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On August 17 2010 03:07 Konsume wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2010 01:31 Umie wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
as someone who's been playing terran since 1998, and been in sc2 beta from the first wave of invites, i'll have to politely disagree with you OP. you do get two points right: zerg are tougher to learn than terran which is why we are seeing less of them, and lurkers brought quite a bit of depth to BW.
T dont actually have that many more viable openings than Z. reapers, ghosts, tanks, dropships (?), and vikings are very situational early game. this leaves us with hellions (to mech, fast expand or switch to bio), bio ball (to fast expand and/or mech), and shee harass.
secondly, Z have some very powerful counters to T openings. mass speedlings/banes utterly decimates any pure mech opening. one base roach play is very strong against a hellion opening. mass speedlings/banes into fast mutas can majorly screw a bio ball opening. mid/late game, rauders/thors are strongly countered by lings/banes/hydras. the broodlord hard counters all of terran ground, and if youre worried about viks, get a dozen mutas.
thirdly, as mentioned above, lurkers did bring that x factor to ZvT in BW but now we have the infestor. ive seen some extremely creative and effective uses of the infestor.
in conclusion, while i may not be one of the top terrans in NA, i am ranked 3rd to 5th in my division. my experience against Z has been opposite of yours. i find Z have a plethora of viable strategies against T, and some fairly strong counters. in addition, i much prefer ZvT in sc2 compared to BW.
are you kidding me?
banes vs. wall
banes/speedlings into fast muta switch is deadly and one of the most popular zerg strats
one base roach is how you counter hellions. just sayin. if you know how to transition out of it, it's great.
thors very much do get countered by hydras. you know about focus firing?
bc vs brood? if a terran invests in bc's, it's gg for him lol.
I'm sorry if it seems offensive... but it's not ment to be. You might have been playing terran since 1998 but you surely haven't played terran at an high level or even made it to C+ cause I have never heard of you. You are litteraly speaking without knowing anything right now! Saying that T doesn't have "more" openings than Z is being totaly ignorant on the matter. I'm sorry but to think that your 1st building can get "marines, marauders, reapers" and than your second building can get you "hellions and tanks" compared to "zerglins OR roaches OR banelings" isn't giving you much options is totaly retarded. Hell terrans dictate the zerg opening as if zergs fail to scout the opening it can lead into a quick terran win and I'm sorry if you are still getting ling busted after (5) five months (don't know if you got beta or not, doesn't matter much) but... if it's the case you still have ALOT to learn from your race eventho you seem to have played it till 1998!! Also... pro terrans such as qxc showed us that it is POSSIBLE to own roaches with hellions with good micro, lz showed us that it is also doable with reapers and many other showed us the immense flaws that zerg has by abusing hellions and banshees/vicking together. To say that zerg has stronger build orders than terran is again to be super ignorant of terran possibilities. Infestors, altho I agree that is super good... comes way too late in the game and with its recent nerfs "NP being a research and a 12 sec ability" makes it kinda dump for the gaz cost. It also comes VERRY late in the game due to the super harass. Also saying that 1 base play is good vs terran is again pretty ignorant on the match up. Yes it can do so far but at one point if you're not taking an expand and start droning... terrans will have 1 expo on you since harass on a terran is almost impossible. I'm sorry but "muta harass is getting owned by 2-3 missle turret or 1 thor. Nydus is a lol cheese that works 2% of the time and massive drops comes only SUPER late in the game. and on your second post I can see that you have strange "mecanics" or again you're just ignorant on the ZvT matter (I vote for the former). Altho I agree that zerg players arn't at their best right now... as an owner of 3 accounts (one of each race, all in diamond @ 500+) and terran being my highest altho I played most of the time with the zerg one... I can see that there is a staight problem in the ZvT matchup. Put it on the lacks of units, maps that favors terran or any other bullcrap that you want to put it but I think that the OP did an EXCELLENT job at showing what's going wrong and to all terrans saying that zergs needs to use mobility... well I play both races and I find that terran is WAYY more mobile and covers alot more than Z can. Nydus isn't a solution. On a final note... I want to point out that pros just to name some: IdrA, Dimaga, Sheth. Machine, SLush, Check (who said that he thinks about switching to protoss) and more. If those guys (they are the zergs figure) thinks that there is something wrong.... than MAYBE in your brains.. it should ring a bell no? .. unless you want to see TvT finals that's what I have to say on the matter.
Great post i dont think Umie knows what he is talking about based on the posts ive seen of his.
