Lately there has been a lot of discussion over TvZ and its alleged imbalance. As a Terran player myself since BW, naturally I came to defend Terran as a balanced race. Unfortunately all this effort was in vain, as I helplessly watched every forum post, every Terran replay thread and every game I played turn into a balance flame war.
Born and raised under capitalism I consider myself like many, an opportunist looking to benefit from any situation I can. The recent escalation in balance discussion and general dissatisfaction by Zerg players is no different, resulting in a personal discovery of a vast new resource: Zerg Tears. I would like to share with you my new hobby (read: passion), so without further adieu I give you...
TalecK's Guide to Zerg Tears
Table of Contents
1. Identifying a candidate 2. Preparation and Extraction 3. Special Zerg Tears 4. Uses for Zerg Tears
1. Identifying a Candidate Identifying an appropriate candidate for tear extraction is extremely important, simply finding or playing a Zerg player is not sufficient. Identification isn't a precise science, however, as a general heuristic successful candidates often exhibit one or more of the following:
1) Outward displays of anger (see e-rage), including verbal abuse and/or excessive and unnecessary use of capital letters 2) Aversion to suggestions / tips and general stubbornness 3) Irrational and / or fallacious reasoning
2a. Preparation A proper tear extraction isn't straightforward at first but after some practice it should become very natural to you. Before we begin though make sure you have the following laid out next to your computer in a clean space free of other debris. Remember a clean and organized work space is a safe work space!
1) Glass vials w/ cork stoppers ½ oz or bigger 2) Masking tape and permanent markers for labeling 3) Paper towels (in case of spills)
Once you have all the materials, we can begin. The simplest way to explain an extraction is by way of an example. Here I will walk you through one of my earlier extractions from start to finish. The text shown is copied from a replay of a game I had played weeks ago, my opponent's identity is concealed for anonymity.
This conversation takes place at the end of the game between myself ( 400 Diamond Terran ) and my opponent ( 450 Diamond player ). The Zerg player has just lost his entire ground army and I am now destroying his base with mainly mech based army. With a clear victory in sight my opponent speaks first... ZergPlayer: LOL WOW
So the first thing to notice is that the Zerg Player's message fits the first heuristic, unnecessarily using capital letters. However, the opponent could be referencing anything at this point, so an extraction is not yet guarenteed. When you're unsure of how to proceed in an extraction, your best choice is always to simply say nothing and let the Zerg player stew in their rage. After about 45 seconds my opponent once again responds. ZergPlayer: TANKS ARE FUCKING REDICULOUS ZergPlayer: SERIUOSLY OP
There are a couple things to note here, we have a continuation of the capital letters, which is a positive sign. Also note the misspelling of “seriously”, grotesque grammar errors are a good sign that your opponent is beginning to succumb to anger. Me: They are much more manageable I find if you don't A-move a giant control group into them through a narrow choke point,. I'd recommend going around or maybe building a nydus worm. Me: Also, I like what you did with those roaches earlier. But I think those flying things you tried to burrow under that said “Raven” on them can see burrowed units
Now what I'm doing here with my first response is trying to see if my opponent is exhibiting the second heuristic (general stubbornness to advice / tips). This is an important step in order to differentiate an ignorant player from a weeping one as we are only interested in the latter. ZergPlayer: UR HORRIBLE. SERIOUSLY BAD Me: Wouldn't that make you seriously worse? ZergPlayer: NO I'M ACTUALLY GOOD
Here the Zerg player has completely ignored the advice, as per the second heuristic. Also note that third heuristic applies here as well. The Zerg player has paradoxically concluded that despite his evident defeat, he is good and I am bad. Alternately one can note the third heuristic also applies since “Seriously bad” players wouldn't be placed in diamond leagues.
At this point the Zerg player has exhibited all three of the heuristics and I am sufficiently confident that this Zerg player will begin weeping. I then begin killing off the last of his buildings, leaving him with: Me: gg
This display of level headed manner will only incite more rage in the Zerg player. At this point I quickly place the paper towel under my monitor and open one of the vials in preparation for the extraction.
2b. Extraction If a candidate has been properly screened based on the given heuristics the extraction itself is a fairly simple procedure. After the game I simply waited at the Battle.net menus for the inevitable chat window from my opponent to appear...
ZergPlayer: wow TvZ is so imba
At this point the Zerg player has stopped using capital letters. It is a good sign your opponent is ready to have a good cry. I've found an easy yet effective way to initiate this process is to simply ask your opponent to cry.
Me: cry? ZergPlayer: seriously, fucking tanks kill everything and broodlords and corruptors die to thor / viking there's nothing z can do ZergPlayer: zerg is so bad now they should bring back the lurker and dark swarm ZergPlayer: marauders are so fucking overpowered too they should remove stim and make it so they can't be healed. ... .. . *For the sake of brevity I've excluded the rest of the Zerg player's tearful rant...*
Success! Now quickly place your uncapped vial under your monitor and start extracting those tears. Some Zerg players cry more than others, this one in particular lasted for just over four minutes. Just watch the drip rate, if it begins to slow you can try to “squeeze” a few more tears out of your opponent by simply asking him/her to “cry more?”. Once your opponent has finished crying place the cork on top of the vial and label it for storage with the masking tape and markers. Congratulations! If everything went according to plan you've just captured your first Zerg tears.
It's important to note that tears can also be extracted from forums using the same set of heuristics. Some things to keep in mind when creating a post aimed at instigating a TvZ balance discussion and ultimately extracting Zerg tears from it:
Include words such as: “mech”, “Terran”, “Siege Tank”, “balance”, “Starcraft” or “the”
use nouns, adjectives, or verbs
choose words with or without vowels in them
3. Special Zerg Tears It's important to note that not all Zerg tears are created equally, some are more valuable than others. Tears from pro or respected Zerg players are highly sought after. The first reason is because they are considered rarer than most Zerg tears. The second, and ultimately more important reason is that when a respected Zerg player weeps it releases a pheromone that draws other surrounding Zerg players to gather and weep together.
An Idralisk
The notable example being Idralisk tears. Though the Idralisk weeps much more frequently than most Zerg players its tears can produce up to 20 times more pheromones than other respected Zerg players. This can cause hundreds of Zerg players to converge on a single thread to weep, an effect known as “cluster-weeping”. Triggering a single cluster-weep can result in an industrial sized tear harvest ( see fallout after Silver's 2-0 victory over the Idralisk here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=141447 ). 4. Uses for Zerg Tears So you've got some Zerg tears, now what? Here are a few of the many things you can do with your Zerg tears.
1) Collect them: Amassing a collection of tears from many different Zerg players is a fun and prideful hobby. Proudly display your collection next to your computer.
2) Eat them! Zerg tears make a tasty and invigorating snack that can put you in the right mood for some more laddering fun. Tears are best served fresh, licked right from your weeping opponent's face if possible.
Well that about does it for now. I hope you've enjoyed my guide and hopefully learned a thing or two about Zerg tears, thanks for reading!
My follow up posts/responses in this thread will be linked here
So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
On August 06 2010 12:53 Endymion wrote: So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
wow this is a hilarious post OP, well done well done. Though I wouldn't say Idra sheds tears, he merely rages different than qqing hes too manly for that.
He has time on his hands because he plays T so he can afford to make a long post summing up annoying things t players do while winning, like giving bad advice and not understanding how hard it is to play vs t
Zergs are only crying imba because they can't mass Hydra and 1a for the win.
I think this matchup is fairly even. Terran is basically forced to go mech if they don't have great control with Bio against Bling (even then burrow is game changing). When they go mech, they are immobile. Zerg really only needs to control the map and tech up to Broodlord/Ultralisk while harassing with Nydus/Mutalisk. :/
On August 06 2010 13:10 Sl4ktarN wrote: I like that Terran-players dont have any evidence that ZvT isnt balanced, instead they simply say: "Stop crying noob lolzors"
I don't think the OP post says that at all! This should be stickied! All other "T is OP!" threads should be closed and a warning be given out for making them!
Think of the power we could harness if we had one centered thread collecting zerg tears; the possibilities are endless!
On August 06 2010 13:16 PeT[uK] wrote: I would find this funny, but TvZ IS actually imbalanced. raise marauder cost. that or lower medvac HPS. That first push is impossible.... PET OUT...
Of all things in the Terran arsenal to cry about, you pick Marauders? :s
A little-known fact: Zerg Tears are actually the fuel used by Terran Mech units. If Zerg players were to do less crying and more playing, the Mech Army would fall handily.
On August 06 2010 13:16 PeT[uK] wrote: I would find this funny, but TvZ IS actually imbalanced. raise marauder cost. that or lower medvac HPS. That first push is impossible.... PET OUT...
Out of all of the things in TvZ you chose to complain about bio?
Sortve funny, but your "advice" is terrible and I don't find the comments made by zerg players all that inaccurate. Its like as if you say "nydus me" while you sit there in your base watching the whole area for nydus worms. I bet you made this post while you were in the middle of a ZvT.
On August 06 2010 13:16 PeT[uK] wrote: I would find this funny, but TvZ IS actually imbalanced. raise marauder cost. that or lower medvac HPS. That first push is impossible.... PET OUT...
Of all things in the Terran arsenal to cry about, you pick Marauders? :s
The problem with Terran in ZvT isn't really one particular thing, and certainly not one particular unit. This causes a lot of Zerg players who don't fully understand the situation to lash out against random units (Tanks OP! No Thors OP! No Marauders OP!). Posts lashing out against specific Terran units should be understood as the frustration of a zerg player who can't quite pin down what's wrong. Most likely it's the unit they most recently lost to given that Terran can pretty much put up 12 strategies on the wall, throw a dart, and go with whichever strategy the dart hits.
This is also why some Terran players seem delusional about the matchup.
i think reveling/inciting someones e-rage only makes you just as much of a low life as that person. the rest of us just "meh" and move on because we've all been frustrated before and lost our composure. thats a part of life.
This thread is useless, excepting the picture of the idralisk which I think will lead to many scientific breakthroughs. It actually allows you to unlock secret zerg research in the campaign.
I love how in this thread people are taking this seriously. Lighten up. Give or take we hope that Blizzard will balance things out, the OP sees this, but just is choosing to write a satirical take on how many Zerg players are just getting angry any chance they get. (Not all, props to the Zerg players who actually laugh, and I agree that there is need of balance.) I myself random, and there is obvious need for change.
On August 06 2010 12:53 Endymion wrote: So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
Lately there has been a lot of discussion over TvZ and its alleged imbalance. As a Terran player myself since BW, naturally I came to defend Terran as a balanced race.
Born and raised under capitalism I consider myself like many, an opportunist looking to benefit from any situation I can.
This passages represent in a nutshell everything I hate about the Terran community. It is not because TvZ might be imbalanced, it is because so many Terrans feel the need to defend their (doubtful)"benefit" by stating the matchup is perfectly fine without any observation or playing the matchup from both sides.
I personally doubt the matchup is imbalanced because even players like IdrA make so many obvious mistakes that TvZ or solid playstyles in general just feel unexplored. And with all the Zergs crying and terrans trying to provoke that, I doubt the matchup is advancing as fast as it could.
This thread is written by a true genius because he captures the current state of TvZ and their clash perfectly. I had to laugh a few times because of how true it feels. Hell, even in my ZvZs people start to discuss TvZ Balance with me, so technically I could collect Zergtears in my Zerggames!
If anything it should encourage Zergplayers to hunt Tearcollectors in the future. I am sick of balance discussions and want my terran opponents to play at their best instead of trying to flame and provoke me. This is the only way to find possible imbalances in the matchup and give both sides a fair matchup.
PS:I am hunting Tearcollectors for a while now and am actually suprised how mannered Terrans can be when they lose to a Zerg.
ok, so you are a terran and happy about what s going on, great. And you made a thread about it, pathetic.
btw an admin should ban him for making useless flamebaith topic, seriously there s no use of this topic beside fueling more rage. And it's not funny, if that is what it was meant to be...
If all of the zerg/protoss wine remains open, this thread must also remain open just to be fair. I haven't been able to collect any zerg tears, simply because they ball me out of every TvZ, but I have a fair collection of protoss tears.
Apparently cloaked banshee/viking/raven has no counter. Apparently it's the best tear extraction tool in the terran arsenal.
I look forward to when the tables turn on the Terrans.
Just like when Blizzard released WoTLK and said themselves "We wanted to make a big bang with the Death Knight - but I think we may have made a little too much noise"... which was followed by nerfing the DK for 6 months straight...
Lately there has been a lot of discussion over TvZ and its alleged imbalance. As a Terran player myself since BW, naturally I came to defend Terran as a balanced race.
Born and raised under capitalism I consider myself like many, an opportunist looking to benefit from any situation I can.
This passages represent in a nutshell everything I hate about the Terran community. It is not because TvZ might be imbalanced, it is because so many Terrans feel the need to defend their (doubtful)"benefit" by stating the matchup is perfectly fine without any observation or playing the matchup from both sides.
I personally doubt the matchup is imbalanced because even players like IdrA make so many obvious mistakes that TvZ or solid playstyles in general just feel unexplored. And with all the Zergs crying and terrans trying to provoke that, I doubt the matchup is advancing as fast as it could.
This thread is written by a true genius because he captures the current state of TvZ and their clash perfectly. I had to laugh a few times because of how true it feels. Hell, even in my ZvZs people start to discuss TvZ Balance with me, so technically I could collect Zergtears in my Zerggames!
If anything it should encourage Zergplayers to hunt Tearcollectors in the future. I am sick of balance discussions and want my terran opponents to play at their best instead of trying to flame and provoke me. This is the only way to find possible imbalances in the matchup and give both sides a fair matchup.
PS:I am hunting Tearcollectors for a while now and am actually suprised how mannered Terrans can be when they lose to a Zerg.
I have played both sides. Throughout beta I was Plat/Diamond (whichever was highest at the time) as first Terran, then Protoss, then Zerg, then Random.
I have two accounts now. One I play Terran on, my 'main' account (I played T in SC1) and the other I play Z/P (mostly Z) on. Both Diamond.
ZvT is nowhere NEAR as bad as all of you are making it out to be. It's not even close. The facts are alot of Z are just massing hydras or roach/hydra and a-moving into a line of tanks. I rarely see infestors/ultras/broodlords which are all INCREDIBLY STRONG. In fact there have been alot of pros recently showing them off so hopefully all the copycats will realize they shouldn't just be massing hydras and to actually use other units like T/P ALREADY DO.
The current Zerg community is sickening in how much they whine and cry about it. Especially with useless or absurd 'balance suggestions' that just show they understand very little about the game.
On August 06 2010 14:26 Geo.Rion wrote: ok, so you are a terran and happy about what s going on, great. And you made a thread about it, pathetic.
btw an admin should ban him for making useless flamebaith topic, seriously there s no use of this topic beside fueling more rage. And it's not funny, if that is what it was meant to be...
On August 06 2010 14:03 doss wrote: I want to know what the OP thinks about a couple things:
3rax reaper harass, world hunger, Lance Armstrong doping accusations, and the moon landing conspiracies.
They're all connected, actually. Neil Armstrong was actually from the future. He went back in time in a zerg rage after losing to 3rax reaper. He used his knowledge of history to implant tyrant dictators in several developing nations thereby hindering their progress. To distract the Americans from his nefarious plot, he staged the Moon Landing. Many years later, his distant relative Lance Armstrong stumbled across Neil's manifesto that had been stored and forgotten in his great grandmother's attic. In an effort to atone for what his evil ancestor (descendant? time travel, how does it work?), he decided that he needed to become the best cyclist in the world and become a role model to young bicycle enthusiasts everywhere. To achieve this lofty goal, he needed all the help he could get...
So obviously, Terran Imbalance is the cause of all human suffering.
The problem these days is I can't find enough zergs on ladder to actually extract any tears. Compare this to beta when roaches were still one supply... back then nearly every match was versus zerg
On August 06 2010 14:34 jalstar wrote: I prefer tear inception to tear extraction
So lets prepare a team to go into IdrA's subcontience. I need a Forger and an architect. We will put the tranquilizer in his korean coffee (or whatever he drinks) and travel down to the core. On the first level we start with his relationship to starcraft, then on the second level we need to implant that Terran is underpowered so that in the 3rd stage we can convince himself of Zergs imbalance.
A post from a non Zerg saying Zergs are complaining about Zerg too much even when he doesn't play as Zerg and doesn't know how frustrating mid-game is for Zerg vs Terran since he's not a Zerg player.
This thread is pretty sad. Ignoring the specificity of tvz and its alleged imbalance, I think any thread which stigmatizes players who believe the game to be imbalanced for any particular mu as cry babies is pathetic. SC2 is only weeks old in its current state, it's obviously not going to be 100% balanced. Posts like these are insulting to members of the SC2 community who wish to see a perfectly balanced game exist, as it is condescending to any one who believes there may be imbalance.
Wow, almost a 100 posts in a few hours. Great to see so much interest in Zerg tears!
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
This may be the most successful troll post I have ever seen.
Well, maybe troll post isn't the right term, it seems like more of a joke post that was never meant to be taken seriously. But then it was, and the results made the original post all the funnier.
Just you wait you disgusting terrans, the age of the zerg will arrive. When that comes, all you scumbags will be crying and screaming imba and will rage in tears when you have to play TvZ. One day this will happen, and we will make you repay that debt for the last twelve years with interest...
On August 06 2010 15:44 Thingdo wrote: This may be the most successful troll post I have ever seen.
Well, maybe troll post isn't the right term, it seems like more of a joke post that was never meant to be taken seriously. But then it was, and the results made the original post all the funnier.
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
This was an amazing post, maybe finally the bad zergs will shut up, idra only complains because that's just what he does when he loses, all you zerg need to look at the ranking, the top 2 highest win ratio and points are GLaDe and IdrA who both have over 85% win ratio as zerg, with a TON of zerg in the world top 20, and if terran was so completely imbalanced why is zerg all over the top of points. and no terran has 85%+ win ratio... people complain just to complain when they just don't wanna think outside the box.
They buffed a race to get everyone who's new to get better... People with more experience, and people who take risks will lose to the buffed race... Next patch/next expansion theyll nerf terran, and some of the newer players will diversify the races, some will quit...
Better to have a lower learning curve at the start of a new game that you want to hit non RTS players.
I laughed a shitton at this thread though, idralisk pic killlled me haha
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
On August 06 2010 15:29 talecK wrote: Wow, almost a 100 posts in a few hours. Great to see so much interest in Zerg tears!
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
On August 04 2010 16:04 Taleck wrote:I'm a 350 diamond player who usually opens with a 3 rax type of build (2 tech lab 1 reactor) on blistering sands and every game seems the same. Toss rolls a 4 gate, knocks down my rocks and goes back and forth at my front / back till I die. Bunkers seem useless since you have to build to cover 2 entrances.
mmmmmmm Taleck tears. I'm charging extra cos the irony adds a nice aftertaste.
On August 06 2010 15:13 kodancer wrote: lol obviously most people in this thread don't get satire. Quite funny
It's the sort of humor that might be hysterical in high school... Someone acts in an extravagant fashion, people roll their eyes, his response is "haha I KNEW you wouldn't get it! ho ho I'm so clever!" It's got about as much depth as the "three words in the english language that end in -gry" joke.
