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On August 10 2010 04:09 Kigari wrote:
Honestly I'm a terran player that barely if ever uses mules (only when i'm critically low on mineral flow).
The upside ? You can't hide. With 2 bases it's literally like a maphack. Yeah sure you'll skip racking minerals faster than you can spend them but what does it matter when you can constantly see and adapt to the opponents strategy ?
Some players go flippin' nuts when you scan them repeatedly and start screaming about imba and QQ and OP scan and "pr0s use mules not scan". :D
Good players hide their tech buildings where you would not scan, but you know hes gotta be spending that gas somewhere if he only has speedlings and a lair which gives you the same information as seeing a spire almost.
For some reason I always think that many zerg players are doing it wrong, I'm not a zerg player but I figure that they should pretty much always build a couple of tech structures that are on separate paths early game. Speedlings shut down early harass from a Terran and hydras placed well pretty much shut down all harass altogether, because of the creep speed bonus it seems that it would be relatively simple to keep ahead in expansions with smaller first response forces directly at the xpos and a larger centralized force able to help reinforce any location if needed in the early game. So, you see the Terran going mech, the terran will be sitting in his base turtling, that means you should be just outside of the range of his tanks making him slow walk his tanks all the way to your natural or one of your expansions when he decides to push. To often a zerg player will just let me walk right up to their nat and siege uncontested. With the time you bought and your economic advantage (which you should have) you should be able to get ultras, broodlords, or infestors depending on the composition of his army. If he is hellion heavy you will want to trade your lings in for roaches, if he is tank heavy you will want to trade your hydras for mutas or lings and roaches if he is thor heavy less mutas. If he has a perfect balance you can try to skew his forces by killing off one type then countering whats left or try to stall for your heavy hitters. Say he has only a few hellions a lot of tanks and maybe 4 thors Ultra ling should roflstomp this composition as long as you hit him unsieged and let an ultra take the first tank hit for your lings to close in (if he is siege walking). This is assuming that you don't have to go through a choke to get to him and that you you get at least a decent flank.
What I'm trying to say is that I don't think zergs really take advantage of the fact that they can switch 100% of their production to producing one unit. It seems like they can hand tailor their army to counter whatever the terran is doing if they can just stall him long enough to let it build (1 min). And I also think that zerg should be harassing the Terrans economy when the Terran is pushing. I think what a lot of zerg players don't realize is that Terran players turtle up because they are scared, and Terrans wont get turrets if they don't think you are getting mutas they wont get units to counter units that you don't have in the midgame when harass loses viability. You can use this to skew his army one way then produce many of the units that counter the skew when he actually begins his push. I scout mass hydraling and I will be really tank heavy with hellions, I might only produce one thor, If I haven't seen a spire and I see evo chambers up i might not even produce one. Lets say you have been saving up until I pushed or saw that I would be ready to make a move, then bam it appears out of nowhere to me, but 15 mutas roflstomp my army just when i siege at your nat and at the same time 5 roflestomp my economy at my base, but this rarely happens in my games and I wonder why. I think zergs reveal their tech switches to soon. I always wonder why in huge econ games when the zerg is closed to max and has extra money lying around he doesn't produce every tech building because that makes so much sense to me. Like in Idras game vs Tester on scrap station (i realize its zvp but same concept), why the hell doesn't he have a spire? Is its cost really that high? Especially when he has the implied econ to max and be sitting on money for a long time (which is when you should start building every tech structure) Zerg seems like it can be so versatile because of this, especially if a Terran goes for heavy harassment that fails and sets his own economy behind. Almost every Terran tries to harass and i think it all can be defended against with minimal losses from the zerg.
Zergs always complain about how hard it is to scout, yet I never see them burrow a ling outside of my natural, or other places where they would want to keep an eye on, in fact i rarely see burrow at all (unless its for some all in roach cheese thats easy to counter), odd to me since it can be so useful. They complain so much about having to sac an overlord to scout, when its actually cheaper then a scan for the early and mid game. Hell, you can sac 3 overlords and still be almost even with what the Terran lost from a mule. Not to mention that terrans need mules just to be able to keep up with the zerg. One thing I would really like to see zergs do is harass mineral lines with fungal growth, this rarely ever happens though. Even if you let the terran walk all the way up to your nat and you went for mass hydraling and had no hidden mutas, you could still fight it off with minimal loses by doing ling drops on the sieged tanks, I have yet to see a zerg do this even in high level games that I have watched.
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On August 10 2010 05:17 Toxigen wrote:
To all those disagreeing with IdrA out there, I'd like you to address his argument for a second:
If Zergs are beating Terrans at high level, it doesn't prove that ZvT is balanced. The other variable is player skill. This means one of two things must be true:
1. Player skill is equal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are balanced.
2. Player skill is unequal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are imbalanced.
He's also saying that he knows for a fact that Terran players, largely, are often newer to the game compared to Protoss and Zerg players in Korea. His proof stems from his knowledge and experience of those players both in SC1 and SC2. Also, these players were no-names previous to phase 2 (i.e., before mech buffs and roach/infestor nerfs).
These new, no-name, and (in some cases) non-professionals are defeating professional Zergs in tournaments. For #1 above to be true, the following must also be true:
These Terrans are just as skilled as professionals without the practice, knowledge and coaching that those professionals have (i.e., they're simply way more talented than those Zerg & Protoss players). Furthermore, despite playing in phase 1, their skill and talent with the race didn't kick-in until phase 2 and release.
The question becomes: does this sound plausible to you?
I agree. I'd like also to add that the statistics can't be taken from the whole population of players in SC2, otherwise results are going to get unreliable. This is because i saw someone analyzing some statistics where the whole population was considered, and that's pretty much useless. Being balanced at bronze level doesn't mean being balanced at the top. Because of that, if the average of winnings is 50-50 throughout all levels, would mean nothing but that the average is 50-50. It could be 60-40 for the bottom and 40-60 for the top skill level and 50-50 inbetween, or the inverse, or more extreme values.
