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On February 11 2024 10:33 darklycid wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2024 10:26 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 10:15 darklycid wrote:On February 11 2024 09:47 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 09:41 Nebuchad wrote:On February 11 2024 09:35 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 09:29 Nebuchad wrote:On February 11 2024 08:50 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 08:41 Charoisaur wrote:On February 11 2024 08:15 Vindicare605 wrote:
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I mean let's just look at the field for a moment. We had herO, stats, Showtime, Astrea, Skillous, Firefly, Trigger and Cyan representing Protoss in this tournament.
Even with Showtime playing better than he has in a while that is a STEEP drop off in player caliber after herO. Stats if he was in his peak would be another strong player but anyone that's watched him lately can clearly tell he's nowhere near as good as he used to be since coming back from the military.
Meanwhile Classic who is as good or better than herO failed to qualify because he got beat in PvP in the qualifiers.
Then herO the lone protoss hope of the tournament, throws a series he was ahead in 2-1 because he loses to a proxy Marauder rush and because his hidden gold natural expansion gets scouted.
I'm sorry but it's really hard to look at that result and say that balance was the reason he lost. Protoss has a very limited group of high caliber players, and it isn't drawing any new ones in because it isn't designed in such a way where new talent is going to pick it as the "cheesy ladder race" over the other two options if they want to win tournaments.
If we want to fix this Protoss representation problem, we can do it in two ways. We can rig the game so that Protoss can win with lower tier players against higher tier ones, either through a very favorable map pool or through balance changes that make Protoss easier to win with with less skill attached (because it would be these same players winning, they wouldn't magically be getting any better just because the game balance shifts in their favor)
Or we can adjust Protoss at its core so that it is less gimmicky in a Bo1 and more stable and rewarding of consistent macro play. This would attract more fresh blood to the race that wants to win with skill alone instead of mindgames and build orders.
Those are the options. I know which one I'd rather do. Weird how we have to do those justifications and mental gymnastics why Protoss lost every tournament for Protoss but not for the other races Because Protoss's problems are VERY different from the problems Terran and Zerg have. They always have been. But sure let's assume for a moment that balance was the reason Protoss is out of this tournament. I'd like to hear what kind of balance changes need to happen so that Skillous could have beat Dark today. Or I'd like to hear how game balance is the reason why herO lost to Cure today. If we want to complain about the patch and how it needlessly nerfed Protoss, then I'm all for that, but I'd ask you again, even if we rolled back every nerf Protoss received in the last two patch cycles. Would anything have changed in this tournament? Would Stats have advanced out of Group B? Would Showtime knock out Maru or Dark to get out of Group D? Would Skillous have beat Dark? Would herO have held that proxy Marauder rush? When Zerg was OP, we all knew Zerg was OP and we all knew EXACTLY HOW Zerg was OP. We all knew what needed to be done, and how to reign them back in. Weird how we don't see that same discussion about how and where Protoss needs help in these threads now. If it was just a balance problem that a single patch could fix, it's weird how no one can seem to suggest what exactly needs to be done to fix it. Just a lot of woe is Protoss. It's extremely easy to understand why protoss loses, and a bunch of people have already said it here and elsewhere. Mistakes are way more punishing for protoss than they are for terran or zerg. Do you remember the last time you thought Serral made a big mistake? I think one time he lost to Maxpax by flying his entire corruptor force over Maxpax's army and losing them all, in like 2021 or something. By contrast, do you remember the last time Serral lost a costly unit when he didn't have to lose it? Probably not, but that happens a lot more often. It doesn't even register as a mistake because there's an understanding that as terran or zerg sometimes you'll lose some costly units, it's fine. If you're protoss, those types of interactions are amplified because just one of those mistakes, at a key point in the game, can very easily mean that you lose. And then after you lose, smart people will go "Oh yeah I see that he made this key mistake, clearly he is lacking in skill and his opponent is very deserving" and we end up in this current silly discussion. Ok, but see now you're agreeing with me that Protoss problems arent in how they are balanced, Protoss problems are in how they are DESIGNED. What you are describing is CORE unit interactions in the Protoss army. I agree with everything you said, I do think Protoss is overly punished for losing its valuable units, but I think that has to do with how Protoss is fundamentally designed and I've made long winded posts about how it all goes back to Warp Gate. The point, is that if this is how you feel about Protoss and the problems it is having, a simple patch fix isn't going to fix the race. The race needs CORE reworks to how it fundamentally operates. I've been saying that shit for 11 years. We could very easily fix that with balance, as we know because in other periods of the game, such as Heart of the Swarm, it was also true that you could lose games as protoss because you lost a key unit and protoss was still overpowered. But I agree there are design problems with the game, I just think it's terran causing them, and it's extremely obvious that nobody will ever touch the marine so I don't see point on focusing on that. Tbh what I'm doing here is also pointless, I'm mostly just wasting time waiting for Stormgate. The game has changed a lot since Heart of the Swarm. The economy changes have radically changed how macro games are played. The problems in Protoss design have always been there, but it wasn't until LotV that they have become THIS much of a problem. Even back in the day, to patch over the problems that Protoss had in their design Blizzard gave them a bullshit bandaid in the Mothership Core to help hide their problems and prop up their winrate. Is that the solution we want to do again to bring Protoss winrates back up? Would that make people happy? I'm willing to bet it won't. So like I said. Our options are rigging the game or fixing Protoss. We tried option 1 back in HotS with the Mothership Core. We could bring that back again, if that's the route we want to go. Or we can actually fix the problems that Blizzard was too chicken shit to fix back in WoL when we first talked about them. Yea because lotv is the Antithesis to protoss, fast expanding more Focus on Mobility, weaken deathballs etc. Right, which is why all adding the Mothership Core would do is double back down on the problematic design that Protoss has and push it further into this realm of being a cheesy all in race, that doesn't produce consistent champions like it was before. The Mothership Core promotes deathball style all ins by its very nature of being a hero unit. It cant be everywhere on the map at once. It would boost Protoss defense and help them survive early game aggression and allow them to be greedy, and then what? When the game spreads out, it offers almost nothing. Oh and if we're talking about units that Protoss can't afford to lose, it goes RIGHT to the top of the list. It won't fix any of the problems Protoss actually has. It will boost its winrate, but personally I don't care to see its winrate boosted if THAT is how we're going to do it. Y'all can make up your own minds though. I mean we either boost the winrate by adding some workaround (realistic) or dont and say it needs a redesign (will never Happen) I'd prefer Option a) here but only because i see b) never Happening.
