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SC2 TvP is irreparably fucked, I can't even think of a way to change it. Like others said, everything P has counters tanks, and even vultures wouldn't fix that.
They knew that BW TvP is very hard for Terrans at the beginner level, and in the process of trying to fix that they sucked the fun from the matchup.
Also I 100% agree that warpgates are the single dumbest decision ever made for SC2. Who thought it would be a good idea to kill off the excitement of having to macro positionally and watching streams of units run as fast as they can to reinforce their buddies? As a spectator it's boring as hell to watch durrrrrr warpin, and that goes for every Protoss matchup.
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I'm not exaclty sure if this is on topic but I think it would be a lot better for the game if marauder slow acted more like stim. It'd be cool to see maybe a cooldown placed into the game for the slow without a mana cost. Maybe a health cost but that might be too much. Imagine someone having a group of marauders and only using half their slow in a big battle and saving the other half for the next wave.
There would be some nice micro involved with that. It wouldn't necessarily take the marauder out of the game nor sway people to use more mech but I think it would somewhat change how the matchup would be played and possibly make it more exciting. Just a shitty random players two cents.
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Northern Ireland117 Posts
the fact still remains that the marauder is super duper strong and there is no real strategy anymore other than hoping you get lucky with drops and going for a timming because mech is super awful vs protoss
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Although I can understand the OP, it feels weird to see a Terran complain, was a while ago hehehe. But yeah, marauders are gay, and so are warpgates, hard to argue against that. Was a good read nevertheless.
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It would be better if they just made HotS it's own game. They could use the same graphics engine (or whatever) but just do an overhaul of all three races. Change (or get rid of) anti hype units such as colossus and marauder, get rid of warpgate and make gateway units better etc.
Blizzard knowingly took some risks when designing the game, and that's a good thing overall, but some things just really didn't work.
But it won't happen. Plus it would probably take another 10 years, and nobody wants that.
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There are a lot things that popped out at me while reading this:
-You lament the loss of the uber-tank and then go on to complain there's no micro. Huh?
-You just kind of said 'warpgates' and then never explained yourself. I wasn't aware the existence of warpgates had any effect on the balance of anything outside of Protoss. If anything, you could postulate that warpgates caused Protoss gateway units to be tuned to be weaker. I don't find myself watching many longer PvT or PvZ games where I think- if only there were no warpgates, the other guy would have won.
-I can't read the last part with a whole lot of sympathy. Terran has the best drops and their units work the best in small numbers. I can't read that without hearing you say 'I want to be able to destroy expansions with impunity'. You have medivacs, zerg has mobility, Protoss has warpgates.
On a side note, I'm not sure why threads are constantly closed for saying 'why isn't it like this', but if the thread is 'why isn't it like BW?' it's somehow ok.
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With regard to 111, I almost feel like Toss is too vulnerable to siege tanks in the early/early-mid game (when their army is mostly gateway units without upgrades), yet rapidly accumulates several options to completely shut down tank play as the game reaches a midpoint (charge, blink, collosi, greater immortal numbers, etc).
People complain about the marine being the problem, but how often do you see anyone lose a 3rax anymore, for example? And siege timings exist that can outright crush an early nexus (see Huk vs MVP). I'm not sure how this would be addressed without breaking the game quite severely, however.
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I agree with the OP to a certain extent.
Tanks are pretty much useless in TvP, lets agree on that. like many more have said before me, Immortals, charge, blink, etc etc etc.
Also in TvP, the main army for terran throughout the entire game is MMM. Once you get to mid-late game you add ghosts and vikings, but the main army is still MMM, which is T1 and is obviously a problem. No thors, no hellions, no BCs, no anything.
On the thorzain comment, I half-agree. Yes, it is micro intensive to a certain degree. HOWEVER, it isn't nearly as micro intensive as the other terran matchups: e.g. in TvT, vikings vs vikings, adding a pdd, making a perfect concave with tanks, defending from BFH runbys/drops, etc etc.
in TvZ, marine splitting, defending ur tanks from mutas, scaning for creep tumours, dropping everywhere, having a leapfrog-pattern of tanks etc etc.