I find it very strange that old BW protoss and zerg players are struggling with terran gamers from other RTSes at top tournament levels. That and that i rarely see a terran top player complaining about imbalance of zerg or protoss, while the reverse is so much more common. Anyway, it's blizzard's game to balance. If they don't they're the ones to lose.
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On August 10 2010 05:29 Dente wrote:
I wonder why blizzard is still not coming with a fix. Blizzard is known for their balancing so why would they wait with nerfing a race which is "imbalanced"? Maybe because it isn't? I don't know. I saw Idra playing vs a terran and I also saw him flaming against that guy. Idra could have finnished the game much earlier with broodlords but he was stubborn and kept making the same units over and over again. Tech switches can be so deadly but it seems like a lot of zergs are forgetting this. I agree 100% that zerg requires more skill tough.
Or maybe because it's not as simple Dustin Browder saying: "Well, our statistics tell us TvZ is tipped slightly in the Terran's favour. We know exactly what to change right away to fix this balance issue. We're Blizzard after all, and we're 'well known for our balancing'."
If there is a balance problem, I'm happy Blizzard are taking their time. Classes in WoW have this terrible habit of fluctuating between god-like and piles of steaming dog shit because of hasty balancing. I don't want races in Starcraft to go in a similar direction.
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not that anyone will listen to this, let alone blizzard, but i think it would be really interesting and potentially useful (i dont know about *Balancing*) if queens transfusion also transfused energy. it would parallel defiler's consume in BW and put a bit more emphasis on zergs to do fancy stuff with their armies (aside from the obvious infestor mass fungal growth, overseers could be a bit more annoying with their building corruption skill, and if necessary corruptors themselves could also spam their spells a bit more).
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On August 10 2010 05:35 AmstAff wrote:
maybe all the P/Z lamers are used to sc1, where a terran needed 250 APM to win against 90 APM P players (HI kwark^^) or where some rofl DT proxy rush/drop could bring them to B- or where Z just wanted to get 4 gas-bases and defend 2 chokepoints with nydus/swarm/lurker and finally pressing the Ultra aka GG button.
I dunno whats the problem, I mean right now you all (including me) suck in this game. so maybe you should first learn this game until perfection and if it will be broken at that point (and to reach this point it will need more than some weeks), then you can complain.
Not all of us want to wait for a year and an expansion for Blizzard to raise the cost of spawning pool from 150 to 200 in order to deal with 4pool.
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On August 10 2010 05:48 Apolo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 05:17 Toxigen wrote:
To all those disagreeing with IdrA out there, I'd like you to address his argument for a second:
If Zergs are beating Terrans at high level, it doesn't prove that ZvT is balanced. The other variable is player skill. This means one of two things must be true:
1. Player skill is equal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are balanced.
2. Player skill is unequal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are imbalanced.
He's also saying that he knows for a fact that Terran players, largely, are often newer to the game compared to Protoss and Zerg players in Korea. His proof stems from his knowledge and experience of those players both in SC1 and SC2. Also, these players were no-names previous to phase 2 (i.e., before mech buffs and roach/infestor nerfs).
These new, no-name, and (in some cases) non-professionals are defeating professional Zergs in tournaments. For #1 above to be true, the following must also be true:
These Terrans are just as skilled as professionals without the practice, knowledge and coaching that those professionals have (i.e., they're simply way more talented than those Zerg & Protoss players). Furthermore, despite playing in phase 1, their skill and talent with the race didn't kick-in until phase 2 and release.
The question becomes: does this sound plausible to you? I agree. I'd like also to add that the statistics can't be taken from the whole population of players in SC2, otherwise results are going to get unreliable. This is because i saw someone analyzing some statistics where the whole population was considered, and that's pretty much useless. Being balanced at bronze level doesn't mean being balanced at the top. Because of that, if the average of winnings is 50-50 throughout all levels, would mean nothing but that the average is 50-50. It could be 60-40 for the bottom and 40-60 for the top skill level and 50-50 inbetween, or the inverse, or more extreme values.
We don't have match-up-specific data, but we do have win ratios for each league: http://sc2ranks.com/stats/all/1/all. Check it out. Zergs, terrans, and protoss all do identically well all across diamond. Moreover, the racial distribution of the top 50, 100, and 500 for every region conform precisely to expectations, assuming a random distribution of skill across all players (actually, ONLY if we adjust for the hypothetical higher average skill level of zerg players -- otherwise zergs look way overpowered). So you'll need to be more specific about what exactly you think is not "valid" about these analyses.
I find it very strange that old BW protoss and zerg players are struggling with terran gamers from other RTSes at top tournament levels. That and that i rarely see a terran top player complaining about imbalance of zerg or protoss, while the reverse is so much more common. Anyway, it's blizzard's game to balance. If they don't they're the ones to lose.
Yeah, this a lot of hearsay. I've heard people complain about protoss imbalance anecdotally too, but it's not reached the "epidemic" level that terran imba cries have.
I think it's time for those of us that need proof to ask for it. (I am a loyal zerg player, btw.)
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Good thing Terran don't have to tech switch since all their stuff counters just about everything else.
Don't throw out tech switch like it's some magical solution.
The problem with ZvT is that T is so nicely packaged. A Starport with a reactor can produce two Anti-Air units or two Ground support units. Yeah you have to tech lab for the rest, but that's a single upgrade to get the rest of your units because frankly, you may not ever need the tech lab if you just want a bio ball with medics and vikings. (Hella hard force to break BTW)
Zerg expansions also cost more in the long run. Why? 300 minerals + 50 for the drone + 100 for the Ovi because zerg expansions don't add to your pop cap if I remember. So it costs 450 per hatch if you compare it to a CC. Add in a queen to make it a viable building and now it costs you 600 to be fully functional. That and you don't get the useful switch between making it a pure money maker or a hard-as-nails self defender.