The thing is, if we just wanted to give Protoss an easy way to win more games, there's MUCH easier ways to do that. We can do that with maps, we don't need to reincorporate a bullshit unit that amplifies every annoying thing in Protoss design to accomplish that goal.
Honestly I'm surprised in all of this "woe is Protoss" talk, that maps never get brought up. We could easily make the most bullshit favored Protoss map pool for a season to see if it helped, and then keep it or get rid of it all without having to do a big PTR to test new unit interactions. Heck that sounds like it might even be a fun distraction for a season.
If work arounds that aren't real solutions is all we're after, we have LOADS of options. But we need to first decide if that's actually what we want to do. It's not what I want to do.
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On February 11 2024 10:38 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2024 10:33 darklycid wrote:On February 11 2024 10:26 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 10:15 darklycid wrote:On February 11 2024 09:47 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 09:41 Nebuchad wrote:On February 11 2024 09:35 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 09:29 Nebuchad wrote:On February 11 2024 08:50 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 08:41 Charoisaur wrote:
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Weird how we have to do those justifications and mental gymnastics why Protoss lost every tournament for Protoss but not for the other races
Because Protoss's problems are VERY different from the problems Terran and Zerg have. They always have been. But sure let's assume for a moment that balance was the reason Protoss is out of this tournament. I'd like to hear what kind of balance changes need to happen so that Skillous could have beat Dark today. Or I'd like to hear how game balance is the reason why herO lost to Cure today. If we want to complain about the patch and how it needlessly nerfed Protoss, then I'm all for that, but I'd ask you again, even if we rolled back every nerf Protoss received in the last two patch cycles. Would anything have changed in this tournament? Would Stats have advanced out of Group B? Would Showtime knock out Maru or Dark to get out of Group D? Would Skillous have beat Dark? Would herO have held that proxy Marauder rush? When Zerg was OP, we all knew Zerg was OP and we all knew EXACTLY HOW Zerg was OP. We all knew what needed to be done, and how to reign them back in. Weird how we don't see that same discussion about how and where Protoss needs help in these threads now. If it was just a balance problem that a single patch could fix, it's weird how no one can seem to suggest what exactly needs to be done to fix it. Just a lot of woe is Protoss. It's extremely easy to understand why protoss loses, and a bunch of people have already said it here and elsewhere. Mistakes are way more punishing for protoss than they are for terran or zerg. Do you remember the last time you thought Serral made a big mistake? I think one time he lost to Maxpax by flying his entire corruptor force over Maxpax's army and losing them all, in like 2021 or something. By contrast, do you remember the last time Serral lost a costly unit when he didn't have to lose it? Probably not, but that happens a lot more often. It doesn't even register as a mistake because there's an understanding that as terran or zerg sometimes you'll lose some costly units, it's fine. If you're protoss, those types of interactions are amplified because just one of those mistakes, at a key point in the game, can very easily mean that you lose. And then after you lose, smart people will go "Oh yeah I see that he made this key mistake, clearly he is lacking in skill and his opponent is very deserving" and we end up in this current silly discussion. Ok, but see now you're agreeing with me that Protoss problems arent in how they are balanced, Protoss problems are in how they are DESIGNED. What you are describing is CORE unit interactions in the Protoss army. I agree with everything you said, I do think Protoss is overly punished for losing its valuable units, but I think that has to do with how Protoss is fundamentally designed and I've made long winded posts about how it all goes back to Warp Gate. The point, is that if this is how you feel about Protoss and the problems it is having, a simple patch fix isn't going to fix the race. The race needs CORE reworks to how it fundamentally operates. I've been saying that shit for 11 years. We could very easily fix that with balance, as we know because in other periods of the game, such as Heart of the Swarm, it was also true that you could lose games as protoss because you lost a key unit and protoss was still overpowered. But I agree there are design problems with the game, I just think it's terran causing them, and it's extremely obvious that nobody will ever touch the marine so I don't see point on focusing on that. Tbh what I'm doing here is also pointless, I'm mostly just wasting time waiting for Stormgate. The game has changed a lot since Heart of the Swarm. The economy changes have radically changed how macro games are played. The problems in Protoss design have always been there, but it wasn't until LotV that they have become THIS much of a problem. Even back in the day, to patch over the problems that Protoss had in their design Blizzard gave them a bullshit bandaid in the Mothership Core to help hide their problems and prop up their winrate. Is that the solution we want to do again to bring Protoss winrates back up? Would that make people happy? I'm willing to bet it won't. So like I said. Our options are rigging the game or fixing Protoss. We tried option 1 back in HotS with the Mothership Core. We could bring that back again, if that's the route we want to go. Or we can actually fix the problems that Blizzard was too chicken shit to fix back in WoL when we first talked about them. Yea because lotv is the Antithesis to protoss, fast expanding more Focus on Mobility, weaken deathballs etc. Right, which is why all adding the Mothership Core would do is double back down on the problematic design that Protoss has and push it further into this realm of being a cheesy all in race, that doesn't produce consistent champions like it was before. The Mothership Core promotes deathball style all ins by its very nature of being a hero unit. It cant be everywhere on the map at once. It would boost Protoss defense and help them survive early game aggression and allow them to be greedy, and then what? When the game spreads out, it offers almost nothing. Oh and if we're talking about units that Protoss can't afford to lose, it goes RIGHT to the top of the list. It won't fix any of the problems Protoss actually has. It will boost its winrate, but personally I don't care to see its winrate boosted if THAT is how we're going to do it. Y'all can make up your own minds though. I mean we either boost the winrate by adding some workaround (realistic) or dont and say it needs a redesign (will never Happen) I'd prefer Option a) here but only because i see b) never Happening. The thing is, if we just wanted to give Protoss an easy way to win more games, there's MUCH easier ways to do that. We can do that with maps, we don't need to reincorporate a bullshit unit that amplifies every annoying thing in Protoss design to accomplish that goal. Honestly I'm surprised in all of this "woe is Protoss" talk, that maps never get brought up. We could easily make the most bullshit favored Protoss map pool for a season to see if it helped, and then keep it or get rid of it all without having to do a big PTR to test new unit interactions. Heck that sounds like it might even be a fun distraction for a season. If work arounds that aren't real solutions is all we're after, we have LOADS of options. But we need to first decide if that's actually what we want to do. It's not what I want to do.