I mean, there was a lot of effort put into the thread, and the tear jar bottle pic was cute, but you could sort of replace the entire OP with "hey zerg players....U MAD? U MAD? WHY U MAD?" and make roughly the same point. I thought it was a funny post, and I laughed a couple times, but following up with pages and pages of "LOL GET'N TROLD SO HARDD" is 4chan-level commentary, not what I look for on TL.
note: I'm not really trying to criticize the OP, it was a funny post, but these sorts of threads really only go one direction and get childish pretty quickly...
On August 06 2010 15:13 kodancer wrote: lol obviously most people in this thread don't get satire. Quite funny
It's the sort of humor that might be hysterical in high school... Someone acts in an extravagant fashion, people roll their eyes, his response is "haha I KNEW you wouldn't get it! ho ho I'm so clever!" It's got about as much depth as the "three words in the english language that end in -gry" joke.
I mean, there was a lot of effort put into the thread, and the tear jar bottle pic was cute, but you could sort of replace the entire OP with "hey zerg players....U MAD? U MAD? WHY U MAD?" and make roughly the same point. I thought it was a funny post, and I laughed a couple times, but following up with pages and pages of "LOL GET'N TROLD SO HARDD" is 4chan-level commentary, not what I look for on TL.
note: I'm not really trying to criticize the OP, it was a funny post, but these sorts of threads really only go one direction and get childish pretty quickly...
This thread is on page 7 and it isn't childish yet.
God this thread made my day. Thank you, sir. Now I will continue to play Z and stomp high diamond T players who don't know what a nydus is (everyone) and ignore all T imba threads.
I'm looking forward to TvZing people and extracting some zerg tears when their 1a doesn't beat my 1a. Man, being random really does reap some benefits.
On August 06 2010 15:13 kodancer wrote: lol obviously most people in this thread don't get satire. Quite funny
It's the sort of humor that might be hysterical in high school... Someone acts in an extravagant fashion, people roll their eyes, his response is "haha I KNEW you wouldn't get it! ho ho I'm so clever!" It's got about as much depth as the "three words in the english language that end in -gry" joke.
I mean, there was a lot of effort put into the thread, and the tear jar bottle pic was cute, but you could sort of replace the entire OP with "hey zerg players....U MAD? U MAD? WHY U MAD?" and make roughly the same point. I thought it was a funny post, and I laughed a couple times, but following up with pages and pages of "LOL GET'N TROLD SO HARDD" is 4chan-level commentary, not what I look for on TL.
note: I'm not really trying to criticize the OP, it was a funny post, but these sorts of threads really only go one direction and get childish pretty quickly...
Nothing wrong with laughing at people who play into the joke as though it were scripted.
On August 06 2010 16:49 Sylvr wrote:Nothing wrong with laughing at people who play into the joke as though it were scripted.
Except there is no way to respond to this thread without "playing into the joke" other than saying "hahaha you are such a comedic genius!!!!! i love you!!!!!"
On August 06 2010 16:49 Sylvr wrote:Nothing wrong with laughing at people who play into the joke as though it were scripted.
Except there is no way to respond to this thread without "playing into the joke" other than saying "hahaha you are such a comedic genius!!!!! i love you!!!!!"
Which is sort of my point? o_o
Actually, that IS comedic genius. He set up the joke in such a way that if you criticize it, you only make it funnier to those who enjoyed it. Unless, of course, you ignore it. Funny, my mother always told me that when people were making fun of me, ignoring them would be the easiest way to make them stop. She was right.
Edit: If no Zergs had responded to this thread, it would probably only be 2 pages, and maybe not even on the front page of the forums anymore. Irony.
So how do you explain the correlation of whiny spoilt players with a race? One race attracts the majority of bad players?
Also, isn't it more convincing to just play zerg and demonstrate how good you are playing zerg? Isn't this the ultimate way to prove your point? How can you be sure otherwise that your criticism of zerg players is valid?
hahaha well played OP. this was a sweet read. how many bottles of zerg tears have you collected from this post so far? lol, zerg players couldnt see it coming, even though you spelled it out for them \:D/
Haha. I know Zerg players should just suck it in and not complain no matter how obviously overpowered Terran is. Zerg players need to gracefully accept that a Terran player much worse than they are defeated them just because they are playing Terran. Thats why you get for playing the underdog race.
But again, Terran players should also gracefully accept that their race is overpowered and ridiculously imba. I mean isn't playing Terran already pathetic enough? Defending your race and saying its BALANCED is just..... just just just.. i don't even know what to say here. HAHA
But again, Terran players should also gracefully accept that their race is overpowered and ridiculously imba. I mean isn't playing Terran already pathetic enough? Defending your race and saying its BALANCED is just..... just just just.. i don't even know what to say here. HAHA
Just stay low...wait... and stick it to them once our patch is released brother.
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
The Z players that cry for your precious tears are screaming IMBA after trying the same strategy vs. the same armies and expecting different results. What's the definition of an idiot again?
Top thread. I'm bored of all the TvZ imbalance talk.
It's also pathetic that just because players are split into 3 different races, there's a constant need for them to bash each other. The zerg community is the whiniest out of all 3 and it's giving those few zerg players who actually get on with coming up with a solution a bad name.
I really could cry alot whenever i play zerg nowadays, especially since i started out as random, then played terran and finally chose zerg (diamond throughout all of beta), which was also my race of choice in SC:BW. What keeps me from crying is that i just dont play any 1on1s at the moment, until the next balance patch comes out, which i am certain will include some cookies for me In the meantime: campaign on brutal and quick match team games
lol I think this is awesome. personally I think that protoss tears are nicer though. since they usually make comments about how the guy with the asian name is jewish and homosexual, with parents that don't love him, whereas zergs qqing are usually just crying about imbalance.
Very useful OP. This post taught me so much I'm starting up a company in Sweden, trying to monopolize the concept here. Hopefully my siege tank line around the company storage facilities with other mech support will keep the likely zerg invasion away.
I'm also going for a toss branch in case it gets many opportunities, with trying to hint *EMP* ocasionally.
And btw, I really like Idra's playstyle, he's an incredible player. Silver is too, aparently. The only thing I dislike is some of Idra's attitude. But all the same, I'm not his fan because I'm his friend. I like how he plays. TLO and Idra are still my favorites, but they loose games too. I don't get worked up over it.
Edit: Bringing out vials to prepare for the "OMG FAN OF BOTH TLO AND IDRA?!" issue.
I gotta say I think this thread is great. I also think that zerg are by far the hardest race, but the incessant whining about it means threads like these are all the funnier.
Here's what I don't understand: the presumption of balance.
StarCraft II is less than 2 weeks old. Is there any reason to assume that it is, in fact balanced? That Zerg players who suggest that ZvT is much harder than TvZ, skill vs. skill, are automatically just QQing and should man up and get better, rather than pointing out a factual problem with the game?
The question is always an accusatory, "Why do you think the game is unbalanced?" Well, let me turn it around on you: "Why do you think the game is balanced?" Where is your evidence that StarCraft II is balanced?
Did you ever play StarCraft 1, version 1.01 (the version shipped on the initial discs)? That version could legitimately be called, "StarCraft: Zerg rape everyone." You think larva spawn fast in SC2 with Spawn Larva? Imagine having larva spawning faster in SC1. Fast enough for a Zerg to effectively drone and produce units on one base. A one-basing Zerg in StarCraft 1. With a faster-growing Spawning Pool that only costs 150.
No Corsairs to do scouting. No Medics. Just Zerg, one-base, killing everything.
StarCraft II is much more balanced than SC1 was in its initial release; that much is certain. But that doesn't mean that it is in fact balanced. Unless you believe that the only kinds of imbalance there are are the very obvious ones, like Marines that do 50 damage per shot, or one-food Roaches, or other such clearly broken stuff.
The question of imbalance should at least be open to reasonable discussion, without people running around accusing people of QQing simply for asking the question.
Take this gem from the OP as an example:
As a Terran player myself since BW, naturally I came to defend Terran as a balanced race.
"Naturally." Why is it natural to assume that the Terrans are balanced in a new game just because they used to be balanced in SC1? That's not natural; indeed, it's pretty irrational. The same goes for defending SC2's Terrans as being balanced solely because they're a Terran player.
If you're a StarCraft II player, you should be able to be objective about the question of balance. You should not confront balance questions as an attack on your person or character just because it targets the race you play. You should not automatically assume that "your race" is perfect as is, and any problems with it are just n00bs and scrubs QQing.
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
As a zerg player i have to say, its a very funny thread people shouldnt take everything too seriously... You know i am (only gold player by now) having a hard time against terran and toss but... i am up for the competition which means losses are sour but wins are even sweeter so you know there is nothing better then winning against these so called (i do not) "easier races". I think its a accelerating incentive to win against the other races in sc2 so i really dont care about the "imbalance" (dont know if its actually there) might be players fault some times...
I tend to blame myself for losses not others for so called "win it all" strategies. If u want to outsmart someone it probably means putting some effort into it. Dont think others are stupid enough to fall for everything like "oh my god my baneling bust didnt work, must be imba"
Nice post by the way Looking forward to the next
P.S. Dont stomp on people that have around 80% win ratio although i admit that i dont like his manner but hes a good player no doubt about that and everyone has a bad day once in a while but your games arent broadcasted you see
On August 06 2010 14:58 bendez wrote: Another terran scum claming zvt is fine. They disregard any balance issues, and label any legit concerns as "cry". Terran scums.
On August 06 2010 19:33 NicolBolas wrote: Here's what I don't understand: the presumption of balance.
StarCraft II is less than 2 weeks old. Is there any reason to assume that it is, in fact balanced? That Zerg players who suggest that ZvT is much harder than TvZ, skill vs. skill, are automatically just QQing and should man up and get better, rather than pointing out a factual problem with the game?
The question is always an accusatory, "Why do you think the game is unbalanced?" Well, let me turn it around on you: "Why do you think the game is balanced?" Where is your evidence that StarCraft II is balanced?
Did you ever play StarCraft 1, version 1.01 (the version shipped on the initial discs)? That version could legitimately be called, "StarCraft: Zerg rape everyone." You think larva spawn fast in SC2 with Spawn Larva? Imagine having larva spawning faster in SC1. Fast enough for a Zerg to effectively drone and produce units on one base. A one-basing Zerg in StarCraft 1. With a faster-growing Spawning Pool that only costs 150.
No Corsairs to do scouting. No Medics. Just Zerg, one-base, killing everything.
StarCraft II is much more balanced than SC1 was in its initial release; that much is certain. But that doesn't mean that it is in fact balanced. Unless you believe that the only kinds of imbalance there are are the very obvious ones, like Marines that do 50 damage per shot, or one-food Roaches, or other such clearly broken stuff.
The question of imbalance should at least be open to reasonable discussion, without people running around accusing people of QQing simply for asking the question.
As a Terran player myself since BW, naturally I came to defend Terran as a balanced race.
"Naturally." Why is it natural to assume that the Terrans are balanced in a new game just because they used to be balanced in SC1? That's not natural; indeed, it's pretty irrational. The same goes for defending SC2's Terrans as being balanced solely because they're a Terran player.
If you're a StarCraft II player, you should be able to be objective about the question of balance. You should not confront balance questions as an attack on your person or character just because it targets the race you play. You should not automatically assume that "your race" is perfect as is, and any problems with it are just n00bs and scrubs QQing.
He took the words from my mouth. For me the game is imbalanced until i see evidence in contrary, and not the other way around. Actually atm i don't even question myself whether there's imbalance or not in the matchups. I just question how big or small the imbalance is and for which side does it lean in. Imo, that's how people should be looking at this.
On August 06 2010 19:33 NicolBolas wrote: Here's what I don't understand: the presumption of balance.
StarCraft II is less than 2 weeks old. Is there any reason to assume that it is, in fact balanced? That Zerg players who suggest that ZvT is much harder than TvZ, skill vs. skill, are automatically just QQing and should man up and get better, rather than pointing out a factual problem with the game?
The question is always an accusatory, "Why do you think the game is unbalanced?" Well, let me turn it around on you: "Why do you think the game is balanced?" Where is your evidence that StarCraft II is balanced?
Did you ever play StarCraft 1, version 1.01 (the version shipped on the initial discs)? That version could legitimately be called, "StarCraft: Zerg rape everyone." You think larva spawn fast in SC2 with Spawn Larva? Imagine having larva spawning faster in SC1. Fast enough for a Zerg to effectively drone and produce units on one base. A one-basing Zerg in StarCraft 1. With a faster-growing Spawning Pool that only costs 150.
No Corsairs to do scouting. No Medics. Just Zerg, one-base, killing everything.
StarCraft II is much more balanced than SC1 was in its initial release; that much is certain. But that doesn't mean that it is in fact balanced. Unless you believe that the only kinds of imbalance there are are the very obvious ones, like Marines that do 50 damage per shot, or one-food Roaches, or other such clearly broken stuff.
The question of imbalance should at least be open to reasonable discussion, without people running around accusing people of QQing simply for asking the question.
Take this gem from the OP as an example:
As a Terran player myself since BW, naturally I came to defend Terran as a balanced race.
"Naturally." Why is it natural to assume that the Terrans are balanced in a new game just because they used to be balanced in SC1? That's not natural; indeed, it's pretty irrational. The same goes for defending SC2's Terrans as being balanced solely because they're a Terran player.
If you're a StarCraft II player, you should be able to be objective about the question of balance. You should not confront balance questions as an attack on your person or character just because it targets the race you play. You should not automatically assume that "your race" is perfect as is, and any problems with it are just n00bs and scrubs QQing.
He took the words from my mouth. For me the game is imbalanced until i see evidence in contrary, and not the other way around. Actually atm i don't even question myself whether there's imbalance or not in the matchups. I just question how big or small the imbalance is and for which side does it lean in. Imo, that's how people should be looking at this.
This is just some black and white point of view - especially asking the question "if you claim the game is not imbalanced - why is it balanced then?" Noone said the game is "final" nor it is "balanced" - people who ARE collectiong Zerg tears argue that there is way too much rant about it which is very true. You saw Idra going burrowed Roaches, you saw TLO going Ultra, you saw viable Muta-micro and what do you see in ladder and the people complain about? Hydra a-move doesnt work against mech - poor you. Take Protoss for an instance - they got hell a lot of nerfs too - there are VERY few that complain about that there is no longer an opportunity to mass gateway units to counter tanks because zealots die to smart targeting and immortals die to EMP - self-made solution: lift with phoenixes works well for instance (but that requires a little more than a-move micro).
Since the game is fairly close to balance (and awaiting more units in its add-ons) blizzard will succeed in ignoring all those cries by thousands of beginners and fairly advanced players until the game is explored out enough to make slight and decen adjustements without throwing off balance completely (remember what happened to DoW2?)
EDIT: almost forgot:
LOVE the article, super funny (and the benet-bottle!) :D
In a weird way this thread provides even too much support for the Zerg race. It could have been written by a zerg, illustrating the state of the Stanford Prison Guard mentality some terrans have reached on the ladder. So thanks, but you shouldn't have. Zerg is still very under-utilized, I hope they don't over-buff it too soon, so we get to experiment with it longer. I'm sure we are still missing a lot of tricks to be found.
On August 06 2010 13:16 PeT[uK] wrote: I would find this funny, but TvZ IS actually imbalanced. raise marauder cost. that or lower medvac HPS. That first push is impossible.... PET OUT...
On August 06 2010 21:29 Bair wrote: The only tears T players get from me is tears from laughter when I melt their bioball with banelings :3
At 300 diamond, I think it is safe to say any games lost are because my limitations, not some imbalance.
You can always win with better play, regardless of how favored the matchup is. It's just that someone that's a worse player or 50 apm can exploit certain things that you have no way of stopping consistently in this matchup.
Do not feed the troll. Seriously they are like gremlins. Feed them tears/water and they will multiply.
I have played both sides. Throughout beta I was Plat/Diamond (whichever was highest at the time) as first Terran, then Protoss, then Zerg, then Random.
I have two accounts now. One I play Zerg on, my 'main' account (I played Z in SC1) and the other I play T on. Both Diamond.
ZvT is as bad as all of you are making it out to be. It's close. The facts are alot of T are just massing Tanks or Thor/Tanks and a-moving into a line of Zerg Units. I rarely see Marine/Marauder/Medivac which are all INCREDIBLY STRONG. In fact there have been alot of pros recently showing them off so hopefully all the copycats will realize they shouldn't just be massing Tanks and to actually use other units like Z ALREADY DO.
The current Terran community is sickening in how much they whine and cry about not being OP. Especially with useless or absurd 'balance suggestions' that just show they understand very little about the game.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
After seeing IdrA insult the Terran player Silver in THIS GAME I almost wanted to start a thread to ask for an apology from IdrA OR for a ban for him on tournaments. He really really gives the players a bad name (just imagine what someone watching that game as his first ever commented game of Starcraft will think).
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
On August 06 2010 23:49 Rabiator wrote: After seeing IdrA insult the Terran player Silver in THIS GAME I almost wanted to start a thread to ask for an apology from IdrA OR for a ban for him on tournaments. He really really gives the players a bad name (just imagine what someone watching that game as his first ever commented game of Starcraft will think).
Yes, I'm sure they would be scarred for life. Let's ban Idra from playing tournaments (i.e. from doing his job) because he flamed some random player with dangerous, deadly words.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
Aren't stats fun?
lol, thank you. Someone had to do it.
I'm sure someone will point out how I'm just "playing into the joke" now, of course. The ultimate trump card.
It was an OK read, was like drawing blood from a stone and not really that funny
Stupid how a post with a few accessible, grossly exaggerated references to the nature of the game and add in a cultural reference is all you need for such over the top responses from people saying that it's "hilarious" and "fully agree" most of them just desperate to get their post count up.
On August 07 2010 00:05 FireBlast! wrote: It was an OK read, was like drawing blood from a stone and not really that funny
Stupid how a post with a few accessible, grossly exaggerated references to the nature of the game and add in a cultural reference is all you need for such over the top responses from people saying that it's "hilarious" and "fully agree" most of them just desperate to get their post count up.
On August 07 2010 00:05 FireBlast! wrote: It was an OK read, was like drawing blood from a stone and not really that funny
Stupid how a post with a few accessible, grossly exaggerated references to the nature of the game and add in a cultural reference is all you need for such over the top responses from people saying that it's "hilarious" and "fully agree" most of them just desperate to get their post count up.
It almost feels like I'm on the xkcd forums :D
could you enlighten me as to what pertains to being on the xkcd forums?
On August 07 2010 00:05 FireBlast! wrote: It was an OK read, was like drawing blood from a stone and not really that funny
Stupid how a post with a few accessible, grossly exaggerated references to the nature of the game and add in a cultural reference is all you need for such over the top responses from people saying that it's "hilarious" and "fully agree" most of them just desperate to get their post count up.
It almost feels like I'm on the xkcd forums :D
could you enlighten me as to what pertains to being on the xkcd forums?
Floods of sycophantic posts / everyone wanting to say "haha funny joke! see, I get it too!" (I was agreeing with you by the way, not criticizing)
On August 07 2010 00:05 FireBlast! wrote: It was an OK read, was like drawing blood from a stone and not really that funny
Stupid how a post with a few accessible, grossly exaggerated references to the nature of the game and add in a cultural reference is all you need for such over the top responses from people saying that it's "hilarious" and "fully agree" most of them just desperate to get their post count up.
It almost feels like I'm on the xkcd forums :D
could you enlighten me as to what pertains to being on the xkcd forums?