Zerg is static. Tech switches are quick, but so can Terran switches if you play it right. (Rise and drop with a new tech building to switch tech) So hard. Terran Mech or Bio can take on most comers with little to no alteration. However, zerg haven't been able to lock down a build type that really deals with opponents like that. It keeps switching. At one point it was ling+roach, then roach+hydra, then hydra+ling, then ling+blings, etc, etc, etc. It's always been Mech or Bio for terran and that makes it simple, effective, easy to learn, and easy to implement.
Don't get me started as well on how Mules allow terran to mine minerals better than any other race past base saturation. Forget to micro the CC? No problem, just drop 4 mules and catch up! Forget to micro the queen? Fooked beacuse you can't go back.
Terran is OP because it's polished and easy. Protoss the same thing. Zerg are still trying to figure out howt he hell to to use the units and are getting frustrated because in a lot of cases, the other races' units simply outclass zerg as far as utility.
Zerg should NEVER be reacting, they should be initiating! Zerg should be pounding on your walls and you should be scared to leave your base when Zerg are running around. Not that way at all now as Toss and Terran just control the map and push out with their incredibly powerful balls and call the shots. Zerg lost their SC1 zerg-ness. Since the pop nerfs and such, they are simply another race with different units but no longer fit the bill as "Zerg" because the only unit that overwhelms is Lings.
Sure Zerg will get "balanced" as people love to say. Oh Blizzard is the king of balance! What shmuck thought that Zerg wanted a single model click spell like Frenzy in the first place? My god... No, Blizzard isn't that great with zerg becuse an ability like that should be an AOE like every other freaking buff cast ability in the game. But now you have Zerg single click casting a buff? The hell? That was perhaps the single worst designed spell in the game, especially for a race that's supposed to have lots of NUMBERS; a swarm race perhaps!
Fungal growth, at least by my games and the games I watch, is simply the only reason why Zerg win against T. No infestors, no win generally. Same deal against Mech, but now Zerg are using the buffed Ultra and it's working somewhat ok. But guess what, Tanks/Marauders decide where Ultras go.
And don't get me started on Mutas. Damnest worthless units in the game outside of a sneaky harass or a quick "surprise buttsecks!" attack. However, once it fails, Mutas are done. No unit should be a one shot wonder that after it's been used, it really doesn't have any benefit after that.
Let's finally conclude with how other races get upgrades that allow their early units to become late-game units. Zealot charge, marine shields, tank siege, infernal pre-igniter, concussive shells, thermal lance, etc, etc, etc. All the races have abilities that turn their units into viable late game units but Zerg has SPEED upgrades which zerg deem a requirement. Honestly, do you think zergling speed is even REMOTELY optional? (And the attack bonus doesn't make them endgame, they still have to get to their target. ) Hydras? The +1 range is also NOT OPTIONAL! Roach speed? NOT OPTIONAL. The ultra armor? NOT OPTIONAL IF YOU WANT THEM TO LIVE!
So you don't get anything that upgrades units into the next tier... we just have a bunch of upgrades that are requirements rather than optional abilities. Now, some people might say Siege is not optional, but have you watched how unsieged tanks can take down targets? They shoot so bloody fast and do great damage that they can survive without Siege. It's just they become gods of war with Siegemode.
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On August 10 2010 05:48 Apolo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 05:17 Toxigen wrote:
To all those disagreeing with IdrA out there, I'd like you to address his argument for a second:
If Zergs are beating Terrans at high level, it doesn't prove that ZvT is balanced. The other variable is player skill. This means one of two things must be true:
1. Player skill is equal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are balanced.
2. Player skill is unequal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are imbalanced.
He's also saying that he knows for a fact that Terran players, largely, are often newer to the game compared to Protoss and Zerg players in Korea. His proof stems from his knowledge and experience of those players both in SC1 and SC2. Also, these players were no-names previous to phase 2 (i.e., before mech buffs and roach/infestor nerfs).
These new, no-name, and (in some cases) non-professionals are defeating professional Zergs in tournaments. For #1 above to be true, the following must also be true:
These Terrans are just as skilled as professionals without the practice, knowledge and coaching that those professionals have (i.e., they're simply way more talented than those Zerg & Protoss players). Furthermore, despite playing in phase 1, their skill and talent with the race didn't kick-in until phase 2 and release.
The question becomes: does this sound plausible to you? I agree. I'd like also to add that the statistics can't be taken from the whole population of players in SC2, otherwise results are going to get unreliable. This is because i saw someone analyzing some statistics where the whole population was considered, and that's pretty much useless. Being balanced at bronze level doesn't mean being balanced at the top. Because of that, if the average of winnings is 50-50 throughout all levels, would mean nothing but that the average is 50-50. It could be 60-40 for the bottom and 40-60 for the top skill level and 50-50 inbetween, or the inverse, or more extreme values. I find it very strange that old BW protoss and zerg players are struggling with terran gamers from other RTSes at top tournament levels. That and that i rarely see a terran top player complaining about imbalance of zerg or protoss, while the reverse is so much more common. Anyway, it's blizzard's game to balance. If they don't they're the ones to lose.
This whole premise has a simple fallacy that I would like to point out, its so large that I'm very surprised that you don't realize it when its blatantly staring you and IdrA in the face. STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE, I mean what heck man. Have you been to highschool? Have IdrA play 50 games against this lessor player and see how the overall win percentages are. You take the 2 games he has played against someone and extrapolate it into way more then it should be without even a single thought. Jesus this is just sad.
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The way I see it, if there are this many zerg players are concerned with TvZ imbalances, then the zerg players are either really bad, terran players are better, or Terran mech is imbalanced against zerg. Since there are a lot of really good zerg players being beaten by B+ (at best) terrans, then I would have to say that mech is imba, and that the zerg players have a right to be upset.