I didnt neccessarily want the msc ,Just Something, im very Open to Options but rn its Just Not fun to root for toss Players.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On February 11 2024 09:55 LordVaza wrote:
Protoss is not tournament viable. The statistics prove it. But I have an idea on how to fix this.
The main problem with Protoss is the PvT matchup. The reason why is simple. If Protoss stays home, the Terran just outpaces them, which means Protoss needs to go across the map with something to slow Terran down. The problem is that Protoss can't do that, because:
(1) Protoss isn't designed to kill SCVs:
- Adepts need 3 shots
- Oracles need 3 shots
- Stalkers die too fast and are way too expensive
- Zealots do nothing because of surface area control and SCV hold position target priority
- (The only unit that can kill SCVs is Phoenixes, but then Terran makes mass bio and hits a timing before colossus)
(2) Terran is designed to kill probes:
- No matter how many shield batteries Protoss has, those batteries don't deal any damage. Reaper/Hellion out-damages the healing, and widow mines, liberators, and 2x banshees one-shot probes. And now there's cyclones that kill all the army and all the probes at the same time.
To fix this problem, one must address those two points. And the fix is quite simple as well:
(1) Reduce SCV health by 5:
- The reason why SCV has 45 while Probes and drones have 40 is because at the start of LotV, nobody knew how to survive mass adepts. Nowadays, they know, and nobody makes mass adepts anymore, because it's a terrible build.
- This buff can now be retracted. With this, adepts and oracles become a lot more viable to control and slow down the Terran and even pester them later on.
(2) Return the Mothership Core:
- Due to how Protoss works, they have a very limited amount of units, especially early on. Protoss is often spread too thin to defend every angle of attack. Thus, the ability to spend energy to create a damage source early on is vital to keep your base protected.
- With the "Nexus Cannon" ability, you can now have some of your other units (e.g. 2 oracles / 2 adepts) across the map to keep the Terran honest/busy, while also being able to successfully defend against any harassment back at base.
Additionally...
- The reason why Terran wins so many battles so easily in TvP is because of their speed and damage. You rush in fast, do damage fast, and then retreat fast before Protoss can even punish anything.
- Well, it just so happens that a Mothership Core also has the "Time Warp" ability that helps against all 3 of those! Terran can't rush in as fast, can't lawnmower everything down as fast, and can't retreat as fast, so you can punish over-extensions more reasonably.
- Also, in case Protoss wants to be aggressive, you can control the battlefield a bit better (especially vs flanks), and even cover your own retreat path if your battle goes wrong, allowing you to save many crucial units instead of losing everything because stimmed bio catches up to punish too fast.
Additionally, while this problem doesn't prevail as hard in PvZ, I do think Zerg is also a bit stronger than Protoss, and I think the mothership core would also help here in many different ways:
- Ling/bane fast and annoying? Time warp to slow them down!
- Mass speed roach lawnmowers you 180 supply vs 116? Time warp to slow them down! And also nexus cannon to add some additional damage.
- Mutalisks kill 30 probes 8 minutes into the game? Apply nexus cannon to alleviate the probe losses!
- Zerg attacks from 3 different paths during your attack? Apply time warps to reposition your army in time!
Lastly, it would also make PvP much more fun. Suddenly, going Gateway Nexus for a macro opening is much more viable, and less games would end within the first 6 minutes in a fierce clown fiesta.
It's almost like the Mothership Core was designed to be a vital key component to a Protoss's success. I wonder why it was removed in the first place...
But hey, don't take my word for it, I'm just a spectator. However, I think my points stand to reason. The one way to find out if I'm correct is to try it out in practice. I honestly think these two changes might be enough to bring Protoss to competition level again. And if the MCore proves to be too strong, then remove shield battery overcharge - it's overrated anyway. [/b][/b]
This is a hell of a good point, welcome!
When the balance was just a little bit more favourable, Protoss could more reliably sit at home, or do light pressure and match, or outgrow and stretch Terran players.
And, harassment heavy or cheesy aggression becomes that much more potent as if sitting back and playing more passive macro styles is more common, just by virtue of giving Terran players more to account for.
There have been roster departures too, but really the last time Protoss had someone genuinely good, like actually favoured vs most T was when Trap was consistently winning things.
When Terran can consistently out-power Protoss, it really emphasises their strengths in splitting off small high DPS forces, and Protoss struggles in clearing them if they’re out of position.
I know Stats isn’t in his best shape but his games really illustrate some of the issues in trying to play his style nowadays.
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SCV's have had 45 health since the beginning of WoL. It was adepts that were nerfed to doing 22 vs light instead of 23 to prevent them from two shotting SCVs.
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On February 11 2024 08:09 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2024 07:51 Zaros wrote:On February 11 2024 07:37 TaKeTV wrote:On February 11 2024 07:29 Zaros wrote:
We can argue about potential all we want, and I somewhat agree in the sense that if you play protoss absolutely perfectly with 0 mistakes it can be very powerful. But this is a game played by humans and mistakes by protoss seem to be punished 10x worse than a similar mistake from another race, that is the main protoss weakness, well other than PR because I still don't understand how it kept getting nerfed with terrible tournament results.