Floods of sycophantic posts / everyone wanting to say "haha funny joke! see, I get it too!" (I was agreeing with you by the way, not criticizing)
On August 06 2010 23:49 Rabiator wrote: After seeing IdrA insult the Terran player Silver in THIS GAME I almost wanted to start a thread to ask for an apology from IdrA OR for a ban for him on tournaments. He really really gives the players a bad name (just imagine what someone watching that game as his first ever commented game of Starcraft will think).
Watched the game right know. This guy deserves to lose, complaining like a little child and playing like a noob. Too bad people tell him that he is good, otherwise his ego would kill him i quess.
This thread is truly epic. Why? Because a thread about a guide on how to draw tears from whinny zerg players serves a double function as another method to draw tears from whiny zerg players.
someone want to buy them from me? i dont know where to put them... my room is full of glasses with zerg tears now. i would just put them in toilett but im scary that i get problems because they could be acid....
i dont want to eat them! im scarry that i become a zerg one day...
On August 07 2010 00:43 Half wrote: This thread is truly epic. Why? Because a thread about a guide on how to draw tears from whinny zerg players serves a double function as another method to draw tears from whiny zerg players.
On August 07 2010 00:43 Half wrote: This thread is truly epic. Why? Because a thread about a guide on how to draw tears from whinny zerg players serves a double function as another method to draw tears from whiny zerg players.
Well done OP. <3.
coffee table book is also coffee table?
YUS.
Amazin, ain't it?
So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
i heard internetz waz srsly srs buzness all the time all day and night long son. amirite?
This is quite possibly the most epic thread to have existed on any forum since the 150+ pages "Sapped girls can't say no"-whine thread from the WoW forums (guildname QQ lawlz).
On August 07 2010 00:37 dybydx wrote: ur not getting it. ppl watch boxer cause of his ingenius plays, ppl watch July for his awesome muta micro. and finally, ppl watch idra for his rage :p
Muta micro and good play is something that needs skill. Talking stupid does not.
Amazing OP . And the responses surely did deliver. I bet talecK could soon open a swimming pool lol.
Also we should focus more on the effect the zerg tears have on terran players. So far, I've only found this study (from the governor of california himself, it must be accurate).
On August 06 2010 14:23 Turbo.Tactics wrote: This passages represent in a nutshell everything I hate about the Terran community. It is not because TvZ might be imbalanced, it is because so many Terrans feel the need to defend their (doubtful)"benefit" by stating the matchup is perfectly fine without any observation or playing the matchup from both sides.
We don't like your kind around here Zergie! You and your Zerg sympathizers and those "hybrids" that plays multiple races are destroying our Terran way of life. Terran FTW.
This passages represent in a nutshell everything I hate about the Terran community. It is not because TvZ might be imbalanced, it is because so many Terrans feel the need to defend their (doubtful)"benefit" by stating the matchup is perfectly fine without any observation or playing the matchup from both sides.
Except as a random player, while I do agree that the MU may favor Terran, just like how the BW match up favored terran, and balance tweaks along this line will only serve to improve the overall balance of the game, it is neither the most pressing problem with balance, nor is it a valid reason to whine about and serve as a scapegoat for all your losses to players "worse" then you.
I mean theres definitely a need for balancing, I just have no clue how to balance it, because its not one unit, its the fact that Terran is so damn versatile. Tech lab on Rax could be reapers or marauders, and you just don't know until the first one comes out.
I'm pretty sure all other balance problems stem from that general issue: that its very hard to scout whatever build the terran is going
"Terran is overpowered" and "your race is just a joke" somehow became the new gg in tvz it seems. Out of the last 10 games against z 2 gg'ed 4 ragequited and 4 flamed me to death o.O
When did blizzard release the last tvz win/loss% statistics and what did they look like? I´m really wondering why they havn´t patched something yet if its really so unplayable like so many people let it seem.
On August 07 2010 02:13 007Kain wrote: "Terran is overpowered" and "your race is just a joke" somehow became the new gg in tvz it seems. Out of the last 10 games against z 2 gg'ed 4 ragequited and 4 flamed me to death o.O
When did blizzard release the last tvz win/loss% statistics and what did they look like? I´m really wondering why they havn´t patched something yet if its really so unplayable like so many people let it seem.
Its become big because of Idra, so they see him whining so it must be right.
Newsflash: idra thinks stuff he loses to is OP all the time, and really shouldn't be listened to when he's on tilt.
On August 07 2010 02:13 007Kain wrote: "Terran is overpowered" and "your race is just a joke" somehow became the new gg in tvz it seems. Out of the last 10 games against z 2 gg'ed 4 ragequited and 4 flamed me to death o.O
When did blizzard release the last tvz win/loss% statistics and what did they look like? I´m really wondering why they havn´t patched something yet if its really so unplayable like so many people let it seem.
lol if u just 10-0'ed in TvZ, ya there could be some balance issues.
although i think another factor was the campaign was T, so ppl are really well practiced in T after all those brutal missions, where as Z is the most confusing race to play for anyone who has not played SC1.
On August 07 2010 02:13 007Kain wrote: "Terran is overpowered" and "your race is just a joke" somehow became the new gg in tvz it seems. Out of the last 10 games against z 2 gg'ed 4 ragequited and 4 flamed me to death o.O
When did blizzard release the last tvz win/loss% statistics and what did they look like? I´m really wondering why they havn´t patched something yet if its really so unplayable like so many people let it seem.
lol if u just 10-0'ed in TvZ, ya there could be some balance issues.
although i think another factor was the campaign was T, so ppl are really well practiced in T after all those brutal missions, where as Z is the most confusing race to play for anyone who has not played SC1.
I don't think it has anything to do with the campaign at all. Terran was OP well before the end of beta.
On August 07 2010 02:13 007Kain wrote: "Terran is overpowered" and "your race is just a joke" somehow became the new gg in tvz it seems. Out of the last 10 games against z 2 gg'ed 4 ragequited and 4 flamed me to death o.O
When did blizzard release the last tvz win/loss% statistics and what did they look like? I´m really wondering why they havn´t patched something yet if its really so unplayable like so many people let it seem.
lol if u just 10-0'ed in TvZ, ya there could be some balance issues.
although i think another factor was the campaign was T, so ppl are really well practiced in T after all those brutal missions, where as Z is the most confusing race to play for anyone who has not played SC1.
Hahah nice catch.
Also @ 007Kain... win %s are going to remain close to 50% as if there's an imbalance Zerg's average matchmaking rating will be lower relative to Terrans and they'll end up playing worse Terrans which they have a 50% win rate against.
SC2 zerg players definitly win the bitchiest race award. Most of the kids complaining won't be happy until they can win on equal bases through a chokepoint with no micro. Zerg still wins games you know, even when played sub par. All of the high level zerg losses I've seen (since the mech nerf and ultralisk buff) have been due to an error or missed oppertunity on the zerg players part. Then they blame imbalance because it's the cool thing to do now. It's really gotten out of control.
On August 07 2010 02:46 Rah wrote: SC2 zerg players definitly win the bitchiest race award. Most of the kids complaining won't be happy until they can win on equal bases through a chokepoint with no micro. Zerg still wins games you know, even when played sub par. All of the high level zerg losses I've seen (since the mech nerf and ultralisk buff) have been due to an error or missed oppertunity on the zerg players part. Then they blame imbalance because it's the cool thing to do now. It's really gotten out of control.
p.s. the current state of zvz is awesome.
Actually people bitch more about the bitching like you.
On August 07 2010 02:13 007Kain wrote: When did blizzard release the last tvz win/loss% statistics and what did they look like? I´m really wondering why they havn´t patched something yet if its really so unplayable like so many people let it seem.
At the end of phase 1, we know that TvZ was "slightly Zerg favored" in the statistics for the top players. Near the end of phase 2, Browder said it was "50/50".
But of course, Zerg players are way better than Terran and Protoss players at the same ELO.
On August 07 2010 02:46 Rah wrote: SC2 zerg players definitly win the bitchiest race award. Most of the kids complaining won't be happy until they can win on equal bases through a chokepoint with no micro. Zerg still wins games you know, even when played sub par. All of the high level zerg losses I've seen (since the mech nerf and ultralisk buff) have been due to an error or missed oppertunity on the zerg players part. Then they blame imbalance because it's the cool thing to do now. It's really gotten out of control.
p.s. the current state of zvz is awesome.
Actually people bitch more about the bitching like you.
No bitching involved from me, my post is pointing out the current state of 1/3 the community, and just maybe bringing it more to their attention. Well less than 1/3rd now since half of them have moved on to being terrible terran players instead of terrible zerg players. Thanks for the rage though? Some people can't be reasoned with when it's easier to pass off blame. That's what got this "imbalance" crap going in the first place.
Did you ever play StarCraft 1, version 1.01 (the version shipped on the initial discs)? That version could legitimately be called, "StarCraft: Zerg rape everyone." You think larva spawn fast in SC2 with Spawn Larva? Imagine having larva spawning faster in SC1. Fast enough for a Zerg to effectively drone and produce units on one base. A one-basing Zerg in StarCraft 1. With a faster-growing Spawning Pool that only costs 150.
No Corsairs to do scouting. No Medics. Just Zerg, one-base, killing everything.
I remember it well. It was that way for quite a long time actually, until 1.04 that was released with Brood War. I have often wondered what percentage of Zerg players are recalling those days of Zerg glory and EZ mode autowin.
I actually agree Terran is a little OP right now but the amount of whining is ridiculous. You could also make a solid argument that late game Zerg is OP. Any argument that something is OP would carry a lot more weight if it actually acknowledged there are 3 races in this game.
Hilarious original post though, I love the Idralisk.
On August 07 2010 02:46 Rah wrote: SC2 zerg players definitly win the bitchiest race award. Most of the kids complaining won't be happy until they can win on equal bases through a chokepoint with no micro. Zerg still wins games you know, even when played sub par. All of the high level zerg losses I've seen (since the mech nerf and ultralisk buff) have been due to an error or missed oppertunity on the zerg players part. Then they blame imbalance because it's the cool thing to do now. It's really gotten out of control.
p.s. the current state of zvz is awesome.
Actually people bitch more about the bitching like you.
No bitching involved from me, my post was only pointing out the current state of 1/3 the community, and maybe bringing it more to their attention. Well less than 1/3rd now since half of them have moved on to being terrible terran players instead of terrible zerg players. Thanks for the rage though?
If thats not bitching then the Zergs arn't bitching you're doing exactly what your claiming them to be doing then claiming your action is somehow different.
"Thanks for the rage" you are asuming I am raging? I guess which is funny because you seem to be doing the same thing but you are somehow not raging?
To put it a bit better. You are complaining that zergs are complaining I'm just pointing out the the irony.
If thats not bitching then the Zergs arn't bitching you're doing exactly what your claiming them to be doing then claiming your action is somehow different.
"Thanks for the rage" you are asuming I am raging? I guess which is funny because you seem to be doing the same thing but you are somehow not raging?
To put it a bit better. You are complaining that zergs are complaining I'm just pointing out the the irony.
I'm pointing out that zergs are making excuses for losses that are their own fault. And they're jumping on the imba bandwagon to save their egos. Simple as that. You make the game less fun for yourself by blaming imbalance rather than trying to get good at your race. It doesn't upset me at all, so there's no complaining involved here, just sharing my brilliant insight, trying to help some people who obviously need to step off the wagon and think about things straight for a change. Chill out and enjoy the game, rather than raging about a patch that isn't going to come until there's concrete data on Blizzard's end, not just raging zergs. Take the feedback however you want. I'm done getting trolled. =p
If thats not bitching then the Zergs arn't bitching you're doing exactly what your claiming them to be doing then claiming your action is somehow different.
"Thanks for the rage" you are asuming I am raging? I guess which is funny because you seem to be doing the same thing but you are somehow not raging?
To put it a bit better. You are complaining that zergs are complaining I'm just pointing out the the irony.
I'm pointing out that zergs are making excuses for losses that are their own fault. And they're jumping on the imba bandwagon to save their egos. Simple as that. You make the game less fun for yourself by blaming imbalance rather than trying to get good at your race. It doesn't upset me at all, so there's no complaining involved here, just sharing my brilliant insight, trying to help some people who obviously need to step off the wagon and think about things straight for a change. Chill out and enjoy the game, rather than raging about a patch that isn't going to come until there's concrete data on Blizzard's end, not just raging zergs. Take the feedback however you want. I'm done getting trolled. =p
You act like they're mutually exclusive. I put a lot of work into my ZvT pretty much to the exclusion of putting effort into refining my tactics for the other matchups (my ZvP is suffering because of it). When I lose a game I know there are always things I could do better, but guess what, there's a lot that my opponent could also do better too as he's just as imperfect as me (arguably more so if his rating is inflated due to balance issues). Either way, even with constantly trying to improve, there's nothing that means someone can't also take the time to come and talk about the balance. The matchup isn't 100% Terran win, it's obviously something more like 70/30 or 60/40 so your losses are largely your own fault, but that doesn't mean it feels like you're going into the match with an even 50% chance to win.
On August 07 2010 03:24 oxxo wrote: T is prob OP in TvZ early-mid game. Z is prob OP in TvZ mid-late game.
Either way. The whining from Zs is ridiculous.
We don't all whine =(.
Just get frustrating - and I think everyone would be better off accepting that the game isn't perfect yet. Constructive criticism is nice. My major gripe isn't so much the balance as the feeling of helplessness.
Ideal world imagination time! How *should* the zerg be played? Swarmy, overwhelming and dangerous. Right now I feel the best way to play is a series of Guerrilla warfare attacks. Spying and reacting. Is it fun now? Yeah! It's why I play zerg exclusively. But when I think long and hard about the "spirit" of the zerg.. it just doesn't mesh well with the current play style. To me at least.
I miss the days of 1 supply roach. Zerg feel like an army that should be able to, in big numbers, overwhelm an opponent. Does this mean attack move into the face? Heck no. I'd put most of the blame on maps. It's just too easy at the moment to defend all the little chokes. This puts a large advantage for the Terrans aoe style long range armies.
So in conclusion? My personal feelings are that the armies aren't as imba as some claim.. but the current state of the maps tend to favour Terrans. A handful of more open ramp matches may make we zerg lovers giddy again.
And also larger armies! I'd gladly accept a roach damage or hp nerf in exchange for more regen and 1 supply. Not so we get a win button. But just for fun.
TL;DR. Maps are more the issue then the races; roaches aren't as cool as they could be
=) Not whining though! Just trying to think objectively about what can be done to make the most people happy as possible.
TvZ IS imbalanced, even if it's just the Z's who haven't found a counter yet, because if there is no known way to balance it out vs. a meching terran(though in theory nydus worms and drops et cetera seems to work). And if people understand why they are raging, why are they making them rage even more? Example: You see a man who is dying of thirst, and you are holding a glass of water in your hand. He begs for it, and you give it to him. The next thing you do, is take the glass for him, just before he can get some of it. It's stupid, ignorant and idiotic. So why do you make them rage more? For the lulz, of course! and what does that make you? Stupid, ignorant and idiotic. Now, I don't mean this personally, but if you act like that, some people will get this impression. EDIT: However, if the Z is completely ignorant to tips and screams imba without listening to anyone, I guess it's fine.
On August 07 2010 03:24 oxxo wrote: T is prob OP in TvZ early-mid game. Z is prob OP in TvZ mid-late game.
Either way. The whining from Zs is ridiculous.
We don't all whine =(.
Just get frustrating - and I think everyone would be better off accepting that the game isn't perfect yet. Constructive criticism is nice. My major gripe isn't so much the balance as the feeling of helplessness.
Ideal world imagination time! How *should* the zerg be played? Swarmy, overwhelming and dangerous. Right now I feel the best way to play is a series of Guerrilla warfare attacks. Spying and reacting. Is it fun now? Yeah! It's why I play zerg exclusively. But when I think long and hard about the "spirit" of the zerg.. it just doesn't mesh well with the current play style. To me at least.
I miss the days of 1 supply roach. Zerg feel like an army that should be able to, in big numbers, overwhelm an opponent. Does this mean attack move into the face? Heck no. I'd put most of the blame on maps. It's just too easy at the moment to defend all the little chokes. This puts a large advantage for the Terrans aoe style long range armies.
So in conclusion? My personal feelings are that the armies aren't as imba as some claim.. but the current state of the maps tend to favour Terrans. A handful of more open ramp matches may make we zerg lovers giddy again.
And also larger armies! I'd gladly accept a roach damage or hp nerf in exchange for more regen and 1 supply. Not so we get a win button. But just for fun.
TL;DR. Maps are more the issue then the races; roaches aren't as cool as they could be
=) Not whining though! Just trying to think objectively about what can be done to make the most people happy as possible.
To me the map balance is a problem that should be corrected with racial balance. Having Zerg rely on a very specific set of map conditions is going to be bad for the game going forward. Not all races need to be equal on all map designs, but it's a little too harsh right now.
The other major thing is it's not even really clear if bigger maps would help zerg. Terran have the stronger harassment game with vikings, hellions, banshee's, medivac drops, etc. and Zerg have some of the weakest drop defense and rely on creep spread (which takes longer on bigger maps). This is especially true with the natural where if it's open zerg are extremely vulnerable to harass at the start.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
Aren't stats fun?
lol, thank you. Someone had to do it.
My response is way late, but I guess that's what I get for having other stuff to do.
Of all players on Korean servers: 8.56% Random, 39.21% Protoss, 34.51% Terran, 17.73% Zerg Diamond league as a whole: 9.74% Random, 36.11% Protoss, 29.87% Terran, 24.28% Zerg.
LOOK at that gigantic gap. Now, % for each race of only Korean diamond players would be ideal, but oh well.
Look at the percentage that plays zerg in each region: 20.35% NA, 21.13% Europe, 17.73% Korea, 24.20% Taiwan, 20.46% SE Asia, 21.71% Russia, 17.53% Latin America.
Now imagine any reasonable weighted average of those numbers. Around 21% maybe? Less? HOWEVER, what percentage of all diamond players are zerg? 24.28%!! That is not only CLOSE to what would be expected, but ABOVE what would be expected.
((Terrans are 36% of the top 50 in Korea, btw... Zergs are 24% -- way MORE than the percentage who play the race in all of Korea))
The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
That's true -- that's a possibility. However, the trend holds even globally.
20.54% of all players worldwide are zerg, but zergs are 24.28% of all diamond players worldwide.
Now, your explanation is still a valid possibility, but still -- we would expect far FEWER zergs in the best of the best if zerg were genuinely underpowered, both globally and in the Korean top 50.
Btw, I'm new to RTS games and I've played zerg exclusively since March or April.
Didn't find this very funny. It'd be better if it wasn't insulting the legitimacy of ZvT problems so much.
On August 06 2010 12:53 Endymion wrote: So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
I wondered the same things. It feels really disrespectful and/or ignorant to zerg players.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis:
4,992 of 81,112 zergs worldwide are diamond players. That's 6.15%.
6,144 of 137,942 terrans worldwide are diamond players. That's 4.5%.
7,420 of 140,812 protoss worldwide are diamond players. That's 5.3%.
So, at first glance, there is mild support for what you're saying -- but these numbers are pretty similar.