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On August 10 2010 06:01 silencesc wrote:
The way I see it, if there are this many zerg players are concerned with TvZ imbalances, then the zerg players are either really bad, terran players are better, or Terran mech is imbalanced against zerg. Since there are a lot of really good zerg players being beaten by B+ (at best) terrans, then I would have to say that mech is imba, and that the zerg players have a right to be upset.
Can you prove that "worse" terrans are beating "better" zergs without the opposite happening with equal frequency?
I mean, Silver beat IdrA, sure. But Silver is the 14th-best player on the NA ladder. (IdrA is 7th.)
Moreover, IdrA lost yesterday to Zelniq. But Zelniq... is a NA zerg. (29th on the NA ladder, btw.)
You're going to need to do more than point to mass hysteria. It sure would be easier if mob rule decided everything in life, but mob opinion tends not to be proof enough.
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I like where you're going LaLush with the Bunker and Mule changes, but I just can't see the need for the supply depot changes. The Viking and Thor changes while I fully agree one or the other is needed to balance T v Z, the problem is that Vikings are the primary AA for Terran, and more importantly, lowering their range will unbalance P v T (in P's favor). What I really believe should be implemented to balance T v Z (and more specifically how hard Thors rape Mutalisk) is simply a cap on how many simultaneous units a single Thor's AA attack can hit (like Blizzard on the Archmage in WC3). This way Thor's would still be a very effective counter to Mutalisks, however at the same time a skilled player could micro their Mutalisks in such a manner as to minimize damage. Overall a great OP, and I'm really glad to see someone has gone ahead and made a constructive and well thought out balance post, that doesn't favor one or the other race. These are the kind of OPs we need to keep seeing.
On August 10 2010 05:45 cmos543 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 10 2010 04:09 Kigari wrote:
Honestly I'm a terran player that barely if ever uses mules (only when i'm critically low on mineral flow).
The upside ? You can't hide. With 2 bases it's literally like a maphack. Yeah sure you'll skip racking minerals faster than you can spend them but what does it matter when you can constantly see and adapt to the opponents strategy ?
Some players go flippin' nuts when you scan them repeatedly and start screaming about imba and QQ and OP scan and "pr0s use mules not scan". :D Good players hide their tech buildings where you would not scan, but you know hes gotta be spending that gas somewhere if he only has speedlings and a lair which gives you the same information as seeing a spire almost. For some reason I always think that many zerg players are doing it wrong, I'm not a zerg player but I figure that they should pretty much always build a couple of tech structures that are on separate paths early game. Speedlings shut down early harass from a Terran and hydras placed well pretty much shut down all harass altogether, because of the creep speed bonus it seems that it would be relatively simple to keep ahead in expansions with smaller first response forces directly at the xpos and a larger centralized force able to help reinforce any location if needed in the early game. So, you see the Terran going mech, the terran will be sitting in his base turtling, that means you should be just outside of the range of his tanks making him slow walk his tanks all the way to your natural or one of your expansions when he decides to push. To often a zerg player will just let me walk right up to their nat and siege uncontested. With the time you bought and your economic advantage (which you should have) you should be able to get ultras, broodlords, or infestors depending on the composition of his army. If he is hellion heavy you will want to trade your lings in for roaches, if he is tank heavy you will want to trade your hydras for mutas or lings and roaches if he is thor heavy less mutas. If he has a perfect balance you can try to skew his forces by killing off one type then countering whats left or try to stall for your heavy hitters. Say he has only a few hellions a lot of tanks and maybe 4 thors Ultra ling should roflstomp this composition as long as you hit him unsieged and let an ultra take the first tank hit for your lings to close in (if he is siege walking). This is assuming that you don't have to go through a choke to get to him and that you you get at least a decent flank. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think zergs really take advantage of the fact that they can switch 100% of their production to producing one unit. It seems like they can hand tailor their army to counter whatever the terran is doing if they can just stall him long enough to let it build (1 min). And I also think that zerg should be harassing the Terrans economy when the Terran is pushing. I think what a lot of zerg players don't realize is that Terran players turtle up because they are scared, and Terrans wont get turrets if they don't think you are getting mutas they wont get units to counter units that you don't have in the midgame when harass loses viability. You can use this to skew his army one way then produce many of the units that counter the skew when he actually begins his push. I scout mass hydraling and I will be really tank heavy with hellions, I might only produce one thor, If I haven't seen a spire and I see evo chambers up i might not even produce one. Lets say you have been saving up until I pushed or saw that I would be ready to make a move, then bam it appears out of nowhere to me, but 15 mutas roflstomp my army just when i siege at your nat and at the same time 5 roflestomp my economy at my base, but this rarely happens in my games and I wonder why. I think zergs reveal their tech switches to soon. I always wonder why in huge econ games when the zerg is closed to max and has extra money lying around he doesn't produce every tech building because that makes so much sense to me. Like in Idras game vs Tester on scrap station (i realize its zvp but same concept), why the hell doesn't he have a spire? Is its cost really that high? Especially when he has the implied econ to max and be sitting on money for a long time (which is when you should start building every tech structure) Zerg seems like it can be so versatile because of this, especially if a Terran goes for heavy harassment that fails and sets his own economy behind. Almost every Terran tries to harass and i think it all can be defended against with minimal losses from the zerg. Zergs always complain about how hard it is to scout, yet I never see them burrow a ling outside of my natural, or other places where they would want to keep an eye on, in fact i rarely see burrow at all (unless its for some all in roach cheese thats easy to counter), odd to me since it can be so useful. They complain so much about having to sac an overlord to scout, when its actually cheaper then a scan for the early and mid game. Hell, you can sac 3 overlords and still be almost even with what the Terran lost from a mule. Not to mention that terrans need mules just to be able to keep up with the zerg. One thing I would really like to see zergs do is harass mineral lines with fungal growth, this rarely ever happens though. Even if you let the terran walk all the way up to your nat and you went for mass hydraling and had no hidden mutas, you could still fight it off with minimal loses by doing ling drops on the sieged tanks, I have yet to see a zerg do this even in high level games that I have watched.
