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Based on my skill level and style below, which Starcraft Brood War race do you believe has most potential for my case in 1v1 ladder battles: Zerg, Protoss or Terran? When you reply, please mention your own skill level.
Here are the details:
My skill level: a few years ago, I was a C on iCCup. In Wings of Liberty, I was a Master league player. I have played thousands of games in BW and SC2.
Races I have played in the past: I used to play Zerg in the past and I am currently playing Protoss. The only race I have never played on the ladder is Terran.
Kind of strategies I like: I like fast expend strategies (like the PvZ Bisu build), drops or mineral line harassment strategies (like the 6 mutalisk attack in ZvT). In SC2, I liked the “warp pism + warp in” attack in the mineral lines. Back in the iCCup days, I think that I used the “3 hatch hydra into 5 hatch mutas” and the “3 hatch mutas into 5 hatch hydra”.
I do not attempt strategies that rely exclusively on very high APM, such as SC2’s blink stalker rollout (teleporting each blink stalker behind the blob as its shields near zero so that I have zero losses and the enemy loses all his hydras). I do some micro in battles of course, but nothing as intense.
APM level: I only have around 95 APM average, so I focus on macro games, doing my best to follow my build order, do units, make probes, make more bases, harass a little bit (occasional drops) and do big attacks. If I remember well from the last time I played, the opponents of my skill level (those I generally play against on the ladder) are generally between 150 and 200 APM, and I sometimes win against 250+ APM opponents. I do believe that’s an indication that I make a very efficient use of my 95 APM and that I have good strategies.
I do realize that if a player had unlimited APM, the best race would be Terran (as often seen in the top of the ladder back in the last time I played), but that may not be the case with 95 APM. However, I am in my late twenties so my APM is unlikely to have a big increase.
I am thinking about coming back to the Starcraft world, but I don’t like that SC2 Legacy of the void has too many weird units and too many APM-intensive units who favor 200+ APM players, so I am considering the good old Starcraft Remastered.
I look forward to reading your thoughts!
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To be frank, theres no answer to this. If you like aggressive play, you can do that for every race. Harass focused, same thing. Any 'style' is possible if your willing to shoehorn yourself into that, over whats considered generally the most effective builds. Low APM macro games are probably most suited for protoss, but you will necessarily increase your apm as you get better, with any race. Dont put yourself in a box either for style or abilities, play what you find fun and discover what kind of player you can be. We cant tell you.
However, I am in my late twenties so my APM is unlikely to have a big increase. Completely and utterly irrelevant unless by that what you mean is, that you dont have spare time to focus on improvement. But if your intending to just play super super casually, even picking a race seems a tad redundant. Certainly forum posts about it...
There is no reality to 'im too old my hands cant move quick durpa durpa derp'.
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Just pick the race you have more fun with, all races have options for several playstyles so this shouldn't be a concern
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It seems like you're thinking about the game a bit too competitively. I think you should play a little bit of each race, because you should be focused on having as much fun as possible. Whichever race you enjoy the most is the right one. There's really no best race (That's more of an excuse people make for their own shortcomings) and you can do harassment-based strategies with any race.
Also, you can increase your apm. If you focus on a particular skill in a way that is smart, then it will work for you, and you will sharpen that skill.
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protoss is the only honorable race.
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Try playing p and doing storm drops on people or reaver drops that might wet your weiner for a harass style that’s really hard to defend against.
Works vs all races too. And u can transition to carrier arbiter late game which is imbalanced as all hell 🤗
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I improved my apm from 220 to 300 in my mid twenties, you can do it.
But if you want to be successful and have fun without improving your apm, then you have to avoid Terran. Both Zerg and Protoss can be played with low apm however.
In ZvP, you could play the muta ling sunken (with scourge if he has corsairs) style. It's much easier to perform than it is to play against, so it's a noob killer. Very good at low levels. Just fly your entire army into his base whenever he attacks you, while you're safe behind the Chinese wall of sunken colonies.
In ZvT, lurker drops while teching to hive.¨
You can't really harass in ZvZ except for speedling counterattacks during muta scourge fights, and even then he has to give you the opportunity to.
For PvZ, speed shuttle stormdrops. You can't really harass in PvT unless the opportunity presents itself, unless you manage to get carriers. Then it's harass central.
PvP is all about performing and defending against storm drops.
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If you want to win play protoss, I've got to B on iccup a few years back playing terran, and I beat players of my level with protoss in PvT, and even late game PvZ. Only difficulty is early game PvZ, which is similar to early game TvP in terms of shit you have to watch out for.