Now, there are 6.15% of zergs worldwide in diamond. Isn't 5% the expected amount? Then there are 1.15% (933) more zergs in diamond worldwide than we would expect. What if we pretend those 933 zergs were in lower leagues and reassign their spots? In other words, what if we adjust for the hypothesized higher skill level of zerg players? If there are 4,992 zergs in diamond worldwide, and there are 933 more zergs than we'd expect, then there are 4,059 zergs in diamond. This, of course, is about 5% of the total number of zergs. If we take the unexpected zergs and put them in lower leagues and assume that those 933 diamond spots are taken up by terran players (because only 4.5% of all terrans are in diamond, but that doesn't matter), then zergs, at 4,059, take up 19.74% of 20,564 total diamond players. This is very close to what we'd expect, given the overall distribution. 20.54% of all players worldwide are zerg.
In other words, there is a HIGHER proportion of all zerg players who make it to diamond than the expected level of 5%. If we assume that this is because there are more good zerg players than bad zerg players (rather than that zerg is OP), then we should move the "unexpected" diamond zergs down to lower leagues, reassign those 933 free spots, and recalculate. This leaves us with 19.44% of all diamond spots being occupied by zerg players. This is very close to what we'd expect, given that 20.54% of all players worldwide are zerg.
But really, if zerg is underpowered and they still have such a solid footing in diamond despite their small numbers, that's amazing! Either there are no glaring balance issues or good zerg players are just really fucking good.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Your final point also ignores the fact that 2/3rd of matches played by a zerg player are NOT ZvT.
On August 06 2010 12:53 Endymion wrote: So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
I wondered the same things. It feels really disrespectful and/or ignorant to zerg players.
Hahah you're taking this way too seriously Saw something like this coming, but really, there are like 15 topics open about it.
If thats not bitching then the Zergs arn't bitching you're doing exactly what your claiming them to be doing then claiming your action is somehow different.
"Thanks for the rage" you are asuming I am raging? I guess which is funny because you seem to be doing the same thing but you are somehow not raging?
To put it a bit better. You are complaining that zergs are complaining I'm just pointing out the the irony.
I'm pointing out that zergs are making excuses for losses that are their own fault. And they're jumping on the imba bandwagon to save their egos. Simple as that. You make the game less fun for yourself by blaming imbalance rather than trying to get good at your race. It doesn't upset me at all, so there's no complaining involved here, just sharing my brilliant insight, trying to help some people who obviously need to step off the wagon and think about things straight for a change. Chill out and enjoy the game, rather than raging about a patch that isn't going to come until there's concrete data on Blizzard's end, not just raging zergs. Take the feedback however you want. I'm done getting trolled. =p
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis:
4,992 of 81,112 zergs worldwide are diamond players. That's 6.15%.
6,144 of 137,942 terrans worldwide are diamond players. That's 4.5%.
7,420 of 140,812 protoss worldwide are diamond players. That's 5.3%.
So, at first glance, there is mild support for what you're saying -- but these numbers are pretty similar.
This means that zerg is a more difficult race to play. Not worse. If you are complaining that zerg is too weak, it probably means that you are NOT GOOD enough to keep up with the apm intensive macro (queen's larva) zerg requires.
zerg is not weaker, just harder to play. IMO queen's spawn larva should be something you click once and it spawns at the nearest hatch. But this wouldn't make zerg stronger, just easier.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis:
4,992 of 81,112 zergs worldwide are diamond players. That's 6.15%.
6,144 of 137,942 terrans worldwide are diamond players. That's 4.5%.
7,420 of 140,812 protoss worldwide are diamond players. That's 5.3%.
So, at first glance, there is mild support for what you're saying -- but these numbers are pretty similar.
Now, there are 6.15% of zergs worldwide in diamond. Isn't 5% the expected amount? Then there are 1.15% (933) more zergs in diamond worldwide than we would expect. What if we pretend those 933 zergs were in lower leagues and reassign their spots? In other words, what if we adjust for the hypothesized higher skill level of zerg players? If there are 4,992 zergs in diamond worldwide, and there are 933 more zergs than we'd expect, then there are 4,059 zergs in diamond. This, of course, is about 5% of the total number of zergs. If we take the unexpected zergs and put them in lower leagues and assume that those 933 diamond spots are taken up by terran players (because only 4.5% of all terrans are in diamond, but that doesn't matter), then zergs, at 4,059, take up 19.74% of 20,564 total diamond players. This is very close to what we'd expect, given the overall distribution. 20.54% of all players worldwide are zerg.
In other words, there is a HIGHER proportion of all zerg players who make it to diamond than the expected level of 5%. If we assume that this is because there are more good zerg players than bad zerg players (rather than that zerg is OP), then we should move the "unexpected" diamond zergs down to lower leagues, reassign those 933 free spots, and recalculate. This leaves us with 19.44% of all diamond spots being occupied by zerg players. This is very close to what we'd expect, given that 20.54% of all players worldwide are zerg.
But really, if zerg is underpowered and they still have such a solid footing in diamond despite their small numbers, that's amazing! Either there are no glaring balance issues or good zerg players are just really fucking good.
What? Getting to diamond /= balance. I am a diamond zerg because platinum players are much worse, not because zerg is on an equal footing to the other races. When I look at those numbers what I see is that players at lower leagues cant even play the race because its so unforgiving and the majority of zerg players are players who are willing to stick with the race and try and figure things out and get better.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
What? Getting to diamond /= balance. I am a diamond zerg because platinum players are much worse, not because zerg is on an equal footing to the other races. When I look at those numbers what I see is that players at lower leagues cant even play the race because its so unforgiving and the majority of zerg players are players who are willing to stick with the race and try and figure things out and get better.
I'm not sure I get your complaint... I adjusted for the hypothesized higher skill-level of diamond zergs. After the adjustment, the number of zergs in diamond was pretty damn close to what we'd expect given the overall percentage of players who play zerg.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
Why aren't the numbers valuable numbers to datamine? It's census data!
And on the 50/50 point, two things: 1) We've established the zergs are well-represented at the top, yet STILL ZvT is 50/50, even though good zergs are playing good terrans; and 2) please give the Blizz staff a little more credit... They're not so stupid as to see 50/50 ZvT diamond results and ignore the possibility that good zergs are playing bad terrans and getting 50/50. And there have been no major nerfs to zerg or buffs to terran since his comment -- he made it AFTER the "ZvT is unfair" cries became so loud.
Tournament results seem so much worse. They're extremely anecdotal (there aren't many) and there is no matchmaking component at all. It's not a system that churns out data like the ladder is.
Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
I agree that zerg isn't necessarily weaker (tho terran is more versatile), it's just they are harder to play which means it takes more work to get the same thing done as the other races.
The shitty part of this is nothing feels worse than working so hard on macro and micro (trying to set up flanks and runbys) just to lose to a glob of marauders or stalkers when you feel like you clearly outworked the opponent. Much less room for mistakes as zerg too I feel (like when to power drones or units).
On August 07 2010 06:55 kajeus wrote: Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
Couldn't agree more, people are only seeing what they want to see. Z is very well represented in tournaments, both in participation numbers and in first or second place finishers. When a Z wins a tournament, people seem not to notice. IdrA sweeping the KotB, etc etc. Hell, last night's GosuCoaching #7 had a ZvZ finals (Sheth vs Slush). I guess when a Z wins it's not noteworthy at all, but when a T wins it's because of imba.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
Aren't stats fun?
lol, thank you. Someone had to do it.
My response is way late, but I guess that's what I get for having other stuff to do.
Of all players on Korean servers: 8.56% Random, 39.21% Protoss, 34.51% Terran, 17.73% Zerg Diamond league as a whole: 9.74% Random, 36.11% Protoss, 29.87% Terran, 24.28% Zerg.
LOOK at that gigantic gap. Now, % for each race of only Korean diamond players would be ideal, but oh well.
Look at the percentage that plays zerg in each region: 20.35% NA, 21.13% Europe, 17.73% Korea, 24.20% Taiwan, 20.46% SE Asia, 21.71% Russia, 17.53% Latin America.
Now imagine any reasonable weighted average of those numbers. Around 21% maybe? Less? HOWEVER, what percentage of all diamond players are zerg? 24.28%!! That is not only CLOSE to what would be expected, but ABOVE what would be expected.
((Terrans are 36% of the top 50 in Korea, btw... Zergs are 24% -- way MORE than the percentage who play the race in all of Korea))
Read your post carefully three times then draw a conclusion from the data you presented.
I trust it will not support your conclusion.
You just basically showed its easier to get into Diamond league as zerg, but it is less popular among players overall.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
Aren't stats fun?
lol, thank you. Someone had to do it.
My response is way late, but I guess that's what I get for having other stuff to do.
Of all players on Korean servers: 8.56% Random, 39.21% Protoss, 34.51% Terran, 17.73% Zerg Diamond league as a whole: 9.74% Random, 36.11% Protoss, 29.87% Terran, 24.28% Zerg.
LOOK at that gigantic gap. Now, % for each race of only Korean diamond players would be ideal, but oh well.
Look at the percentage that plays zerg in each region: 20.35% NA, 21.13% Europe, 17.73% Korea, 24.20% Taiwan, 20.46% SE Asia, 21.71% Russia, 17.53% Latin America.
Now imagine any reasonable weighted average of those numbers. Around 21% maybe? Less? HOWEVER, what percentage of all diamond players are zerg? 24.28%!! That is not only CLOSE to what would be expected, but ABOVE what would be expected.
((Terrans are 36% of the top 50 in Korea, btw... Zergs are 24% -- way MORE than the percentage who play the race in all of Korea))
Read your post carefully three times then draw a conclusion from the data you presented.
I trust it will not support your conclusion.
You just basically showed its easier to get into Diamond league as zerg, but it is less popular among players overall.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
Why aren't the numbers valuable numbers to datamine? It's census data!
And on the 50/50 point, two things: 1) We've established the zergs are well-represented at the top, yet STILL ZvT is 50/50, even though good zergs are playing good terrans; and 2) please give the Blizz staff a little more credit... They're not so stupid as to see 50/50 ZvT diamond results and ignore the possibility that good zergs are playing bad terrans and getting 50/50. And there have been no major nerfs to zerg or buffs to terran since his comment -- he made it AFTER the "ZvT is unfair" cries became so loud.
Tournament results seem so much worse. They're extremely anecdotal (there aren't many) and there is no matchmaking component at all. It's not a system that churns out data like the ladder is.
Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
This is just so wrong it's hard for me to start =/.
Tournaments are the #1 source of data to identify balance issues. While it's a smaller sample size we know that a) we're dealing with the highest caliber of players, b) all of said players are playing to the best of their ability because $ is on the line. Plus it's our biggest source of data of specific match-ups.
Second people selectively viewing tournament results has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VALUE OF LOOKING AT TOURNAMENT RESULTS. That's just so absurd I can't believe you said it. Just because some bozos decide to only focus on high profile zerg losses doesn't mean that taking an objective look at all tournament results is worthless. I mean is that really the argument you are putting forward?
Lastly your comments on 50/50 make absolutely no sense to me. Do you believe Blizzard is looking at every single game played and deciding that the players are of equal skill? How in the world could they possibly tell from the data that we have that there is a big balance issue?
A lot of the affects of a matchup imbalance are going to be hidden by differences in player skill and the fact that only roughly 1/3rd of the games are played with that matchup. As an example of how much this affects things lets say you play 100 games vs a hypothetical evenly matched blob of players. If you have 50/50 for 2 matchups and 40/60 for one matchup you'd still be expected to win 46 of your 100 games. The fact that it's 1 of 3 possible matchups means the actual affect, even if the imbalance is pretty significant, appears as a very tiny thing. When you factor in how ELO fudges this and drives it more towards 50% it's obvious that you can't just look at the data we have.
Besides the quote starts with, "I have the same feel, but the numbers don't support it..." and he goes on to say, "We are studying the issue and trying to figure out if we should do something..." That seems to imply that they're not sure of the data and need further analysis.
Couldn't agree more, people are only seeing what they want to see. Z is very well represented in tournaments, both in participation numbers and in first or second place finishers. When a Z wins a tournament, people seem not to notice. IdrA sweeping the KotB, etc etc. Hell, last night's GosuCoaching #7 had a ZvZ finals (Sheth vs Slush). I guess when a Z wins it's not noteworthy at all, but when a T wins it's because of imba.
[Citation Needed] Saying it doesn't make it true. If you want to say tournaments well represent each race then do it out and show that they do. If you want to say there is an imbalance in tournament wins by match-up then likewise show it.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
Why aren't the numbers valuable numbers to datamine? It's census data!
And on the 50/50 point, two things: 1) We've established the zergs are well-represented at the top, yet STILL ZvT is 50/50, even though good zergs are playing good terrans; and 2) please give the Blizz staff a little more credit... They're not so stupid as to see 50/50 ZvT diamond results and ignore the possibility that good zergs are playing bad terrans and getting 50/50. And there have been no major nerfs to zerg or buffs to terran since his comment -- he made it AFTER the "ZvT is unfair" cries became so loud.
Tournament results seem so much worse. They're extremely anecdotal (there aren't many) and there is no matchmaking component at all. It's not a system that churns out data like the ladder is.
Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
This is just so wrong it's hard for me to start =/.
Given that I'm essentially playing the role of a statistics textbook in this thread, that's an interesting reaction.
Tournaments are the #1 source of data to identify balance issues. While it's a smaller sample size we know that a) we're dealing with the highest caliber of players, b) all of said players are playing to the best of their ability because $ is on the line. Plus it's our biggest source of data of specific match-ups.
Second people selectively viewing tournament results has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VALUE OF LOOKING AT TOURNAMENT RESULTS. That's just so absurd I can't believe you said it. Just because some bozos decide to only focus on high profile zerg losses doesn't mean that taking an objective look at all tournament results is worthless. I mean is that really the argument you are putting forward?
I'm not quite sure what you're so upset about. The fact of tournament results is that there are very few games played. This results in extremely small data pools, which is always bad. You can't conclude much scientifically from 10 tournament TvZ games dominated by 2 or 4 players.
Bnet matchmaking is determined by performance. Tournament rosters are determined by invitation or popularity... not an objective system. This makes the "match-ups" rather anecdotal.
But I'm not outright opposed to looking at tournament results. If you can prove, with numbers, that zerg is underrepresented or underperforming in recent tournaments, I'll listen.
Lastly your comments on 50/50 make absolutely no sense to me. Do you believe Blizzard is looking at every single game played and deciding that the players are of equal skill? How in the world could they possibly tell from the data that we have that there is a big balance issue?
The Bnet matchmaking system determines ratings on the basis of past performance. If TvZ is 50/50 controlling for rating (at high levels, when lots and lots of games have been played), then TvZ is balanced -- unless zergs are underrepresented in diamond. They're not, relative to the total percentage of players who play zerg.
A lot of the affects of a matchup imbalance are going to be hidden by differences in player skill and the fact that only roughly 1/3rd of the games are played with that matchup. As an example of how much this affects things lets say you play 100 games vs a hypothetical evenly matched blob of players. If you have 50/50 for 2 matchups and 40/60 for one matchup you'd still be expected to win 46 of your 100 games. The fact that it's 1 of 3 possible matchups means the actual affect, even if the imbalance is pretty significant, appears as a very tiny thing. When you factor in how ELO fudges this and drives it more towards 50% it's obvious that you can't just look at the data we have.
Your hypothetical would predict an underrepresentation of zergs at the high levels. This doesn't seem to be the case.
Besides the quote starts with, "I have the same feel, but the numbers don't support it..." and he goes on to say, "We are studying the issue and trying to figure out if we should do something..." That seems to imply that they're not sure of the data and need further analysis.
Well, they're approaching it scientifically and diplomatically. They're saying: "We're thinking about it." I'm doing the same thing. The current data does not seem to imply that zerg is underpowered in any way. I've yet to see numerical or statistical evidence that zerg IS underpowered.
How does the number of zerg players in diamond compared to the total number of zerg players have anything to do with this analysis?
The only thing that matters is how skilled these players are, and there is no objective method to measure that. Bnet rating is misleading because if the matchup were in fact imbalanced then zerg players would end up with lower ratings than their skill level deserves.
Simply put, you can't use this kind of statistical information to decide on balance (whether you use ladder or tournament data). Neither would this kind of aggregate information help fix any matchup. The kind of details needed here are specific builds/unit compositions that are producing high win rates, or an objective analysis of IdrA's claim that terran has 20 build orders which require different counters and cannot all be scouted in time.
Couldn't agree more, people are only seeing what they want to see. Z is very well represented in tournaments, both in participation numbers and in first or second place finishers. When a Z wins a tournament, people seem not to notice. IdrA sweeping the KotB, etc etc. Hell, last night's GosuCoaching #7 had a ZvZ finals (Sheth vs Slush). I guess when a Z wins it's not noteworthy at all, but when a T wins it's because of imba.
[Citation Needed] Saying it doesn't make it true. If you want to say tournaments well represent each race then do it out and show that they do. If you want to say there is an imbalance in tournament wins by match-up then likewise show it.
Why? I'm Zerg, so it would seem I would have high interest in identifying an imbalance if such exists. However, an eyeball across the tournament rosters shows me an acceptable spread, and it is immediately plain that plenty of Zerg are winning or placing in them as well. These quick examinations are enough to satisfy me. You're the one claiming that the current situation is imbalanced, so the burden of proof falls on you, not me. Do your own work.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
Why aren't the numbers valuable numbers to datamine? It's census data!
And on the 50/50 point, two things: 1) We've established the zergs are well-represented at the top, yet STILL ZvT is 50/50, even though good zergs are playing good terrans; and 2) please give the Blizz staff a little more credit... They're not so stupid as to see 50/50 ZvT diamond results and ignore the possibility that good zergs are playing bad terrans and getting 50/50. And there have been no major nerfs to zerg or buffs to terran since his comment -- he made it AFTER the "ZvT is unfair" cries became so loud.
Tournament results seem so much worse. They're extremely anecdotal (there aren't many) and there is no matchmaking component at all. It's not a system that churns out data like the ladder is.
Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
This is just so wrong it's hard for me to start =/.
Given that I'm essentially playing the role of a statistics textbook in this thread, that's an interesting reaction.
Tournaments are the #1 source of data to identify balance issues. While it's a smaller sample size we know that a) we're dealing with the highest caliber of players, b) all of said players are playing to the best of their ability because $ is on the line. Plus it's our biggest source of data of specific match-ups.
Second people selectively viewing tournament results has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VALUE OF LOOKING AT TOURNAMENT RESULTS. That's just so absurd I can't believe you said it. Just because some bozos decide to only focus on high profile zerg losses doesn't mean that taking an objective look at all tournament results is worthless. I mean is that really the argument you are putting forward?
I'm not quite sure what you're so upset about. The fact of tournament results is that there are very few games played. This results in extremely small data pools, which is always bad. You can't conclude much scientifically from 10 tournament TvZ games dominated by 2 or 4 players.
Bnet matchmaking is determined by performance. Tournament rosters are determined by invitation or popularity... not an objective system. This makes the "match-ups" rather anecdotal.
But I'm not outright opposed to looking at tournament results. If you can prove, with numbers, that zerg is underrepresented or underperforming in recent tournaments, I'll listen.
Lastly your comments on 50/50 make absolutely no sense to me. Do you believe Blizzard is looking at every single game played and deciding that the players are of equal skill? How in the world could they possibly tell from the data that we have that there is a big balance issue?
The Bnet matchmaking system determines ratings on the basis of past performance. If TvZ is 50/50 controlling for rating (at high levels, when lots and lots of games have been played), then TvZ is balanced -- unless zergs are underrepresented in diamond. They're not, relative to the total percentage of players who play zerg.