It's real easy for Terran players to talk all day about how 'Zerg could do this and that' but all I can say is try it. Try going Zerg and doing anything versus the Terran wall-in short of what we've seen IdrA do time and time again, go up 3 or 4 bases above the Terran and send wave after wave after wave of men at the wall until the Terran runs out of resources. 'Harassing Terran Eco' as you so eloquently put it is not nearly as easy as you make it seem, competent Terrans will have Vikings, Thors, Turrets for AA, and Tanks and Marauders to hold back Baneling busts. While it is by no means impossible to beat Terran as Zerg, it certainly is not as easy as 'simply harassing their eco all game and stalling their army for 1 minute while you tech switch'.
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I know it wouldn't be easy, but perhaps one of the fixes would be reducing the food count of each unit by 1 (to min of 1) and then reducing their statline to account for that.
Yeah it would be a lot of stastical work, but it would make zerg feel more like "Zerg" in that you are grinding your opponent. Then make Ultas very expensive with applicable stats so you see fewer of them, but they bring down the house when they appear.
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I like it all except the mule change. Makes Muta harass more difficult. terran sees it coming?spam mules on his line and now you either have to pick out the scv manually or your mutas will attack the, now-less-important-per-unit, Mule. Before i would target the mul then let the mutas burn for a few sec while i macro/micro elseware a few seconds... If AI would prioritize workers>mules, then sure.
Honestly i would like to see depot burrow a researched ability. or at least give them SOME drawback to walling off.
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On August 10 2010 06:06 SichuanPanda wrote:I like where you're going LaLush with the Bunker and Mule changes, but I just can't see the need for the supply depot changes. The Viking and Thor changes while I fully agree one or the other is needed to balance T v Z, the problem is that Vikings are the primary AA for Terran, and more importantly, lowering their range will unbalance P v T (in P's favor). What I really believe should be implemented to balance T v Z (and more specifically how hard Thors rape Mutalisk) is simply a cap on how many simultaneous units a single Thor's AA attack can hit (like Blizzard on the Archmage in WC3). This way Thor's would still be a very effective counter to Mutalisks, however at the same time a skilled player could micro their Mutalisks in such a manner as to minimize damage. Overall a great OP, and I'm really glad to see someone has gone ahead and made a constructive and well thought out balance post, that doesn't favor one or the other race. These are the kind of OPs we need to keep seeing. Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 05:45 cmos543 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 10 2010 04:09 Kigari wrote:
Honestly I'm a terran player that barely if ever uses mules (only when i'm critically low on mineral flow).
The upside ? You can't hide. With 2 bases it's literally like a maphack. Yeah sure you'll skip racking minerals faster than you can spend them but what does it matter when you can constantly see and adapt to the opponents strategy ?
Some players go flippin' nuts when you scan them repeatedly and start screaming about imba and QQ and OP scan and "pr0s use mules not scan". :D Good players hide their tech buildings where you would not scan, but you know hes gotta be spending that gas somewhere if he only has speedlings and a lair which gives you the same information as seeing a spire almost. For some reason I always think that many zerg players are doing it wrong, I'm not a zerg player but I figure that they should pretty much always build a couple of tech structures that are on separate paths early game. Speedlings shut down early harass from a Terran and hydras placed well pretty much shut down all harass altogether, because of the creep speed bonus it seems that it would be relatively simple to keep ahead in expansions with smaller first response forces directly at the xpos and a larger centralized force able to help reinforce any location if needed in the early game. So, you see the Terran going mech, the terran will be sitting in his base turtling, that means you should be just outside of the range of his tanks making him slow walk his tanks all the way to your natural or one of your expansions when he decides to push. To often a zerg player will just let me walk right up to their nat and siege uncontested. With the time you bought and your economic advantage (which you should have) you should be able to get ultras, broodlords, or infestors depending on the composition of his army. If he is hellion heavy you will want to trade your lings in for roaches, if he is tank heavy you will want to trade your hydras for mutas or lings and roaches if he is thor heavy less mutas. If he has a perfect balance you can try to skew his forces by killing off one type then countering whats left or try to stall for your heavy hitters. Say he has only a few hellions a lot of tanks and maybe 4 thors Ultra ling should roflstomp this composition as long as you hit him unsieged and let an ultra take the first tank hit for your lings to close in (if he is siege walking). This is assuming that you don't have to go through a choke to get to him and that you you get at least a decent flank. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think zergs really take advantage of the fact that they can switch 100% of their production to producing one unit. It seems like they can hand tailor their army to counter whatever the terran is doing if they can just stall him long enough to let it build (1 min). And I also think that zerg should be harassing the Terrans economy when the Terran is pushing. I think what a lot of zerg players don't realize is that Terran players turtle up because they are scared, and Terrans wont get turrets if they don't think you are getting mutas they wont get units to counter units that you don't have in the midgame when harass loses viability. You can use this to skew his army one way then produce many of the units that counter the skew when he actually begins his push. I scout mass hydraling and I will be really tank heavy with hellions, I might only produce one thor, If I haven't seen a spire and I see evo chambers up i might not even produce one. Lets say you have been saving up until I pushed or saw that I would be ready to make a move, then bam it appears out of nowhere to me, but 15 mutas roflstomp my army just when i siege at your nat and at the same time 5 roflestomp my economy at my base, but this rarely happens in my games and I wonder why. I think zergs reveal their tech switches to soon. I always wonder why in huge econ games when the zerg is closed to max and has extra money lying around he doesn't produce every tech building because that makes so much sense to me. Like in Idras game vs Tester on scrap station (i realize its zvp but same concept), why the hell doesn't he have a spire? Is its cost really that high? Especially when he has the implied econ to max and be sitting on money for a long time (which is when you should start building every tech structure) Zerg seems like it can be so versatile because of this, especially if a Terran goes for heavy harassment that fails and sets his own economy behind. Almost every Terran tries to harass and i think it all can be defended against with minimal losses from the zerg. Zergs always complain about how hard it is to scout, yet I never see them burrow a ling outside of my natural, or other places where they would want to keep an eye on, in fact i rarely see burrow at all (unless its for some all in roach cheese thats easy to counter), odd to me since it can be so useful. They complain so much about having to sac an overlord to scout, when its actually cheaper then a scan for the early and mid game. Hell, you can sac 3 overlords and still be almost even with what the Terran lost from a mule. Not to mention that terrans need mules just to be able to keep up with the zerg. One thing I would really like to see zergs do is harass mineral lines with fungal growth, this rarely ever happens though. Even if you let the terran walk all the way up to your nat and you went for mass hydraling and had no hidden mutas, you could still fight it off with minimal loses by doing ling drops on the sieged tanks, I have yet to see a zerg do this even in high level games that I have watched. Try going Zerg and doing anything versus the Terran wall-in short of what we've seen IdrA do time and time again, go up 3 or 4 bases above the Terran and send wave after wave after wave of men at the wall until the Terran runs out of resources. 'Harassing Terran Eco' as you so eloquently put it is not nearly as easy as you make it seem, competent Terrans will have Vikings, Thors, Turrets for AA, and Tanks and Marauders to hold back Baneling busts.
