HOTS balance for PvX, analysis and suggestions - Page 2

On February 21 2013 00:28 Aquila- wrote:
Nice "analysis", completely biased from a diamond level protoss. You want to nerf drops so the 20 apm protosses can just sit and then a move again? Stargate not viable? Too high risk?? Are you kidding me? Make 1 oracle and have the chance to outright win the game by killing all marines and scvs, and if not get ahead anyway because having forced 5 turrets, or having detection against the mines. Get master first and play some terran and then try again.
And no, TvP is not balanced, it is completely protoss favoured right now but we see that anyway in the first hots tournaments.

On February 21 2013 01:04 kondis wrote:


[...]

Conclusion:
Terran seems to be the strongest race, while zerg is clearly the underdog. So, if TvP is "completely protoss favored", terran pro players are far better than other races pro players. I try to collect more statistics and calculate individual ratios for each matchup in the weekend.

[...]

On February 21 2013 01:10 ZenithM wrote:

Wait, you have 5 Terrans, 4 Zergs, and 3 Protosses in your rankings, and the conclusion is: Terran is the strongest (I'll allow it) and Zerg is clearly the underdog (wtf)?
Not that I disagree, but pick your justification better...

On February 21 2013 01:04 kondis wrote:


Hi!

In order to determine the balance of the matchup, we must first determine how we want to measure it. As only publicly available information is from first HOTS beta tournaments (mostly GM / pro level), I'll summarize results here. These are statistics for few first tournaments that google found first.

To determine actual "value" for each win, we should take number of players for each race into account. For example, if there are 20 terran players but only 1 protoss player, it would be highly unlikely protoss player to win. I also expect that each player is equally skilled (not true, but good enough when we have enough statistics)

PHD_Inaugural_HotS_Beta_Tournament
Participants: 8

TOP 3:
1. T
2. Z
3. P

NVIDIA_SC2_HotS_Cup
Participants: 28

TOP 3:
1. Z
2. T
3. Z

ESET_UK_Masters_2012 (Main event)
Participants: 16

TOP 3:
1. P
2. T
3. Z

The_SHOUTcraft_Invitational / House_of_the_Swarm

TOP 3:
1. T
2. P
3. T

Conclusion:
Terran seems to be the strongest race, while zerg is clearly the underdog. So, if TvP is "completely protoss favored", terran pro players are far better than other races pro players. I try to collect more statistics and calculate individual ratios for each matchup in the weekend.

Meanwhile, if you intend to state "completely protoss favored", please include statistics or even explanation why. Because "Get master first and play some terran and then try again" makes you just sound dumb.

On February 21 2013 01:16 Grapefruit wrote:


Are you, or are you not aware that none of these tournaments was played after HotS Balance Patch #9 and therefore have NO relevance for current balance?

Also Aquila has a point, get to the Masters league before you try analyze the meta-game. Many people fall into the trap of thinking that Diamond -> Masters is pretty much the same difference as Plat -> Diamond for example, but this is very far from the truth. Getting from High Dia/Low Masters to mid/high Masters takes more learning that from Bronze to low Masters. It may sound harsh, but people below mid Master don't know shit about SC2.

On February 21 2013 01:25 kondis wrote:


Hello!

If you have links to tournaments AFTER the patch, please include them! It's not really helpful just state that those hold no significance. Also, at least ESET UK MASTERS qualifiers were played after the patch. Also, I could state that anyone below pro level can't speak about the metagame. Imagine the gap between top masters and pro players. However I won't because
that is not really helping the community.

On February 20 2013 23:33 Grapefruit wrote:


Using GM rankings as an argument for or against balance is not really the best way to go at it, I think. I don't say that you can't read any balance from it, but in the end it's more of an indicator of how much a person plays.