Protoss hasn't won an esl pro tour tournament since Nov 2022 (that includes the regionals that maxpax plays in,) I suspect its not going to win one this year at all, in the end results matter and something should be done to change those results. I refuse to believe all the protoss pros are just worse than zerg and terran. I don't disagree that Protoss design is flawed. Unfortunately no balance patch in the world will correct the design aspect of Protoss. Protoss is either the unbreakable wall or the wet-paper defence as long as it relies on strong AoE/tech to ultimately trade efficient. Protoss has a low skill floor which is easily reached thus a lot of Protoss can get to an annoyingly good level and are hard to beat for equally good players of Zerg/Terran but at the highest level there is little to no room to push skill ceiling. Units lack micro capability and it relies heavily on AoE tech which either works well or doesnt at all. My only "balance" or re-design proposition would be to heavily rework Protoss to be way more gateway based and a lot less robo based to rely on AoE. Buff gateway in a way that goes online after the earlier/midgame so other races don't straight up die but this would have to be a huge design-change across full matchups. Thats unfortunately very unrealistic. A straight buff of Protoss will help elevate worse players to better rankings while devaluating better Zerg/Terran. That would probably result in a better distribution of races across Top 16/12/8 but its ultimately a bad solution since it doesn't reflect skill. Unfortunately we will never reach a good basis on this discussion as emotions are involved and not a ton of people are willing to try to work on actual balance/design but rather complain. Your making an assumption that the terran/zerg in the top 16 have higher skill than the protoss which didn't make it. I don't think you can ever really know that, weight of numbers suggests there should be a broadly even distribution in skill between races. Ultimately I think results matter and there should be a buff, if someone like cure loses out so we can have some protoss actually threaten a tournament win then tough for him, others have benefitted from playing strong races over the last few years. There is no real reason to believe a very hard to quantify value as "skill" should be equally distributed between all three races. Okay, you said "broadly distribution", but there is a "broadly distribution". If you look at the groupstage of IEM, more Protoss than Zerg players have qualified. And I feel like that when we talk about players "missing" from this event, we mostly talk about Protoss like Creator or Classic. Or is anyone truely missing Cham here? But the higher up we go in the "skill ranking", it gets thinner and thinner. There is no real statistical reason to say that if there is a Zerg-GOATender and a Terran-GOATender there must also be a Protoss-GOATender. The only way you get that is if you balance around player-skill, which seems ludicrous to me. Because you would literally look at herO and go "so, how can we improve Protoss that this currently best protoss in the World can go 50/50 vs. Serral and Maru on any given day?"
You spelled it out. There is no definitive way to objectively measure skill. Perceived skill is based largely on tournament results so as a result protoss players are going to be perceived as less skillful since they don't win.
I just find it hard to believe that the 5th and 6th best players of two races are better than the best player of toss in a balanced game. That doesn't mean it's definitively imba, since like you said the best players could all just happen to play z/t. But that's the dilemma it's hard to see where player faults begin and race faults end.
Protoss, imo, needs more consistent paths to victory. When a new strat or patch comes out they seem to do ok for a bit until it gets figured out. Especially ZvP has felt like as long as zerg doesn't get blindsided or tricked a "normal" game state is zerg winning.
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On February 11 2024 11:00 Athenau wrote:
SCV's have had 45 health since the beginning of WoL. It was adepts that were nerfed to doing 22 vs light instead of 23 to prevent them from two shotting SCVs.
why don't they just make SCVs have 42 health? workers do 5 damage so it would still take 9 hits whether they have 45hp or 41hp, right? I'd be afraid of zerg getting an advantage over terran though lol
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On February 11 2024 11:07 Moonerz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2024 08:09 Balnazza wrote:On February 11 2024 07:51 Zaros wrote:On February 11 2024 07:37 TaKeTV wrote:On February 11 2024 07:29 Zaros wrote:
We can argue about potential all we want, and I somewhat agree in the sense that if you play protoss absolutely perfectly with 0 mistakes it can be very powerful. But this is a game played by humans and mistakes by protoss seem to be punished 10x worse than a similar mistake from another race, that is the main protoss weakness, well other than PR because I still don't understand how it kept getting nerfed with terrible tournament results.