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From a relative noob here's a serious question. Someone explain to me why if terran is in fact overpowered there is not an elite terran player dominating the tournament scene. If the imbalances were as glaring as people are making them out to be it would only make sense that the elite players of that race would be posting results that are unattainable to the other two races. That simply is not happening. So while you could argue that Terran may be easier to be "good" with, the statistics simply don't seem to back up a racial imbalance at the highest level. The argument that all the high level Terrans are simply worse than the high level players of the other races to justify this lack of evidence just doesn't hold any water for me. Other than the fact there are more people playing Terran than any other race at all levels I have yet to see any real evidence of this massive gap.
So where am I going wrong here?
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On August 17 2010 03:49 JPSke wrote:
From a relative noob here's a serious question. Someone explain to me why if terran is in fact overpowered there is not an elite terran player dominating the tournament scene. If the imbalances were as glaring as people are making them out to be it would only make sense that the elite players of that race would be posting results that are unattainable to the other two races. That simply is not happening. So while you could argue that Terran may be easier to be "good" with, the statistics simply don't seem to back up a racial imbalance at the highest level. The argument that all the high level Terrans are simply worse than the high level players of the other races to justify this lack of evidence just doesn't hold any water for me. Other than the fact there are more people playing Terran than any other race at all levels I have yet to see any real evidence of this massive gap.
So where am I going wrong here?
Terran is dominating the tournaments. Most terran player are nonamers whereas well known players (and likely better) play the other two races.
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On August 17 2010 03:49 JPSke wrote:
So where am I going wrong here?
here
On August 17 2010 03:49 JPSke wrote:
the statistics simply don't seem to back up a racial imbalance at the highest level.
Statistics ONLY shows 2 things
1. That the B.Net 2.0 match making algorithm is working and is keeping you around 50% wins
2. That there is less zerg players overall.
Than lately there is a tread of pro zerg players switching to either terran or protoss it should indicate something. Why would zerg players switch if they are doing well? Also alot of good terrans admitted that TvZ matchup wasn't fair. Also in tournaments you can see many random terran players emerging in the last few rounds... never a zerg. Have you ever seen an epic comback from zerg? cause I've seen many for terrans. You also ear from P and Z that T is imba... you never ear (or almost never) any complains from T. Finaly it has become obvious for casters that terran has a huge advantage... so if you watch streams of tournaments you'll see alot of (!) from casters.
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Why would that be? Were Terrans underpowered in BW? Why would the high level Terrans be inherently worse than the high level protoss and zerg players? As I said in the post I can buy that the race may be easier to be "good" with, but if it was as bad as everyone is saying it would only take one elite Terran player to completely dominate the tournament scene, and that simply is not happening.
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On August 17 2010 04:02 JPSke wrote:
Why would that be? Were Terrans underpowered in BW? Why would the high level Terrans be inherently worse than the high level protoss and zerg players? As I said in the post I can buy that the race may be easier to be "good" with, but if it was as bad as everyone is saying it would only take one elite Terran player to completely dominate the tournament scene, and that simply is not happening.
Cause terrans can actualy get killed by skilled protoss. So it takes a skilled protoss to kill a terran and then you might have a luckey zerg.
Easy look at SLush's bracket yesterday...
Protoss
Protoss
Protoss
Zerg
Protoss
Terran (lost vs reaper harass vs a no namer that he beats in ladder)
if SLush didn't get a terran in his last round I'm pretty sure he would have made it to the finals 
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The point he makes about options is huge.
I hate to side with the argument for "moving hydra to T1" but it almost sounds the most reasonable.
Before you can get Lair, you're having to prepare for Hellions, Reapers, Banshees, Bio-Pushes... and lets not forget a Macro game (which means you should be makin' Drones).
Sacc'ing overlords is huge- but to either rush to lair or expo and play macro can sometimes be a very hard (and deady) decision. Because if that CC comes floating out really fast, and he can defend it... you now gotta get a 3rd real quick. If you haven't been able to power drones to this point (due to some good harass) or are facing a huge Bio-Ball, ugh... it gets ugly.
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Some changes that I thought up and figured I'd throw into this thread to see what everyone else thinks.
1) Allow Queens to use their spawn larva ability on unit enabling structures (ie Spawning pool, roach warren etc) but the non-hatch structure only produces 3 larva and cannot hold more than 3 at any point in time. I feel like this change would have a two fold effect, it would allow Zerg to make up for any lapse of macro, albeit at a cost, similar to how T can call down multiple mules and how toss can chrono boost multiple buildings at a time to make up for stored up energy. And secondly it would make Zerg a bit more robust when dealing with econ harass and will allow zerg to mass up even more effectively to make up for what the OP believes to be greatly less efficient units in SC2.