Nice write-up. Let's see what blizzard has in store for us for HotS.
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On October 01 2011 08:52 Dbla08 wrote:i hate to be that guy, but you're just whining dude. Show nested quote +How about you having wrong unit composition? He has collosus and you have no vikings? You lose. He has storms and you have no EMPs? You lose. theorycrafting does about as good as bitching when you're the #1 most represented race amongst the top players (referring to the gsl code s), by a large margin. the only thing you seem to have right is that terran is boring, "oh i build the same units as i get in the first few minutes, all game long, and win if my micro is decent and i hit the scan button a couple times in the game so i don't die to dts or something." the only exception is the mirror match, but of course, when op fights op you get epic battles.
Oh he's the one whining, is he?
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On October 01 2011 07:26 Reborn8u wrote:I don't think the match ups in SC2 are even close to how entertaining and deep they were in BW! I thought I'd post a TvP and TvZ for those unfamiliar. Check these out if you haven't watched much pro BW and compare them to the sc2 matchups. To me it's like comparing Michelangelo's David to that clay ash tray I made in art class when I was 8.
The stork-falsh game is not really good in my opinion because the map was kind of bad with t able to attack p's 3rd with a handfull of seconds walking distance.
Btw compairing BW after a year to sc2 is just ridiculous because BW was basically the game competitive rts developed from. Timing pushes and build orders and macro mechanics basically developed from there and players of today have all played other rts games before and feed on the experiences made from that era.
The problem is in my opinion that there are some fundamental flaws in sc2 that prevent it from being as exciting as BW. The matchup defining units of pvt in broodwar were tanks and especially vultures for terran and arbiters and a mobil army for protoss. The matchup in sc2 just seems to be too reliant on a handfull of units. If t can emp the templars in a game without any/many collossi P loses and has no chance of doing anything. If the ghosts dont get the emps of storms destroy terran and the fight is over in a second, too. The clumping of units makes me think that the extreme dencity of firepower is a huge factor of why battles in sc2 cant really entertain as much as in bw. I hope blizzard can find a few good solutions in the next expansion.
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I really can't agree with much of this. I respect OP as a player and a contributor, but it's a completely subjective analysis. He likes tanks. Tanks aren't very good in TvP. Therefore, tanks need to be better. I don't necessarily like that logic.
I also find the general TvP stuff a little ironic. Do Terrans really find the matchup that hard?
It's obvious that toss is very good at killing tanks, fine. It's also pretty obvious that toss really struggles against mass supported bio when it's well controlled. It's not enough to say that everything was better when tanks did 60 damage, because that just gives more options and more power to a race that really doesn't need them, for completely aesthetic reasons.
The question is one of preference, not balance. Terrans are doing plenty fine. If you want mech units to come into their own, you need to be willing to accept bio nerfs to make biomech necessary. Otherwise it would just be silly, because winrates are already sky high with mmmgv.
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I think there isn't a single terran saying mech needs help who does not think marauders are bullshit and bio needs a nerf to balance out any mech buffs.
Ideally protoss would have units that make the bio ball less effective than it currently is, as colossi and psi storm are somewhat usable, but not effective enough to discourage mass marauder balls.
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On October 03 2011 09:40 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2011 08:52 Dbla08 wrote:i hate to be that guy, but you're just whining dude. How about you having wrong unit composition? He has collosus and you have no vikings? You lose. He has storms and you have no EMPs? You lose. theorycrafting does about as good as bitching when you're the #1 most represented race amongst the top players (referring to the gsl code s), by a large margin. the only thing you seem to have right is that terran is boring, "oh i build the same units as i get in the first few minutes, all game long, and win if my micro is decent and i hit the scan button a couple times in the game so i don't die to dts or something." the only exception is the mirror match, but of course, when op fights op you get epic battles. Oh he's the one whining, is he?
the reason terrans are the most represented race is because they have a build (1-1-1) that has a winrate way over 50%, yet theres no way to nerf that or buff protoss without messing up other matchups, which are pretty well balanced.