Have you ever watched a game played by the Korean zerg CheckPrime?
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On August 10 2010 06:06 SichuanPanda wrote:
I like where you're going LaLush with the Bunker and Mule changes, but I just can't see the need for the supply depot changes. The Viking and Thor changes while I fully agree one or the other is needed to balance T v Z, the problem is that Vikings are the primary AA for Terran, and more importantly, lowering their range will unbalance P v T (in P's favor). What I really believe should be implemented to balance T v Z (and more specifically how hard Thors rape Mutalisk) is simply a cap on how many simultaneous units a single Thor's AA attack can hit (like Blizzard on the Archmage in WC3). This way Thor's would still be a very effective counter to Mutalisks, however at the same time a skilled player could micro their Mutalisks in such a manner as to minimize damage. Overall a great OP, and I'm really glad to see someone has gone ahead and made a constructive and well thought out balance post, that doesn't favor one or the other race. These are the kind of OPs we need to keep seeing.
I realy like this idea, obviously thors will still rape mutas, but at least the thors wont get that one lucky volley that does thousands of dmg across all your mutas while they were mistakenly clumped.
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On August 10 2010 06:13 Mantikor wrote:
I like it all except the mule change. Makes Muta harass more difficult. terran sees it coming?spam mules on his line and now you either have to pick out the scv manually or your mutas will attack the, now-less-important-per-unit, Mule. Before i would target the mul then let the mutas burn for a few sec while i macro/micro elseware a few seconds... If AI would prioritize workers>mules, then sure.
Honestly i would like to see depot burrow a researched ability. or at least give them SOME drawback to walling off.
Well there's a simple fix to that, reduce MULE hit points so they die in only a few muta-splashes. Moreover, good luck getting past Thors and Vikings with Mutalisks(of course we have to assume the Zerg is muta harassing because the Terran lacks these units).
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On August 10 2010 06:01 cmos543 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 05:48 Apolo wrote:On August 10 2010 05:17 Toxigen wrote:
To all those disagreeing with IdrA out there, I'd like you to address his argument for a second:
If Zergs are beating Terrans at high level, it doesn't prove that ZvT is balanced. The other variable is player skill. This means one of two things must be true:
1. Player skill is equal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are balanced.
2. Player skill is unequal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are imbalanced.
He's also saying that he knows for a fact that Terran players, largely, are often newer to the game compared to Protoss and Zerg players in Korea. His proof stems from his knowledge and experience of those players both in SC1 and SC2. Also, these players were no-names previous to phase 2 (i.e., before mech buffs and roach/infestor nerfs).
These new, no-name, and (in some cases) non-professionals are defeating professional Zergs in tournaments. For #1 above to be true, the following must also be true:
These Terrans are just as skilled as professionals without the practice, knowledge and coaching that those professionals have (i.e., they're simply way more talented than those Zerg & Protoss players). Furthermore, despite playing in phase 1, their skill and talent with the race didn't kick-in until phase 2 and release.
The question becomes: does this sound plausible to you? I agree. I'd like also to add that the statistics can't be taken from the whole population of players in SC2, otherwise results are going to get unreliable. This is because i saw someone analyzing some statistics where the whole population was considered, and that's pretty much useless. Being balanced at bronze level doesn't mean being balanced at the top. Because of that, if the average of winnings is 50-50 throughout all levels, would mean nothing but that the average is 50-50. It could be 60-40 for the bottom and 40-60 for the top skill level and 50-50 inbetween, or the inverse, or more extreme values. I find it very strange that old BW protoss and zerg players are struggling with terran gamers from other RTSes at top tournament levels. That and that i rarely see a terran top player complaining about imbalance of zerg or protoss, while the reverse is so much more common. Anyway, it's blizzard's game to balance. If they don't they're the ones to lose. This whole premise has a simple fallacy that I would like to point out, its so large that I'm very surprised that you don't realize it when its blatantly staring you and IdrA in the face. STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE, I mean what heck man. Have you been to highschool? Have IdrA play 50 games against this lessor player and see how the overall win percentages are. You take the 2 games he has played against someone and extrapolate it into way more then it should be without even a single thought. Jesus this is just sad.
Well actually i had a chair of statistics at college, which was far more complicated than all highschool classes put together.