Protoss hasn't won an esl pro tour tournament since Nov 2022 (that includes the regionals that maxpax plays in,) I suspect its not going to win one this year at all, in the end results matter and something should be done to change those results. I refuse to believe all the protoss pros are just worse than zerg and terran. I don't disagree that Protoss design is flawed. Unfortunately no balance patch in the world will correct the design aspect of Protoss. Protoss is either the unbreakable wall or the wet-paper defence as long as it relies on strong AoE/tech to ultimately trade efficient. Protoss has a low skill floor which is easily reached thus a lot of Protoss can get to an annoyingly good level and are hard to beat for equally good players of Zerg/Terran but at the highest level there is little to no room to push skill ceiling. Units lack micro capability and it relies heavily on AoE tech which either works well or doesnt at all. My only "balance" or re-design proposition would be to heavily rework Protoss to be way more gateway based and a lot less robo based to rely on AoE. Buff gateway in a way that goes online after the earlier/midgame so other races don't straight up die but this would have to be a huge design-change across full matchups. Thats unfortunately very unrealistic. A straight buff of Protoss will help elevate worse players to better rankings while devaluating better Zerg/Terran. That would probably result in a better distribution of races across Top 16/12/8 but its ultimately a bad solution since it doesn't reflect skill. Unfortunately we will never reach a good basis on this discussion as emotions are involved and not a ton of people are willing to try to work on actual balance/design but rather complain. Your making an assumption that the terran/zerg in the top 16 have higher skill than the protoss which didn't make it. I don't think you can ever really know that, weight of numbers suggests there should be a broadly even distribution in skill between races. Ultimately I think results matter and there should be a buff, if someone like cure loses out so we can have some protoss actually threaten a tournament win then tough for him, others have benefitted from playing strong races over the last few years. There is no real reason to believe a very hard to quantify value as "skill" should be equally distributed between all three races. Okay, you said "broadly distribution", but there is a "broadly distribution". If you look at the groupstage of IEM, more Protoss than Zerg players have qualified. And I feel like that when we talk about players "missing" from this event, we mostly talk about Protoss like Creator or Classic. Or is anyone truely missing Cham here? But the higher up we go in the "skill ranking", it gets thinner and thinner. There is no real statistical reason to say that if there is a Zerg-GOATender and a Terran-GOATender there must also be a Protoss-GOATender. The only way you get that is if you balance around player-skill, which seems ludicrous to me. Because you would literally look at herO and go "so, how can we improve Protoss that this currently best protoss in the World can go 50/50 vs. Serral and Maru on any given day?" You spelled it out. There is no definitive way to objectively measure skill. Perceived skill is based largely on tournament results so as a result protoss players are going to be perceived as less skillful since they don't win. I just find it hard to believe that the 5th and 6th best players of two races are better than the best player of toss in a balanced game. That doesn't mean it's definitively imba, since like you said the best players could all just happen to play z/t. But that's the dilemma it's hard to see where player faults begin and race faults end. Protoss, imo, needs more consistent paths to victory. When a new strat or patch comes out they seem to do ok for a bit until it gets figured out. Especially ZvP has felt like as long as zerg doesn't get blindsided or tricked a "normal" game state is zerg winning.
Of course there will always be that possibility. But usually that would happen in a more abrupt kind of way. For example, if there is a patch next week and in the next big tournament, no Zerg, not even Serral, Reynor, Dark or Solar can even reach the group stage, then that would be extremly odd.
But in case of Protoss...the race just bleed out through the years. herO for example never was "the best" at any given time, not even the best Protoss. He was good, amazing even of course. But was he really on that Zest/Rain/sOs/PartinG/Stats level? Doesn't feel like it.
And now he is the best Protoss in the world. Of course there is the chance of a huge skill-jump, but it feels much more likely that he just outlived everyone else. You can do the same example for someone like ShoWTimE: He was, before the "rise of Neeb" probably the best foreign Protoss. Of course not on par with the korean powerhouses, but he was undeniably good. There is just no reason to think that he now should be able to win against the remaining top players consistently. Why? Why would that happen?
Players don't get better just because the player above them vanishes. Since picking your race in SC2 is initially a rather random choice (though I wonder if Protoss being the last race to get a campaign affected the popularity in any way) you could make the same argument for nationalities. Clem is without a doubt the best french player in the world...so why would, idk, Arrogfire? DnS? suddenly jump up in skill and results just because Clem stops playing?
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Watching some of the earlier games and Bunny vs Clem where Bunny forgets combat shields was so amazing. He still almost won multiple times. I kept thinking he was completely dead and then he would bring himself back into the game with a random counterattack or doom drop all without ever getting combat shields. It was like some absurd self imposed challenge to make the game harder except it was actually just the biggest throw of the event. I'm not sure whether to be extremely impressed or disappointed.
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On February 11 2024 12:37 JJH777 wrote:
Watching some of the earlier games and Bunny vs Clem where Bunny forgets combat shields was so amazing. He still almost won multiple times. I kept thinking he was completely dead and then he would bring himself back into the game with a random counterattack or doom drop all without ever getting combat shields. It was like some absurd self imposed challenge to make the game harder except it was actually just the biggest throw of the event. I'm not sure whether to be extremely impressed or disappointed.
Combat shields is a stupidly strong upgrade too. 3-3 marines without shields lose to 1-1 marines with shields, which is just crazy given how important upgrades are to marines vs marines fights.
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On February 11 2024 12:37 JJH777 wrote:
Watching some of the earlier games and Bunny vs Clem where Bunny forgets combat shields was so amazing. He still almost won multiple times. I kept thinking he was completely dead and then he would bring himself back into the game with a random counterattack or doom drop all without ever getting combat shields. It was like some absurd self imposed challenge to make the game harder except it was actually just the biggest throw of the event. I'm not sure whether to be extremely impressed or disappointed.
I have to imagine Bunny coming to that realization is crushing. Extremely impressed at how close to victory he came in spite of, but losing because of a trivial mistake like that is awful as a competitor.
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I do wonder how much losing the best protoss players makes a difference.
We lost Zest, Stats, Trap, sOs, PartinG, Dear, and Neeb. Even Patience and Hurricane had good runs every now and again. If all those guys entered the tournament protoss would probably have had solid representation, especially the big game performers like Zest and Stats.
Classic and herO are the best, but both post-military and never looked as good as their primes.
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On February 11 2024 13:23 Fango wrote:
I do wonder how much losing the best protoss players makes a difference.
We lost Zest, Stats, Trap, sOs, PartinG, Dear, and Neeb. Even Patience and Hurricane had good runs every now and again. If all those guys entered the tournament protoss would probably have had solid representation, especially the big game performers like Zest and Stats.
Classic and herO are the best, but both post-military and never looked as good as their primes.
This is exactly why I don't think there is huge imbalance that needs to be fixed. I do think Protoss is overly fragile and that some sort of small buff might be appropriate in that direction, but nothing extreme. Most of high level ladder is made up of protoss players, it's only at the very top pro level where protoss appears to underperform.
Terran still has Maru, and to a lesser extent Cure, Byun, and Clem.
Zerg has Dark, Reynor, Solar, and Serral.
(Though I think Serral is a statistically freakish outlier, who would look like one of the best players in the world no matter what race he played.)
Meanwhile all those protoss players who were champion level have all gone to military or retired.... herO, Classic and Stats are back but the latter two don't look anything like their previous level. herO is super inconsistent.
