despite scouting and reacting well due to the slightest slip, then when holding the attack not being in any significant advantage.
I believe there was some proposition about changing the blink cooldown. It amazes me they went with that solution, I really think other than this timing attack blink is one of the most engaging and fun abilities in the game and a flat nerf across the board for it seems very stupid to me. The best solution iv heard lately is to REMOVE all vision from the MSC. This would solve the blink all in, forcing them to get the obs to blink into the main greatly nerfing the build. It would also help deal with a lot of the free map control and scouting the MSC can be used for early game, while not nullifying it as a strong support unit.
As for the Oracle im still not sure why its in the game at all it seems to overlap with the other protoss air units far too much and be an exclusively coinflip unit. Im happy at least protoss are slowly using revelation more and more after their various oracle shenanigans; the main thing I like about the Oracle. I wish they would have balanced the originally proposed spellcaster/harass Oracle that was one of the units I was really looking forward to in HotS.
On February 16 2014 23:19 SiskosGoatee wrote:
What definitely exists is that Protoss has far more options early game than Terran. But I don't think this is too much of a problem, it's something that has plagued ZvT since forever, there was a time where the only real option Z had was 15 hatch and Terran held all the options.
Don't really agree with this analogy. Zerg has never lacked good all ins against Terran. Often there have been times where again the "grey area" - mentioned right at the top of this post, between what we consider an all in and what we consider a normal attack - has been pretty empty. But yea as mentioned Zerg has always had loads of great all ins against Terran, I mean for example there's a million variants of the roach bane timing attack from 6 minutes to beyond 10 minutes, all of them have been extremely strong and well used, especially in wings while honestly being a lot easier to execute than to hold for the most part.
Not to mention for wings there was a wide variety of strategies zerg could use particularly a bit later in the game. We've seen for solid openings: 2 base muta, roach ling infestor, 3 base muta, hive rush, mass ling bane and even roach hydra. For lategame there was a good amount of variation: mass muta much as is common now, infestor heavy, fast broodlords, ultralisk queen picked up a lot of traction in the last months of wings because of mass drops. Its not the most strategically diverse race for sure but we had options.
Compared to that currently Terran have 0 decent success rate all ins vs protoss. They have only a single gameplan shown to be solid against a good variety of protoss styles at a respectable level of play. Deviance is basically limited to throwing all their chips behind a big MMM timing, maybe with SCVs even or playing this hard lategame ghost viking heavy style. This lategame is perfectly viable and functional but with all the different abilities and control required, not to mention keeping up with macro, controlling this composition correctly is insanely difficult. Terran has a pretty raw deal in this matchup atm.
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On February 16 2014 23:02 SiskosGoatee wrote:
"I wish I could all in, not win, and still be in the game like StarCraft II players"
- random Poker players
This happens all the time when the poker player that loses starts with more chips than the opponent.
I agree with your point that the term "all-in" is over-used but the problem it addresses is the ease with which the Protoss can potentially win the early game against Terran. And we are still seeing at high levels Protoss that win games three to four blinks into a game or through the massive advantage from killing so many workers plus marines with a few starting oracles. Meanwhile the biggest damage a Terran is likely to get with their open against Protoss is to kill 3 or 4 probes if the Protoss is extra slow to react.
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On February 16 2014 23:38 Iksf wrote:
Its good reasoning but I really feel that there's a missing classification between timing attack / push and all in, we just don't really have a word for it. This also adds to the obscurity as to where an all in ends and cheese starts.
Semi all in?
Cheese and all ins are also two completely different strategies. Parting's famous sentry/immortal is an all in, but not a cheese, it doesn't rely on not being scouted and the surprise factor, but it still does not consider any follow up whatsoever and expects to kill the opponent right there.
For the other point, yea PvT is really messed up with the amount of super powerful low risk attacks protoss can do. Not gunna comment on the balance but its definitely a design problem and I know its extremely frustrating for terrans; having to scout exactly which attack it is, react to it perfectly due to the massive strength of all the builds discussed, often still losing despite scouting and reacting well due to the slightest slip, then when holding the attack not being in any significant advantage. Well, I think it's also the position Terrans are inviting by playing so greedy and defensively. Terrans are set to the 1 rax (reaper) expand. If you do that you cede most map control to protoss and say "come at me, I can hold it". When protoss does proxy oracles or something like that against it they commit to something before an expansion. I think proxy factories are really viable, as viable as proxy oracles and use them a lot. I often do a timing push where I hit with 3 marines, a marauder and a mine from a proxied factory and it's very effective and tends to succeed in planting the mine in the mineral line or killing the mothership core with it. And even if it doesn't do super high damage it's very transitionalbe much like proxy oracle, you get an early starport, protoss is forced to sit back clearing up the mines just like the oracle pins them and you can typically transition into an early 3 CC, float the factory home and get a tank out for good security.