Saying that Bio TvP hasn't undergone many changes is a MASSIVE understatement. One of the core moments of 99% of all Bio TvP plays is the 2 Medivac Stim timing, for several reasons. First and most importantly it keeps the Protoss at home, allowing you to take your third and let your full production kick in and starting to counter the tech path of the Protoss. The problem is that with the addition of the MC Core this push doesn't really work anymore. You see, in WoL your main goal as a Terran was to get the Protoss to split up his units and then attack the "weaker" side as in if he pulls to many units into his main you stim in with your army and try to kill Sentries, Probes or other valuable things if he sits at his natural your drop your 2 Medivacs and try to get damage done in that way and finally the last option, if the Protoss splits his units even and is safe on both sides you keep up a "mini-contain". During all this is it VERY important that you do not lose your army because it's the only thing that keep him from moving across the map and killing you, because you can't take on a Protoss army without having the proper counter to his tech path even with perfect micro it's near impossible to trade cost reflectively or even against Storm or Collossi with pure Bio. Okay, so far so good. Now we get to the MS Core, which pretty much shuts down this attack because the core with a handful of units is enough to defend either the natural or the main. If the Core is at the natural with a few Sentries a slow + FFs will delay your army for long enough to move his units down and deal with it, if the Core is in the main an Overcharge + a few Stalkers to snipe the Medivacs is enough to hold off drops.

The big problem that results from this is that the Protoss player gains a new timing, he can now attack with his first Tech path, which is just so hard to deal with that's not even fun anymore.

Sure, I'm not a top tier player (~Rank 30 Masters in WoL with Z and T) but from what I've experienced so far it only really works if the Toss fucks up.

I'm not saying that Bio isn't viable anymore, but it has gotten a lot harder. If you now also take into consideration how strong current Gateway + Stargate all-ins are and that Tempests and buffed VRs make the late-game even harder than it already was you get a fucking hard match-up.

As an added bonus the win-rates of two of my friends, who play roughly at my level.

+ Show Spoiler +

On February 21 2013 01:57 Grapefruit wrote:


They were played after Patch 9 maybe, but we're currently at Patch 14.

The closest we get is the MLG WC Showdowns and the GSL preseason, which results so far are:

MLG:

TvP: 1:1
PvZ: 5:2
TvZ: 2:0

GSL:

TvP: 3:4
PvZ: 1:1
TvZ: 3:2


Overall there are just not enough games yet to take them as an example, this will change soon however. When the first real tournaments have been played and the HotS GSL is running we will be able to make conclusions from the results but right now? It would take a fucking mastermind of SC to say what is balanced, what is not and what should be changed. And with all respect, that mastermind certainly isn't you.

And yes, you should state that only Pro level players can really talk about the meta-game and balance, because it's 100% correct. You should also draw the conclusion from it that you're even less qualified to do so. Because what's really not helping the community are countless people who think they know what they are talking about, making senseless and biased balance suggestions.

Imagine if someone who studied half a semester of Engineering came to you and told you how he could redefine Hooke´s law, because that's basically what you're doing right now.

On February 21 2013 04:26 emc wrote:
I think a good way to fix skytoss is to just buff infestors Neural Parasite to siege like range that only effects air massive units and can also be used while burrowed. It would effect tempest and carriers, but wouldn't change infestors NP useage on ground units. They could even add a flag that doesn't allow colossi to be NP if it's too strong. The drawbacks is that it could really hurt BC's and carriers and they already have too many hard counters. NP is already rather useless, it's not like zergs are using them on ground units at the moment, and this could also make ZvZ kind of funny if both players end up with BL/infestor.

Otherwise I can't think of anything other than a straight nerf to tempest and/or voids because I don't think buffing hydras is the way to go, sure they could use more HP but that would up their usefullness against every unit in the game with a combination of vipers and I would rather keep balance the way it is but only change the relationship of skytoss in PvZ. I think buffing corrupters would result in the same thing, unless the ghost snipe ability was buffed to compensate for vikings being weaker in ZvT.

Maybe another option is buffing vipers abduct aka grab ability? Currently you have to get pretty close and the main ability zergs are using with vipers is blinding cloud, so buffing this ability to giving it more range could be acceptable. NP and abduct could both be great to pick apart the skytoss death ball and the death ball is only good if it has templars so it's not like toss doesn't have a counter. Any other ideas?