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On August 27 2010 03:05 brad drac wrote:
2 out of the top 3 in the IEM were zerg, despite the fact there were half as many zergs as terrans in the tournament. People are always acting as if zerg being imbalanced is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow and that anyone who disagrees is just an ignorant terran who's afraid of their easy mode being nerfed. This sort of blind certainty without any particularly compelling evidence does noone any favours, especially with all the whining driving players away from zerg.
If you really think terran is so easy to play, why don't you try it. Reaper micro against roaches or queens, or even mass speedlings is not easy to pull off well. Moving out of your base with thors at the same time mutalisks move in means you're going to lose some shit. Getting your siege tanks in the right position at the right time is not really not easy. The only terran strategy that could accurately be described as "a move to win" is MMM, and if any zerg players doesn't know how to deal with that at this stage, you might want to try playing as protoss(the actual easy mode).
I play random at a low diamond level and ZvT is my favourite matchup on both sides. Sure, the first 10 minutes as zerg are a struggle for survival where you can die at any time if you're not super aware and careful, but once I get my mutas out the pendulum swings totally in the other direction, and I can easily contain and outmacro the terran. The midgame push is always going to be difficult to deal with, but it is by no means insurmountable.
I'm not telling anyone to L2P, especially not top diamond players who know all the timings for everything to a tee - as these are the only people whose opinions can actually be considered valid, and that's before factoring in bias - all I'm hoping for is rather than just constantly complaining about everything terran being OP, just accept that this may be the case and try your best to come up with strategies to deal with it(1 hatch muta and 5RR are great examples) until such a time as blizzard manages to get a patch through QA, which I have to imagine is always going to take some time.
About 2 weeks before the IEM, I was defeated again and again by the mass reapers build by the same player. (I think dimaga and Idra were aware of that build at almost the same time)
I didn't have a solution because the best defend I can possibly come up with is an even. Any mistakes will just result in instant-lose.
Then I tried it by playing terran. I admit microing reapers perfectly are not easy. But it is really easy to micro them not extremely bad so that you are still far ahead. (like outranging roaches are so easy for terran and microing roaches not to be destoryed for zerg is really hard) I can kill some zerg players who ranks in the top 200 US and practice 10 hours a day when I play terran for the first time. I guess that's easy enough.
Of course the strategy is improving. I usually come up with roaches to get even with the reapers. Yesterday I played one terran who used exactly the same openning but he only made one reaper and he succeeded in letting me believe he was hiding his reapers. Of course I died by the 1-A marauders. There is no way to scout since he do have a reaper and a marine. New methods are being created. Maybe things will change in the following months. We will see.
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On August 27 2010 03:42 heishe wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 03:05 brad drac wrote:
2 out of the top 3 in the IEM were zerg, That is true, but can't you see that it is always these 2 Zerg that score high in tournaments, while literally every tournament a new "pro terran" pops up? It's obvious that at least IdrA is just mile above the Terrans he's losinga gainst, and I'd say the same for Dimaga. You literally see not a SINGLE other Zerg except Dimaga and Idra go deep in major tournaments, while in every tournament you see, there's a new player in the ro8 or even ro4 that nobody expected and guess what? He's Terran.
So what? Zerg is hard to master, no one is arguing with that, but that doesnt make it underpowered or the Terrans overpowered. There isnt an even distribution between the races which is in big parts due to the whining of certain "very visible top level Zerg" players. It has become a mantra for all Zerg players so they can stop evolving and improving themselves. People like the guy I quoted above are saying things which are not true, but which they perceive to be true and perception is a powerful weapon. If you start the match already intimidated by the fact that its a Terran you will play less effectively. Quite stupid if you ask me, but then Zerg players also consider burrow to be effective and whining to get the Lurker back when they can get Baneling mines instead if ridiculous. But then burrow - at a whooping 100/100 - is too expensive to even get in the mid-game.