I believe there was some proposition about changing the blink cooldown. It amazes me they went with that solution, I really think other than this timing attack blink is one of the most engaging and fun abilities in the game and a flat nerf across the board for it seems very stupid to me. The best solution iv heard lately is to REMOVE all vision from the MSC. This would solve the blink all in, forcing them to get the obs to blink into the main greatly nerfing the build. It would also help deal with a lot of the free map control and scouting the MSC can be used for early game, while not nullifying it as a strong support unit. all vision is too much, but I think the MSC should have very low vision, around 6 is enough, it's still a unit that is used to scout itself. I also think the unit should be made less maneuvrable with its acceleration lower. I actually think the dance around the core in blink all ins is interesting with Terran trying to kill it. I actually think a mothership core which is less maneuvrable but has more hp would be interesting.
As for the Oracle im still not sure why its in the game at all it seems to overlap with the other protoss air units far too much and be an exclusively coinflip unit. Im happy at least protoss are slowly using revelation more and more after their various oracle shenanigans; the main thing I like about the Oracle. I wish they would have balanced the originally proposed spellcaster/harass Oracle that was one of the units I was really looking forward to in HotS. Oracle is kind of super situational, it's an early cheese unit and its revelation is useful in lategame PvZ, apart from that, its abilities apart from its gun are only used because you have the oracle so you might as well use it. I'd like the oracle to have more use in general. No one makes an oracle to be able to use revelation with it except in lategame PvZ.
I wouldn't mind if they merged revelation/envision or just made the oracle a permanent detector, nerved its gun a little and gave it a third ability which it was actually worth getting for.
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I actually think a mothership core which is less maneuvrable but has more hp would be interesting.
Remember you can't actually push the MSC's base stats that far without seriously breaking PvZ. If you gave it more than a slight buff rushes based on nuking down the queen would be pretty strong. A queen only beats an MSC 1 on 1 by a tiny amount currently and its something that's a huge irritation compared to wings when dealing with early pressures off a chronoed gate, a strategy with basically 0 economic impact for the protoss meaning the zerg has to be extremely conservative with their reaction.
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On February 17 2014 00:04 Iksf wrote:Show nested quote +I actually think a mothership core which is less maneuvrable but has more hp would be interesting. Remember you can't actually push the MSC's base stats that far without seriously breaking PvZ. If you gave it more than a slight buff rushes based on nuking down the queen would be pretty strong. Yeah, that is a really fair point, I'm sure that Blizzard thoroughly has tested MSC vs Queen for any damage and hp they give it to ensure that a queen can always solo one.
This is by the way why all this theorycraft about change that people come up with must first be tested, which Blizzard does before they implement changes. These are the small things you might overlook, the moment that a mothership core can solo a queen PvZ would be broken beyond repair.
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I guess another solution would be removing the base attack but yea the base attack of the MSC is a surprisingly useful feature for protoss in PvZ particularly, dislodging lings from towers, makes gate FE builds a lot more viable.
I really wish theyd heavily nerf the MSC vision, either to a decent level as you suggested or a more extreme nerf. I think that would fix a lot of problems across all protoss matchups. At least the current level is absurd, I can think of several games where iv had to check the replay suspecting a hack or something, a game I nydused comes to mind, but its just the MSC's huge vision range.
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Oh god !!! yes please. the pro players finds a good strategy so lets all nerf it! down with pro playing!!
Blizzard.. keep fucking up your game.. go go go!
PS : go to custom games and look for the extension mod unnerfed HOTS and look for a freaking clue to resolve the blink !
like blizzard should have done in the first place.. fucking whiner bitch ass punk
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IMO the problem for PvT is that on some maps, the number of aggression a protoss can pull and do critical damages forces the terran player to play overly safe so as to potentially counter all of them, leading to a mid-game/late-game where T is behind and unless much better play loses.
If there was no blink timing, oracle would be way easier to defend, and vice versa. Thats leads to the need for terran to scout perfectly, which sometimes is not done perfectly and lead to frustrating loses, and to "terran tears".
