One thing that often gets overlooked is that Terran has very clear timings in every matchup. Like, the number of control groups to move out with is pretty homogenous, and there isn't as much variation about that. No matter what kind of army the enemy has, because the Terran units have range and the movement AI is what it is, you are all but guaranteed to be cost effective in engagements if you have a specific number of units with specific upgrades at specific timings. 6-7 tanks with an aribtrary number of vultures and mines on the high ground? That can pretty much guarantee a cost-effective trade against dragoons, no matter how many there are. Whereas there is no magic number of dragoons that are cost-effective against any number of terran units. This means that the Protoss player has to do more figuring out on-the-fly about the number of units he needs to build and send out to be effective. So, in that way, Protoss is more difficult than Terran. Zerg has a similar sort of function via Dark Swarm, but that only comes out at hive tech. So, until hive tech, it's very difficult to balance how many units to make against T.
In other words, Terran is more of a set it and forget it race than the other two races in terms of basic army composition. Of course it's possible to overextend in any matchup, but competent Terran players can rest assured that the number of units they decide to make can be leveraged more effectively based on preset benchmarks than the other two races, strategically speaking. Tactically, the units are still very difficult to control, but I think all 3 races can make an argument in that direction.
So yes, you just heard me say that Protoss is more difficult than Terran in a specific way. I hope that doesn't cause anyone's blood pressure to raise to unhealthy levels.
On June 18 2021 01:58 ThunderJunk wrote: I'm going to express an unpopular opinion here.
One thing that often gets overlooked is that Terran has very clear timings in every matchup. Like, the number of control groups to move out with is pretty homogenous, and there isn't as much variation about that. No matter what kind of army the enemy has, because the Terran units have range and the movement AI is what it is, you are all but guaranteed to be cost effective in engagements if you have a specific number of units with specific upgrades at specific timings. 6-7 tanks with an aribtrary number of vultures and mines on the high ground? That can pretty much guarantee a cost-effective trade against dragoons, no matter how many there are. Whereas there is no magic number of dragoons that are cost-effective against any number of terran units. This means that the Protoss player has to do more figuring out on-the-fly about the number of units he needs to build and send out to be effective. So, in that way, Protoss is more difficult than Terran. Zerg has a similar sort of function via Dark Swarm, but that only comes out at hive tech. So, until hive tech, it's very difficult to balance how many units to make against T.
In other words, Terran is more of a set it and forget it race than the other two races in terms of basic army composition. Of course it's possible to overextend in any matchup, but competent Terran players can rest assured that the number of units they decide to make can be leveraged more effectively based on preset benchmarks than the other two races, strategically speaking. Tactically, the units are still very difficult to control, but I think all 3 races can make an argument in that direction.
So yes, you just heard me say that Protoss is more difficult than Terran in a specific way. I hope that doesn't cause anyone's blood pressure to raise to unhealthy levels.
Theorycraft at its best. If you get 2 lurkers under swarm in terrans natural you are guaranteed to do great. If you get 4 lurkers and 12 lings + delifer you win the game. This is same as moving enough thanks to have a cost effective engagement.. Also, having 10 carriers will guarantee you having cost effective trades against terran. Same as making a huge recall in their main.
On June 18 2021 01:58 ThunderJunk wrote: I'm going to express an unpopular opinion here.
One thing that often gets overlooked is that Terran has very clear timings in every matchup. Like, the number of control groups to move out with is pretty homogenous, and there isn't as much variation about that. No matter what kind of army the enemy has, because the Terran units have range and the movement AI is what it is, you are all but guaranteed to be cost effective in engagements if you have a specific number of units with specific upgrades at specific timings. 6-7 tanks with an aribtrary number of vultures and mines on the high ground? That can pretty much guarantee a cost-effective trade against dragoons, no matter how many there are. Whereas there is no magic number of dragoons that are cost-effective against any number of terran units. This means that the Protoss player has to do more figuring out on-the-fly about the number of units he needs to build and send out to be effective. So, in that way, Protoss is more difficult than Terran. Zerg has a similar sort of function via Dark Swarm, but that only comes out at hive tech. So, until hive tech, it's very difficult to balance how many units to make against T.