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On August 27 2010 03:35 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 01:43 TrickyCat wrote:On August 26 2010 18:13 Rabiator wrote:On August 26 2010 17:39 Disastorm wrote:On August 26 2010 16:28 GreatestThreat wrote:I agree, this build seems like that sweet middle ground between early aggression and economy zerg has needed but no one was looking for because they just assumed it didn't exist due to all the whining. I fully support Blizzard in taking their time and being patient with balance changes, because the metagame is still developing drastically. If anyone remembers a month ago what the main gripe was about Terran, it was mech builds. Now, zero balance patches later, pure mech is pretty much unheard of and USELESS versus mass mutalisks. If there's anything that needs to change soon, it's the map pool. That might be the one and only major problem with ZvT balance. I disagree, mech is still as OP as it was before its just overshadowed by the new reaper build which is even more OP. Terran can basically choose whether to go OP or Mega OP or probably even God Mode Instant Win if they want. I can't believe you even remotely suggest the possibility that they don't need nerfs. If Terrans were REALLY as OP as you suggest there would never ever be a Zerg winning against Terrans. If you had watched the IEM for example you might have noticed that the Zerg actually had won quite a few matches against Terrans ... even with the new "Mega OP" build. I would suggest thinking before posting and to try to be objective. There are two things which hamper Zerg atm: 1. The negative propaganda which Zerg are subjecting themselves to. This prevents them from thinking anything creative and puts them in the endles "Terran is overpowered, Terran is overpowered, Terran is overpowered" mantra. 2. The "tiny" Blizzard maps which make super fast rushing strategies possible. So please stop whining about Terrans being overpowered and complain about the REAL issues. Btw., no one has ever said that an RTS is supposed to be easy, so if you play Zerg and have trouble defending against Terran you simply need to practice more until you learn what to do. In fighting games, matchups are graded in "out of 10 games." When someone says Sagat beats Fei Long 7-3 in Street Fighter 4, that means that in a game of two high level players of equal skill, Sagat will win 7 games out of 10 against Fei Long. This is a bad Matchup and Sagat is Definitely OP against Fei. In BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, Arakune vs Hakumen is an 8-2 matchup. Out of 10 games, Arakune will win 8 of them. in the fighting game community, 8-2 matchups are unplayable in tournaments. I feel like Zerg vs Terran is about a 7-3 matchup. So, saying that Terrans aren't OP because Zerg occaionally wins, is a bad argument. If two professional level players of equal skill sit down and play the TvZ matchup, and the T wins 7 games out of 10, is Terran not OP against zerg? (I would say so.) Your entire argument boils down to "L2P" and provides no real substance or insight into the actual matchup. you cite one game, where one terran player lost, particularly to decided more skilled player. a) Starcraft 2 is NOT a comparatively simple fighting game b) You just declared the races as balanced according to your own logic ... http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/allCheck the win-% of the races and they are ALL around 55% if you take all leagues and if you narrow it down to "top 500 players" its all around 58% ... http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/500Next time think a little harder on your post, because you yourself are using subjectiveness in a sentence like "I feel like Zerg vs Terran is about a 7-3 matchup." [interesting side-note: I always though Terran was considered to be the OP side and not the Zerg.]
I wish people would figure out that the win percentages only mean that the match maker system is working correctly. This talking point has been debunked over and over again in countless threads, and anyone who's been paying half-attention would know that.
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On August 27 2010 01:14 Mensab wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 00:36 fdsdfg wrote:
It's not like Zerg came up with a persecution complex before anyone played the game. Creative thinking is not rewarded in SC2 because of two facts:
- No zerg unit is VERY good against any other type of unit. It's either hard countered or relatively even.
- The only zerg unit with relevant special abilities is the Infestor. Terran can build units that handle many many things - for instance, rushing to vikings on Kulas. It can shoot down spotting overlords so ground units can't attack, land to kill drones, fly around to hunt overlords and scout, and if it gets in danger just fly home.
Every zerg unit (except infestor) only has the ability to engage the enemy head-on and try to win.
Regarding the second point, we HAVE to engage the Terran army. It's a necessity - our buildings are very limited where they can be built and they have less HP and cannot lift off. If the enemy army is approaching, you MUST intercept it with your army.
Every single unit just gets thrown at the enemy army. You don't get an advantage by getting a perfect flank or surround - you need one or else you die. You don't get an advantage by being on creep, you need to be on creep or you die. You don't get an advantage by sending in roaches first and hydras behind, or going around back with your zerglings - you just have to do everything right with equal army values or you lose. If you fail on any of these points, even your superior army will be crushed.
On top of that, you need the RIGHT army composition. Not one that counters the opponent, but one the opponent's doesn't counter. That's what the whole TvZ matchup feels like, trying to keep the opponent from having a huge advantage and instead bring it down to 'relatively even'.
=
Terran hasn't explored many creative strats either, and they sure aren't getting punished for it. What if a Terran hid the Armory, built a siege tank when the Zerg scouted, but then switched up to thors? Or uses a nuke during a battle, or drops reapers as someone said?