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On October 03 2011 10:04 ledarsi wrote:
I think there isn't a single terran saying mech needs help who does not think marauders are bullshit and bio needs a nerf to balance out any mech buffs.
Ideally protoss would have units that make the bio ball less effective than it currently is, as colossi and psi storm are somewhat usable, but not effective enough to discourage mass marauder balls.
But Mech doesn't need help. Mech is pretty much dominant in TvT, and it's strong in TvZ.
The only reason to say that Mech needs help is if you want Mech in every matchup. And we (thankfully) didn't even have that in SC1.
What is wrong with having one matchup without those Goddamned Siege Tanks in it?
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That's a great post summarizing my and probably a lot of people's frustration with the match up. Every time something that even appears viable comes up, it gets nerfed back to MMMVG. It is a dull match up.
Either MMMVG is too strong or everything else is too weak. I suspect the latter since Terran unlike Zerg do not change unit composition due to the way upgrades worth. They get to a unit composition and stay with it and augment with other tech paths. The closest thing I can estimate as potentially viable (Mass Banshee into BC, and Thor-mech) are basically very situational compared to spraying MMMVG all over most maps during the mid-game.
It just makes the match up a micro match and more like PvP from BW. :| Its not an issue of imbalance, its an issue of frigging dull because you don't develop the Terran army, you get your core immediately and you tech for support units...
One of the problems is that Feedback on Templars basically neutralizes every ground attack Terran unit after the siege tank.
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On October 03 2011 09:23 Jerubaal wrote:
There are a lot things that popped out at me while reading this:
-You lament the loss of the uber-tank and then go on to complain there's no micro. Huh?
-You just kind of said 'warpgates' and then never explained yourself. I wasn't aware the existence of warpgates had any effect on the balance of anything outside of Protoss. If anything, you could postulate that warpgates caused Protoss gateway units to be tuned to be weaker. I don't find myself watching many longer PvT or PvZ games where I think- if only there were no warpgates, the other guy would have won.
-I can't read the last part with a whole lot of sympathy. Terran has the best drops and their units work the best in small numbers. I can't read that without hearing you say 'I want to be able to destroy expansions with impunity'. You have medivacs, zerg has mobility, Protoss has warpgates.
On a side note, I'm not sure why threads are constantly closed for saying 'why isn't it like this', but if the thread is 'why isn't it like BW?' it's somehow ok.
Thank you! I kept reading about how WG are a bad mechanic.. perhaps somewhere in this thread there is at least an attempt at an explanation.
As for TvP micro, the one thing I noticed is that the micro is way more exciting when both sides have to react to each other. The harder the Protoss micros, the harder the Terran has to micro and vice versa (sort of). I think we should just let the gameplay evolve a bit more. If TvP looks more like sC vs MC last night then I think it's gonna be fine.
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This is very well written - but I personally don't agree with some of the things. This: "unless we see a terran winning GSL/MLG/DH with mech in TvP" particularly bothers me, high level Korean terrans have been owning protoss players in GSL (aside from 1/1/1) with MMM+V/G for a while now, when you can consistently win with something, why would pro players, who play for money, bother to change with what works for no reason? Its so effective to the point that protoss players in code S are almost extinct. TvP in Korea at top levels has a win rate average of over 55+% the past five months - maybe someone like Huk/Jinro can shed some light on this, but I seriously doubt any of the top terrans in the OGS house would spend much of their time trying out new stuff as opposed to continually fine tuning their bio-centric play during practice.
It doesn't necessarily mean other unit compositions are unfeasible, I hate to bring up the points QQ'ers do, but there is some truth in that there isn't the incentive to innovate when you already dominate the matchup. I'm pretty sure that if marauders weren't so bloody good against protoss, you would have seen more players try to incorporate other units faster already.
