Does PvZ Matchup Need Balancing? - Page 3

On October 07 2021 16:43 Zealgoon wrote:
You might as well make an argument for nerfing zealots because gateway expand is harder for Z to defend than for P to execute.

On October 07 2021 04:34 Moopower wrote:
I think all zerg progamers can agree that ZvP for them is the easiest match up by default. Why is this nearly always the case?

I have 2 reasons to explain for this disparity in results.

1. Protoss lack of early game scouting in combination of Zerg's volatility/adaptability.
2. Disparate risks/rewards inherently favor Zerg in this match up.

If anyone can pull up the statistics of how often PvZ ends with Zerg cheesing/ all-in or doing some variation of some aggressive strategy that can still transition into mid/lategame, I'd like to see that. Because when I watch this match up, it seems protoss loses to some kind of aggression play before it develops to mid/late game at least 30% of the time or more.

This goes into my 2nd point, we all should agree that the higher the risk, the higher the reward should be. If zerg does a 4 pool that's a high risk but the reward is you'll win the game if its successful. I think that's a fair trade-off for the decision you make. No one should agree that an all-in strat you decide to do should go unpunished if it fails. But that's kind of what we are looking at here in the ZvP match up albeit not as high of a degree as a 4 pool high risk/high reward, but still the ratio between the risk that zerg takes to do a hydra bust or ling bust is relatively small compared to the advantage that zerg gets even if it doesn't outright win them the match. Hydra bust in the past back in the late 2000s used to be punished heavily if it failed and Protoss would have a macro advantage by mid game but modern Zerg strategies today have become so efficient that Zerg can just force Protoss to make cannons and then time up their drone macro cycles to come back into the game without a hitch and it's like it becomes still an even game at worst for Zerg.

My solution to solve this PvZ imbalance would be for blizzard to patch Zerg hydra upgrades to either cost a little more or take a little longer. Because if you think about it, this hardly affects ZvT and doesn't affect ZvZ at all. It only applies to early zerg aggression against protoss, when they have shitty options for scouting. Probe will get killed by speedlings and basically have to hope zerg is incompetent enough to allow a probe to sneak in to scout Hydras at the right time, or wait until corsairs which can often times be too late where Protoss is forced to sacrifice probes to stay alive, and then zerg equalizes any economic advantage Protoss should've had. I know many will say well Corsairs technically can scout a hydra bust as long as stargate timing was fast enough and the sair goes along the pathway hydras would go, but even then Protoss is still forced in a lose-lose scenario because they have to sacrifice their economic advantage to still stay alive even if the game continues. Their econ advantage is equalized because of probes having to buy time for cannons warping in. The intel that corsairs give is still too late to punish zerg for going for a hyper aggressive strategy.

This doesn't even mention or go into late game PvZ where Zerg has more cost efficient defense and atking options. A sunk, lurker, spore defense can hold almost a maxed Protoss army, think about Larva vs Rain in ASL season 3. Yes I realized Rain suicided his army, but the point still stands, Zerg static def is much more cost effective than Protoss static def options. It seems Protoss has to stay much more on top of Zerg in skill if he wants to win more. In late game, defiler swarm + cracklings and lurkers can take down any defensive structure and protoss have to rely on HTs and reavers stationed at the proper locations because of army movement is much slower, reinforcing battles and war of attrition nearly always go in zerg's favor as long as they were relatively evenly matched in skill and performance in the game.

In early game, and late game, it's said Zerg maxed out army is much scarier than maxed protoss army. So the only way for Protoss to win is to take advantage in mid game or late game exchanges to cap Zerg from exponentially growing out of control. Once Zerg starts winning, it becomes much more impossible to win, where as the reverse isn't true. If Protoss starts winning, Zerg can make a comeback more easily than Protoss can in the same position. And looking at Zero's macro hydra style, it seems few protosses can actually handle a huge hydra army build where there's just not enough units for Protoss to be pumping out and the supplies become relatively even in number. When historically Protoss should always be 20 supply ahead. Protoss seems to have much less windows of advantage and have a higher hill to climb at each stage of the game as well as possibilities of comebacks. How often do you see Zerg winning despite Protoss being 30-50 supply ahead vs Protoss being 10 supply behind if we take into account Zerg units take much less supply so the equivalent scenario would be Protoss being 10-20 supply behind.

On October 07 2021 21:44 Jealous wrote:
The reason why your arguments are so readily dismissed is because in every era of post-patch Brood War there were low level whiners with tooootally valid analysis for why X match-up is broken and needs to be fixed, otherwise Brood War is DOOMED! However, as players rise and fall, new ideas come to the forefront, and old meta becomes outdated, it becomes clear that the issue wasn't the race balance, or one specific build. Maps were updated, new strategies and timings are developed, and the pendulum swings again. This is why your rants fall on deaf ears - everyone who has been around long enough has seen this thread a hundred times in the past two decades. Your [i]specific[i] issues and hypotheses are functionally irrelevant when looked at through this lens, one that takes in the entirety of Brood War history.

What Protoss needs, if it needs anything at all, is innovation. We saw it with the return of Shuttle-oriented PvT (with modernization, of course). We saw it with GFE in PvZ. Innovations may have slowed to some extent, at least in the eyes of the casual viewer like you and I, due to the nature of competitive Brood War in 2021. But, that may be just appearances. I don't think competitive BW is done evolving, the right players just need the right incentive. For example, with the retirement/leaving of many old heads from the scene, new power dynamics and ideas may come to the forefront. We could be looking at a (relatively) dramatically different BW in the next few years, both in terms of who is at the top and how the match-ups are being played by those individuals, which will in turn trickle down to us plebians.

In summary, stop balance whining. It's not productive in any sense of the word and it's beyond a dead horse or even glue topic at this point. Think instead about how Protoss can change the dynamic. Practice instead, for the purposes of improving your play.

On October 08 2021 00:02 HC_Rain wrote:

And this leaves us with the third possibility.... some balance fine-tuning. Delaying hydra upgrades, faster cannon warp time or something like this. The specifics should be decided by the progamers anyways. But what I don't understand is why people here are so reluctant, borderline aggressive, when someone mentions even a minor patch? Koreans can test this, just like they do with the maps, and decide if it is the right way to go or not. I don't understand how can this be an issue for Blizzard either, if the community makes a unified stance. I am no IT-specialist, but how hard can it be to modify one or two numeric values for an upgrade?

On October 07 2021 09:47 ggsimida wrote:
the intern won't be too happy to hear this!