To me, the inclusion of harassment units like the oracle makes no sense, as it only increase the early game protoss potential and has no effect at all on the infamous toss deathball.
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On February 16 2014 23:02 SiskosGoatee wrote:
"I wish I could all in, not win, and still be in the game like StarCraft II players"
- random Poker players
Over the years, the term "all in" has been extremely deflated in StarCraft, I remember when I was scoffed for saying that 4gates had an "all innish caracter" because you stopped worker production, delayed tech and an expansion and was in a need to do very heavy damage once you commited to it. But you didn't bring your workers along so it wasn't all in right? Well, it wasn't, it was 'all innish'. The meaning of the word "all" should be transparent to anyone enjoyed any education in English. When you put it all in that attack it means you have considered absolutely no follow up plan.
I've seen a lot of comments talking about how it is ridiculous how someone can still win after a failed "all in", well, then it's not an all in is it? Especially when it happens repeatedly. I've been bitched at a lot on the ladder for my repeated habit of 10pooling Terrans, forcing a cancel on a CC on the low ground (totally worth a 10pool by the way) and then still winning. There's currently a mentality with a lot of people that the moment you make a single blink stalker in PvT before storm or colossi you are "all in", empirical evidence seems to strongly disagree with this idea. There have been plenty of games where people still win despite not killing their opponent with it.
Now, the obvious point you gravitate towards is "Is it fair that Protoss can kill Terran with such an attack if Terran is not ready but can transition when they are easily?", well, no, not really, but this is called assymetric balance. Is it fair that Terran can fly three dropships in and do cripling damage to a Protoss that is not ready but just boost in the opposite direction when stalkers are waiting? Is it fair that a ling runby can absolutely kill a Terran or Protoss who is not walled off, but if they are, the lings can just go do something else?
If the rule "In order to kill someone with an attack you have to put yourself behind if you don'tkill that person" actually existed in this game, it would be a stale game where no one had any incentive ever to be aggressive and every attack that could do damage would be all in. It's essential to encourage aggression that there exists potential in timing windows to kill your oppponent without significant investment. As long as the potential exists in different timing windows for both sides the overal metagame is still balanced.
Currently the 'blink stalker timing' (different from the 1base blink all in) seems to be a timing window on 2 bases in PvT which is not unlike the medivac timing which follows in reverse. It's a timing you have where you might as well move out with your army because the potential outweighs the risk. In both cases you can loose your army yes if you fuck up. But if you don't, you don't really lose anything of value and you always have the potential to do game ending damage.
It ultimately reminds me of what David Kim said about the oracle and medivac speed boost. Initially people said it was impossible to deal with, but it became so common because of that that people got so good at dealing with it that it since has become very reasonable to deal with. Which is ultimately the self-balancing nature of this game. If a strat is powerful it happens often and people get good training against it, and motivation to figure out a solution. The standard TvP meta currently is to scout for that blink timing and build bunkers appropropriately, then the PvT meta in reverse when the medivacs come is to place obeservers properly and get stalkers ready in good drop spots.
The problem with your comparison is that blinks are so good in the current map pool that even when scouted, pro Terrans have trouble holding. This was not the case for 3 medivac drops and ling runbys. If spotted, they are easy to hold off, that is the biggest difference. Imagine if roach bane bust had viable transitions or 11-11. Or 6 pool in PvZ if scouted.
As for medivac boost, remember that hell bats were nerfed so that is why the boost was weakened. As for oracles, HerO showed that oracles are still good but with the maps, blink is a better choice.
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I completely agree.
All in is pretty much a wrong term to describe blink in PvT, blink stalker is more of a harassment build unless he is really pushing the gateway numbers.
there are other things that it can go into, quick third, contain and tech behind etc.
It's a bit like mass bfhellion "all in" in TvZ, it puts you behind if you don't do any damage, but it transition into mech perfectly.
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On February 17 2014 01:00 vthree wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2014 23:02 SiskosGoatee wrote:
"I wish I could all in, not win, and still be in the game like StarCraft II players"
- random Poker players
Over the years, the term "all in" has been extremely deflated in StarCraft, I remember when I was scoffed for saying that 4gates had an "all innish caracter" because you stopped worker production, delayed tech and an expansion and was in a need to do very heavy damage once you commited to it. But you didn't bring your workers along so it wasn't all in right? Well, it wasn't, it was 'all innish'. The meaning of the word "all" should be transparent to anyone enjoyed any education in English. When you put it all in that attack it means you have considered absolutely no follow up plan.
