Is Protoss too strong in SC2? - Page 2

On May 28 2019 15:21 FataLe wrote:

pretty much this. seems to be an irresponsible trend going. but ofc, your house..

On May 28 2019 00:08 sertman wrote:


You are incredibly patronizing when it's not warranted, and it makes me think that you're just projecting a lot of your emotions onto this conversation. Yes, this poll gives the P R O T O S S E D crowd in Twitch Chat some validity. You're going to have to get a grip and get over it.

1.) Since when dude? You said yourself that in 4.) that there have only been 2 recent tournaments (read: the last two) where we've seen this extremity of Protoss success, and it's not like a bunch of T/Z have left and a bunch of P returned. It's actually that basically every Protoss in Korea is succeeding right now - MC was literally the only notable Protoss to not qualify for GSL this season.

2.) The sample size thing is a cop-out. People were saying that during BL/Infestor too.

3.) The Super Tournament was a Bo5 for all rounds.

4.) Already addressed

5.) Winrates outside of top Koreans are generally meaningless, especially considering that one of the things that makes PvZ especially difficult right now are warp prism immortal micro, which only the top players can do with the kind of extreme efficiency that GSL Protosses are achieving. No matter how you cut it, watching two immortals in a prism hold off 20+ roaches *looks* ridiculous, unfair, and overpowered.

6.) Except the reason that people are really frustrated with Protoss, especially pro Zergs, is that they have a huge variety of really strong builds that make appropriately reacting to them basically impossible. Many Protoss losses come from egregious mistakes on their end like losing a warp prism during a 2 base push or something.

I'm not arguing here in the essentialness of Protoss being too strong right now. What I'm saying is that watching Protoss right now *looks* and *feels* overpowered. Look at Parting's recent GSL games. Game 3 against Gumiho, Gumi makes the rather small mistake of mismanaging his orbital energy - it straight up loses him the game. Is there a similar mistake that Protoss can make that insta-loses them the game vs Terran? Is there a chrono that they can miss or something? That feels bad to watch - Gumi played really well up until that point, but he makes one mistake and the game ends, when Protoss does not have that same margin of error. Game 2 against soO - soO makes the rather small mistake of not having a drone in the way to block a single pylon in his natural against a gateway first opening. From that one tiny micro mistake, he insta loses - Parting gets down 4 pylons (which soO had no way of stopping the final three), a cannon + robo and an immortal down with a shield battery. One unit absolutely destroyed anything that soO could make from that point. That just feels bad to watch. It doesn't feel like Protoss is in a situation right now where one mistake and they outright lose the game the way that Terrans and Zergs are at present in that matchup.

So no, it's not too soon. The community, as you can see by this poll, feels very strongly that something needs to change. If you want to talk about hurting the scene, think about how many people stop watching because they don't feel like they're watching a fair fight. Do you think I watched the Super Tournament past the round of 8? Do you think I'm really tuning into watching 8 Protosses in the GSL? I watched Group B and witnessed three of the most brutal Protossings I've seen recently in professional play - games that just straight up felt unfair to watch. I left feeling pretty upset for soO and Gumiho and I highly doubt I'll tune into future GSL games if that's going to be how I feel after watching them.

It's journalistic malpractice to not put an emphasis on the recent total domination of Protoss in Korea. You are projecting toxicity onto TL when that's all coming from inside your own head. If you truly believe that all races are totally balanced and fair to play, "Protoss dominate GSL Super Tournament" shouldn't bother you. But because you associate any mention of racial success as toxic, you perceive it as toxic. There needs to be a place for there to be mature discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each race in the meta. Shutting down discussion completely only pushes that discussion to places such as Reddit, which is just a circlejerk/counter-circlejerk mess of a place to discuss this, and Twitch Chat, which is not remotely constructive.

You say that Blizzard shouldn't be listening to 1000s of bad players - except practically every single professional Terran and Zerg right now has said they feel Protoss is strong. soO was so tilted from his match against Parting he was talking about it after he beat Gumiho. Elazer straight up said that PvZ is imbalanced in an interview. "But they're just biased", you'll say. So are you dude. The reality of the Protoss Defense Squad is that you've constructed this talking point based bubble where every non-Protoss pro is biased, every fan is just upset about the games that THEY are losing, and the sample size is always too small and nothing should ever change. That's how we got BL/Infestor for way too long, and that's how people lose money even though they're working hard just because they couldn't play a perfect game against a race that doesn't need to.

So no, I think that your advocation of sugarcoating and censorship does a lot more harm than good. It's not TL's responsibility how Twitch Chat responds to their articles as long as they are not straight up lying, just like it's not a sportswriter's responsibility how fans react to articles that are critical of a player or a coach. The reality is that it's Blizzard's responsibility to not just make a game that's balanced and fair, but to make a game that FEELS balanced and fair. Right now, we can disagree all day on whether they're doing the first thing, but it's clear they are failing at the second thing.

On May 28 2019 18:41 Dedraterllaerau wrote:


Done discussing this with you, you are using vague statements or outright lies as arguments waste of my time.

On May 29 2019 06:57 Psychonian wrote:
So, I know that I already made a post in this thread, but it wasn't really anything substantial. However, I'm watching the episode of In-depth where artosis and noregret go over the emergence of immortal pushes, and I'm kind of reconsidering my Yes vote on this poll.

Watching this episode, the recent dominance of Protoss in Korean tournaments appears to be a combination of two things.

The first thing is a problem that has been around for years: a severe lack of top level Korean terrans. I don't need to talk too much about this, this is a problem that has been discussed over and over and over again.

A lack of Korean terrans, though, will make any shift in the PvZ matchup much, much more noticeable in terms of results than any other. In the In-Depth episode, Jake and Dan talk about how the meta in PvZ has been largely static for a very long time. The matchup has largely been Stargate-based since the end of the KeSPA era, and perhaps even longer. I bring up the end of the KeSPA era because that seemed to be kind of when this issue of a lack of top Korean terrans came into play.

So since then, the PvZ matchup has been, for the most part, static. This era of Immortal-Sentry all ins is really the first time since 2016 that the matchup has made a significant shift in meta. However, since this new meta *is* so very new, Zergs have yet to adapt to it, leading to Protoss doing well against Zerg currently, and the lack of top Korean terrans simply makes this more obvious to the casual observer.

TL;DR: I think it's just a meta shift, and will likely sort itself out as Zergs learn to adapt to the new meta of Immortal based builds.

Quick edit: This does, of course, bring back up a remaining problem of the lack of top Korean terrans. However, I feel that that's a problem that will be much more difficult to solve.

On May 30 2019 06:01 machinus wrote:
All these protoss fanboys are going to have some explaining to do when Blizzard balances the game and confirms that Protoss needed a nerf.

On May 30 2019 11:02 machinus wrote:
What do balance changes prove? That the game was imbalanced...is this a joke or what

On May 30 2019 22:09 BlueStar wrote:

It only proves that Blizzard didn't know what they were doing when they did the previous balance changes.