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I think it mainly depends on whether you want to get better or not. If you don't care, you can play whatever race. If you want to play with 95 apm, do the strategies you like, and improve? Protoss sounds like your only option.
Also, with unlimited apm zerg, I'm pretty sure zerg would be the strongest race, solely by virtue of having the most units to control, and the larva mechanic.
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Wow guys, I like the quality of this tread! Here are my replies!
It seems like a few people agree that Protoss is good for low APM players, with Zerg being mentioned as well. Terran seems off limits for now.
@Dazed.: what “most effective builds” would you recommend for Protoss?
@Gorgonoth: agreed: my life for Aiur!
I like that a few people mentioned “storm drops”. I have never tried it on the ladder! How many high templars you do need to do it effectively? Fill the shuttle with 4 HT or bring some other units to sacrifice them and avoid losing precious HT?
@vOdToasT:
I am impressed by your 2618 posts!
Your Zerg ideas are tempting! For 95 APM, do you favor Zerg or Protoss?
@YPang: that’s a solid argument for Protoss!
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Protoss accomodates all levels of incompetence and inability. Regularly among Protoss players, clumsiness and amateurishness have manifested as advantages, rather than handicaps (vide: my dear friend LancerX's twitch channel for further reference on inaptitude and success with Protoss).
Play Protoss.
User was warned for this post.
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On August 05 2018 22:20 DarthLeader wrote:
I like that a few people mentioned “storm drops”. I have never tried it on the ladder! How many high templars you do need to do it effectively? Fill the shuttle with 4 HT or bring some other units to sacrifice them and avoid losing precious HT?
@vOdToasT:
I am impressed by your 2618 posts!
Your Zerg ideas are tempting! For 95 APM, do you favor Zerg or Protoss?
I don't recommend storm dropping until you have at least three assimilators, and all of the templars and observers that you need. Your standing army has to be strong enough. Storm drops are for when you dominate the map, but you need to hurt a Zerg who's hiding behind defence.
So losing four templars isn't going to kill you, because you're not losing fighting strength. You can outrun scourge with shuttle speed. It's a lot harder to defend against than it is to do. Even the best players in the world get their drones stormed.
You can put four templars into one shuttle, and continuously fly around, dropping one at each base. Or you can just put two templars in a shuttle, or four templars divided into two shuttles if you're feeling adventurous. It's all fine. Just get out there and storm some drones.
NinaZerg is in here with 7000 posts. Why isn't that more impressive? :p
For Zerg vs Protoss with low apm, I favour Zerg, but there was a time when I would favour Protoss. At the lowest level, Protoss is the easiest, but at middle levels, Zerg can be more passive while still winning. Look at Bakuryu's stream if you want an example of how to achieve success as Zerg with low apm.
You seem like a beginner though so Protoss will be the easiest for you, at least if I remember what it's like to be a beginner correctly, and if it's still the case that Protoss is the easiest to start with.
I remember that it was simpler to play Protoss back in the day than it is now because Zerg users weren't as adept. The metagame was simply easier.
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The bliss of reading all this Protoss bashing, haha (it's not bashing actually, just saying how it is).
One thing to OP: Your 95 APM, what are they made of?
Do you know about the mechanics of BW and did you ever try to practice your mechanics?
Do you use shortcuts for building- and unit-production? A (good) hotkey-setup to group and move your units? F2-F4 and ctrl and alt and shift with their different functions?
Like some other people here I think that you should, on the one hand, reconsider your alleged inability to increase your APM, but on the other hand also check if you could not increase the efficiency of the APM you have (which would actually lead to an increase in your APM, I suppose). And by the latter I don't mean better decisions if you say they're already decent.
You wrote you played thousands of games and you're still at 95. I've seen some people play where it's really hard to imagine that they'll ever get past 100 APM. RTS-multitasking seems to take a certain combination of quickness of the mind and finger-dexterity, and these people just can't coordinate two things at the same time or jump the screen around or do the necessary eye-hand-coordination.
But the problem might also just be that you never learned and practiced mechanics properly. I don't know a game with more complex mechanics than BW, but that also means that there's no game where the gain of any improvement of your mechanics is so big.
The good part about these is: It doesn't really matter how "quick" of a person you are, it's actually better if you're steady and precise. One thing is how fast your hands and brain are, the other how efficient your inputs. If you just repeatedly use the right keys in the most efficient way then you will get more stuff done faster. Additionally your brain will accommodate to the patterns and your input-speed will increase over time.