Terran players generally don't do this because they have the advantage while 1-a'ing their army across the map.
Zerg just has no advantage they can make use of. It's like an ant trying not to get stepped on. The hell? Banelings > bio, lings > marines until you hit crit mass, lings > marauders, roaches > marines, sieged tanks. Ultras > tanks, armored units, Corrupters > Terran air. Broodlords > anything ground. What are you on? -Yeah Mutas can do the exact same thing, except they don't have a 3 second window where they just die doing nothing. Also Mutas are ridiculously fast, while Vikings has the same speed as unstimmed marines. It was like this in BW as well, you had two casters for Zerg, Queen and Defiler, the rest of the units didn't have any abilities or gimmicks, it was pure micro. Terran back then was harder to play cause you had to use abilities as well as micro at the same time in order to make the most out of the units, spider mines, stim, and siege. Do you really think that having to add a bunch of extra keystrokes in order to maximize a zerg armies capabilities is going to placate the hordes of zerg shitters who can't micro or macro out of a paper bag? Is this going to fix the actual problem zerg has with their early game? As for your last point, terran isn't the race that can make a 100 food army in about 2 minutes. Try and read up on how retarded it was when roaches were one food and zerg would just s r r r r r r r r their way to victory mid game. Also lol reaper drop.
Yeah dude you really have no idea what you're talking about.
1. Banelings do not counter MMM very well. They counter marines. Period. Also, they only counter marines efficiently when you have the speed upgrade and infestors. Without infestors terran can just control click the marines and move them out of the way for the banelings to hit the mauaraders. You have to remember that each baneling costs the same amount as a maurader and has ony the POTENTIAL to do damage whereas if you make maurauders you have pretty much a 90 percent chance of them becoming very effective.
2. It's because of the lack of midgame choices that zergs ALMOST ALWAYS go mutas. Saying that mutalisks somehow make up for the lack of choices in the zerg army midgame is really ignorant on your part. What's happening right now with mutalisks is a period where zerg becomes slightly more viable. The new zerg "magic box" (which is not that new) technique is making it so that zergs have a chance when they get to midgame. Once terrans figure out how to counter it (which btw is very easy to counter) effectively then it's back to Terran dominating again. As for your viking comment. Vikings can come out a lot earlier than mutas. Sure we can produce a lot of them at the same time but that doesn't mean you can't just make 2 of them and go around hunting overlords while we're busy. Then when you see the mutas pull back.
3. Terran doesn't need to be the race that makes 100 food armies in 2 seconds. Neither is the zerg. It's not as if the zerg can instantly reinforce after a battle. Units take time to produce as well. This isn't a zerg "ADVANTAGE" it's a skill of the zerg that can be used to barely keep up. Terran units are so cost effective against the zerg that terrans' need to reinforce is not really that bad against zerg armies.
4. Idk who but someone commented earlier about bunkers. Bunker salvage completely needs to be reworked so that it takes more time and only returns 75 percent of the resources. To those who will argue against this I say to you: let zerg players have the ability to salvage our spine cralwers and get 50 minerals back plus the drone. Then i'll be satisfied with the "no cost" bunkers.
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On August 27 2010 03:49 Rabiator wrote:
So what? Zerg is hard to master, no one is arguing with that, but that doesnt make it underpowered or the Terrans overpowered.
Should one race be that much harder to play than the others?
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On August 27 2010 03:49 Rabiator wrote:
So what? Zerg is hard to master, no one is arguing with that, but that doesnt make it underpowered or the Terrans overpowered. There isnt an even distribution between the races which is in big parts due to the whining of certain "very visible top level Zerg" players. It has become a mantra for all Zerg players so they can stop evolving and improving themselves.
Calling the negative opinions of top-level Zerg players baseless whining seems highly insulting to them. Yes, having skill doesn't necessarily mean having objectivity, but it seems to me that you should at least consider that they might have reasons for believing what they do, even if you disagree with those reasons on a fundamental level.
Concluding that entire faction psychological trends are simply due to the opinions of tournament players also seems iffy. You're going the wrong way 'round with it: 'whining' doesn't cause imbalances, imbalances cause 'whining.' Players are, in large numbers, very good at figuring out what works effort-efficiently and what doesn't. There was never a player to complain about something without a legitimate underlying reason for it, however small that reason may be.