In other words, Terran is more of a set it and forget it race than the other two races in terms of basic army composition. Of course it's possible to overextend in any matchup, but competent Terran players can rest assured that the number of units they decide to make can be leveraged more effectively based on preset benchmarks than the other two races, strategically speaking. Tactically, the units are still very difficult to control, but I think all 3 races can make an argument in that direction.
So yes, you just heard me say that Protoss is more difficult than Terran in a specific way. I hope that doesn't cause anyone's blood pressure to raise to unhealthy levels.
Theorycraft at its best. If you get 2 lurkers under swarm in terrans natural you are guaranteed to do great. If you get 4 lurkers and 12 lings + delifer you win the game. This is same as moving enough thanks to have a cost effective engagement.. Also, having 10 carriers will guarantee you having cost effective trades against terran. Same as making a huge recall in their main.
Yes, Zerg and Dark Swarm works in precisely a similar way, but it doesn't come until hive tech. And 10 carriers is such a rarity in high level games that I can't remember the last time I've seen it. Like, if you could point to a game where the protoss got 10 carriers against a top 5 Terran that didn't go 8 rax in the middle of the rax to start the game, I'd be surprised. Arbiters and recall may come off as arbitrary, but that's only because it's mostly used to avoid the army and attack the infrastructure. If it's used as part of a flank, then a decision does need to be made on the fly about what mixture of units to recall to the flanking position to deal with the Terran's army as it exists currently. There isn't a correct preset composition to use for flanks that works well in every situation.
So, in this way that I've outlined, and that you've described in more detail - in terms of difficulty, P > Z > T.
I agree that Terran is very hard on mechanics, but I don't think that is the reason for Terran being difficult to win with at the pro level. You can see players like Light under 50% WR, and he doesn't struggle with mechanics at all. It does play a factor as they are not perfect, but still not as much as people say.
I think the main things are that mistakes get punished much more, and that Terran is the race that ultimately has to do something. The mistakes part has been mentioned in this post, so not gonna say anything more about that. As for the part about ultimately having to do something, I think this is very overlooked. In TvZ, Terran has to kill the Zerg though starving them for resources or just straight up killing them. In PvT, Terran has to move out at some point and start to kill the Protoss, unless you play a map that can be easily split in half and the Protoss is not going early carriers. I think this is a bit problematic, as Terran is by far the worst race at attacking, since units are slow, weak on their own and positioning is so important.
Flash also talked about this earlier, I think it was with NaDa. He really struggles in TvP sometimes, because ultimately there comes a point where he has to actually kill the Protoss. I think this "problem" really shows when the Protoss is going carriers. If you wait for a Protoss player to attack in TvP, when the Protoss player goes for carriers, you will get absolutely destroyed 100% of the time.
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
OP's discussion point was on Terran being the weakest and hardest race which is absolutely true and holds up even at Korean pro level. Look at the number of top Terrans now compared to Protoss and Zerg.
The difference gets even larger once you look at the foreign scene. How many top level Terrans are there?
So yes Terran is hard at pro gamer level and even harder below pro gamer level.
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
OP's discussion point was on Terran being the weakest and hardest race which is absolutely true and holds up even at Korean pro level. Look at the number of top Terrans now compared to Protoss and Zerg.
The difference gets even larger once you look at the foreign scene. How many top level Terrans are there?
So yes Terran is hard at pro gamer level and even harder below pro gamer level.
Someone posted the all time ASL win stats recently and it was like 50.6% Zerg 50% Terran and 49.5% Protoss. I dont see any particularly glaring gaps in results.
Maybe, to bring all of this out of a certain bubble, one should mention that 'Terran is the hardest race to play in BW' does point out a rather marginal difference in difficulty if we're talking across-the-board. I think it mainly captures the widespread experience/impression that Terrans have to invest more time and practice earlier to reach a certain level of play or ladder rank compared to Protoss or Zerg, until all races struggle equally hard to improve further.