I've seen a lot of comments talking about how it is ridiculous how someone can still win after a failed "all in", well, then it's not an all in is it? Especially when it happens repeatedly. I've been bitched at a lot on the ladder for my repeated habit of 10pooling Terrans, forcing a cancel on a CC on the low ground (totally worth a 10pool by the way) and then still winning. There's currently a mentality with a lot of people that the moment you make a single blink stalker in PvT before storm or colossi you are "all in", empirical evidence seems to strongly disagree with this idea. There have been plenty of games where people still win despite not killing their opponent with it.
Now, the obvious point you gravitate towards is "Is it fair that Protoss can kill Terran with such an attack if Terran is not ready but can transition when they are easily?", well, no, not really, but this is called assymetric balance. Is it fair that Terran can fly three dropships in and do cripling damage to a Protoss that is not ready but just boost in the opposite direction when stalkers are waiting? Is it fair that a ling runby can absolutely kill a Terran or Protoss who is not walled off, but if they are, the lings can just go do something else?
If the rule "In order to kill someone with an attack you have to put yourself behind if you don'tkill that person" actually existed in this game, it would be a stale game where no one had any incentive ever to be aggressive and every attack that could do damage would be all in. It's essential to encourage aggression that there exists potential in timing windows to kill your oppponent without significant investment. As long as the potential exists in different timing windows for both sides the overal metagame is still balanced.
Currently the 'blink stalker timing' (different from the 1base blink all in) seems to be a timing window on 2 bases in PvT which is not unlike the medivac timing which follows in reverse. It's a timing you have where you might as well move out with your army because the potential outweighs the risk. In both cases you can loose your army yes if you fuck up. But if you don't, you don't really lose anything of value and you always have the potential to do game ending damage.
It ultimately reminds me of what David Kim said about the oracle and medivac speed boost. Initially people said it was impossible to deal with, but it became so common because of that that people got so good at dealing with it that it since has become very reasonable to deal with. Which is ultimately the self-balancing nature of this game. If a strat is powerful it happens often and people get good training against it, and motivation to figure out a solution. The standard TvP meta currently is to scout for that blink timing and build bunkers appropropriately, then the PvT meta in reverse when the medivacs come is to place obeservers properly and get stalkers ready in good drop spots. The problem with your comparison is that blinks are so good in the current map pool that even when scouted, pro Terrans have trouble holding. This was not the case for 3 medivac drops and ling runbys. If spotted, they are easy to hold off, that is the biggest difference. Imagine if roach bane bust had viable transitions or 11-11. Or 6 pool in PvZ if scouted. As for medivac boost, remember that hell bats were nerfed so that is why the boost was weakened. As for oracles, HerO showed that oracles are still good but with the maps, blink is a better choice. What are you talking about, many people have died to 3 medivac drops who saw them coming?
I'm also talking about the 2base non all in variant here, not the 1base all in.
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The term means something else in sc2. The poker analogy isn't very good since if you're all-in in a poker game and you loose, you're just as much in the game as you were before since the game never ends, but I digress. All-in just describes a level of committment. How committed the all-in is depends. It's not a black and white term.
I am very ambivalent regarding balance talk, I just find it mildly amusing that terrans are complaining that there are timing attacks against their race that aren't fully committed when for two years they have had a 1-base all-in that was extremely strong while simultanuously opening every single tech path and forcing a very narrow tech path for the defender.
I'm not complaining, I'm just saying what goes around comes around and life isn't always fair. Most people learn this around the age of three, unfortunately most of the Starcraft community seems to have forgotten.
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You can do very little direct damage with 1 base blink "all-in," and as long as you protect the sentry at Terran's natural, you can expand and saturate your natural before Terran can ever hope to break out. 1 base blink is not "all-in," unfortunately
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the reason nobody likes that shit is because its very coin-flippy and luck-based
not debating the semantics of "all-in"
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On February 17 2014 15:45 opsayo wrote:
the reason nobody likes that shit is because its very coin-flippy and luck-based
not debating the semantics of "all-in" Maybe, but I'm not addressing those people, I'm addressing the people that say "It's ridiculous that X can still win after a failed all in."
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Except your medivac "timing" doesn't constrict your tech routes, delay economy, and depend on not getting scouted to do damage.
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terrans just need to bring back the 1-1-1
tanks are better than ever and protosses forgot how to make robos
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EPT