Maybe you cannot get past a certain level, but if you can increase the efficiency of your 95 APM or add just 10, 20 or 30 efficient APM to what you have now: if you're a smart player then it should give you a big skill boost.
edit: And maybe you don't have to chose to be a sissy and play Protoss after all. Maybe deep inside you do want to be a bug/slug-thing and play zerg. Or become a respectable person and play Terran.
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On the fun side of things, you can also pick based on what match ups you absolutely hate (or you could race pick).
For instance some people hate zvz with a passion, or pvp or tvt. If you dont want to racepick then my advice would be to not pick a race whose mirror MU you hate, because it will ruin your fun on the ladder.
Other than that, play random for a bit maybe and see what you prefer?
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Yes, there seems to be a lot of Protoss bashing lol.
However, isn’t there a protoss win rate problem on this season’s ladder maps as well? I looked at the past 4-5 maps I played and in all of them, the Protoss have 37% to 45% win rate on them. I have not seen a single map where Protoss get 50+ % win rate.
Of course, those are probably global stats over all leagues and all regions (unless they are my own stats?). Do they apply in the same brutal manner in the E league and D league in North America?
@vOdToasT:
Your advice about waiting to get at least 3 assimilators because I attempt storm drops is extremely wise: it puts things into context. For now, most of my games are 10 to 20 minutes, so I won’t see that point often.
It feels strange to be “beginner level” after thousands of games in the past, but I guess that my old C on iCCup and Master league Wings of liberty means league E or league D in the current Starcraft Remastered because of a serious drop in active players (only the previous master league people play now, I guess).
I might be able to reach back to intermediate and switch to Zerg?
@Highgamer:
You have a very valid question. My 95 APM are very effective. I do not spam click anything. I am precise in what I do and try to keep strategy above APM because as Day9 once said “at the end of the day, your marines only shoot when they are not moving”.
You are right, I may have to improve my mechanics and study this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/bw-strategy/442812-mechanics-video-series
@ WGT-Baal:
The mirror matchup comment is interesting. In the E league, I am seeing a lot of Protoss. I would say 60%+ of players are Protoss, then some zerg and very few Terran, which means that playing Protoss naturally creates a lot of mirror matchups. I don’t like those. Perhaps that would be a reason to play Zerg, although I have unfamiliar with ZvZ.
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If you're bad, play protoss. But even if you improve you'll be stuck playing protoss since you'll be terrible at the other races. That's why 70% of players are toss.
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TLADT24920 Posts
haha Sero, well, playing toss is a bit easier than playing terran or zerg imo.
OP, play what you find is the most fun for you. As mentioned, 95 apm won't cut it as terran especially if you want to go for bio terran, pretty intensive overall.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
If you want to play with honour then play Terran.
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Sounds like you should play protoss. I hate recommending toss though, as every noobie plays it so it's only protosses around and it's less fun for others. Im much more impressed when i see noobies learning z or t.
You can do reaver builds pvt and pvp, as you said you like harass. Dt expand builds pvt are also fun and easy if you know what to do and watch out for. PvZ has a lot of harass opportunities if you can engineer them: early zealots, corsairs, sneaky dts, zealot timings, dt/zealot drops, various other timings and funky builds.
Toss requiress less apm than other races. If you play smart, you can reach high levels of skill with really low apm (like the player KwarK). Toss also fast expands in PvZ and PvT. Not so much in pvp, but there is a standard build that lets you expand earlier than usual, but is tricky to defend with it.
Getting good at pvp is probably the easiest out of the 3 matchups, you just have to know the builds and what they are good/weak againt and what to do with them. It's relatively straightforward. Other than that, its just about execution and adapting.
PvT is about slowing down terran early with some build, and then expanding and macroing like crazy while defending from vults. If you manage to macro and defend, and get a somewhat good read on when t is going to push, you can crush his army if you are ready with your army on the map. If you dont manage to slow the terran early or you take some damage, it's trickier. PvP relies on small harrass-like plays, and big engagements when terran moves out, so i feel its right up your alley.
PvZ can be nasty. You gotta hit that timing with zealots, or its harder. Keep threatening and harassing the opponent, and get ready for hydra pushes. Always scared of mutas and scourge, and mass hydras if youre low on storms. Wondering when to make obs so you can have them in time for lurkers. Cracklings late game, ewww.
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t or p IMO unless u Wanna frère Win with. 9 pool gaz everygane
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Alright: thank you guys for the support! For now, I will play Protoss. If I make it to "intermediate" level in the ladder, then I will consider playing Zerg.