What you said is a straw man because i didn't mention Idra at all or his 2 games. I based what i said on more than just him. Why did Artosis complain about terran mech, why Idra complained about even more than mech? Why did Whitera and Huk complain about marauders? Why did Tester said Terran was the best race? Why haven't i seen a top terran player complain about zerg or protoss in the last month or two? Why is it that Protoss is by far the most popular race at lower levels, and then the top 100 of diamond Terran takes that place?(1) Why is it that most tournament winnings and runner ups are Terran?(2) I can't comment on the win ratios of the leagues because the B.net system messes up with win ratios directly by trying to make everyone 50-50. And at the top it's even more different. I'll have to think more about that.
(1) http://sc2ranks.com/stats/all/1/100
(2) there's a post somehwere in this thread that has a big list of tournaments and their respective winners, and most without a doubt are terran.
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I'm ignoring the first part of your post because it's hearsay... Sorry...
On August 10 2010 06:17 Apolo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 06:01 cmos543 wrote:On August 10 2010 05:48 Apolo wrote:On August 10 2010 05:17 Toxigen wrote:
To all those disagreeing with IdrA out there, I'd like you to address his argument for a second:
If Zergs are beating Terrans at high level, it doesn't prove that ZvT is balanced. The other variable is player skill. This means one of two things must be true:
1. Player skill is equal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are balanced.
2. Player skill is unequal, so if Zerg is winning close to 50%, the races are imbalanced.
He's also saying that he knows for a fact that Terran players, largely, are often newer to the game compared to Protoss and Zerg players in Korea. His proof stems from his knowledge and experience of those players both in SC1 and SC2. Also, these players were no-names previous to phase 2 (i.e., before mech buffs and roach/infestor nerfs).
These new, no-name, and (in some cases) non-professionals are defeating professional Zergs in tournaments. For #1 above to be true, the following must also be true:
These Terrans are just as skilled as professionals without the practice, knowledge and coaching that those professionals have (i.e., they're simply way more talented than those Zerg & Protoss players). Furthermore, despite playing in phase 1, their skill and talent with the race didn't kick-in until phase 2 and release.
The question becomes: does this sound plausible to you? I agree. I'd like also to add that the statistics can't be taken from the whole population of players in SC2, otherwise results are going to get unreliable. This is because i saw someone analyzing some statistics where the whole population was considered, and that's pretty much useless. Being balanced at bronze level doesn't mean being balanced at the top. Because of that, if the average of winnings is 50-50 throughout all levels, would mean nothing but that the average is 50-50. It could be 60-40 for the bottom and 40-60 for the top skill level and 50-50 inbetween, or the inverse, or more extreme values. I find it very strange that old BW protoss and zerg players are struggling with terran gamers from other RTSes at top tournament levels. That and that i rarely see a terran top player complaining about imbalance of zerg or protoss, while the reverse is so much more common. Anyway, it's blizzard's game to balance. If they don't they're the ones to lose. This whole premise has a simple fallacy that I would like to point out, its so large that I'm very surprised that you don't realize it when its blatantly staring you and IdrA in the face. STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE, I mean what heck man. Have you been to highschool? Have IdrA play 50 games against this lessor player and see how the overall win percentages are. You take the 2 games he has played against someone and extrapolate it into way more then it should be without even a single thought. Jesus this is just sad. hy is it that Protoss is by far the most popular race at lower levels, and then the top 100 of diamond Terran takes that place?(1) Why is it that most tournament winnings and runner ups are Terran?(2) (1) http://sc2ranks.com/stats/all/1/100
Check out the "top 500": http://sc2ranks.com/stats/all/1/500
Moreover, this "top 100" business is a bit silly -- we should really be controlling for region, because those people are playing each other. The top of the Russian ladder isn't really relevant to our discussion, imo.
By the way, it seems that approximately equal numbers play terran and protoss worldwide. 35.68% are protoss and 35.35% are terran.
(2) there's a post somehwere in this thread that has a big list of tournaments and their respective winners, and most without a doubt are terran.
I'm gonna need you to quote that post and compare the distribution of winners and runners up with the distribution of entrants.
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On August 10 2010 06:15 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2010 06:06 SichuanPanda wrote:I like where you're going LaLush with the Bunker and Mule changes, but I just can't see the need for the supply depot changes. The Viking and Thor changes while I fully agree one or the other is needed to balance T v Z, the problem is that Vikings are the primary AA for Terran, and more importantly, lowering their range will unbalance P v T (in P's favor). What I really believe should be implemented to balance T v Z (and more specifically how hard Thors rape Mutalisk) is simply a cap on how many simultaneous units a single Thor's AA attack can hit (like Blizzard on the Archmage in WC3). This way Thor's would still be a very effective counter to Mutalisks, however at the same time a skilled player could micro their Mutalisks in such a manner as to minimize damage. Overall a great OP, and I'm really glad to see someone has gone ahead and made a constructive and well thought out balance post, that doesn't favor one or the other race. These are the kind of OPs we need to keep seeing. On August 10 2010 05:45 cmos543 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 10 2010 04:09 Kigari wrote:
Honestly I'm a terran player that barely if ever uses mules (only when i'm critically low on mineral flow).
The upside ? You can't hide. With 2 bases it's literally like a maphack. Yeah sure you'll skip racking minerals faster than you can spend them but what does it matter when you can constantly see and adapt to the opponents strategy ?