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On February 11 2024 10:38 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2024 10:33 darklycid wrote:On February 11 2024 10:26 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 10:15 darklycid wrote:On February 11 2024 09:47 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 09:41 Nebuchad wrote:On February 11 2024 09:35 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 09:29 Nebuchad wrote:On February 11 2024 08:50 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 08:41 Charoisaur wrote:
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Weird how we have to do those justifications and mental gymnastics why Protoss lost every tournament for Protoss but not for the other races
Because Protoss's problems are VERY different from the problems Terran and Zerg have. They always have been. But sure let's assume for a moment that balance was the reason Protoss is out of this tournament. I'd like to hear what kind of balance changes need to happen so that Skillous could have beat Dark today. Or I'd like to hear how game balance is the reason why herO lost to Cure today. If we want to complain about the patch and how it needlessly nerfed Protoss, then I'm all for that, but I'd ask you again, even if we rolled back every nerf Protoss received in the last two patch cycles. Would anything have changed in this tournament? Would Stats have advanced out of Group B? Would Showtime knock out Maru or Dark to get out of Group D? Would Skillous have beat Dark? Would herO have held that proxy Marauder rush? When Zerg was OP, we all knew Zerg was OP and we all knew EXACTLY HOW Zerg was OP. We all knew what needed to be done, and how to reign them back in. Weird how we don't see that same discussion about how and where Protoss needs help in these threads now. If it was just a balance problem that a single patch could fix, it's weird how no one can seem to suggest what exactly needs to be done to fix it. Just a lot of woe is Protoss. It's extremely easy to understand why protoss loses, and a bunch of people have already said it here and elsewhere. Mistakes are way more punishing for protoss than they are for terran or zerg. Do you remember the last time you thought Serral made a big mistake? I think one time he lost to Maxpax by flying his entire corruptor force over Maxpax's army and losing them all, in like 2021 or something. By contrast, do you remember the last time Serral lost a costly unit when he didn't have to lose it? Probably not, but that happens a lot more often. It doesn't even register as a mistake because there's an understanding that as terran or zerg sometimes you'll lose some costly units, it's fine. If you're protoss, those types of interactions are amplified because just one of those mistakes, at a key point in the game, can very easily mean that you lose. And then after you lose, smart people will go "Oh yeah I see that he made this key mistake, clearly he is lacking in skill and his opponent is very deserving" and we end up in this current silly discussion. Ok, but see now you're agreeing with me that Protoss problems arent in how they are balanced, Protoss problems are in how they are DESIGNED. What you are describing is CORE unit interactions in the Protoss army. I agree with everything you said, I do think Protoss is overly punished for losing its valuable units, but I think that has to do with how Protoss is fundamentally designed and I've made long winded posts about how it all goes back to Warp Gate. The point, is that if this is how you feel about Protoss and the problems it is having, a simple patch fix isn't going to fix the race. The race needs CORE reworks to how it fundamentally operates. I've been saying that shit for 11 years. We could very easily fix that with balance, as we know because in other periods of the game, such as Heart of the Swarm, it was also true that you could lose games as protoss because you lost a key unit and protoss was still overpowered. But I agree there are design problems with the game, I just think it's terran causing them, and it's extremely obvious that nobody will ever touch the marine so I don't see point on focusing on that. Tbh what I'm doing here is also pointless, I'm mostly just wasting time waiting for Stormgate. The game has changed a lot since Heart of the Swarm. The economy changes have radically changed how macro games are played. The problems in Protoss design have always been there, but it wasn't until LotV that they have become THIS much of a problem. Even back in the day, to patch over the problems that Protoss had in their design Blizzard gave them a bullshit bandaid in the Mothership Core to help hide their problems and prop up their winrate. Is that the solution we want to do again to bring Protoss winrates back up? Would that make people happy? I'm willing to bet it won't. So like I said. Our options are rigging the game or fixing Protoss. We tried option 1 back in HotS with the Mothership Core. We could bring that back again, if that's the route we want to go. Or we can actually fix the problems that Blizzard was too chicken shit to fix back in WoL when we first talked about them. Yea because lotv is the Antithesis to protoss, fast expanding more Focus on Mobility, weaken deathballs etc. Right, which is why all adding the Mothership Core would do is double back down on the problematic design that Protoss has and push it further into this realm of being a cheesy all in race, that doesn't produce consistent champions like it was before. The Mothership Core promotes deathball style all ins by its very nature of being a hero unit. It cant be everywhere on the map at once. It would boost Protoss defense and help them survive early game aggression and allow them to be greedy, and then what? When the game spreads out, it offers almost nothing. Oh and if we're talking about units that Protoss can't afford to lose, it goes RIGHT to the top of the list. It won't fix any of the problems Protoss actually has. It will boost its winrate, but personally I don't care to see its winrate boosted if THAT is how we're going to do it. Y'all can make up your own minds though. I mean we either boost the winrate by adding some workaround (realistic) or dont and say it needs a redesign (will never Happen) I'd prefer Option a) here but only because i see b) never Happening. The thing is, if we just wanted to give Protoss an easy way to win more games, there's MUCH easier ways to do that. We can do that with maps, we don't need to reincorporate a bullshit unit that amplifies every annoying thing in Protoss design to accomplish that goal. Honestly I'm surprised in all of this "woe is Protoss" talk, that maps never get brought up. We could easily make the most bullshit favored Protoss map pool for a season to see if it helped, and then keep it or get rid of it all without having to do a big PTR to test new unit interactions. Heck that sounds like it might even be a fun distraction for a season. If work arounds that aren't real solutions is all we're after, we have LOADS of options. But we need to first decide if that's actually what we want to do. It's not what I want to do.
Maps get brought up in almost every single one of these threads. And every time it's "Well, this current map pool is just bad for Protoss, we'll just have to wait for the next one to fix that" and then that next magical map pool that fixes that balance problem never comes.