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I'll destroy you at this game, shut your mouth.
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On August 11 2018 11:32 DarthLeader wrote:
Alright: thank you guys for the support! For now, I will play Protoss. If I make it to "intermediate" level in the ladder, then I will consider playing Zerg.
Go check out the practice partner thread too, sometimes laddering makes you feel a bit lonely.
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i didn't read your thread, but I am confident that the answer is toss
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On August 07 2018 02:22 Sero wrote:
If you're bad, play protoss. But even if you improve you'll be stuck playing protoss since you'll be terrible at the other races. That's why 70% of players are toss.
Provocative, but still generally true. If you worry about APM, let me tell you that you won't become really good without high APM with any of the races, but with Protoss you will be able to beat some strong terrans for example. Going from low APM to high APM protoss is hard though, you will be stuck in mediocrity most of the time. 
My recommendation is to play protoss for fun, and then when you learn some stuff, start playing random and learn all 3 races, increase your APM and then decide which one you really like.
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So to rephrase your question: how to get wins with 95 apm in Broodwar? Answer: Protoss. You probably won't be able to pull off decent reaver drop micro but DT drops are a set and forget kind of thing while you build your death army.
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On August 16 2018 00:11 orvinreyes wrote:
So to rephrase your question: how to get wins with 95 apm in Broodwar? Answer: Protoss. You probably won't be able to pull off decent reaver drop micro but DT drops are a set and forget kind of thing while you build your death army.
To be fair I think you can 5 pool with 30 APM, saw a video like that not too long ago. PvZ also demands a ton of APM to play well too and some of the most multitasking in BW.
In general I think Protoss main advantages are that they operate with very linear mechanics. They are conceptually perhaps the easiest race to understand because most units come out ready to roll with no abilities like stim or siege, they can build economy and production facilities and army at the same time, and of course their units are relatively bulky in the early game. Protoss may require less APM to play but the more major proponent is conceptual facility IMO. That's why I think Protoss is the best introduction into the fundamental mechanics of Brood War. Zerg's economy management alone is super difficult in comparison IMO.
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On August 04 2018 22:33 DarthLeader wrote:
I only have around 95 APM average
All I need to know -> Protoss.
With Protoss, IMO, you will be able to reach at least 2 ladder levels more than with other races, simply based on this.
My max was C terran on Iccup.
Not sure why you're asking this after having played thousands of games.
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Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go.
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It might be a good indicator how much fun the mirror matchup is to you. For example, I only really like to play ZvZ as mirror matchup. I hate to play TvT tank-chess :D
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Looking at half of the posts on page 2:
DarthLeader, apparently your thread became too long for people to read through. You might want to put the info that you decided to try Protoss for now in your OP, right on top, with "tl;dr" and BIG AND RED LETTERS or something.
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On August 19 2018 07:09 Highgamer wrote:
Looking at half of the posts on page 2:
DarthLeader, apparently your thread became too long for people to read through. You might want to put the info that you decided to try Protoss for now in your OP, right on top, with "tl;dr" and BIG AND RED LETTERS or something.
People probably did read it but felt like bashing on Protoss anyway, but thanks for the PSA!
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Go for Zerg :-D I was zerg-only back in the days 250/300 apm and B/A-. I never regret sticking with just Zerg. But how do you choose? It can be many variables affecting this, like the styles you mention, one's favourite mu's, favourite progamers and strategies they use with that particular race and favourite units that makes you want to choose that race. It is a stupid example, but if you h a t e the mirror matchup then maybe that race is not for you? Personally I dont like racepicking for mu's. You are one race, and if you racepick you can certantly not call yourself a true player of that race. If you are (that you identify yourself with one race) then you should also play the mirror. This is especially true for some zerg players... who zvp zvt and tvz.. TT
Another point, there are so many stream's available now so why don't you just check some of them out for inspiration. Both progamers and some decent foreginers 
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On August 18 2018 19:05 iFU.pauline wrote:
Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go.
it must suck to be part of the 1% with micropenis T.T
if you like to micro a lot, then play P...
if you like to macro a lot, play T.
if you like to be cheese, play Z.
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Play some mirror match-ups and decide then.
APM wise I'm pretty much in the same area as you (~100 if I play enough to not be rusty) and imo all three races are enjoyable to play at that APM. It depends on the match-up as well though. I have never beaten a ~200 apm terran in a TvT or a ~200 apm Zerg in a ZvZ while that matters a lot less in a PvP. In the non-mirror match-ups apm seems to be less important and a 50 apm difference won't make it impossible to win.
