[GSL 2022] Code S - Ro20 Group C

On March 28 2022 21:57 Vindicare605 wrote:
Can't wait for the Protoss tears to come in and be like "Oh Zoun SHOULD HAVE won if it weren't for game balance."

I'm the first to say I thought he would have. IF Byun didn't show up. But Byun put together a great second series, and outmicro'd him and out game'd him at every scenario.

I still don't want to bet on Byun going forward, but a Byun that is firing on all cylinders is a hard opponent to get past, and Zoun just wasn't up to it this time. I have a hard time believing that anyone thinks GAME BALANCE is the reason he won.

On March 28 2022 21:57 Vindicare605 wrote:
Can't wait for the Protoss tears to come in and be like "Oh Zoun SHOULD HAVE won if it weren't for game balance."

On March 28 2022 22:34 Moonerz wrote:


Oddly enough I think people watch just to balance whine it's like a whole second game for them lol or maybe even the main event.

On March 29 2022 00:40 Poopi wrote:

It’s for too early to judge anyways, we haven’t even seen how the patch plays out in Europe big competitions. EPT cups is nice but the stakes aren’t very high so we will have to wait for the beginning of DH:EU most likely

On March 29 2022 04:09 Vindicare605 wrote:


I wasn't going to until I saw the fallout from the Zest series. Yet it was exactly what happened.

On March 28 2022 23:25 Zambrah wrote:


I watch StarCraft masochistically, only watching Protoss and only expecting them to lose, once theyre out I sigh and tune out.

Im not sure why I do this to myself.

On March 29 2022 09:57 Vindicare605 wrote:


And it was fucking stupid then too.

Look right now, Protoss players can't even describe WHAT they think needs to be buffed about their race in order for it to perform better. I've seen shit like nerfing EMP (which wouldn't help them vs Zerg) or bringing back the Mothership Core (which is never going to happen) but nothing realistic about where specifically in the match ups the problems actually are.

They just say "no Protoss players are winning" but they never say who they think SHOULD be beating the top players in the world right now. The only top Protoss who isn't either in the military, just about to go to the military, or just got out of the military right now is Trap. He's literally the only one. There's no top Protoss from Europe or NA bursting onto the scene either, so where exactly are these wins supposed to be coming from?

And say what you want about Trap, but he does NOT inspire the same level of confidence as the lone Protoss hope that Maru did as the lone Terran hope not that long ago.

So all this whining. It's just pointless. If Protoss players want to complain about balance the least they can do is come up with what exactly they think is imbalanced, because I'm not seeing ANY of that anywhere. At least when Terrans whined they whined about specific things they thought was unfair.

On March 29 2022 16:13 Vindicare605 wrote:


Yet Protoss has been in the finals in 12/19 of the last GSL events (including Super Tournaments) since the start of 2019. and 20/29 events since 2017.

I'm going to cross off GSL vs the World because that event doesn't count it was a glorified all star game. So that's 12/18 since 2019

and 20/28 since 2017.

Protoss doesn't really have a complaint about being competitive when 71% of the GSL tournaments played since 2017 have had at least one Protoss in the finals.

Winning a final is a whole other thing entirely, just ask soO. Was Zerg underpowered because it couldn't win a GSL title for so long despite the fact that soO was in every fucking final? No. It was just soO not being able to seal the deal.

The fact is and I will keep repeating this. Protoss doesn't have a player like Maru or Rogue in its ranks. Someone that is ALWAYS solid, always consistently performing and always contending. Zest is the most successful Protoss in terms of GSL titles and not even the most devoted of fans would call him consistent.

You maybe could argue and I have before that the race isn't designed to be a model of consistency, or players that like consistent gameplay gravitate towards Terran or Zerg. That's a conversation that could be and probably should be had (more like it should have been more seriously talked about in WoL) but in terms of just not winning Protoss is weak? No, you can't make that argument. 71% of GSL events since 2017 have had a Protoss in the final. This idea that they deserve buffs because they aren't winning is completely wrong.


EDIT: last point. That 71% btw, that's several different players too. That's not the race being propped up by one player like soO with Zerg or Maru with Terran. That's how I know for sure that the race itself is fine and not just one outlier player carrying it.

On March 29 2022 16:13 Vindicare605 wrote:

You maybe could argue and I have before that the race isn't designed to be a model of consistency, or players that like consistent gameplay gravitate towards Terran or Zerg. That's a conversation that could be and probably should be had (more like it should have been more seriously talked about in WoL) but in terms of just not winning Protoss is weak? No, you can't make that argument. 71% of GSL events since 2017 have had a Protoss in the final. This idea that they deserve buffs because they aren't winning is completely wrong.

EDIT: last point. That 71% btw, that's several different players too. That's not the race being propped up by one player like soO with Zerg or Maru with Terran. That's how I know for sure that the race itself is fine and not just one outlier player carrying it.

On March 29 2022 21:16 Vindicare605 wrote:
The number of players playing on multiple different regions in multiple different countries ARE large enough to be statistically significant.

On March 29 2022 19:21 Vindicare605 wrote:
So if we buffed Protoss just for viewership's sake, we'd be doing harm to the ladder just so people who watch instead of play will be more entertained. Is that a fair trade off? I think that depends who you ask.