A lot of the affects of a matchup imbalance are going to be hidden by differences in player skill and the fact that only roughly 1/3rd of the games are played with that matchup. As an example of how much this affects things lets say you play 100 games vs a hypothetical evenly matched blob of players. If you have 50/50 for 2 matchups and 40/60 for one matchup you'd still be expected to win 46 of your 100 games. The fact that it's 1 of 3 possible matchups means the actual affect, even if the imbalance is pretty significant, appears as a very tiny thing. When you factor in how ELO fudges this and drives it more towards 50% it's obvious that you can't just look at the data we have.
Your hypothetical would predict an underrepresentation of zergs at the high levels. This doesn't seem to be the case.
Besides the quote starts with, "I have the same feel, but the numbers don't support it..." and he goes on to say, "We are studying the issue and trying to figure out if we should do something..." That seems to imply that they're not sure of the data and need further analysis.
Well, they're approaching it scientifically and diplomatically. They're saying: "We're thinking about it." I'm doing the same thing. The current data does not seem to imply that zerg is underpowered in any way. I've yet to see numerical or statistical evidence that zerg IS underpowered.
You treat diamond like it's 1 skill level. Diamond goes all the way from the lowly protoss who can only a-move gateway forces up to the pro level players. A prime example is the game I just played vs another Zerg. He makes 4 zerglings, a spine crawler on the edge of his own creep, and then a late batch of 2 roaches. When he losses over 1/2 his economy right then and there (and eventually the game) he says, "Omg lame rush." His rating? 468 Diamond with 64 wins. He's played over 100 Diamond rating games and doesn't even know the core basic fundamental of how ZvZ works? Give me a break. Diamond is not one skill level and is in fact quite a large spread of players of many different skill levels. "High Level" cannot be considered Diamond, there's just too many people in Diamond for that distinction to work. If you say took Diamond players about 500 ranking then you might start to have something worth going on.
While tournaments have their own issues when looking at stats they're way better than ladder. They take the highest skills of players and focus just on those. Representation isn't as much of an issue if you are looking for matchups and win %s. Do you really believe there are players out there who can play significantly better than IdrA, TLO, Tester and others but isn't being invited to a tournament? Do you really think there's a Zerg player out there who's completely solved ZvT but never players tournaments? Give me a break. Any player with that kind of jump in skill over our current roster would at the very least be showing up in spades on open tournaments of which there are plenty.
Couldn't agree more, people are only seeing what they want to see. Z is very well represented in tournaments, both in participation numbers and in first or second place finishers. When a Z wins a tournament, people seem not to notice. IdrA sweeping the KotB, etc etc. Hell, last night's GosuCoaching #7 had a ZvZ finals (Sheth vs Slush). I guess when a Z wins it's not noteworthy at all, but when a T wins it's because of imba.
[Citation Needed] Saying it doesn't make it true. If you want to say tournaments well represent each race then do it out and show that they do. If you want to say there is an imbalance in tournament wins by match-up then likewise show it.
Why? I'm Zerg, so it would seem I would have high interest in identifying an imbalance if such exists. However, an eyeball across the tournament rosters shows me an acceptable spread, and it is immediately plain that plenty of Zerg are winning or placing in them as well. These quick examinations are enough to satisfy me. You're the one claiming that the current situation is imbalanced, so the burden of proof falls on you, not me. Do your own work.
How can you say this after calling people out on selectively looking at tournament results?
Also I'm not claiming anything, I'm just pointing out that people are using woefully inadequate methods of parsing data to act like they're proving a point.
On August 07 2010 02:46 Rah wrote: SC2 zerg players definitly win the bitchiest race award. Most of the kids complaining won't be happy until they can win on equal bases through a chokepoint with no micro. Zerg still wins games you know, even when played sub par. All of the high level zerg losses I've seen (since the mech nerf and ultralisk buff) have been due to an error or missed oppertunity on the zerg players part. Then they blame imbalance because it's the cool thing to do now. It's really gotten out of control.
p.s. the current state of zvz is awesome.
Actually people bitch more about the bitching like you.
No bitching involved from me, my post is pointing out the current state of 1/3 the community, and just maybe bringing it more to their attention. Well less than 1/3rd now since half of them have moved on to being terrible terran players instead of terrible zerg players. Thanks for the rage though? Some people can't be reasoned with when it's easier to pass off blame. That's what got this "imbalance" crap going in the first place.
Terrible post, how can you take 1/3 of the community as a whole (aka every zerg player) and say that every single one of them are whiny bitches.
And why can't you recognize that, maybe, some of the ''bitches'' might have a valid concern?
You sound like the one that is impossible to be reasoned with when you go around posting such statements.
I personaly found the OP kinda funny, but it obviously meant to put oil on the flames.
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
Why aren't the numbers valuable numbers to datamine? It's census data!
And on the 50/50 point, two things: 1) We've established the zergs are well-represented at the top, yet STILL ZvT is 50/50, even though good zergs are playing good terrans; and 2) please give the Blizz staff a little more credit... They're not so stupid as to see 50/50 ZvT diamond results and ignore the possibility that good zergs are playing bad terrans and getting 50/50. And there have been no major nerfs to zerg or buffs to terran since his comment -- he made it AFTER the "ZvT is unfair" cries became so loud.
Tournament results seem so much worse. They're extremely anecdotal (there aren't many) and there is no matchmaking component at all. It's not a system that churns out data like the ladder is.
Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
This is just so wrong it's hard for me to start =/.
Given that I'm essentially playing the role of a statistics textbook in this thread, that's an interesting reaction.
Tournaments are the #1 source of data to identify balance issues. While it's a smaller sample size we know that a) we're dealing with the highest caliber of players, b) all of said players are playing to the best of their ability because $ is on the line. Plus it's our biggest source of data of specific match-ups.
Second people selectively viewing tournament results has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VALUE OF LOOKING AT TOURNAMENT RESULTS. That's just so absurd I can't believe you said it. Just because some bozos decide to only focus on high profile zerg losses doesn't mean that taking an objective look at all tournament results is worthless. I mean is that really the argument you are putting forward?
I'm not quite sure what you're so upset about. The fact of tournament results is that there are very few games played. This results in extremely small data pools, which is always bad. You can't conclude much scientifically from 10 tournament TvZ games dominated by 2 or 4 players.
Bnet matchmaking is determined by performance. Tournament rosters are determined by invitation or popularity... not an objective system. This makes the "match-ups" rather anecdotal.
But I'm not outright opposed to looking at tournament results. If you can prove, with numbers, that zerg is underrepresented or underperforming in recent tournaments, I'll listen.
Lastly your comments on 50/50 make absolutely no sense to me. Do you believe Blizzard is looking at every single game played and deciding that the players are of equal skill? How in the world could they possibly tell from the data that we have that there is a big balance issue?
The Bnet matchmaking system determines ratings on the basis of past performance. If TvZ is 50/50 controlling for rating (at high levels, when lots and lots of games have been played), then TvZ is balanced -- unless zergs are underrepresented in diamond. They're not, relative to the total percentage of players who play zerg.
A lot of the affects of a matchup imbalance are going to be hidden by differences in player skill and the fact that only roughly 1/3rd of the games are played with that matchup. As an example of how much this affects things lets say you play 100 games vs a hypothetical evenly matched blob of players. If you have 50/50 for 2 matchups and 40/60 for one matchup you'd still be expected to win 46 of your 100 games. The fact that it's 1 of 3 possible matchups means the actual affect, even if the imbalance is pretty significant, appears as a very tiny thing. When you factor in how ELO fudges this and drives it more towards 50% it's obvious that you can't just look at the data we have.
Your hypothetical would predict an underrepresentation of zergs at the high levels. This doesn't seem to be the case.
Besides the quote starts with, "I have the same feel, but the numbers don't support it..." and he goes on to say, "We are studying the issue and trying to figure out if we should do something..." That seems to imply that they're not sure of the data and need further analysis.
Well, they're approaching it scientifically and diplomatically. They're saying: "We're thinking about it." I'm doing the same thing. The current data does not seem to imply that zerg is underpowered in any way. I've yet to see numerical or statistical evidence that zerg IS underpowered.
You treat diamond like it's 1 skill level. Diamond goes all the way from the lowly protoss who can only a-move gateway forces up to the pro level players. A prime example is the game I just played vs another Zerg. He makes 4 zerglings, a spine crawler on the edge of his own creep, and then a late batch of 2 roaches. When he losses over 1/2 his economy right then and there (and eventually the game) he says, "Omg lame rush." His rating? 468 Diamond with 64 wins. He's played over 100 Diamond rating games and doesn't even know the core basic fundamental of how ZvZ works? Give me a break. Diamond is not one skill level and is in fact quite a large spread of players of many different skill levels. "High Level" cannot be considered Diamond, there's just too many people in Diamond for that distinction to work. If you say took Diamond players about 500 ranking then you might start to have something worth going on.
I'm not treating diamond like it's one skill level. I'm treating it like it's the top 5% of the playerbase.
Matchmaking is not made on the basis of league. It is made on the basis of rating. Do you think that rating is a bad way of determining skill level? Because it's determined by who you beat and who you don't.
While tournaments have their own issues when looking at stats they're way better than ladder. They take the highest skills of players and focus just on those. Representation isn't as much of an issue if you are looking for matchups and win %s. Do you really believe there are players out there who can play significantly better than IdrA, TLO, Tester and others but isn't being invited to a tournament? Do you really think there's a Zerg player out there who's completely solved ZvT but never players tournaments? Give me a break. Any player with that kind of jump in skill over our current roster would at the very least be showing up in spades on open tournaments of which there are plenty.
Well, there are lots of players in the top 20 of every region's ladder who I've rarely seen in tournaments. And my entire point about Korea was that Korean zergs seemed to do pretty well against terrans. Again, this is an entirely subjective point -- they seemed to.
Anyway, Tester is like 10th on the Korean ladder, fyi. Who's first? Last time I looked (couple hours ago), it was CheckPrime, the zerg. Second place was another zerg. Third was a terran.
((EDIT: Tester is currently 22nd on the Korean ladder. CheckPrime is 1st.))
Whether you think TvZ is balanced or not it takes months of game data and tournaments with different map pools to come to a conclusion. Unless it's some major design flaw that was overlooked I doubt Blizzard is going to patch in anything new for a couple of months.
IdrA --> Thinks about switching to Terran, plays 1/3 of his time on his Terran account and clearly stated that zergs are not worth shit anymore
Dimaga --> Did some all ins every game since he knows he barely stand a chance vs them.
MoMaN --> Switched to Terran... straight pipe... he learned them in a couple days and now wins alot with them.
Artosis --> Eventho he will mostly repete everything that is said by IdrA.... he's still saying that zerg needs something
SLush --> Says that Terran is too strong economicaly and also says that tanks and thors are a pain to deal with. Also he said that zerg has no early harass and that it's hard to deal with all the crap that terran players can throw at thim.
Sheth --> I don't know his stances on the subject.
My stance --> I find that either tanks should be nerfed or thor air damage. The only viable counter to tanks are mutalisk which are taken out by 1-2 thors... yah yah spread your mutalisk blah blah blah... do you have to spread your marine balls? do you have to spread your tanks? I mean... ffs you'd need 20+ mutalisk to kill those 2 thors anyways. Also... hellions/banshee must be delayed... it's just stupid how fast hellions arrive and how devastating they are. Than banshee will normaly arrive just after. It's ridiculous.
You know, all it really takes for me to be satisfied to make ZvT a lot more bearable would be to add in overkill on tanks. Is that really so much to ask?
I remember when boxer bunker rushed yellow like 5 times in a row on a finals, people started saying "tvz imba nerf naw!1".... then came julyzerg, savior, etc...
On August 07 2010 05:22 kGold wrote: The only defense could be that while there are fewer Zerg players than the other races on Korea, there are more BETTER Zerg players per capita of Zerg players in Korea vs. the other races.
I can believe it because Zerg is the hardest race to play so the beginner-intermediate players will show more of a tendency to stay away from Zerg.
Ok, here's the data that is directly relevant to YOUR hypothesis..
The problem with statistical analysis like this is it's not actually based on any sort of anything. If you aren't going to use some actual methods of statistical analysis with math to back it up, just don't even bother.
For example you don't even account for the fact that Zerg is a smaller sample size so there's a higher chance that the result will deviate from the expected value. For all we know all three values are within an acceptable deviation from the expected value.
Do you want me to do a t-test or something? I mean, I could... or you could. If you accept everything up to the point of demanding one t-test on the difference between 4223 (expected diamond zerg population) and 4059 (skill-adjusted diamond zerg population), then I'm doing ok.
I'd like to do a simple binomial test on this difference to see the probability of that difference having popped up by chance. But I gotta read back over an old paper and remember how to do that. And I don't have time for that right now. D:
So... I'll try to later. Or you could do it!
((By the way, on your point about ZvT, Dustin Browder has said that high-level ZvT is 50/50.))
Everything is 50/50 with good matchmaking regardless of balance =/. Also browder said that back in early/mid July.
And no that's not really the only problem I have with the analysis. I mean the numbers aren't even valuable numbers to datamine.
Simply put the data needed to statistically determine any sort of racial imbalance is not available to us as players. Your time would be better spent statistically analyzing tournament results.
Why aren't the numbers valuable numbers to datamine? It's census data!
And on the 50/50 point, two things: 1) We've established the zergs are well-represented at the top, yet STILL ZvT is 50/50, even though good zergs are playing good terrans; and 2) please give the Blizz staff a little more credit... They're not so stupid as to see 50/50 ZvT diamond results and ignore the possibility that good zergs are playing bad terrans and getting 50/50. And there have been no major nerfs to zerg or buffs to terran since his comment -- he made it AFTER the "ZvT is unfair" cries became so loud.
Tournament results seem so much worse. They're extremely anecdotal (there aren't many) and there is no matchmaking component at all. It's not a system that churns out data like the ladder is.
Actually, I'd say perceived tournament outcomes CAUSED this perception that TvZ is so imbalanced. People watch qxc turtle Sheth through three waves of ultras and call imba. Later, IdrA destroying everyone in KotB is completely ignored when Silver beats IdrA 2-0. So people are dumb about tournament results, imo. That's the opposite of science.
This is just so wrong it's hard for me to start =/.
Given that I'm essentially playing the role of a statistics textbook in this thread, that's an interesting reaction.
Tournaments are the #1 source of data to identify balance issues. While it's a smaller sample size we know that a) we're dealing with the highest caliber of players, b) all of said players are playing to the best of their ability because $ is on the line. Plus it's our biggest source of data of specific match-ups.
Second people selectively viewing tournament results has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VALUE OF LOOKING AT TOURNAMENT RESULTS. That's just so absurd I can't believe you said it. Just because some bozos decide to only focus on high profile zerg losses doesn't mean that taking an objective look at all tournament results is worthless. I mean is that really the argument you are putting forward?
I'm not quite sure what you're so upset about. The fact of tournament results is that there are very few games played. This results in extremely small data pools, which is always bad. You can't conclude much scientifically from 10 tournament TvZ games dominated by 2 or 4 players.
Bnet matchmaking is determined by performance. Tournament rosters are determined by invitation or popularity... not an objective system. This makes the "match-ups" rather anecdotal.
But I'm not outright opposed to looking at tournament results. If you can prove, with numbers, that zerg is underrepresented or underperforming in recent tournaments, I'll listen.
Lastly your comments on 50/50 make absolutely no sense to me. Do you believe Blizzard is looking at every single game played and deciding that the players are of equal skill? How in the world could they possibly tell from the data that we have that there is a big balance issue?
The Bnet matchmaking system determines ratings on the basis of past performance. If TvZ is 50/50 controlling for rating (at high levels, when lots and lots of games have been played), then TvZ is balanced -- unless zergs are underrepresented in diamond. They're not, relative to the total percentage of players who play zerg.
A lot of the affects of a matchup imbalance are going to be hidden by differences in player skill and the fact that only roughly 1/3rd of the games are played with that matchup. As an example of how much this affects things lets say you play 100 games vs a hypothetical evenly matched blob of players. If you have 50/50 for 2 matchups and 40/60 for one matchup you'd still be expected to win 46 of your 100 games. The fact that it's 1 of 3 possible matchups means the actual affect, even if the imbalance is pretty significant, appears as a very tiny thing. When you factor in how ELO fudges this and drives it more towards 50% it's obvious that you can't just look at the data we have.
Your hypothetical would predict an underrepresentation of zergs at the high levels. This doesn't seem to be the case.
Besides the quote starts with, "I have the same feel, but the numbers don't support it..." and he goes on to say, "We are studying the issue and trying to figure out if we should do something..." That seems to imply that they're not sure of the data and need further analysis.
Well, they're approaching it scientifically and diplomatically. They're saying: "We're thinking about it." I'm doing the same thing. The current data does not seem to imply that zerg is underpowered in any way. I've yet to see numerical or statistical evidence that zerg IS underpowered.
You treat diamond like it's 1 skill level. Diamond goes all the way from the lowly protoss who can only a-move gateway forces up to the pro level players. A prime example is the game I just played vs another Zerg. He makes 4 zerglings, a spine crawler on the edge of his own creep, and then a late batch of 2 roaches. When he losses over 1/2 his economy right then and there (and eventually the game) he says, "Omg lame rush." His rating? 468 Diamond with 64 wins. He's played over 100 Diamond rating games and doesn't even know the core basic fundamental of how ZvZ works? Give me a break. Diamond is not one skill level and is in fact quite a large spread of players of many different skill levels. "High Level" cannot be considered Diamond, there's just too many people in Diamond for that distinction to work. If you say took Diamond players about 500 ranking then you might start to have something worth going on.
I'm not treating diamond like it's one skill level. I'm treating it like it's the top 5% of the playerbase.
Matchmaking is not made on the basis of league. It is made on the basis of rating. Do you think that rating is a bad way of determining skill level? Because it's determined by who you beat and who you don't.
While tournaments have their own issues when looking at stats they're way better than ladder. They take the highest skills of players and focus just on those. Representation isn't as much of an issue if you are looking for matchups and win %s. Do you really believe there are players out there who can play significantly better than IdrA, TLO, Tester and others but isn't being invited to a tournament? Do you really think there's a Zerg player out there who's completely solved ZvT but never players tournaments? Give me a break. Any player with that kind of jump in skill over our current roster would at the very least be showing up in spades on open tournaments of which there are plenty.
Well, there are lots of players in the top 20 of every region's ladder who I've rarely seen in tournaments. And my entire point about Korea was that Korean zergs seemed to do pretty well against terrans. Again, this is an entirely subjective point -- they seemed to.
Anyway, Tester is like 10th on the Korean ladder, fyi. Who's first? Last time I looked (couple hours ago), it was CheckPrime, the zerg. Second place was another zerg. Third was a terran.
((EDIT: Tester is currently 22nd on the Korean ladder. CheckPrime is 1st.))
The only thing is you haven't proved they've done well against Terrans. You've just proved that Zerg are represented quite well in the ranking system and that they play vs Terrans ~34% of the time. I agree that seems to suggest that koreans do alright vs zerg, but it's still my same basic point that the data isn't enough to really prove anything. I also do agree with Ace that there hasn't been enough tournaments to completely decide definitively anything, but it'd at least be a start.
The thing about representation is that even if there are some strong ladder players who aren't playing in tournaments, there's no evidence that they'd be significantly better than the current pool to the point of skewing the data if it shows it's in Terran's favor.