Why that is the case is probably another discussion altogether. I personally blame it on every single map pool being almost identical standard maps, and if Protoss is just worse on standard maps then of course this will never change if we don't fundamentally change how we approach the map pool.
When people talk about experimental and crazy map contests, it's stuff like "a healing shrine in the corner of the map", as if that would change anything about how the maps are played.
The point is that all this talk about the map pool and the players just not showing up in shape or how Protoss X threw the game and so forth is happening in almost every thread.
Protoss won their last world championship in 2015 and their last premier tournament in 2022.
Before herO won his GSL Code S in late 2022, the last time a Protoss won that tournament was in 2017.
Quite a lot of great players have come, peaked and gone in that period of time, yet somehow they just don't seem to win the big tournaments. So this whole argument of "Look how bad this Protoss lineup is" just doesn't work when the results have been largely the same no matter how much you stack a tournament with great Protoss talent.
At some point we have to admit that there is a fundamental problem and miniscule balance changes just aren't going to cut it. PiG said that the last balance patch was a bold step in the right direction, but it was "bold" in much the same way that the finalists of the recent map making contest were "experimental".
Do some massive changes. If the pendulum swings in the opposite direction for a while, so be it. If we have to make arguments that the best Protoss players deserve to make it out of the group stage while players like SHIN make deep runs in a tournament and no one bats a fucking eye, it's time to shake the whole thing up.
Though that is just not going to happen. We'll hear the same excuses and arguments that we have been hearing for the last 5+ years and then the Void Ray gets a movement speed buff which then gets reverted a couple month later because MaxPax uses it to beat up other top tier players and we clearly cannot have that, now can we?
I am just tired of hearing how each and every tournament is an outlyer that can be blamed on factor X.
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WOW. Protosses are beaten brutally.
ZVP 82% win rate for zerg. TVP 62% win rate for terran.
Protosses have the same skill level, but other races are better than protoss. One case would be incident, but this is tendency. This argument that zerg or terran players have more skill doesn't stand examination - their race are better than protoss and for this reason they perform better than protoss. It's not players.
Map polls have changed, but situation haven't changed . So it's not map poll problem.
If game would balanced, race distribution in tournament stages should be around equal e.g. 1/3 for each. Now P T 0:3:5.
People are talking for years about this, but game balancers isn't hearing or not doing their job properly.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On February 11 2024 13:23 Fango wrote:
I do wonder how much losing the best protoss players makes a difference.
We lost Zest, Stats, Trap, sOs, PartinG, Dear, and Neeb. Even Patience and Hurricane had good runs every now and again. If all those guys entered the tournament protoss would probably have had solid representation, especially the big game performers like Zest and Stats.
Classic and herO are the best, but both post-military and never looked as good as their primes.
Zoun too.
Even then though Protoss representation frequently wasn’t great. It’s definitely a factor though for sure.
Even when it’s the lagging race at pro level Toss still keep getting as many, if not more nerfs than buffs. There’s fewer and fewer questions players can ask, and opponents know the exact answers for most of them. You barely see Phoenix PvT styles anymore because other nerfs make it too hard to not get steamrolled by the first big push.
Meanwhile Terran get a massable cyclone to give them yet another option and to encourage more ‘mech’, when they’re doing fine as it is.
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On February 11 2024 13:23 Fango wrote:
I do wonder how much losing the best protoss players makes a difference.
We lost Zest, Stats, Trap, sOs, PartinG, Dear, and Neeb. Even Patience and Hurricane had good runs every now and again. If all those guys entered the tournament protoss would probably have had solid representation, especially the big game performers like Zest and Stats.
Classic and herO are the best, but both post-military and never looked as good as their primes.
I think with all these players it would probably look like 2018-22 again where Protoss players had okay representation in the ro8 and sometimes won a small event but rarely/never won the biggest events.
I mean that was the situation when they were all still playing.
And it's not like the other races had no losses, Zerg lost Rogue (arguably the Goat) and soO while Terran lost Inno and TY
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so for the 7 remaining matches 4 are mirrors, most likely to be 5
sounds fun 
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On February 11 2024 17:54 Waxangel wrote:
How goes that vote for those of us who don’t use the Artist Formerly Known as TwitterTM? Curious as to the standings.
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On February 11 2024 08:50 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2024 08:41 Charoisaur wrote:On February 11 2024 08:15 Vindicare605 wrote:On February 11 2024 08:01 Poopi wrote:
No Zest no hope for protoss, really. I mean herO wasn’t the best toss even before his military departure, he is a scarily good aggressive protoss but you can’t have all of your hopes into a single player
It’s very annoying to cheer for a race and that race has low representation, but unfortunately since there are so few top players left in the game, it’s bound to happen unless you make the race so overpowered that many protoss win I mean let's just look at the field for a moment. We had herO, stats, Showtime, Astrea, Skillous, Firefly, Trigger and Cyan representing Protoss in this tournament. Even with Showtime playing better than he has in a while that is a STEEP drop off in player caliber after herO. Stats if he was in his peak would be another strong player but anyone that's watched him lately can clearly tell he's nowhere near as good as he used to be since coming back from the military. Meanwhile Classic who is as good or better than herO failed to qualify because he got beat in PvP in the qualifiers. Then herO the lone protoss hope of the tournament, throws a series he was ahead in 2-1 because he loses to a proxy Marauder rush and because his hidden gold natural expansion gets scouted. I'm sorry but it's really hard to look at that result and say that balance was the reason he lost. Protoss has a very limited group of high caliber players, and it isn't drawing any new ones in because it isn't designed in such a way where new talent is going to pick it as the "cheesy ladder race" over the other two options if they want to win tournaments. If we want to fix this Protoss representation problem, we can do it in two ways. We can rig the game so that Protoss can win with lower tier players against higher tier ones, either through a very favorable map pool or through balance changes that make Protoss easier to win with with less skill attached (because it would be these same players winning, they wouldn't magically be getting any better just because the game balance shifts in their favor) Or we can adjust Protoss at its core so that it is less gimmicky in a Bo1 and more stable and rewarding of consistent macro play. This would attract more fresh blood to the race that wants to win with skill alone instead of mindgames and build orders. Those are the options. I know which one I'd rather do. Weird how we have to do those justifications and mental gymnastics why Protoss lost every tournament for Protoss but not for the other races Because Protoss's problems are VERY different from the problems Terran and Zerg have. They always have been. But sure let's assume for a moment that balance was the reason Protoss is out of this tournament. I'd like to hear what kind of balance changes need to happen so that Skillous could have beat Dark today. Or I'd like to hear how game balance is the reason why herO lost to Cure today. If we want to complain about the patch and how it needlessly nerfed Protoss, then I'm all for that, but I'd ask you again, even if we rolled back every nerf Protoss received in the last two patch cycles. Would anything have changed in this tournament? Would Stats have advanced out of Group B? Would Showtime knock out Maru or Dark to get out of Group D? Would Skillous have beat Dark? Would herO have held that proxy Marauder rush? When Zerg was OP, we all knew Zerg was OP and we all knew EXACTLY HOW Zerg was OP. We all knew what needed to be done, and how to reign them back in. Weird how we don't see that same discussion about how and where Protoss needs help in these threads now. If it was just a balance problem that a single patch could fix, it's weird how no one can seem to suggest what exactly needs to be done to fix it. Just a lot of woe is Protoss.