Being such a radical change all of the above would be subject to individual tweaking for balance
i.e Only spawning 2 larva on a non-hatch structure? or limiting the larva spawned to only being able to produce whatever unit the structure could make? Pool -> lings, hydra den -> only hydras etc? Or possibly make it so it can only be used on a spawning pool.
2) For a cost, in both minerals and time, allow Zerg to re-enable used creep tumors. That way if T picks off the forward most tumor Zerg doesn't have to either pull a queen all the way to the front to replant or start another line of tumors from home, and it would force T to really push out and exterminate many creep tumors rather than just the one that is the furthest out. It would also mean zerg would be able to spread creep out even more effectively than before and would allow Z to cover multiple lanes with just one creep tumor if left unchecked. In a sense this by itself would be a play, as it would force other players to react by getting mobile detection and having to waste time and resources to keep shutting down tumors and/or force them to make a play to end the game before they got overrun by purple goo.
3) Allow Zerg units to keep their creep movement bonus for a small sliver of time after leaving the creep. Currently your hydras go from sports car worthy speeds to golf cart speeds the moment they leave the goo. But what if they kept the speed for a split second or two after leaving creep? This would effectively extend the range of creep without having to put a creep structure possibly within harm's reach. Zerg would only have to extend creep to just outside another player's door to benefit from it in the case of a full frontal attack (you no longer would have to literally try to get a creep tumor set up right under a tank line). It also wouldn't necessitate covering the entire battlefield with creep, just enough around where you think a fight will go down.
This way the effective reach of a Zerg player remains tethered to the creep, but isn't so harshly leashed by it either. Combined with point 2 I feel like this could greatly alleviate some of the sluggishness some Z players feel about playing with creep. It would also make random overlords spewing creep all over the map a bit more of a wise decision.
4) Give certain zerg units burrow by DEFAULT or by having it baked into a certain upgrade. For example researching roach tunneling claws will give roaches burrow. Overall I feel like burrow is an underused mechanic that most players haven't spent enough time playing around with, but in certain cases like the roach and the infestor I feel like burrow shouldn't be something that you have to get separately, but should come with the package since for both units burrow opens up new ways to use the unit. Naturally some things would have to be tweaked for balance sake but the point is burrow should be reexamined.
Another interesting idea: Also give banelings burrow, BUT burrowing and un-burrowing them takes a bit of time, in addition the un-burrow time is removed with the full Burrow upgrade from the Lair. That way Zerg get access to hilarious Banelings-as-mines play much earlier and makes for an effective deterrent to early bio balls or aggression, but at the same time Zerg has to be smart about his placement of banelings.
Another idea that I had but haven't really thought to much about is possibly changing the damage bonus of banelings to armored or something else. Food for thought.
I would like to say however that for the most part I disagree with this thread. I'm not sure if TvZ really is overwhelmingly in favor of T. I feel that some of Z's more nuanced plays may have yet to reveal themselves and once they do things will work out. Currently zerg presents some major threats already, such as mutalisks.
Mutalisks necessitates either keeping marines home, dropping turrets or getting slow, expensive thors. Which while they do quite well against mutalisks I have yet to see many Z players spread out their mutalisks to negate the Thor's AoE. Something which I feel could either make or break a game early on before a critical mass of thors comes into play. And simply the threat of mutalisks flying into your mineral lines alone is enough to make most T go turtle. At which point Z is virtually free to take over the map. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned that turrets are really good against mutalisks, but this is only true when mutalisks are small in number. And quite frankly well counter-timed turrets or AA should counter mutalisks, thats the whole point of a counter. I don't see a problem here.
Having said that, I will agree that Z openings feel a lot more constricted. Playing T I feel like I have hundreds of openings at my fingertips. With Zerg I feel like its just lair tech or bust (baneling bust that is, get it?). And quite frankly I haven't got too many ideas to change that perception barring adding new units or taking some units down from the tech tree. But I do hope that some of my ideas will give Zerg's few openings a bit more flexibility to make up for the lack of diversity.
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Queens costing 2 food seems to be a lot.
6 hatch you're looking at 12 supply for them.
You can't have them be free- because of massing in endgame etc (sounds dumb untill u have to face 5000 of them).
