EPTOn May 08 2026 20:00 Maks wrote:
I wonder what happened to the PvT matchup? Back in the KeSPA era, it leaned slightly in Protoss’s favor, if I recall correctly. There certainly wasn't a massive disparity like in TvZ or ZvP, but it was still considered a tough hill to climb for Terrans.
I wonder what happened to the PvT matchup? Back in the KeSPA era, it leaned slightly in Protoss’s favor, if I recall correctly. There certainly wasn't a massive disparity like in TvZ or ZvP, but it was still considered a tough hill to climb for Terrans.
I'm going to spoiler this, because at the end of the day I'm a terrible player and have absolutely no real basis for this opinion other than how I'm viewing games and how I remember games being. The final part I don't think requires any real skill to be able to say I feel so I'll not spoiler that bit.
+ Show Spoiler +
I genuinely think part of this is due to how Protoss expand now. I think this is likely due to the fact that Terran aggresion got better, but in the past (2008-2011 at least) Protoss were always expected to take another main as soon as possible to get gates up at another starting location, the reason for this is historically I remember people saying that one protoss army isn't going to be enough to take down a full 3-3 terran army, you always need reinforcements to finish it off.
By expanding to another main and getting the gates up quicker the Terran when attacking one location has more to worry about as not all the units are coming out of the same base. Now it feels like Protoss will get up to 4 bases before even attempting to go towards another main. I guess maybe part of this is on the map design, but expanding to a quick main just doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. I guess it's because of optimisation, terrans attacking a lot faster so you likely have less room to fit in another 8+ gates before the Terran is at your front door, but it definitely feels like currently Terran have it easy if they get a strong enough army as they just sit outside the main while killing all the side bases seperately.
Also in the KeSPA era you had a lot more active players back then meaning you had some TvP specialists and PvT specialists who rose above the ranks. It always felt like there were more PvT specialists than there were TvP specialists though! Stork and later JangBi back then were on an absolute other level that it doesn't feel like anyone currently is anywhere near that level of play. You've also got to take into account that there overall were a lot fewer games being played than there are now, at least publically. You had Proleague, OSL and MSL and that was it. Now you've got some of the same players playing 100s of games a week in front of an audience even if there is only ASL as a major tournament.