It's a really tough thing to make a call on. As we know from BW you can leave a game for years and something can still evolve that shows it's balanced. Or you could leave a game for years and it'd still remain shit. I think either way the consensus is that ZvT plays like crap currently (for the Zerg at least) regardless of win % and Zerg really don't think they have many options to expand their play to make it feel better. If it's not imbalanced it still might warrant changes horizontally (not a straight buff for either side, but changes that make it more even for control of the game).
On August 07 2010 10:10 Konsume wrote: I'm just going to say this:
IdrA --> Thinks about switching to Terran, plays 1/3 of his time on his Terran account and clearly stated that zergs are not worth shit anymore
Dimaga --> Did some all ins every game since he knows he barely stand a chance vs them.
MoMaN --> Switched to Terran... straight pipe... he learned them in a couple days and now wins alot with them.
Artosis --> Eventho he will mostly repete everything that is said by IdrA.... he's still saying that zerg needs something
SLush --> Says that Terran is too strong economicaly and also says that tanks and thors are a pain to deal with. Also he said that zerg has no early harass and that it's hard to deal with all the crap that terran players can throw at thim.
Sheth --> I don't know his stances on the subject..
MoMaN switched to terran? Could you link a news item for that, please? I was watching his stream like two days ago, and he was still zerg.
Did Dimaga actually say that he all-ins because he doesn't think he stands a chance versus toss, or are you just going off of what IdrA said? Because I know IdrA claims that, but IdrA spent his entire BW career proclaiming how badly OP protoss was.
Also, could you link some of SLush's comments on the subject?
I wonder what CheckPrime and Cool think, personally. My entire point in all of this was: a) Perception is not reality; and b) the Korean zergs seem to be doing pretty well.
The only thing is you haven't proved they've done well against Terrans. You've just proved that Zerg are represented quite well in the ranking system and that they play vs Terrans ~34% of the time. I agree that seems to suggest that koreans do alright vs zerg, but it's still my same basic point that the data isn't enough to really prove anything. I also do agree with Ace that there hasn't been enough tournaments to completely decide definitively anything, but it'd at least be a start.
The thing about representation is that even if there are some strong ladder players who aren't playing in tournaments, there's no evidence that they'd be significantly better than the current pool to the point of skewing the data if it shows it's in Terran's favor.
All I'm doing is providing evidence that zerg is not underpowered, man. B)
It sounds like you want a more recent in-depth comment from Blizzard on TvZ win-rates. I hope they give you that. But I also think they would definitely have done something if it were clear to them that TvZ is much more easily won by the T at high levels.
On August 07 2010 10:00 ToxNub wrote: i am happy to present this Zerg Tears replay for the enjoyment of the community: [url blocked]
Good harvest, ToxNub. I was a bit surprised, though. I mean, I thought I was going to see tank and mech battles against 1a hydras but your opponent was raging about bio mech with no siege tanks. Siege tank-less zerg tears are hard to get.
On August 07 2010 10:10 Konsume wrote: I'm just going to say this:
IdrA --> Thinks about switching to Terran, plays 1/3 of his time on his Terran account and clearly stated that zergs are not worth shit anymore
Dimaga --> Did some all ins every game since he knows he barely stand a chance vs them.
MoMaN --> Switched to Terran... straight pipe... he learned them in a couple days and now wins alot with them.
Artosis --> Eventho he will mostly repete everything that is said by IdrA.... he's still saying that zerg needs something
SLush --> Says that Terran is too strong economicaly and also says that tanks and thors are a pain to deal with. Also he said that zerg has no early harass and that it's hard to deal with all the crap that terran players can throw at thim.
Sheth --> I don't know his stances on the subject..
MoMaN switched to terran? Could you link a news item for that, please? I was watching his stream like two days ago, and he was still zerg.
News? why news... he played all the last tournament as terran
On August 07 2010 10:15 kajeus wrote: Did Dimaga actually say that he all-ins because he doesn't think he stands a chance versus toss, or are you just going off of what IdrA said?
Do you need him to say it? He litteraly went ALL IN in each games. I mean... I wouldn't say that he was deseperate if he did some all ins 1-2 games... but basicaly all his ZvT was ALL INS!... says alot... I mean... if you can't see it well sorry bro you must be one hell of a detective.
On August 07 2010 10:15 kajeus wrote: Also, could you link some of SLush's comments on the subject?
I don't need a comment made by SLush.. HE'S HANGING IN MY VENT! We talk alot on vent and he's giving me lots of tips and such. Why would I need to link something from him? Just come and talk with him how about that?
On August 07 2010 10:10 Konsume wrote: I'm just going to say this:
IdrA --> Thinks about switching to Terran, plays 1/3 of his time on his Terran account and clearly stated that zergs are not worth shit anymore
Dimaga --> Did some all ins every game since he knows he barely stand a chance vs them.
MoMaN --> Switched to Terran... straight pipe... he learned them in a couple days and now wins alot with them.
Artosis --> Eventho he will mostly repete everything that is said by IdrA.... he's still saying that zerg needs something
SLush --> Says that Terran is too strong economicaly and also says that tanks and thors are a pain to deal with. Also he said that zerg has no early harass and that it's hard to deal with all the crap that terran players can throw at thim.
Sheth --> I don't know his stances on the subject..
MoMaN switched to terran? Could you link a news item for that, please? I was watching his stream like two days ago, and he was still zerg.
News? why news... he played all the last tournament as terran
On August 07 2010 10:15 kajeus wrote: Did Dimaga actually say that he all-ins because he doesn't think he stands a chance versus toss, or are you just going off of what IdrA said?
Do you need him to say it? He litteraly went ALL IN in each games. I mean... I wouldn't say that he was deseperate if he did some all ins 1-2 games... but basicaly all his ZvT was ALL INS!... says alot... I mean... if you can't see it well sorry bro you must be one hell of a detective.
You mean in the KotB, right? Because he went all-in against White-Ra, too... He made banelings every single game, against a protoss. So it wasn't just his ZvT that tournament. It was his ZvP as well.
Unless you're arguing that Z has no chance against Protoss either...?
Moreover, I seem to remember Dimaga going all-in versus Terran as far as back as March. Before tanks were even used. He invented the baneling bust.
On August 07 2010 10:15 kajeus wrote: Also, could you link some of SLush's comments on the subject?
I don't need a comment made by SLush.. HE'S HANGING IN MY VENT! We talk alot on vent and he's giving me lots of tips and such. Why would I need to link something from him? Just come and talk with him how about that?
Dude, I'd love to talk to SLush. I was just looking for documented specifics, so that I could hear his complaints straight from the horse's mouth.
On August 07 2010 10:13 Camila_br wrote: I remember when boxer bunker rushed yellow like 5 times in a row on a finals, people started saying "tvz imba nerf naw!1".... then came julyzerg, savior, etc...
I remember when Terran was thought to be "weak" before Boxer.
On August 07 2010 10:39 kajeus wrote: You mean in the KotB, right? Because he went all-in against White-Ra, too... He made banelings every single game, against a protoss. So it wasn't just his ZvT that tournament. It was his ZvP as well.
Unless you're arguing that Z has no chance against Protoss either...?
Moreover, I seem to remember Dimaga going all-in versus Terran as far as back as March. Before tanks were even used. He invented the baneling bust.
Not only in the KOTBH, look at all his latest games vs terrans. He's all in vs most of them... I'd say 95% of them.
On August 07 2010 10:39 kajeus wrote: Dude, I'd love to talk to SLush. I was just looking for documented specifics, so that I could hear his complaints straight from the horse's mouth.
Don't worry we talk alot about it lately cause it's an hot subject in our vent. Fredz keeps saying it's balanced cause he's getting owned by SLush and SLush is just saying that it's not THAT bad just that the early and mid game is stupid for zergs.
On August 06 2010 14:26 Geo.Rion wrote: ok, so you are a terran and happy about what s going on, great. And you made a thread about it, pathetic.
btw an admin should ban him for making useless flamebaith topic, seriously there s no use of this topic beside fueling more rage. And it's not funny, if that is what it was meant to be...
I have to agree with this guy. It's not even that funny and OP, you should consider that maybe TvZ IS imbalanced and zergs actually have something to complain about with good reason. making a thread like this is arrogant and obnoxious, especially because you can't prove that TvZ is balanced.
On August 06 2010 14:26 Geo.Rion wrote: ok, so you are a terran and happy about what s going on, great. And you made a thread about it, pathetic.
btw an admin should ban him for making useless flamebaith topic, seriously there s no use of this topic beside fueling more rage. And it's not funny, if that is what it was meant to be...
I have to agree with this guy. It's not even that funny and OP, you should consider that maybe TvZ IS imbalanced and zergs actually have something to complain about with good reason. making a thread like this is arrogant and obnoxious, especially because you can't prove that TvZ is balanced.
Honestly, there seems to be more evidence that zerg is not underpowered than there is evidence that it is underpowered.
I'm still looking for a scrap of statistical evidence that zerg is underpowered.
On August 06 2010 14:26 Geo.Rion wrote: ok, so you are a terran and happy about what s going on, great. And you made a thread about it, pathetic.
btw an admin should ban him for making useless flamebaith topic, seriously there s no use of this topic beside fueling more rage. And it's not funny, if that is what it was meant to be...
I have to agree with this guy. It's not even that funny and OP, you should consider that maybe TvZ IS imbalanced and zergs actually have something to complain about with good reason. making a thread like this is arrogant and obnoxious, especially because you can't prove that TvZ is balanced.
Where did the OP ever state that ZvT was imba or have points that said why ZvT wasn't imba or something like that? It looks like the OP just wanted to make fun of something that has been annoying in both SC2 and in this forum. And tbh, he's brought a bunch of smiles to a lot of people :D
IdrA vs Drewbie. Imo in this game IdrA litteraly outplayed drewbie BY ALOT.... and still... he managed to make the game last 40ish minutes and at some point I taught that drewbie might win.
I really don't agree with the BM IdrA is pulling. But I totaly agree with him tho
message log:
Drewbie: Fake Idra IdrA: Ya Drewbie: Or maybe not Drewbie: why aren't you on asia ;p IdrA: Too early here IdrA: Good players are asleep Drewbie: Oh Drewbie: So you come here to enjoy the lastest cheese IdrA: Asias gayer than us right now actualy IdrA: ZvT at least Drewbie: haha Drewbie: I guess korean T's better IdrA: No, they are horrible IdrA: Just cheesy as fuck IdrA: Buncha fkin war3 players Drewbie: WoW
IdrA: yay for terran Drewbie: agreed
IdrA: This is such a joke Drewbie: T_t IdrA: You're actualy the worst player I've seen IdrA: and it doesn't matter Drewbie: thx
IdrA: Such fucking bullshit Drewbie: I love terran
Drewbie: Awww cmon I wanted to use the 250mm canon IdrA: go fuck yourself
Drewbie: Pewpew Drewbie: I guess I don't raelly need to attack
IdrA: Do you actualy feel any satisfaction IdrA: Playing this Drewbie: It's fucking funny Drewbie: I DON'T THINK IT'S BALANCED Drewbie: lol IdrA: Well no shit?
<Idra finaly sees and opening and takes it and might win the game> IdrA: I want you to take a moment IdrA: and reflect IdrA: on how much a failure you are Drewbie: LOL IdrA: to play like this and still lose Drewbie: Zerg imba Drewbie: T_T Drewbie: Well how would you have played it? IdrA: I wouldn't play terran cause I have self respect (which is a lie since we know he has a T account) Drewbie: Well Drewbie: I played T Drewbie: back when it was the worst race Drewbie: so ;( IdrA: It was never worst, terran players were just bad IdrA: that it seemed bad Drewbie: lies Drewbie: ok GG
I don't get ppl telling terran to play something else i have played terran since beta and was way harder but we didn't change to other races cause real man play Terran baby
Idra has a storng tendency to go for the player and not the game. If I feel at a lose, like I've done a good number of times against T, I will usually just say gg. If I am a tad more frustrated, I will leave without gg. If I am really f'in frustrated and on a losing streak, I will leave with a "TvZ is such a joke" or whatever. And it may not always be warranted, but you know... sometimes you can get too passionate about a game like this
BUT! Even if Idra didn't tackle it as well as he could've, I strongly agree with him in the sense that he played that match very well, and a lot better than his opponent imo. His macro was close to perfect (yes fanboy) I really think it showcases some of the problems - just not really how f'in obnoxious it is to deal with the Terran harrass possibilities at the start of the game. Z always feels like you're forced into all sorts of weird shit
When I play toss, I will be able to take control over the match in another way which is pretty awesome. I must admit I consider switching even if Z is my favorite race and I've played Z all through BW too
The main thing that irritates me as a Terran player is that no matter how I beat a zerg player now, even if the player is utter garbage and only knows how to six pool it's instantly "Oh, terran is imba. IMBA IMBA IMBA."
Lol can't you comprehend that if more than half the zerg players in this game complain of imbalance i nthis matchup cant then you consider there just might be a problem. No joke a zerg player has to be alot better than the terran opponent to win. Our units are situational while your sitting back in your walled off base we need to react to whatever your doing. We dont have a build with such stopping power and versatility as terran. I cant make a build and KNOW it will be effective in this matchup. The whole matchup seems to me a game of stalling till ultras come out and hope theres not a healthy amount of maraudors on the feild. You open with either viking, hellion and if your smart youll bring 6-8 marines with the 2 hellions and either destroy my nat or delay, kill a queen force me to build alot of speed lings.
maybe i could stop this if i luckily scout it while you dont need to scout you just need to know where i am..... You pretty much have a unit that hard counters every single zerg unit and i meen hard. One moment of miss control and your army is gone. Scouting for you entails a scan or that lovely viking crusing around that might aswell make me run hydras all over.. if im lucky to not have gone hard roach. Poppin ovies
So yea i know all the bronze level terrans cock riding you in this thread will flame me but if you cant understand my logic. Play zerg before you make this grand epic post bashing zerg. Like i said if omost every zerg is complaining there must be a problem
On August 07 2010 12:38 PlagueRat wrote: Play zerg before you make this grand epic post bashing zerg. Like i said if omost every zerg is complaining there must be a problem
Well if there is a problem it's really not a question of whether it exists or not it's about whether Blizzard will fix it or not. A lot of people had balance concerns with WC3 that Blizzard just ignored.
On August 07 2010 12:38 PlagueRat wrote: Play zerg before you make this grand epic post bashing zerg. Like i said if omost every zerg is complaining there must be a problem
Well if there is a problem it's really not a question of whether it exists or not it's about whether Blizzard will fix it or not. A lot of people had balance concerns with WC3 that Blizzard just ignored.
This game has been out for less than 2 weeks. Unless there is a critical problem, Blizzard is not going to balance patch a live game unless and until they:
1: Have verified to themselves that there is indeed a problem.
2: Have a solution to the problem.
3: Have verified to themselves that the proposed solution actually solves the problem.
4: Have verified to themselves that the proposed solution does not break the game somewhere else.
Oddly enough, this takes longer than 2 weeks.
It is good that Blizzard doesn't just slam down a balance patch. Even if you agree that Zerg have a real problem with Terrans, you don't want Blizzard to make things worse with a hasty patch.
If you feel you really are unable to enjoy the game in its current state, then put it on the shelf for a little while until Blizzard feels comfortable changing things.
Given perfect play, I think it's pretty much balanced. At the sub-perfect play, it seems much easier to do well with Terran than with Zerg. A Zerg player has to pull out all the stops to deal with anything the Terran player has, while Terran can build pretty much whatever he wants and do well.
I didn't read every post so I'm not sure if someone already mentioned this but as a Zerg player this guide is still helpful. Since Zerg Tears can also be collected in ZvsZ.
Follow the original guide and simply add in some Banelings and get lucky.
Idra has a storng tendency to go for the player and not the game. If I feel at a lose, like I've done a good number of times against T, I will usually just say gg. If I am a tad more frustrated, I will leave without gg. If I am really f'in frustrated and on a losing streak, I will leave with a "TvZ is such a joke" or whatever. And it may not always be warranted, but you know... sometimes you can get too passionate about a game like this
BUT! Even if Idra didn't tackle it as well as he could've, I strongly agree with him in the sense that he played that match very well, and a lot better than his opponent imo. His macro was close to perfect (yes fanboy) I really think it showcases some of the problems - just not really how f'in obnoxious it is to deal with the Terran harrass possibilities at the start of the game. Z always feels like you're forced into all sorts of weird shit
When I play toss, I will be able to take control over the match in another way which is pretty awesome. I must admit I consider switching even if Z is my favorite race and I've played Z all through BW too
Does anyone else think IdrA played that game rather oddly?
His macro is fine, sure -- it's fantastic. But his entire gameplan seems to be: "Once I get ultras, I'll keep making ultras until I win." In making such a hard transition, he sacrificed a lot of mobility and even defensive power (i.e., it became hard to defend his expos from drops). He kept going massss ultra even after drewbie had transitioned to all marauder-thor, and he just moved around in a giant slow ball. He routinely smashed his army into drewbie with his 10 ultras mucking each other up in chokes and giving drewbie tons of free hits without doing much himself.
IdrA seems to have a gameplan, and it seems to be: "Get to ultras." But then he just stays on ultras for 40 minutes. No matter how clear it is that a quick switch to a hydra-ultra army would completely destroy drewbie's standing force.
I prefer Check any day of the week. Look at Check's mass muta against terran -- it's pretty cool. Granted, all of his games feel very aggressive and all-in (not long, safe macro games like IdrA's), but he wins every single time TvZ.
His macro is fine, sure -- it's fantastic. But his entire gameplan seems to be: "Once I get ultras, I'll keep making ultras until I win." In making such a hard transition, he sacrificed a lot of mobility and even defensive power (i.e., it became hard to defend his expos from drops). He kept going massss ultra even after drewbie had transitioned to all marauder-thor, and he just moved around in a giant slow ball. He routinely smashed his army into drewbie with his 10 ultras mucking each other up in chokes and giving drewbie tons of free hits without doing much himself.
IdrA seems to have a gameplan, and it seems to be: "Get to ultras." But then he just stays on ultras for 40 minutes. No matter how clear it is that a quick switch to a hydra-ultra army would completely destroy drewbie's standing force.
I was thinking something similar when I was watching the replay. But after thinking about it Ultras made the most sense for allot of reasons. He had invested allot in their upgrades. And they are the intuitive choice to counter an armored Heavy Thor/Marauder army. They are suppose to counter Armored units. And they are a T3.5 Counter to Armored units so you gota think thats your best option.
I was thinking, "When is he going to get broodlords?" But in the mid game, or middle of that game(It was a long game.) making a big tech switch would of been risky. Since Broodlords are so slow he would of been in a tough spot if he got attacked at any of his expansions and been somewhere else. He would of had to hope he could engage the Main Terran army is a straight up fight. And the Terran army was split up. The main army on the right side of the map and a smaller forced on the left. If he got unlucky he would put himself in a bad spot to lose all his expos and get starved out.
Including a smaller number of Broodlords(which he did eventually do) is a much safer choice. But a small amount of Broodlords don't do anything sense 2-3 vikings will own them. So then you have to invest in Corrupters. But not so many that your ground army is to weak because if you lose that you lost the game.
From watching some of his recent interviews I think that Idra believes that Ultra is the safest choice. And that Corrupters are a bad unit choice since once the air is dead they are useless. Although Broodlords are very strong and maybe the best choice against that army composition I think the map and the position of each players expos and army's made Broodlords a bad choice in this game. He was attacked at his main and expos with drops and straight hit and runs. If he had Broodlords there would of been no way to respond to any of those.