Just seems odd to me that Zerg has to spend supply just to macro- while Terran buildings don't cost them on the supply end. Or Protoss.
Couple that with the fact that you need MORE units, more PSI, MORE drones (to compensate for income/mule)... you're looking at Supply being a big part of the crunch IMO.
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The whole "T has more options" problem over Z seems to stem from this (interchangeable) tech lab system, which honestly baffles me when you compare it to the Z's system of "get a new building for every single unit".
For example, a T just needs to get a tech on his barracks and he gets access to two new units, rauder and reaper. For Zerg to get access to either bling or roach, they need to get two separate new buildings, both of which cost additional time and gas, and then they need to get upgrades for those units if they plan on using them (which all cost a lot more than 50/50 conc shells).
A 1/1/1 T has access to every single unit in the game for T except ghosts and BCs and since tech labs are interchangeable you can do goofy stuff like rushing banshees, and no T unit except maybe the siege tank is reliant on getting upgrades for just their basic usage, they are merely vastly improved once you get each unit's specific upgrade (preigniter, reaper speed, banshee cloak).
Meanwhile, let's take the equivalent of a 1/1/1 for Zerg (pool, lair, and infestor pit). Z has access to only 5 units, three of which are drone queen and overlord. Every single zerg unit aside from those three are a separate and different investment that costs time and gas even when you don't factor in that most of them are useless until you get their upgrades. A Z going 1hatch muta for instance can't easily transition into roach hydra, whereas a T can use hellions to harass and then transition that factory into tank/thor production and not have lost anything except the cost of the hellions.
This also adds to the difficulty of scouting. Even when you manage to get your sac ovie into the guy's base past the rines and see that he's going 1/1/1, that doesn't really tell you for sure if he's going hellion harass or banshee rush or planning a doom drop. Whereas if the T player simply scans a Z and sees the baneling nest, he knows for a fact the Z is getting banelings, or same with mutas, or hydras, or any Z unit.
T has so much more flexibility over Z it's not just an imbalanced matchup, it's Z being a poorly designed race while T is a perfectly polished one. This clearly isn't a case of just T being the campaign race so it's had more time to be worked on than the other races, since P is also a well designed race in comparison to Z. So this is a Zerg-specific problem.
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Edit: also, the post above mine (krigwin) is very true. And if you scout a terran going 1-1-1 you need to tech lair asap, get an overseer vs banshees, possibly spire/hydraden or at least extra queens vs viking/banshee and maybe baneling/infestationpit if he was just going 1-1-1 for quick medivac for his bioball.
On August 17 2010 03:52 tacrats wrote:
Terran is dominating the tournaments. Most terran player are nonamers whereas well known players (and likely better) play the other two races.
This. I've seen replays in eyes of top zergs who lost to noname terrans and the most frustrating thing that goes hand in hand with the issues described here, is that the terran almost never scouts the zerg beyond the initial scv that sees a spawningpool finishing and then dying to the two first lings.
Yesterday i saw like 2 streams and 1 replay of the matchup where the zerg lost to a terran who had decided beforehand on what opening to do and could happily tech there with no knowledge of what the zerg was doing. In eyes showed that the terran hadnt even scouted the zerg main a single time when he won, all he saw was the creep on the mains ramp and an expo. Can't remember their names but it was 'top' players. (some cup final, think it was gosucup).
Remember the commentator going "this thor will be out just in time for the mutas. His gamesense is just so good at this point that he doesnt even need to scout." Right...
Same goes for the game i mentioned from yesterday, CatZ rushed infestors and the terran hadnt scouted his base since his reaper died to roaches. He could have ended the game 20 minutes earlier if he had just used one scan instead of calling down MULES and expanding twice in the early game. Most terrans don't even care to see what the zerg is going , even when CatZ got ultras when most people would still be t2 i dont think the terran had seen him tech Lair even...its just silly.
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I see lots of people suggesting hydras to be t1... This is a problem to me, since Toss as my main race doesn't have a counter to hydra besides collosis and Templar which comes very late.
So I believe Terran needs to be nerfed. Not Zerg buffed. The thing I think needs to be done for Terran is don't make so many openings viable, and it won't effect TvP as much since different openings are used anyways. This would allow Zerg to counter the openings much easier.
Make one or two Terran units hit less. In my opinion a marine should hit 5, or lower it's attack speed by 20% or so. Marines do alot of dps in TvP and Terran has other alternatives besides a bio build in TvP. Vs Zerg lower marine damage would prevent those crazy timing pushes and make Terran less agressive mid game.