On March 29 2022 20:37 Charoisaur wrote:


We wouldn't be buffing Protoss for 'viewership sake' but to retain the competitive integrity of the game.
Competitive games don't feel fair to watch when one race just has better tools than the other one and it screws over a third of the professional player base.

Also the high representation on ladder could just be because there are more players at that skill level who happened to choose Protoss. That is not more unlikely than the hypothesis that at the top level the Protoss players are just worse

On March 29 2022 21:46 Poopi wrote:
Terran and protoss players fighting each other to know which of their race is the worst while zerg just shows up to win the big bucks quietly

On March 29 2022 21:55 Vindicare605 wrote:


I blame IEM for that fucking atrocity that was Katowice's map pool this year. How in the fuck are tournament organizers going to let a map like Pride of Altaris be played in the tournament when there is already AT LEAST one other automatic veto vs Zerg in both PvZ and TvZ?!

But sadly, I agree with you. I don't think IEM cares about how fair the tournament actually was. If they did, they would have adjusted the Group stage because those groups were some of the most laughably imbalanced groups that I've seen in any "championship" level tournament.

But that's one of the points I'm trying to make in this thread. If we want to care about tournaments being fair we need to go at the tournament organizers themselves not just aimlessly balance whine on Reddit or TL.net. The Tournament organizers have the ability IF THEY WANTED TO, to move a lot faster and a lot more effectively than Blizzard currently is. There is a LOT they have the power to do if the fanbase really wanted them to.

So, I offer up that challenge to anyone that thinks Protoss is in terrible shape right now. You're wasting your time clamoring for balance changes, you're wasting your time for a variety of reasons. You want to see more Protoss wins? Go at the tournament organizers. Go at the TLMC. Get THEM to make adjustments because Blizzard is either too slow, or is not interested in making things more fair at the top level.

On March 29 2022 22:33 Vindicare605 wrote:


That's a nice idea in theory but in practice it's just keeping a Zerg favored meta, Zerg favored. Why is it that "standard" maps seem to favor Zerg more than any of the other races? Is there perhaps something wrong with the "standard" itself? That's a question I'm asking that I don't see enough people asking.

The last 5 years have been dominated by Zerg. And we've seen more balance adjustments to Zerg than we've seen adjustments to what we consider "standard" maps in that time frame, and somehow we're all surprised when year after year the map pool is Zerg favored at the global finals. It's fucking ridiculous that we're still clinging to this idea that this "standard" map layout is untouchable and we can't be using anything else.

Change the maps. Put out a map pool for a tournament that specifically is targetted to make Protoss have a better chance at winning. Just do it and see what happens. Pros are pros, as long as there is money to be won they will want to compete for it.

On March 29 2022 22:33 Vindicare605 wrote:


That's a nice idea in theory but in practice it's just keeping a Zerg favored meta, Zerg favored. Why is it that "standard" maps seem to favor Zerg more than any of the other races? Is there perhaps something wrong with the "standard" itself? That's a question I'm asking that I don't see enough people asking.

The last 5 years have been dominated by Zerg. And we've seen more balance adjustments to Zerg than we've seen adjustments to what we consider "standard" maps in that time frame, and somehow we're all surprised when year after year the map pool is Zerg favored at the global finals. It's fucking ridiculous that we're still clinging to this idea that this "standard" map layout is untouchable and we can't be using anything else.

Change the maps. Put out a map pool for a tournament that specifically is targetted to make Protoss have a better chance at winning. Just do it and see what happens. Pros are pros, as long as there is money to be won they will want to compete for it.

On March 29 2022 19:21 Vindicare605 wrote:


I'll tell you one thing they could do that would IMMEDIATELY help PvZ and nothing else. Get rid of the mandatory "perch" that every map has that allows an overlord to spy on a Protoss wall at the natural until an air unit can clear it out. There is absolutely no fucking reason that blind spot NEEDS to be there on every fucking map. Zerg clearly doesn't need the help so why is it considered mandatory to have on every map?

On March 30 2022 04:12 Xain0n wrote:
At this point, the risks of giving Zerg a favourable map pool in this era of Sc2 should have been clear to everyone but Blizzard evidently did not agree, gifting us with the current one the 20th of October 2021.

On March 30 2022 08:17 SHODAN wrote:
protoss needs some major redesign not buffs! do it now while half the KR protoss talent is AFK. the disruption caused by major design changes are minimized while Zest, Parting and Stats are serving military duty. there won't be a better opportunity again

On March 30 2022 17:27 Vindicare605 wrote:


Which is why 2 things need to happen. 1 we need to agree as a community that we want to help out Protoss. And second, we need to stop voting on maps that are "standard" and start voting on maps that suit the goal of giving Protoss an easier time winning and Zerg a harder one.

We could accomplish both of those goals easily by tournament organizers dictating what they want in the seasonal map pool. Blizzard used to have this role but they aren't involved anymore so we'd leave it up to TL.net or IEM to make those kinds of calls.

The thing is, we have this fundamental problem that our map pool is being dictated by what's popular, and what is popular is fundamentally favoring Zerg year after year. So either the community needs to be willing to enact change through popular demand or we have the tournament organizers do it on our behalf.

One thing that doesn't make any sense is continuing to put the majority of the input on maps on the pro players. It's a conflict of interest for them to be choosing what maps they play on because each voter is going to pick maps that they think they will be the most successful on rather than what is fair for the whole playerbase.