Would it be any good? I don't know - point is, it takes time for metagame to develop, for instance blue flame hellions were sick good from release, however pretty much nobody used them in the first few seasons. They turned out to be so good that they had to be nerfed in the last patch, but it took almost a year for people to realize that. I definitely remember there used to be threads on TL complaining that bio was too good in TvT that the good ol' BW tank usage is all but gone in SC2, which clearly isn't the case anymore despite any significant patch changes regarding those units.
There is a ton of possibilities that haven't even been explored yet, to say that the game has already been completely figured out and that in TvP, bio is the only effective way you can play just can't be right. There are a lot of things which are heavily underused in TvP on GSL levels (such as sensor towers for one) which can definitely play a role in the usage of mech to help combat the loss in mobility in the matchup imo. But it won't happen anytime soon as long as Korean protoss players continue to struggle against existing terran builds.
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I'm going to regret replying to this thread, but it was linked on the news page so I'm interested and I want to talk about a bunch of different things.
1. Comparisons to Brood War: I actually think that SCII TvP plays more like BW TvZ. Consider first that in BW the standard terran build was bio with science vessels for irradiate. The zerg would try to expand ahead of the terran, who would try to make certain timing attacks using medics and stimmed marines, later incorporating science vessels and perhaps a mech switch in order to make an unstoppable army. It was also extremely common for the terran to use multiple drops using marines and medics, stretching the multitasking ability of the defending zerg.
Now, compare that to SCII TvP. The terran again builds a powerful and mobile base of MMM that can be used to quickly attack, for timings, and to challenge the opponent's multitasking using drops. Ghosts have essentially replaced science vessels and emp provides the powerful area damage necessary to weaken the opposing army, while vikings against colossi actually take on a sort of siege role as well by attacking the opponent's siege units from a long distance. A late game switch to mech might even be possible. It took years to develop the mech switch in BW TvZ and I'm not sure we're ready to give up on such a thing in SCII TvP just yet.
2. Boring nature of the composition: I'm not really sure what to say to this kind of thing. Is it really boring to play? Even with multiple drops across the map, EMPs, viking snipes, storm dodging, basically all the stuff that Thorzain said on page 2. To the extent that Starcraft is about challenging your ability to execute a strategy and act quickly, I find it hard to believe that Terran is boring to play.
Maybe the issue isn't boredom per se, but rather that Terran playstyle does not match up to expectations. People go into Terran expecting it to be the turtle race that builds up a powerful physical army and eventually smashes its way to victory, taking advantage of superior positioning, like a chess game where you slowly move your pawns up, choking off all of the opponent's moves.
If that's the case, I'm not really sure how to respond. I would think you could play 10 or so games as Terran, realize that it's not the turtle race (at least in PvT) and switch to protoss so you can build up a death ball and slowly push across the map. Because honestly, in standard strategies the roles of P and T have switched relative to their positions in BW. (Aside: if protoss ever figures out a way to harass while turtling the way that vultures worked for terran in BW TvP, I think that the matchup actually would mirror BW with the roles swapped 100% because it is very hard to attack into a defensive P with storms, forcefields, and colossi.)
3. Terran Aesthetics: Now, maybe it could be that Terran is boring to watch. Maybe the problem is that the marauder is fat and ugly? Or it's projectile and sound effect are displeasing to the eye and ear? People naturally like the beautiful lines of the siege tank while growing disgusted with the fact that a bioball of MMMG just looks like a greyish black blob. If this is the case, lots of people should complain about it and perhaps Blizzard will give the race an art overhaul as part of HotS or Legacy of the Void. One can hope, right?