In response to your Hydra/Ultra army. I don't know. Hydra against Terran is normally not a good idea. Terran had upgraded tanks. And could of added in more. Plus allot of the fighting was going on around the right side of the map. Where creep was sparse. He would of been put in allot of spots where his Hydra are out of position or just late to the battle. It might of worked but it would of been a risky move. Just like transitioning into heavy Broodlords.
EDIT: One more thing
In making such a hard transition, he sacrificed a lot of mobility and even defensive power (i.e., it became hard to defend his expos from drops)
He had lings in the mix. Which is Zergs fastest unit. I don't see any better way to defend against drops when your spread over half of a 4 player map. Probably even faster than muta in response time when on creep.
Also it was a natural transition. It was his game plan the whole time. He was upgrading melee and armor in anticipation of his ultras.
Wow, can't believe you took the effort to make such a long thread. Gotta give it to you though, this is funny =D After watching Idra-rage several times I got pretty annoyed with these Zerg players complaining against imbalance. My cousin, a Zerg player is complaning about how to TvZ is imbalanced and I get really fed up sometimes, he refuses to play me 1v1 coz I play Terran exclusively =/ Oh well, but he doesn't cry like Idra at least.
Idra is pro gamer , he relies into balance to earn his paychecks , hes not playing for fun nomatter if this s is a smart move or not.
Atm hes loosing money cause of blandant imbalances for the zerg race both vs terran and toss.
blizzard openly admited that at 200/200 zerg looses both to terran and toss , i dont see though the advantages of zerg ..
clearly in later game both terran and toss can have 10+ baracs or gateways to spam units almost as fast as zerg + also having way more powerfull units through robo or factory or spaceports.
Terms of minerals both due to mules and chronoboost can have better economies at start - esp terrans not to mention the eazy wallins that zerg lacks and the lack of easy scouting in general
fyi is so lame atm for zerg.
Last why some race should not have their owns builds and rely to counter the other race , who thought of that , even if it was true ur always a move behind , always.
Idra has a storng tendency to go for the player and not the game. If I feel at a lose, like I've done a good number of times against T, I will usually just say gg. If I am a tad more frustrated, I will leave without gg. If I am really f'in frustrated and on a losing streak, I will leave with a "TvZ is such a joke" or whatever. And it may not always be warranted, but you know... sometimes you can get too passionate about a game like this
BUT! Even if Idra didn't tackle it as well as he could've, I strongly agree with him in the sense that he played that match very well, and a lot better than his opponent imo. His macro was close to perfect (yes fanboy) I really think it showcases some of the problems - just not really how f'in obnoxious it is to deal with the Terran harrass possibilities at the start of the game. Z always feels like you're forced into all sorts of weird shit
When I play toss, I will be able to take control over the match in another way which is pretty awesome. I must admit I consider switching even if Z is my favorite race and I've played Z all through BW too
Does anyone else think IdrA played that game rather oddly?
His macro is fine, sure -- it's fantastic. But his entire gameplan seems to be: "Once I get ultras, I'll keep making ultras until I win." In making such a hard transition, he sacrificed a lot of mobility and even defensive power (i.e., it became hard to defend his expos from drops). He kept going massss ultra even after drewbie had transitioned to all marauder-thor, and he just moved around in a giant slow ball. He routinely smashed his army into drewbie with his 10 ultras mucking each other up in chokes and giving drewbie tons of free hits without doing much himself.
IdrA seems to have a gameplan, and it seems to be: "Get to ultras." But then he just stays on ultras for 40 minutes. No matter how clear it is that a quick switch to a hydra-ultra army would completely destroy drewbie's standing force.
I prefer Check any day of the week. Look at Check's mass muta against terran -- it's pretty cool. Granted, all of his games feel very aggressive and all-in (not long, safe macro games like IdrA's), but he wins every single time TvZ.
Well, let's look at his options: - Ling/Ultra/Infestor is what he had - Mutas he had and switched out of, if you want to know why, look what happened to the early ones. - Corruptors are a non issue. - Banelings he had in a good amount to handle the marines throughout the game, remember they die epically to any mech or marauder. - Hydras just die to mech - Roaches are a very inefficient 200/200, it means you get 60 roaches rather than 15 ultras and 60 lings. - Broodlords are maybe valid and he got a few at the end, but looking at what happened then, 4-5 vikings counter any number of broodlords aren't accessible as they can sit over marines/thors/tanks which take out any anti air zerg has.
The fact that zerg 200/200 gets killed by protoss is less of a problem because the zerg can hit 200 well before the protoss and attack at that point. Against Terran though the 200/200 zerg will die to 150 food Terran in a defensive position without any chance.
What composition would you suggest against all marauder/thor/tank ? Roaches? Hydras? Mutas? Ideally in fact it would be absolutely pure ling on an open plain, except for the fact that on current maps 250 lings are not an option.
What shocked me the most in the game was a bunch of ultras getting an almost perfect surround on a marine marauder thor ball with a couple tanks. At the end of the battle the losses were still roughly equal. On the other hand if Zerg needs to pull out Terran gets 3-4 free ultras because of small chokes and the all ranged army.
I think one fix, which would not break anything I can think of and would make the matchup more interesting would be to make Thors attack-able as air units like the colossus. This means corruptors would have a use (which they don't unless BCs show up) and Thors would have a proper counter. It wouldn't really affect TvP because phoenixes die to thors regardless and VRs can already attack them, TvT doesn't seem to use thors anyways so wouldn't matter. Corruptors able to attack thors would force some anti air. Corruptors can also be had at the same time (Z t2 versus T t3) which is nice unlike the super slow and expensive broodlords which are way way later.
The more I think about that fix the better idea it seems. It means the all marauder/thor/tank build could be beaten by corruptors with some muta support (with good micro) forcing marines or vikings, which in turn limits availability of anti armor so roaches and ultras become good. If marines are chosen then banelings become an option whereas vikings could open up hydra play if the Terran is tank light. Seems like that would be a relatively nice matchup to play (and again, it changes very little so the side effects are practically non existent).
People talk about Terran like 200/200 is the problem, when really it's not.
The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.
We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.
So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?
Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.
Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.
First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)
Tier 1- Roach pressure. Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings. 55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.
Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this. Tech lab - 25s Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)
That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.
Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).
Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).
Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...
Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s Armory + Thor = 125s 133s = 5 marines Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).
This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.
While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.
Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...
1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions. 2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.
Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.
The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.
So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.
Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
Aren't stats fun?
lol, thank you. Someone had to do it.
My response is way late, but I guess that's what I get for having other stuff to do.
Of all players on Korean servers: 8.56% Random, 39.21% Protoss, 34.51% Terran, 17.73% Zerg Diamond league as a whole: 9.74% Random, 36.11% Protoss, 29.87% Terran, 24.28% Zerg.
LOOK at that gigantic gap. Now, % for each race of only Korean diamond players would be ideal, but oh well.
Look at the percentage that plays zerg in each region: 20.35% NA, 21.13% Europe, 17.73% Korea, 24.20% Taiwan, 20.46% SE Asia, 21.71% Russia, 17.53% Latin America.
Now imagine any reasonable weighted average of those numbers. Around 21% maybe? Less? HOWEVER, what percentage of all diamond players are zerg? 24.28%!! That is not only CLOSE to what would be expected, but ABOVE what would be expected.
((Terrans are 36% of the top 50 in Korea, btw... Zergs are 24% -- way MORE than the percentage who play the race in all of Korea))
I've seen this argument many times before. If somebody hasn't already pointed out you are making a very poor assumption that skill level is evenly distributed.
On August 07 2010 10:13 Camila_br wrote: I remember when boxer bunker rushed yellow like 5 times in a row on a finals, people started saying "tvz imba nerf naw!1".... then came julyzerg, savior, etc...
I remember when Terran was thought to be "weak" before Boxer.
This kind of evolving metagame won't ever happen in SC2 to this kind of degree <3. If it does it will be because of a different tourny mappool or blizzard balance.
On August 08 2010 05:28 Logo wrote: People talk about Terran like 200/200 is the problem, when really it's not.
The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.
We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.
So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?
Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.
Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.
First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)
Tier 1- Roach pressure. Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings. 55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.
Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this. Tech lab - 25s Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)
That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.
Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).
Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).
Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...
Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s Armory + Thor = 125s 133s = 5 marines Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).
This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.
While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.
Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...
1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions. 2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.
Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.
The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.
So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.
Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.
Very nice analysis. The build times and the branching are certainly a core part of the problem. Do you feel this is the only issue are are there any Terran units that are just outright OP.
On August 06 2010 22:29 Shadowed wrote: New version out, changes:
Profile page has been redone, you can now see the region and world rankings for that bracket for every team: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/715900/dayvie Character code is no longer listed, but you can still find it by going to the battle.net page (this will probably not change) Supports random leagues, data has to be loaded for these still so it might take a day or two for the random league rankings to be accurate. Random leagues and team leagues are separate for the purpose of rankings. Example: http://sc2ranks.com/char/us/422331/Fellowshadow
Statistics! http://sc2ranks.com/stats Lets you see the league breakdown by region and overall, race breakdown by league and race breakdown by region
Right now you cannot see the race information for any other brackets except 1v1, this will change thought, as well as some sort of stats on the top players.
And now it's 6:30 AM and the sun is coming out, so try not to break anything for a few hours while I sleep.
Wow, 17.75% of Korean players play zerg, but zergs are 30% of the top 20 in Korea??
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly NOT underpowered to me.
Wow, 34.49% of Korean players play Terran, but Terrans are 43.33% of the top 30 in Korea???
I dunno about you guys, but that sounds astoundingly overpowered to me.
Aren't stats fun?
lol, thank you. Someone had to do it.
My response is way late, but I guess that's what I get for having other stuff to do.
Of all players on Korean servers: 8.56% Random, 39.21% Protoss, 34.51% Terran, 17.73% Zerg Diamond league as a whole: 9.74% Random, 36.11% Protoss, 29.87% Terran, 24.28% Zerg.
LOOK at that gigantic gap. Now, % for each race of only Korean diamond players would be ideal, but oh well.
Look at the percentage that plays zerg in each region: 20.35% NA, 21.13% Europe, 17.73% Korea, 24.20% Taiwan, 20.46% SE Asia, 21.71% Russia, 17.53% Latin America.
Now imagine any reasonable weighted average of those numbers. Around 21% maybe? Less? HOWEVER, what percentage of all diamond players are zerg? 24.28%!! That is not only CLOSE to what would be expected, but ABOVE what would be expected.
((Terrans are 36% of the top 50 in Korea, btw... Zergs are 24% -- way MORE than the percentage who play the race in all of Korea))
I've seen this argument many times before. If somebody hasn't already pointed out you are making a very poor assumption that skill level is evenly distributed.
On August 08 2010 06:38 Grond wrote: Very nice analysis. The build times and the branching are certainly a core part of the problem. Do you feel this is the only issue are are there any Terran units that are just outright OP.
The only Terran unit I have a problem with is the Thor, and only then because of the reasons I stated before. At 60s the Thor is extremely fast to come out for a 6 pop unit and it's incredibly versatile and effective vs ground units. Forcing your Terran opponent to make Thors by making mutalisks really doesn't get you anywhere. It's not like when you force a bio-Terran to make marines by making Mutalisks then crush the marines with banelings. With Thors the only unit that 'crushes' them are ultralisks and infestors with NP, two very gas heavy options to transition to from mutalisks. I don't think I'd mind the versatility if they were a little more difficult to mass and had a training time of 65 or 70 seconds (colossi and ultralisk training time respectively).
Thor is also a nice unit to adjust because it doesn't have much bearing on TvT or TvP from my understanding.
Still I'd say the majority of the issue is on the Zerg side. Terran are really fun and interesting right now, I'd hate to have that taken away from them.
Thor is also a nice unit to adjust because it doesn't have much bearing on TvT or TvP from my understanding.
Still I'd say the majority of the issue is on the Zerg side. Terran are really fun and interesting right now, I'd hate to have that taken away from them.
What I said above:
I think one fix, which would not break anything I can think of and would make the matchup more interesting would be to make Thors attack-able as air units like the colossus. This means corruptors would have a use (which they don't unless BCs show up) and Thors would have a proper counter. It wouldn't really affect TvP because phoenixes die to thors regardless and VRs can already attack them, TvT doesn't seem to use thors anyways so wouldn't matter. Corruptors able to attack thors would force some anti air. Corruptors can also be had at the same time (Z t2 versus T t3) which is nice unlike the super slow and expensive broodlords which are way way later.
The more I think about that fix the better idea it seems. It means the all marauder/thor/tank build could be beaten by corruptors with some muta support (with good micro) forcing marines or vikings, which in turn limits availability of anti armor so roaches and ultras become good. If marines are chosen then banelings become an option whereas vikings could open up hydra play if the Terran is tank light. Seems like that would be a relatively nice matchup to play (and again, it changes very little so the side effects are practically non existent).
Thor is also a nice unit to adjust because it doesn't have much bearing on TvT or TvP from my understanding.
Still I'd say the majority of the issue is on the Zerg side. Terran are really fun and interesting right now, I'd hate to have that taken away from them.
What I said above:
I think one fix, which would not break anything I can think of and would make the matchup more interesting would be to make Thors attack-able as air units like the colossus. This means corruptors would have a use (which they don't unless BCs show up) and Thors would have a proper counter. It wouldn't really affect TvP because phoenixes die to thors regardless and VRs can already attack them, TvT doesn't seem to use thors anyways so wouldn't matter. Corruptors able to attack thors would force some anti air. Corruptors can also be had at the same time (Z t2 versus T t3) which is nice unlike the super slow and expensive broodlords which are way way later.
The more I think about that fix the better idea it seems. It means the all marauder/thor/tank build could be beaten by corruptors with some muta support (with good micro) forcing marines or vikings, which in turn limits availability of anti armor so roaches and ultras become good. If marines are chosen then banelings become an option whereas vikings could open up hydra play if the Terran is tank light. Seems like that would be a relatively nice matchup to play (and again, it changes very little so the side effects are practically non existent).
Thoughts?
The biggest problem is that it would have drastic effects on TvT--specifically, it would pretty much kill Marauder/Thor based builds because Vikings would be able to destroy Thors well before they could threaten Tanks in a normal Tank/Viking composition, especially given the relatively poor anti-armor damage that Thors have vs. air.
People talk about Terran like 200/200 is the problem, when really it's not.
The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.
We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.
So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?
Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.
Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.
First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)
Tier 1- Roach pressure. Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings. 55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.
Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this. Tech lab - 25s Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)
That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.
Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).
Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).
Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...
Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s Armory + Thor = 125s 133s = 5 marines Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).
This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.
While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.
Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...
1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions. 2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.
Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.
The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.
So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.
Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.
This is a good post. I don't think it addresses everything I would put in such an essay (were I enlightened enough to make one), but there are some very good points in here. One of the few posts about this problem that I actually enjoyed reading and felt I learned something from.
People talk about Terran like 200/200 is the problem, when really it's not.
The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.
We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.
So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?
Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.
Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.
First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)
Tier 1- Roach pressure. Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings. 55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.
Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this. Tech lab - 25s Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)
That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.
Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).
Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).
Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...
Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s Armory + Thor = 125s 133s = 5 marines Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).
This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.
While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.
Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...
1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions. 2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.
Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.
The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.
So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.
Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.
This is a good post. I don't think it addresses everything I would put in such an essay (were I enlightened enough to make one), but there are some very good points in here. One of the few posts about this problem that I actually enjoyed reading and felt I learned something from.
edit: format
Yeah, it's by no means comprehensive. As a lengthy post I didn't really want to add too much more to it because then you risk TLDR or someone cherry picking 1 thing that's wrong and ignoring the rest of it. Thanks for the positive words though, I hope it at least shows some Terrans why this matchup is really frustrating to Zerg players.
On August 08 2010 07:13 TheYango wrote: The biggest problem is that it would have drastic effects on TvT--specifically, it would pretty much kill Marauder/Thor based builds because Vikings would be able to destroy Thors well before they could threaten Tanks in a normal Tank/Viking composition, especially given the relatively poor anti-armor damage that Thors have vs. air.
I was not aware of thors used in TvT (thought that was just boring tank viking ... with occasionally a marauder rush). What are the thors actually used for that marauders can't do better in TvT?
On August 08 2010 07:13 TheYango wrote: The biggest problem is that it would have drastic effects on TvT--specifically, it would pretty much kill Marauder/Thor based builds because Vikings would be able to destroy Thors well before they could threaten Tanks in a normal Tank/Viking composition, especially given the relatively poor anti-armor damage that Thors have vs. air.
I was not aware of thors used in TvT (thought that was just boring tank viking ... with occasionally a marauder rush). What are the thors actually used for that marauders can't do better in TvT?
Their really big.
... I'm not kidding, it means they soak tank fire better.
And they kill clumped vikings decently without having to go air.
am I the only one that thinks that 4 offensive queens for idra would have ended the match so much earlier? He did have like 4 queens at full energy, he could have build 4 new for lava spawn and take the 4 full ones at an attack behind the ultras. A single queen can heal an ultralisk for 600 hp, that's 100 more than it has. So a single queen at full energy kinda gives you another Ultralisk for 2 supply and 150 minerals. Even better, the first two or so ultralisk that storm into the Terran army usually die without hitting anything and are just sacrificing themselves, but even then the Ultralisks that comes after that still have to walk over the corpses till they can finally attack. If you chain heal the first ultralisks that rush into they won't die and it actually makes your ultras hit so much earlier and longer, and since you can now attack with the zerlings head first, your zerglings can flank after the first siege tank barrage.
Ofcourse this is only possible if you actively spread creep until the very end, something which idra definitely did not do. But I think there's a lot of potential in Queens and healing Ultras.
Maybe there could be a T3 tech that allows queen to move at regular speed at non creep.
On August 08 2010 06:38 Grond wrote: Very nice analysis. The build times and the branching are certainly a core part of the problem. Do you feel this is the only issue are are there any Terran units that are just outright OP.
The only Terran unit I have a problem with is the Thor, and only then because of the reasons I stated before. At 60s the Thor is extremely fast to come out for a 6 pop unit and it's incredibly versatile and effective vs ground units. Forcing your Terran opponent to make Thors by making mutalisks really doesn't get you anywhere. It's not like when you force a bio-Terran to make marines by making Mutalisks then crush the marines with banelings. With Thors the only unit that 'crushes' them are ultralisks and infestors with NP, two very gas heavy options to transition to from mutalisks. I don't think I'd mind the versatility if they were a little more difficult to mass and had a training time of 65 or 70 seconds (colossi and ultralisk training time respectively).
Thor is also a nice unit to adjust because it doesn't have much bearing on TvT or TvP from my understanding.
Still I'd say the majority of the issue is on the Zerg side. Terran are really fun and interesting right now, I'd hate to have that taken away from them.
I agree. My problems with the matchup:
1) Thors invalidate Mutas too fast 2) Roaches blow 3) Super fast Hellion and Reaper harass are difficult to counter and have no downside for the Terran (see #2) 4) Maps with ledges and hard-to-defend naturals are anti-Zerg.
I think there are a lot of things which make this match-up 'un-fun' for Zerg at all levels, and make it really hard for lower-level Zergs (myself included). But since there's no adequate metric for how fun a game is, Blizzard's just going by win rate instead, and that's apparently balanced.