Those are the two things Id change and go from there. If I could change one more thing.
Tanks costing 2 supply and hitting 5-15 less in siege mode. Making Zerg stronger in mid game would transition into a very strong late game. If TvZ goes into late game, Zerg has an advantage. Making tanks hit less but cost 2 supply would make them slightly weaker mid game, would be harder to contain and what not, but late game they would become stronger. You could make a big mech ball which wouldn't die to ultras as easy. Just my suggestions.
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Heh this thread is turning into a collection of articles on TvZ balance 
My main problem is that I feel extremely weak when I divide my army as a Z player. Say that a game turns into a long game with multiple expansions on both sides. A T player can take a medivac or two, fill them with some marines and marauders, and go around dropping on my expansions. If things go bad for this drop-team, no sweat. T always has the tanks to fall back on, whereas every bad-gone nydus attempt or drop attempt by Z puts a serious dent in Z's main defence. I just wish that Z had something to fall back on when things went downhill.
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On August 17 2010 04:34 Skillz_Man wrote:
I see lots of people suggesting hydras to be t1... This is a problem to me, since Toss as my main race doesn't have a counter to hydra besides collosis and Templar which comes very late.
Would it be any better if we kept range upgrade still at t2? That would make hydras mainly defensive unit till t2. It would definitely nerf 4 gate push but that would be only good for the game. This and some form of mobility-increase-system-help would be more than enough for me.
If you are going to nerf terran it has to be done in a way it doesnt hurt TvP too much. Like nerfing units which are used often on TvZ but not TvP
(helions and thors maybe? dont know much about TvP),
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Decreasing the build/burrow time of spine crawlers would help improve the matchup. In BW, zergs could respond to a push by throwing down creep colonies and still having sunkens up by the time MM/vulture reached your base. Now we are stuck with investing in one/two crawlers to stop hellion harass.
I don't see how zerg has evolved at all. How did defilers become extinct in the game of darwinism?
Devolution complete.
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This might be better suited to a strategy thread, but I'm finding this matchup much easier when I just suck it up and 14 hatch before pool. Losing to cheese once in a while sucks, but if you want to beat a strong mech terran you pretty much have to take huge economic risks early on to get an edge big enough to win. It also actually feels better vs early hellion and banshee aggression because you have a lot more minerals and can build 4+ queens and spine crawlers while maintaining a decent econ.
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Why don't we up the default speed (on and off creep) of some units? Roaches, Hydras and even lings get a default speed boost. On creep, they get an even bigger boost. In addition, maybe bring the Roach back to one supply.
The problem with buffing Zerg is that it complicates the entire game again and brings us back to square one. So I expect a Terran nerf to align one race to be in accordance with two, instead of buffing one race (Zerg) to be in accordance with one.
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Some have suggested that P is in fact also favored in the ZvP matchup, just that at the moment it looks much better in numbers and the ZvT issue overshadows it, nonetheless, I'd kind of want to see a major zerg overhaul. Either in ZvT or ZvP I haven't really felt like I have any real initiative ever. The marriage to the creep system leads to a pretty bad ability to pressure early on and promotes the macro-based builds that Z have settled into.
Well, this isn't so much a suggestion as personal feelings, but I honestly think that Blizzard would make the game much better for Z by nerfing creep bonus and inject larvae and giving zergs better aggressive options early on, possibly with a worker buff as to actually differentiate between amount of bases, with generally lower supply taken from units in general.
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On August 17 2010 05:02 Drowsy wrote:
This might be better suited to a strategy thread, but I'm finding this matchup much easier when I just suck it up and 14 hatch before pool. Losing to cheese once in a while sucks, but if you want to beat a strong mech terran you pretty much have to take huge economic risks early on to get an edge big enough to win. It also actually feels better vs early hellion and banshee aggression because you have a lot more minerals and can build 4+ queens and spine crawlers while maintaining a decent econ.
I also do this (sometimes even 15h/14p) but occasionally when T scouts this, they just bunker behind the mineral line at nat. Even if you immediately pull two drones off to kill scv, it gets completed often due to convenient scv movement. A skilled terran who has good understanding of the game will do this, and heck, he was probably planning to reaper harass you before hellion anyway. I imagine if hatch before pool FE becomes popular, more T's will catch onto this.
The fluidity of the terran gameplan in this matchup is beyond frustrating...
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EPT