4. On Micro: I really can't say that there's a micro advantage either way. I think that sniping colossi is easier than feedbacking ghosts because ghosts are so bloody hard to click on. But dodging storms is way harder than laying forcefields. EMPs might be too easy, but colossi are basically a 1a unit and it actively hurts your chances to micro zealots with charge (because it cancels the charge). It really seems like both races have different advantages. I will make one note, which is that I think that Terran at 3/3 upgrades has an advantage over protoss. This takes the following logic: of stalkers, zealots, marines, and marauders, only the marauder scales with attack upgrades better than armor (gaining an additional +1 against armored units), so parity at the top level is mostly preserved and/or Terran has a larger advantage at 3/3 than at 0/0 on both sides. Moreover, the range of EMP on ghosts slightly outranges feedback and storm due to the aoe. At equal micro, this makes is seem likely that the terran would get off better EMPs than the protoss got off storms and that the basic units would be slightly in favor of terran, leading to clear wins at 200/200 max upgrades (should the game ever progress to that point). This could actually be an appropriate place for use of a mothership.
5. On warpgates. Can someone explain to me the issue with warpgates in the TvP match? Very few protoss rushes work effectively against T and they don't cut drops much shorter than a full round of regular gateway units popping normally in the base. Maybe with the warp prism now at 100 shields we'll start seeing more active harass using warp-ins, but if nobody scouts and there are pylons all around the map, I don't think that's a warp-in problem, it's a scouting problem.
6. Parting shot (if this is the only thing you read, god help you): Let P mix in carriers lategame and we'll talk about giving Terran a switch over to mech.
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So basically, this should be Brood War? I honestly don't get why people spend half of their time suggesting that starcraft 2 become a game that had about 7 years of professional gamers testing builds and working out strategies. I know it seems like things are hard or stupid now but we're still in the early stages of the games development. Please stop hoping for a massive unit change in the expansion or some sort of super buff/nerf. I think Blizzard's made it clear that atm they're only doing changes to affect how certain units are used (infestor fungal change) and the occasional big one to change a stagnant match-up (Pvp for instance). Saying that a certain match-up/unit/composition is unsuitable or dumb in terms of the whole game seems really arrogant to me.
We won't know they're true use until all the options are fully explored. You quoted vultures, remember when people thought they were useless in bw? No terrans would use them and now if a terran doesn't players get suspicious. Hellions and ravens are the same for sc2. I say wait a few years for things to play out (It's been lesss than 18 months since relase) and then start complaining.
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Does this seem to anyone like a glorified whine thread? I mean there isnt a whole lot of strategy to it. Its not even really about the marauder as a unit. Its about how PreDy probably a very, very highly ranked player, complaining that Sc2 TvP micro isnt BW and he can't use tanks. Like the OP doesnt solve anything by his post. Sc2 doesnt have as much micro as BW, we heard it before, and how you can only ever use the marauder, which is a point I dont agree with anyway.
I dont like doing this either, but I am at 1000 masters protoss with a 53ish win percentage, however much that means to you, whatever its there.
For TvP, on the fact that in battles there is no micro, I definitely don't agree. Ive had games where if the T didnt kite me, I ran him over with equal ups, and games where he did and I got totally dominated. Where he didnt run from my storms and it was over, he did and it was an equal fight. Like if I didnt pull back my units after he runs, or if he doesnt kite me during the fight, the battles turn out completely, completely different. And Viking micro is very very important in Colossus battles, how you position both in the battle, who pulls their colossus/viking back or how how many hits they get off is incredibly important in battles. Early game micro is incredibly important! Forcefields make micro incredibly important for both sides, and early stim timing make micro for T and P still very important. I dont get where you think there isnt micro. I mean sure it isnt spectacular like TvZ but I mean its there, mostly in engage timing and AoE control.
And for the whole composition point, I'm sorry but that is just how the matchup works. You need to have the right amount of units and the right time of the right kind. For Both sides, and that is just a facet of the matchup. Whether or not you like it, we can't help that its just the way it is. I personally like it, because the littlest mistake in unit choice or your build order can mean the game, which it makes the game however more precise.
I think its just a bad thread...
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