That said, there really is no point raging. You just end up amusing people like the OP. At this point I'm just going to cross my fingers and wait.
i cant belive it. they did it! they take a thread over how to collect there Tears and whine in it.
OP your a master of the Zerg Tear collection. We all have much to learn from you. I only own 4 L zerg tears and i must say i collect the last 7 post of this thread. i hope you dont mind but im sure you have over 1k L yet.
On August 08 2010 10:44 skeldark wrote: i cant belive it. they did it! they take a thread over how to collect there Tears and whine in it.
OP your a master of the Zerg Tear collection. We all have much to learn from you. I only own 4 L zerg tears and i must say i collect the last 7 post of this thread. i hope you dont mind but im sure you have over 1k L yet.
Actually I don't think those posts are particularly whiny but rather a more constructive and analytical approach when faced with a rather clear problem. Call it what you will but when a large majority of Zerg players are seeing an issue (and actually I have met a fair few Terran players who saw it too, to the point of apologizing because they felt outplayed and still just a-moved to a win) it is quite possible there is a real problem.
I think this justifies at least an analysis of the matchup and, where issues are found, a discussion of the possible solutions. There is a large gap between that and random Idra style rage.
Zerg is not underpowered, they suffer from flawed design. For one, creep should NOT be a requirement but a bonus (see Hydra speed, queen off-creep handicap)
On August 08 2010 13:20 FallinDevast wrote: Zerg is not underpowered, they suffer from flawed design. For one, creep should NOT be a requirement but a bonus (see Hydra speed, queen off-creep handicap)
Creep mechanics are one of my favorite parts of Zerg and probably one of the parts I like the design of the most =/.
Hydras still work off creep vs a lot of stuff, it's just riskier. Queens are like that because they are OP if they can move off creep.
So long as tumors = 15 seconds the mechanic works fine.
On August 08 2010 10:44 skeldark wrote: i cant belive it. they did it! they take a thread over how to collect there Tears and whine in it.
OP your a master of the Zerg Tear collection. We all have much to learn from you. I only own 4 L zerg tears and i must say i collect the last 7 post of this thread. i hope you dont mind but im sure you have over 1k L yet.
Actually I don't think those posts are particularly whiny but rather a more constructive and analytical approach when faced with a rather clear problem. Call it what you will but when a large majority of Zerg players are seeing an issue (and actually I have met a fair few Terran players who saw it too, to the point of apologizing because they felt outplayed and still just a-moved to a win) it is quite possible there is a real problem.
I think this justifies at least an analysis of the matchup and, where issues are found, a discussion of the possible solutions. There is a large gap between that and random Idra style rage.
Well said, if nothing else hopefully such discussion can identify problem areas where zerg players can focus their efforts to get better.
On August 08 2010 07:13 TheYango wrote: The biggest problem is that it would have drastic effects on TvT--specifically, it would pretty much kill Marauder/Thor based builds because Vikings would be able to destroy Thors well before they could threaten Tanks in a normal Tank/Viking composition, especially given the relatively poor anti-armor damage that Thors have vs. air.
I was not aware of thors used in TvT (thought that was just boring tank viking ... with occasionally a marauder rush). What are the thors actually used for that marauders can't do better in TvT?
Thor/Marauder is basically the only thing keeping TvT from being boring tank viking lol. And as was said before, Thors do a good job of absorbing tank fire (mitigating splash as well), and deterring Viking spotting (since their attack range is *exactly* equal to Viking sight range).
On August 08 2010 07:13 TheYango wrote: The biggest problem is that it would have drastic effects on TvT--specifically, it would pretty much kill Marauder/Thor based builds because Vikings would be able to destroy Thors well before they could threaten Tanks in a normal Tank/Viking composition, especially given the relatively poor anti-armor damage that Thors have vs. air.
I was not aware of thors used in TvT (thought that was just boring tank viking ... with occasionally a marauder rush). What are the thors actually used for that marauders can't do better in TvT?
Thor/Marauder is basically the only thing keeping TvT from being boring tank viking lol.
Bikes + tanks is really the only thing keeping TvT from being boring.
Knowing Blizzard these Zerg first are going to get nerfed some more before they'll balance this after one and half year of waiting for the first significant patch. Serves 'em right for their whining. Hehehe. Nerf 'em some more I tell you!
On August 08 2010 14:35 Jujimbo wrote: Knowing Blizzard these Zerg first are going to get nerfed some more before they'll balance this after one and half year of waiting for the first significant patch. Serves 'em right for their whining. Hehehe. Nerf 'em some more I tell you!
Immaturity at its finest.
There's nothing wrong with Zerg. I'm rank 4 diamond (610 pts.) as zerg, and thanks to the win % calculator (search the forums, you'll find it.) I know I'm 64% against terran. I'll agree that it's HARDER to win against mech, but the new units from the expansions will hopefully do something to fix that.
Zerg who cry and whine don't understand the concept of Infestors. Get like 10 of them. Send in 3-4 ultras to soak some tank fire, send in the roach hydra crackling ball, and MC all his thors at once. Oh shit, suddenly his own "OMG IMBA UNITS" are raping his tanks....
This thread is hilarious. I commend you, OP. You're a highly skilled terran player with wit literally exploding out of your ass. You put that Zerg player in his place, waiting for him to get too eager and attack you, then punishing his terrible lack of patience by a-moving his base. Just goes to show, number of bases, number of workers, they're all a bunch of gimmicks. Starcraft 2 isn't a "build a good economy" game, it's a real time strategy game. Hence the word strategy, and you're the one with the better strategy: picking the race that has siege tanks.
On August 08 2010 05:28 Logo wrote: People talk about Terran like 200/200 is the problem, when really it's not. + Show Spoiler +
The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.
We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.
So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?
Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.
Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.
First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)
Tier 1- Roach pressure. Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings. 55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.
Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this. Tech lab - 25s Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)
That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.
Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).
Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).
Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...
Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s Armory + Thor = 125s 133s = 5 marines Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).
This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.
While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.
Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...
1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions. 2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.
Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.
The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.
So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.
Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.
This is an absolutely terrific analysis of the issue at hand. The "tl;dr" version would be essentially that Zerg players are being asked to do something that they are not given the tools to do.
It feels like, for everything the Zerg player wants to do, the Terrans have an effective counter tactic that they can get cheaper, quicker, and is more flexible.
The time problem is probably the big one: Terran stuff just seems to build really, really fast. Double-pumping, Turret construction speed, etc, the Terrans always seem to be able to react to a Zerg player faster than the Zerg can react back.
There's nothing wrong with Zerg. I'm rank 4 diamond (610 pts.) as zerg, and thanks to the win % calculator (search the forums, you'll find it.) I know I'm 64% against terran. I'll agree that it's HARDER to win against mech, but the new units from the expansions will hopefully do something to fix that.
So there's "nothing wrong with Zerg", but you're expecting expansions and patches to fix something. If something needs fixing, I think that's a good case for something being wrong. If it's harder to win ZvT than TvZ, then something is wrong.
Great read on the previous page about scouting and I couldn't agree more. One small change I'm sure would help would reduce tank splash radius ever so slightly. Thors also don't need to be hit by air. They're rare enough in tvt as it is. Thors also such vs air. Against everything but clumped mutas really.
I found this thread very informative and helpful. Mostly the section 2B, as before i've had experience identifying crying zergs, but always had trouble with proper extraction and storage. You've helped me solve these problems and i look forwards to comparing our collections later down the track!
I'm just grateful that you found the time out of your busy, busy schedule to type this high-quality guide. The StarCraft community as a whole is better for having read it.
On August 08 2010 05:28 Logo wrote: People talk about Terran like 200/200 is the problem, when really it's not.
The problem is that Zerg has to play the matchup reactionary. Ok, that's part of the flavor of the race so lets go with that. By definition this means Terran gets to be aggressive.
We all know Terrans get to be aggressive, they can hellion harass, bio push, mech push, medivac drop, thor drop, air harass, etc. Obviously not all at once or anything, but they have their options.
So it'd stand to reason that since Terrans get to be aggressive and Zerg has to play reactionary the Zerg are the better race at being reactionary?
Well no, that's actually not the case and the more I play the more I realize this is the imbalance (well this and cliff issues) or at least where the perception comes from.
Lets look at some examples of not all-in strategies that the Terran can react to very late and still be safe vs.
First we can briefly mention baneling busts, as people know Terrans can stop this quite easily and it's clear they do so on reaction or with cost-free pre-planning (basically just how they lay their buildings out will solve this form of pressure)
Tier 1- Roach pressure. Roaches seem like a great way to keep a terran from teching. They can actually damage a wall, they don't melt to hellions, and they're tier 1. But lets look at the timings. 55s for roach warren + 27s to make roaches + ~50s to travel rush distances (this is a low estimate and I based it off near kulas ravine distances which are some of the shortest rush distances in the game, I use a low number because it best favors the zerg side of things). So that's 132s from when you start the roach warren to win your at the Terran's door with roaches. As a 1-base, or in general early roach opening this is going to come out fairly early on in the game so you can expect 4-6 roaches in your first push.
Meanwhile lets look at how long it takes the Terran to prepare a defense for this. Tech lab - 25s Marauder - 30s (bunker can be built simultaneously and bunker + marauder + possible some repair action will hold the wall vs roaches)
That's right 55s to have an adequate defense vs 4-6 roaches. That means as long the Terran scouts the roaches by the time they're DONE building he'll have adequate defense up in time to hold that pressure.
Lets compare that to something like defending Hellion Harass, even if you scout the hellions as they leave your base the only defense that may be able to get up in time is blocking your ramp with your queen or roaches. Possibly, depending on map distance you may be able to have a batch of roaches or lings spawn the moment the hellions get there if you queue them the moment the hellions leave base (hellions are 2x as fast as roaches, if it takes roaches 50s to travel to the enemy ramp it takes hellions 25s). Spine crawlers take 50s so they're too slow to make on reaction. Also note that defending with zerglings on reaction would require you to have the larvae available (need at least 2 per hellion) and hellions can micro around roaches. So pretty much you either need the ramp blocked, spine crawlers, or both (if on 2 bases).
Next take a look at mutalisks. To make mutalisks requires 133s for the first batch from the moment you place the spire + travel time (dunno a good number to use for air distance to estimate with).
Now lets look at the possible Terran responses...
Engineering bay + missle turret(s) = 85s Armory + Thor = 125s 133s = 5 marines Also note these sets of responses are not mutually exclusive and can all be done in parallel (resources permitting).
This means the Terran has 48s + Air distance to start the engineering bay or 8 seconds + air distance to start the armory (provided they don't already have the buildings for upgrades). That's a significant amount of game time to have to prepare a defense on reaction.
While you can't take stuff like this out of context, I think it's a big part of the perceived imbalanced (regardless of if it exists or not). What makes this even worse is how vague Terrans can be.
Take for example some situations I've seen by Terran players...
1. Barracks -> reactor + factory. You scout that, so what is the enemy going? Most likely hellions. 2. Then they add a Star port and tech lab to the barracks. What is the Terran going now? You'd probably guess medivacs and a bio push if you don't get a good scout of their base, if you see there's only one 1 barracks it becomes a little easier but there is still a lot of options. Are they going to put the factory on the tech lab and make tanks? Are they going to make vikings from the star port? Are they going to make banshees from the starport by putting it on the tech lab? Are they going to build up a marauder hellion push with a viking in there for harass? Are they going for a hellion medivac drop? Are they going for a Thor medivac drop? Until you can actually see the buildings in a settled position training units you don't know what's coming.
Even worse is you don't know what's coming after the first wave. A great example of this is banshees where a single banshee means you only want to defend with queens or your're putting yourself behind. Even 2 banshees warrants only a queen defense (maybe some infestors as well). However if the person decides to pump 5 banshees before taking the starport off the tech lab then you need a dedicated system of air defense and a completely different response that CANNOT be done on reaction.
The last part of this triforce of Zerg woe is overdefense. On the Terran side a Terran player might build 2-3 thors and 3-4 missile turrets to what ends up only being 4-5 mutas. Well the terran has wasted the money on turrets, and has Thors which are great units regardless of what they face (excluding broodlords). Meanwhile they can use their wall and siege tanks to wait until that lapse in investment becomes less significant. As players mine and spend more and more spending several hundred resources on turrets becomes less of an issue. On the zerg side this doesn't happen though. The defenses they need to prepare for something like vikings or banshees (hydras, extra queens, and/or spore crawlers) don't necessarily carry the same utility. Hydras are poor in ZvT because they melt to hellions and tanks for example. The 2nd part of the problem is Zerg can't be defensive until the resources don't matter as much. Without a defensive gameplan the Zerg is relying on all of the resources they can scrap together to make sure they don't die. While in some situations the game will progress on to when the resources don't matter it's never the less always a tough choice for zerg. If they over commit in the wrong type of defense they run a much higher risk of dieing than the Terran does and can't hope that their defensive setup (of which they have none because it's zerg) will hold out.
So put together the above situation and consider the needs of scouting and everything else. You have to scout the factory+reactor going down, the switch of the factory to the reactor, the tech lab going down, the starport going down, the starport moving to the tech lab/reactor or staying put, the first wave of units to come out of the reactor or base starport (vikings or medivac), whether or not the starport switches at that point, whether or not the factory is staying on the tech lab, reactor, or nothing. All that just to determine what general unit composition the Terran is going + you still need to know things like expansions and any other buildings in his base you might not see yet. That's an insane amount of branching points for the Terran and we're only talking about 1 build/situation and one 2 minute span of the game.
Now I'm not posting this as proof of an imbalance, other parts of the matchup may make the win %s stay even, but I feel like so many Zerg and other players misunderstand why and how the matchup is imbalanced. As far as I can tell this is what really makes the situation tough and feel wrong to so many zerg players. So hopefully it at least gets the point across of how overwhelming and futile a lot of Zerg play feels when pitted up against Terran. Not only do the Terrans get to react incredibly well to the Zerg, but they get this great aggressive game because they can hide their intentioned form of aggression or harassment for so very long, even if the zerg is scouting an incredible amount.
Good analysis. In pretty much any high level ZvT, if you see the Zerg try to go mutas, the Terran will have 1 thor + turrets at both bases in time before they even arrive, making it pretty much useless. Meanwhile, the thors can then be immediately used to counter push together with hellions to win the game. 3-5 thors + hellion support that early is pretty much unbeatable if they invest heavily into mutas, especially since they nerfed neural parasite for some ungodly reason.
Same with the roach busts... just watch Dimaga vs IntoTheRainbow for perfect example of easy Terran defense after scouting it. On the other hand, Zerg have to guess what the Terran is going to make from a variety of lethal options and prepare a defense for it BEFOREHAND without even knowing for sure which one it is, since scouting is so difficult. If they guess wrong, they'll be behind for the rest of the game and could possibly even lose to a timing push. If they guess right, they'll stop the push and be on equal footing, since they can't really actually punish the Terran by immediately countering due to wall + sieged tanks.
On August 08 2010 10:44 skeldark wrote: i cant belive it. they did it! they take a thread over how to collect there Tears and whine in it.
OP your a master of the Zerg Tear collection. We all have much to learn from you. I only own 4 L zerg tears and i must say i collect the last 7 post of this thread. i hope you dont mind but im sure you have over 1k L yet.
Actually I don't think those posts are particularly whiny but rather a more constructive and analytical approach when faced with a rather clear problem. Call it what you will but when a large majority of Zerg players are seeing an issue (and actually I have met a fair few Terran players who saw it too, to the point of apologizing because they felt outplayed and still just a-moved to a win) it is quite possible there is a real problem.
I think this justifies at least an analysis of the matchup and, where issues are found, a discussion of the possible solutions. There is a large gap between that and random Idra style rage.
Yeah they got really nice after the 17th page, but before that it was a veritable goldmine of QQ. Seriously go read page 2 or 3 lol.
On August 09 2010 02:29 MoMaN- wrote: hi, sorry for this but i never switched Terran and i will not ;D your rep its not me if you look ;D Sorry for this!
On August 06 2010 12:53 Endymion wrote: So what exactly is the point of this post? Are you complaining about Zergs crying about imbalance, or just saying that they have absolutely no balance or validity? Or maybe your just saying that IdrA cries a lot?
On August 08 2010 14:35 Jujimbo wrote: Knowing Blizzard these Zerg first are going to get nerfed some more before they'll balance this after one and half year of waiting for the first significant patch. Serves 'em right for their whining. Hehehe. Nerf 'em some more I tell you!
Immaturity at its finest.
There's nothing wrong with Zerg. I'm rank 4 diamond (610 pts.) as zerg, and thanks to the win % calculator (search the forums, you'll find it.) I know I'm 64% against terran. I'll agree that it's HARDER to win against mech, but the new units from the expansions will hopefully do something to fix that.
Zerg who cry and whine don't understand the concept of Infestors. Get like 10 of them. Send in 3-4 ultras to soak some tank fire, send in the roach hydra crackling ball, and MC all his thors at once. Oh shit, suddenly his own "OMG IMBA UNITS" are raping his tanks....
"610 pts." isn't the best way to start off if you want to be taken seriously.
Hypothetically, even if the game was 100% balanced right now (it's not), the vast majority of Zergs agree that ZvT is not fun at all for the Zerg player. Roughly only 19% of people are playing Zerg at the moment. Isn't that incentive enough to help us out a little bit?
On August 08 2010 14:35 Jujimbo wrote: Knowing Blizzard these Zerg first are going to get nerfed some more before they'll balance this after one and half year of waiting for the first significant patch. Serves 'em right for their whining. Hehehe. Nerf 'em some more I tell you!
Immaturity at its finest.
There's nothing wrong with Zerg. I'm rank 4 diamond (610 pts.) as zerg, and thanks to the win % calculator (search the forums, you'll find it.) I know I'm 64% against terran. I'll agree that it's HARDER to win against mech, but the new units from the expansions will hopefully do something to fix that.
Zerg who cry and whine don't understand the concept of Infestors. Get like 10 of them. Send in 3-4 ultras to soak some tank fire, send in the roach hydra crackling ball, and MC all his thors at once. Oh shit, suddenly his own "OMG IMBA UNITS" are raping his tanks....
"610 pts." isn't the best way to start off if you want to be taken seriously.
610 points... that's a lot of points... lol.
But yeah, not the best way to start. Hell I'm ranked mid-20's with about 700 points in diamond league and I'm terrible. What the post a couple posts above said is pretty true. Scouting versus a terran's ability to be so flexible is very difficult. Coupled with the harassment they can apply beforehand, and it can get extremely tricky.
You have to be an excellent Z player to defend (or they have to be pretty terrible in their execution).
Dude I refuse, you must have me confused! With some other race (I'm not like you T, baby) Your bridges were burned, and now it's your turn (It's your turn!) To cry, cry me a river (Go on and just) Cry me a river-er (Go on and just) Cry me a river (Baby go on and just) Cry me a river-er, yea yea..
Queen buff is actually Browder and friends' attempt at decreasing the world supply of Zerg tears therefore driving up the value of their massive stock that they've accumulated through gratuitous destructible rocks.
That is Blizzard's most valuable asset, WoW be damned.
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/gMooC.gif)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/makzN.jpg)
.
![[image loading]](http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac73/WholeGurn/MSPaint/italianhydralisk.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/BHOHq.jpg)
. And the responses surely did deliver. I bet talecK could soon open a swimming pool lol.
Even though I'm a Zerg-only player myself the Idralisk is always a bit funny 