'Terran is the hardest' doesn't mean that Terrans are doing the impossible every time they get a win, even less that they try harder, and it's not as if Zerg or Protoss had an easy time playing one of the mechanically most demanding games out there. It's also clearly a maximal short-summary of a discussion with contradicting points, which means that there can very well be aspects of the game or situations that are harder for Zerg or Protoss. In the same way 'Protoss is the easiest' is not to be misunderstood as 'Protoss is easy' in absolute terms. This should be clear by just comparing what people say about the general difficulty of PvT and PvZ. It's hinting at, for example, the fact that a noticeably bigger percentage of people, but not an overwhelmingly vast majority, picks/stays with Protoss as their main race, assumably in many cases because "it's the race I felt most comfortable with in the beginning".
My impression is: The bottom line for most serious participants in the discussion, who have played all races or try to weigh all the voices of different significance justly, seems to be that overall there are slightly more factors that can give Terran a hard time, especially when you're still learning the basics or even moderately advanced aspects of the game.
And I personally feel that this discussion is to be completely separated from what happens at the very top where a handful of Koreans, not more, have full control over Terran and have then arguably the strongest race at their hands - and also here: by a small margin; for the individual player temporarily when they're in good shape. And someone pointed out that at the end of the day BW-balance is always strongly determined by maps and meta, and there were times when Terran couldn't do shit just because of that.
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
OP's discussion point was on Terran being the weakest and hardest race which is absolutely true and holds up even at Korean pro level. Look at the number of top Terrans now compared to Protoss and Zerg.
The difference gets even larger once you look at the foreign scene. How many top level Terrans are there?
So yes Terran is hard at pro gamer level and even harder below pro gamer level.
Someone posted the all time ASL win stats recently and it was like 50.6% Zerg 50% Terran and 49.5% Protoss. I dont see any particularly glaring gaps in results.
I think Dante08 would be wrong if he meant 'Top-Terrans have it harder than Top-Protosses/Zergs', but I think he is right when he tells you that the balance at the top (mainly: maps and meta) doesn't tell you anything about how hard a race is to play in general. What does the good balance at the top have to do with this:
Doesn't look to marginal here xD... but this is a very particular sample/case, general ladder-statistics don't look so bad afaik. Still, to me the best explanation for why there are so few Terrans at foreigner top-level is: It's harder to get to that level as Terran...
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
OP's discussion point was on Terran being the weakest and hardest race which is absolutely true and holds up even at Korean pro level. Look at the number of top Terrans now compared to Protoss and Zerg.
The difference gets even larger once you look at the foreign scene. How many top level Terrans are there?
So yes Terran is hard at pro gamer level and even harder below pro gamer level.
Someone posted the all time ASL win stats recently and it was like 50.6% Zerg 50% Terran and 49.5% Protoss. I dont see any particularly glaring gaps in results.
ASL winrate being close doesn't mean it's not hard for Terran. All the Terrans in that list have god tier mechanics, try finding one that has below 300apm. Now people here will say apm doesn't matter but let's see a pro Terran try to keep up in TvZ with sub 300apm. Answer is you can't.
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
OP's discussion point was on Terran being the weakest and hardest race which is absolutely true and holds up even at Korean pro level. Look at the number of top Terrans now compared to Protoss and Zerg.
The difference gets even larger once you look at the foreign scene. How many top level Terrans are there?
So yes Terran is hard at pro gamer level and even harder below pro gamer level.
Agreed about the hard part, but what about the weak part? As I dont see how a race can be the hardest to play just to yield the minimum. If that was the case no one would even bother to play Terran.
I think someone put it quite close in the previous page with the "high risk high reward" comment, although I'd correct it as "high demand high reward".
I firmly believe that outside of Flash and a fluke win here and there, Terrans cannot compete in modern korean broodwar tournaments. It has been an uphill battle for ~15years and today is no different. You can cite all the stats you want.. Ive been watching this game a long time and I stand by that statement. I will also be the first to admit that I can only play Terran, I just cant get the hang of the other two races. As “hard” as it may be to play, its the race that comes naturally for me.. so its actually the “easiest” race.