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On August 24 2018 14:02 XenOsky- wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2018 19:05 iFU.pauline wrote:
Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go. it must suck to be part of the 1% with micropenis T.T if you like to micro a lot, then play P... if you like to macro a lot, play T. if you like to be cheese, play Z. haha think you got z and p the wrong way around friend.
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On August 25 2018 05:30 Dazed. wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2018 14:02 XenOsky- wrote:On August 18 2018 19:05 iFU.pauline wrote:
Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go. it must suck to be part of the 1% with micropenis T.T if you like to micro a lot, then play P... if you like to macro a lot, play T. if you like to be cheese, play Z. haha think you got z and p the wrong way around friend.
try playing protoss with no micro or TR8 vs terran or zerg...
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On August 25 2018 06:39 XenOsky- wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2018 05:30 Dazed. wrote:On August 24 2018 14:02 XenOsky- wrote:On August 18 2018 19:05 iFU.pauline wrote:
Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go. it must suck to be part of the 1% with micropenis T.T if you like to micro a lot, then play P... if you like to macro a lot, play T. if you like to be cheese, play Z. haha think you got z and p the wrong way around friend. try playing protoss with no micro or TR8 vs terran or zerg... much easier than doing it as terran or zerg against protoss...
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On August 25 2018 06:52 Dazed. wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2018 06:39 XenOsky- wrote:On August 25 2018 05:30 Dazed. wrote:On August 24 2018 14:02 XenOsky- wrote:On August 18 2018 19:05 iFU.pauline wrote:
Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go. it must suck to be part of the 1% with micropenis T.T if you like to micro a lot, then play P... if you like to macro a lot, play T. if you like to be cheese, play Z. haha think you got z and p the wrong way around friend. try playing protoss with no micro or TR8 vs terran or zerg... much easier than doing it as terran or zerg against protoss...
ZvP = draw boxes and a-click.
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Comon guys, admit at least that it's situational, game-phase-dependent.
Examples:
- Early 1gate-goon in PvT needs good micro against FD, 2 gate openings make it much easier. Do lategame ground-armies in PvT need "micro"? I guess a lot of basic movement, plus a few storms or stasis or zealot-bombs here n there...
- Mutas need their specific micro almost any time you build them, but not "Zerg" in general if you only have mutas for 1/10 of the duration of a regular game and can play lurker-ling/ultra-ling for the rest of it.
- If you play drop-style TvP you need spot-on precise micro; if you play turtle-style TvP, no so much.
"Control" is the better concept anyway, if you ask me, at least it's broader and should accompany that of micro.
In TvP for example, the constant mine-laying and tank-sieging/unsieging you have to do can hardly be grouped into the same category as early game micro (SCV/marine-defense, FD-push) or something like shuttle-reaver-micro. Rather it's a constant amount of extra-control, on top of regular movement-control, that Terran has to put into every engagement or they flatout lose, in contrast to Protoss. (To me it feels like this is one if not the reason why lategame TvP is so hard until you have unlimited amounts of precise APM: your army (re-)arrangement takes more control - a lot more in total, as it has to be done dozens of times throughout every single TvP)
Finally, if you talk about difficulty in real-game situations, you cannot really separate micro from macro. Microing the one wraith that I produce in the 1-1-1 TvZ build is not that hard - if I wouldn't have anything else to do. But as I have to juggle vulture-control, teching up, building turrets, general macro at the same time, it looks like my wraith-micro sucks most of the time... If one plays shuttle-reaver-harrass in PvT on the other hand... well I guess building probes and pylons and 2-3 goons and a nexus is something to do.
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On August 25 2018 06:52 Dazed. wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2018 06:39 XenOsky- wrote:On August 25 2018 05:30 Dazed. wrote:On August 24 2018 14:02 XenOsky- wrote:On August 18 2018 19:05 iFU.pauline wrote:
Heavily depends on your penis's size, if it is really small, then Protoss is for you. But if you are part of the 1% Zerg is the way to go. it must suck to be part of the 1% with micropenis T.T if you like to micro a lot, then play P... if you like to macro a lot, play T. if you like to be cheese, play Z. haha think you got z and p the wrong way around friend. try playing protoss with no micro or TR8 vs terran or zerg... much easier than doing it as terran or zerg against protoss...
u're not forced to go mutas on bad TR
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You could pick depending on what match-up you will have to play, you can't race-pick anymore so you might be forced into a lots of games with a match-up you hate playing. Get as much fun you can !
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France1920 Posts
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EPT
