EPTOn April 23 2019 09:14 Athenau wrote:
I think Zerg unit design is, at least in part, to blame as well.
The most efficient Zerg units (lings, banes, hydras) are almost devoid of micro potential. In big fights you might pre-split and flank, and that's about it. You can send lings on runbys, but there's no real point in continually microing them once they get in, since you don't care about getting them out again. The most effective strategy with banes is to just blow your bank on morphing a huge number and overwhelming with brute force since banes are so supply efficient, and at that point any sort of small-scale unit micro is pointless. Hydras are units with decent range and speed (especially on creep) but have such a terrible damage-point that Zerg pros often don't bother to do the most basic stutter-stepping, even on creep.
Roaches and ravagers are in theory more amenable to micro, but in practice are so much less efficient in the mid-long term that there's no real point in trying to maximize the value you get out of them.
Mutas are, of course, a poster child for high skill-cap units, but the meta doesn't favor them in PvZ, though Koreans still ike them in TvZ, though even there they tend to get phased out much faster than in previous expansions because the mid-game is much shorter.
Injects have a crazy high skill-cap in theory, but if you don't need to hit 100% efficiency to saturate your income then it doesn't matter in practice, and in fact that's what we see. Every mid-tier foreign Zerg pro can macro well and cover the map in creep if they don't fuck up their early game, to the point where it's hard to distinguish them from the best Zergs under "normal" circumstances.
Lategame army control with a lot of spellcasters is another avenue for better Zergs to stand out (*cough* Dark), but if you have to hit the lategame first, which means the actual impact of being really good at lategame on tournament success is diluted by the pre-requisite of not dying before getting there.
TL;DR version: Zerg has fewer ways to stand out mechanically, and the high skill-cap things they do have turn out to matter less than they should due to both race design and the current metagame.
Protoss, on the other hand, is more mechanically challenging in LotV than you give them credit for. Some of the prism juggling shenanigans that the best Protoss players can do produce miraculous outcomes--the ability for Protoss players to properly position and split their gateway armies, cast forcefields and storms, and pickup-micro their power units is absolutely key in top-level PvZ, for example, and Korean Protoss are clearly a cut above their foreign counterparts there.
Terran, well, not much to say. They're the ranged glass cannon race, so every improvement in micro, multitasking, and general tactical savvy produces a corresponding bump in efficacy. Top terran players look untouchable when they're firing on cylinders and pathetic when they're not. That level of play doesn't appear to be achievable on a consistent basis, which is, IMO, why Terran players still do well in the GSL and suck at weekenders (having a week to prepare for each series and play in comfortable, familiar surroundings as opposed to flying all over the world, dealing with jet-lag, foreign food, illness, while having to mass games against unknown opponents).
I think Zerg unit design is, at least in part, to blame as well.
The most efficient Zerg units (lings, banes, hydras) are almost devoid of micro potential. In big fights you might pre-split and flank, and that's about it. You can send lings on runbys, but there's no real point in continually microing them once they get in, since you don't care about getting them out again. The most effective strategy with banes is to just blow your bank on morphing a huge number and overwhelming with brute force since banes are so supply efficient, and at that point any sort of small-scale unit micro is pointless. Hydras are units with decent range and speed (especially on creep) but have such a terrible damage-point that Zerg pros often don't bother to do the most basic stutter-stepping, even on creep.
Roaches and ravagers are in theory more amenable to micro, but in practice are so much less efficient in the mid-long term that there's no real point in trying to maximize the value you get out of them.
Mutas are, of course, a poster child for high skill-cap units, but the meta doesn't favor them in PvZ, though Koreans still ike them in TvZ, though even there they tend to get phased out much faster than in previous expansions because the mid-game is much shorter.
Injects have a crazy high skill-cap in theory, but if you don't need to hit 100% efficiency to saturate your income then it doesn't matter in practice, and in fact that's what we see. Every mid-tier foreign Zerg pro can macro well and cover the map in creep if they don't fuck up their early game, to the point where it's hard to distinguish them from the best Zergs under "normal" circumstances.
Lategame army control with a lot of spellcasters is another avenue for better Zergs to stand out (*cough* Dark), but if you have to hit the lategame first, which means the actual impact of being really good at lategame on tournament success is diluted by the pre-requisite of not dying before getting there.
TL;DR version: Zerg has fewer ways to stand out mechanically, and the high skill-cap things they do have turn out to matter less than they should due to both race design and the current metagame.
Protoss, on the other hand, is more mechanically challenging in LotV than you give them credit for. Some of the prism juggling shenanigans that the best Protoss players can do produce miraculous outcomes--the ability for Protoss players to properly position and split their gateway armies, cast forcefields and storms, and pickup-micro their power units is absolutely key in top-level PvZ, for example, and Korean Protoss are clearly a cut above their foreign counterparts there.
Terran, well, not much to say. They're the ranged glass cannon race, so every improvement in micro, multitasking, and general tactical savvy produces a corresponding bump in efficacy. Top terran players look untouchable when they're firing on cylinders and pathetic when they're not. That level of play doesn't appear to be achievable on a consistent basis, which is, IMO, why Terran players still do well in the GSL and suck at weekenders (having a week to prepare for each series and play in comfortable, familiar surroundings as opposed to flying all over the world, dealing with jet-lag, foreign food, illness, while having to mass games against unknown opponents).
I do largely agree. Bar the Zerg mechanical part, I guess I’m talking mechanics in all things.
They have more stuff than the other races, and thus the more they can do with that stuff in combination with how the race works in a production sense and how that works with information.
Their mechanics scale well with gathering the information that works in conjunction with this, and it’s this that separates the best Zergs from the rest, and it’s trying to do all of this at once that makes the ceiling so high.
Continuously shaving off individual scouting speedlings all game, finding angles for multipronged attacks, not committing too much to them and making optimal use of ling runbys or small roach hitsquads while keeping up the baseline of solid macro that most decent pros can do is what makes the elite Zergs so crazy. The more things you have to do, or can do, the higher that ceiling gets mechanically.
Agree on the micro part, Dark’s lategame control is pretty nuts. I’m not a good player by any means but I’ve found controlling multiple spellcaster armies in lategame probably the hardest thing for me to do personally.
Protoss is harder than people make out, and all you mentioned is difficult to do, also generally under appreciated. A lot of their unit’s micro potential scales really badly though. I like units like phoenixes and blink stalkers a lot for example. It’s why, outside of silly proxies I quite like PvP when it’s in that sub 90 supply phase because the engagements are super technical and micro intensive.
I don’t even think it’s a bad thing in a strategy game, what differentiates the best Protoss from the rest is consistently good decision making and positioning more than outright mechanics.