I was relieved to find KogeTs replies in this thread. I played some recently and dark swarm vs Terran is so hilariously hard to handle. I am bad enough so it does not matter. but even as a Terran C I die to things I never died to before defilers and arbiters where used (I played mostly in the old days).
Artosis has kinda bad mechanics(as do almost all non pro Koreans), so he always fails at lots of stuff if you watch his streams. It's not a matter of Terran being weaker, but it's his lack of mechanic skill.
On June 19 2021 05:14 SlayerS_BunkiE wrote: I firmly believe that outside of Flash and a fluke win here and there, Terrans cannot compete in modern korean broodwar tournaments. It has been an uphill battle for ~15years and today is no different. You can cite all the stats you want.. Ive been watching this game a long time and I stand by that statement. I will also be the first to admit that I can only play Terran, I just cant get the hang of the other two races. As “hard” as it may be to play, its the race that comes naturally for me.. so its actually the “easiest” race.
While I agree with Koge and others that Terran is the hardest race to play for various reasons, I think this is taking things way to far.
First of all, it feels to me like Terran has lost more of their top-tier pros than other races.
Fantasy never really did anything in BW after kespa fell.
Last hast left due to wrist issues.
What happened to Sea?
Mind is missed as well.
And with Flash being the dominant player and pushing the Terran meta in a way that might be hard to follow.
Other races has lost some of their best pros as well, but not as severely imo.
Second of all, lets look at the winning of major tournaments since remastered was released (from ASL 1) without Flash:
That is without Flash, claiming that Terran struggles in modern brood war when they are winning more tournaments than Protoss even without their best player seems like a stretch.
And we need to consider that the map pool has been pretty hard for Terran lately as a way to stifle the dominance of Flash. Now that Flash is gone for a while, maybe we can see a more Terran friendly map-pool.
While I think it is perfectly fair to talk about how Terran is the hardest race to play in a lot of ways I think it is asinine to claim that Terran cannot compete in modern korean broodwar and can only win with Flash or flukes.
On June 18 2021 11:02 Dante08 wrote: Lol some people trying to argue Terran is not the hardest by using the Korean progamer Terrans with god level mechanics as examples.
Shouldnt pro gamer level optimal play be the gold standard for balance discussion? If we were to decide "3 pointers are OP" would we use high school sports or the NBA as a reference point?
OP's discussion point was on Terran being the weakest and hardest race which is absolutely true and holds up even at Korean pro level. Look at the number of top Terrans now compared to Protoss and Zerg.
The difference gets even larger once you look at the foreign scene. How many top level Terrans are there?
So yes Terran is hard at pro gamer level and even harder below pro gamer level.
Agreed about the hard part, but what about the weak part? As I dont see how a race can be the hardest to play just to yield the minimum. If that was the case no one would even bother to play Terran.
I think someone put it quite close in the previous page with the "high risk high reward" comment, although I'd correct it as "high demand high reward".
Terran is hard because the units are weak. Let's look at the matchups:
TvZ bio: vulnerable early on to lings, mutas lurker all-in (note this applies to Zerg as well early game). Bio gets considerably weaker as the game goes on vs ultra ling. Very hard to control more than 5 groups of bio and you have to babysit your army compared to Zerg who can a move.
TvZ mech: units are much stronger than bio but builds are more fragile and you tend to give up more map control due to less mobility.
TvP: don't really need to go much into this, Terran can die at any moment to Protoss, from the first zealot/Dragoon to Arbiter recall. The Terran 3-3 mech army is scary but it still takes a skilled player to control, e.g. if you siege too late you can lose your whole army.
EPT
If you get 2 lurkers under swarm in terrans natural you are guaranteed to do great. If you get 4 lurkers and 12 lings + delifer you win the game. This is same as moving enough thanks to have a cost effective engagement.. Also, having 10 carriers will guarantee you having cost effective trades against terran. Same as making a huge recall in their main.![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/JWNH18z.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://preview.redd.it/x0u7d03lpy371.png?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=40157a79bd9529e48354a3e94c931f93e08279f4)