Some players go flippin' nuts when you scan them repeatedly and start screaming about imba and QQ and OP scan and "pr0s use mules not scan". :D Good players hide their tech buildings where you would not scan, but you know hes gotta be spending that gas somewhere if he only has speedlings and a lair which gives you the same information as seeing a spire almost. For some reason I always think that many zerg players are doing it wrong, I'm not a zerg player but I figure that they should pretty much always build a couple of tech structures that are on separate paths early game. Speedlings shut down early harass from a Terran and hydras placed well pretty much shut down all harass altogether, because of the creep speed bonus it seems that it would be relatively simple to keep ahead in expansions with smaller first response forces directly at the xpos and a larger centralized force able to help reinforce any location if needed in the early game. So, you see the Terran going mech, the terran will be sitting in his base turtling, that means you should be just outside of the range of his tanks making him slow walk his tanks all the way to your natural or one of your expansions when he decides to push. To often a zerg player will just let me walk right up to their nat and siege uncontested. With the time you bought and your economic advantage (which you should have) you should be able to get ultras, broodlords, or infestors depending on the composition of his army. If he is hellion heavy you will want to trade your lings in for roaches, if he is tank heavy you will want to trade your hydras for mutas or lings and roaches if he is thor heavy less mutas. If he has a perfect balance you can try to skew his forces by killing off one type then countering whats left or try to stall for your heavy hitters. Say he has only a few hellions a lot of tanks and maybe 4 thors Ultra ling should roflstomp this composition as long as you hit him unsieged and let an ultra take the first tank hit for your lings to close in (if he is siege walking). This is assuming that you don't have to go through a choke to get to him and that you you get at least a decent flank. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think zergs really take advantage of the fact that they can switch 100% of their production to producing one unit. It seems like they can hand tailor their army to counter whatever the terran is doing if they can just stall him long enough to let it build (1 min). And I also think that zerg should be harassing the Terrans economy when the Terran is pushing. I think what a lot of zerg players don't realize is that Terran players turtle up because they are scared, and Terrans wont get turrets if they don't think you are getting mutas they wont get units to counter units that you don't have in the midgame when harass loses viability. You can use this to skew his army one way then produce many of the units that counter the skew when he actually begins his push. I scout mass hydraling and I will be really tank heavy with hellions, I might only produce one thor, If I haven't seen a spire and I see evo chambers up i might not even produce one. Lets say you have been saving up until I pushed or saw that I would be ready to make a move, then bam it appears out of nowhere to me, but 15 mutas roflstomp my army just when i siege at your nat and at the same time 5 roflestomp my economy at my base, but this rarely happens in my games and I wonder why. I think zergs reveal their tech switches to soon. I always wonder why in huge econ games when the zerg is closed to max and has extra money lying around he doesn't produce every tech building because that makes so much sense to me. Like in Idras game vs Tester on scrap station (i realize its zvp but same concept), why the hell doesn't he have a spire? Is its cost really that high? Especially when he has the implied econ to max and be sitting on money for a long time (which is when you should start building every tech structure) Zerg seems like it can be so versatile because of this, especially if a Terran goes for heavy harassment that fails and sets his own economy behind. Almost every Terran tries to harass and i think it all can be defended against with minimal losses from the zerg. Zergs always complain about how hard it is to scout, yet I never see them burrow a ling outside of my natural, or other places where they would want to keep an eye on, in fact i rarely see burrow at all (unless its for some all in roach cheese thats easy to counter), odd to me since it can be so useful. They complain so much about having to sac an overlord to scout, when its actually cheaper then a scan for the early and mid game. Hell, you can sac 3 overlords and still be almost even with what the Terran lost from a mule. Not to mention that terrans need mules just to be able to keep up with the zerg. One thing I would really like to see zergs do is harass mineral lines with fungal growth, this rarely ever happens though. Even if you let the terran walk all the way up to your nat and you went for mass hydraling and had no hidden mutas, you could still fight it off with minimal loses by doing ling drops on the sieged tanks, I have yet to see a zerg do this even in high level games that I have watched. Try going Zerg and doing anything versus the Terran wall-in short of what we've seen IdrA do time and time again, go up 3 or 4 bases above the Terran and send wave after wave after wave of men at the wall until the Terran runs out of resources. 'Harassing Terran Eco' as you so eloquently put it is not nearly as easy as you make it seem, competent Terrans will have Vikings, Thors, Turrets for AA, and Tanks and Marauders to hold back Baneling busts. Have you ever watched a game played by the Korean zerg CheckPrime?
Have you ever watched one of a thousand replays of T v Z? There's always an odd-man out or two (or twenty for that matter) who can play the given race (in this case Zerg) more effectively than others. However, the fact of the matter is that as an admittedly Terran only play you are obviously going to have a bias towards any strategy Zerg has beaten you with. I am not talking about my skill as Zerg or Terran (play both), or yours. What I am talking about is in high level play, and in high level play, if you were really as versed as you claim yourself to be, you would understand that the norm is the Zerg sending continual waves of troops at the Terran wall. Any games you've seen from this player are quite simple, the Terran made a mistake, and CheckPrime did not. In T v Z if the Terran plays it perfectly and makes no mistakes, and the Zerg does the same, the conditions I described in my previous post ring true. Now please, don't reply with another arrogant one-liner of a barely recognized SC2 player. Countless high-level and recognized players agree there is something just a little off with T v Z, and LaLush is trying to work towards fixing that, as am I and the majority of people in this thread. You on the other hand cling to your prejudice against Zerg because you are a Terran player and then try to sum up the entire match-up of T v Z based on one Zerg player's form. If you have something constructive to add the conversation here then by all means go ahead. But if you are going to sit there stubbornly and not accept the balance issues that have been glaring us all in the face even while the game was in beta then simply give up, because this thread is for a discussion on T v Z balance, not a discussion on why nothing needs changed (as clearly there are some albeit minor changes that certainly do need to occur).
Also what's with the attitude? All I was doing is pointing out that since you don't play Zerg you have no right to say 'simply do this' and you can beat a Terran. What makes kajeus the end-all-be-all of T v Z balance, whose word is never to be disputed? Get off your high horse buddy.
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I am a zerg player... And I'm contributing nothing but verifiable statistics and accurate analysis of them.
Also what's with the attitude? All I was doing is pointing out that since you don't play Zerg you have no right to say 'simply do this' and you can beat a Terran. What makes kajeus the end-all-be-all of T v Z balance, whose word is never to be disputed? Get off your high horse buddy.
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EPT