Are you kidding me? xD
Yes - If recent Carrier nerfs, shield battery Nerf, and Mothership Nerf hadn't happened, then Macro Protoss Players like Stats and Showtime would have a much better chance.
Yes - If the Void ray wasn't nerfed with a 50 cost increase and a build time increase, Hero probably would have build a Void Ray instead of Oracle and held Cure's Marauder rush. By the time HerO had the money to build a VR his oracle was already 50% done.
Aside from basic things like this, it seems you are not understand how chronic nerfing will necessarily just lead to overall lower performance. It's basic mathematics.
The answer on how to make Protoss more viable is very clear. Protoss needs better units - especially late game Unit. Just make Buff carriers so they don't get deleted, cost-for-cost, against all Terran units. There is no reason that everything from the basic marine to ghost to wido mime to cyclone to viking to thor to BC should at worst trade well against them, and at best delete them before Interceptors are barely out. You know how mass BC Wipes the floor with all protoss comps even tempests, supposed counters? Carriers should have at least a fraction of that ability. If Protoss at least has the option to go to late game it doesn't incentivize Terran players to just throw early game cheeses and timings and not care because they know Protoss struggles hard in the Late Game/closing out games unless you are Hero himself.
Since around 2017 Protoss was tweaked (nerfed) with the incorrect premises that its late game was too powerful against Terran and its timing game was just too powerful (more like uncompetitive) in general but especially against Zerg. And that this mythical Protoss Death Ball, long since neutered, was too powerful. This is clearly wrong, and the results are obvious. Most of the time protoss loses on all forms of engagement, whether being picked apart by Terran/Zerg multiprong or most of the time trading at lower cost efficiency when it's P death ball vs T/Z death ball (and if the Protoss army slips up ever so slightly it just completely evaporates, while T/Z death balls are always doing good damage even if they take a bad engagement). It is 100% fact that Protoss ground doesnt scale anywhere near as well as T/Z ground. And even Protoss air doesnt scale as well as T/Z lategame comps. When Protoss wins it's usually pre true late game through leveraging its ever so slight advantage in terms of logistics. Protoss is even vastly inferior to harassing workers and infrastructure than T/Z. T/Z basic units in form of MM or ling bane will delete a mineral line no problem. A medivac with a couple of windo mines or even a Liberator will often do more damage than 1k worth of Zealots. Protoss is just so heavily outclassed in most cases. This is how the best of Z/T can reach 90+ win rate vs protoss (serral) or win 5 code S off of protoss (Maru). You simply will never see this happen other way around it's impossible.
You're wrong about comparing Zerg and Protoss when acknowledging when it is OP/UP. Nobody seems to ever admit that Protoss is UP, there is always mental gymnastics as to why they underperform at pro level - and even everyone admits when Zerg is OP they get compensated to some degree after a nerf lol....
Incontrol said it best, everyone just loves to hate on Protoss. It's possible it's because Protoss is the most frustrating race to play sub GM (I am a Terran main). And that carriers over to mass sentiment.
Sorry it is just Woe is Protoss. You are not going to convince me, or anyone with eyes and a modicum of understanding of the game, that all of a sudden, after 2017 when MSC was ended and the constant assault on protoss began, that Stats, Zest, Classic, sOS, all just lost all their talent and never again were able to win like the likes of Oliveria, Reynor, Cure, Maru, Serral, Innovation, and Solar. There's no reason except for balance. All the Protoss greats just stopped winning big tournaments at the same time until Hero miraculously won a Code S before falling off the map again.
On February 11 2024 08:01 Poopi wrote:
No Zest no hope for protoss, really. I mean herO wasn’t the best toss even before his military departure, he is a scarily good aggressive protoss but you can’t have all of your hopes into a single player
It’s very annoying to cheer for a race and that race has low representation, but unfortunately since there are so few top players left in the game, it’s bound to happen unless you make the race so overpowered that many protoss win
You know even before Trap, Zest, and Stats left, a protoss fan can't put their hopes into them, since they never won big either xD.
I think it's good for the health of the game if we can all talk about the elephant in their room that protoss just stopped winning anything big after a certain point, even when championship caliber Protoss players were active and peaking.
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Problem isnt so much about protoss lategame than early game. Maybe nexus could start with more energy, maybe some buff to gateway units before twilight council, like a bit more movement speed to zealots. It is grazy how many ways terran can kill protoss in early game and there is really no for protoss to dmg to terran. Dts could get small buff after cheaper ravens and blink nerf. Why warp prism price was increased it is a mandatory protoss unit and the nerf just adds volatility.
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EPT