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On August 27 2010 03:49 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 03:42 heishe wrote:On August 27 2010 03:05 brad drac wrote:
2 out of the top 3 in the IEM were zerg, That is true, but can't you see that it is always these 2 Zerg that score high in tournaments, while literally every tournament a new "pro terran" pops up? It's obvious that at least IdrA is just mile above the Terrans he's losinga gainst, and I'd say the same for Dimaga. You literally see not a SINGLE other Zerg except Dimaga and Idra go deep in major tournaments, while in every tournament you see, there's a new player in the ro8 or even ro4 that nobody expected and guess what? He's Terran. So what? Zerg is hard to master, no one is arguing with that, but that doesnt make it underpowered or the Terrans overpowered.
That isn't the problem at all imo. All three races have depth (if anything, I would say zerg has the least) and idra/dimaga go deep because, unlike the Ts atm, he has fully explored it.
On August 27 2010 03:49 Rabiator wrote:
It has become a mantra for all Zerg players so they can stop evolving and improving themselves. People like the guy I quoted above are saying things which are not true, but which they perceive to be true and perception is a powerful weapon. If you start the match already intimidated by the fact that its a Terran you will play less effectively. Quite stupid if you ask me, but then Zerg players also consider burrow to be effective and whining to get the Lurker back when they can get Baneling mines instead if ridiculous. But then burrow - at a whooping 100/100 - is too expensive to even get in the mid-game.
ridiculous; this is just projecting your stupid opinion on all zerg players.
apologies for flames but come on, i'll qq about reapers but any new strat or idea (ie, magic box or 5RR, neither of which I'm all that fond of but I have used the latter fairly extensively, and am tired of the former because I've overused it) is jumped upon with even greater enthusiasm than a balance thread.. until every terran feels the need to suggest each little nuance is a gamechanging impact on the TvZ metagame
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The mu sucks cause T has a big advantage early game and after that Z has the big advantage. I mean T can make different openings and all in, but they all want to kill the Z directly or to put him far behind. Imagine both would go even into midgame, I bet T would be screwed so hard. Mutas give mapcontroll and are faster than medivacs or viking or ravens or banshees and they destroy thors unless the Z is stupid enough to stack them and then T HAS to go marines to support his thors and the zerg just adds same banelings to his mass ling and muta army. than he will 1a his lings than fly his mutas above you and then 30 banelings will eat you.
You cant just "fix/nerf" T you have to fix both sides. I am not happy to 1 base all in, but for me its the only way to win in this mu.
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I actually read this post from beginning to end and agree with everything. I'm glad that you took the time to write these down. I am a diamond zerg and find it extremely difficult to beat terran . I always wish my hydra were a bit faster. I mean, what would it hurt if my hydra could run away from MM? Would that be a horrible thing??
Also, I think the planetary fortress is a horrible, horrible idea. It's like saying 'if I made a CC here and build a few turrets you will never kill this expansion, ever.'
Terran has awesome very useful weapons while as you said, Zerg just sits there and is a punching bag. It's like playing a 'defense' game. NOT FUN.
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On August 27 2010 03:49 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 03:42 heishe wrote:On August 27 2010 03:05 brad drac wrote:
2 out of the top 3 in the IEM were zerg, That is true, but can't you see that it is always these 2 Zerg that score high in tournaments, while literally every tournament a new "pro terran" pops up? It's obvious that at least IdrA is just mile above the Terrans he's losinga gainst, and I'd say the same for Dimaga. You literally see not a SINGLE other Zerg except Dimaga and Idra go deep in major tournaments, while in every tournament you see, there's a new player in the ro8 or even ro4 that nobody expected and guess what? He's Terran. So what? Zerg is hard to master, no one is arguing with that, but that doesnt make it underpowered or the Terrans overpowered. There isnt an even distribution between the races which is in big parts due to the whining of certain "very visible top level Zerg" players. It has become a mantra for all Zerg players so they can stop evolving and improving themselves.
You're doing something very unfair here, and that is projecting all the whinery of the bad Zerg players on here onto the rest of the Zerg crowd. Don't you think it's a little bit ridiculous that , since at least the start of phase 2, there was not a single Zerg constantly placing relatively well in tournaments beside Dimaga and IdrA? Don't you think someone would have transcended the oh-so-big clowd of Zerg tears and trained enough to start approaching the levels of all the random Terrans who constantly do good in tournaments during all that time [assuming the matchup is balanced]?
What you're basically saying here is: OK, winning with Zerg is harder than winning with Terran, but that doesn't mean Zerg is UP or Terran is OP. You're simply wrong man, face it. You're one of the guys who constantly say that ZvT is balanced, that all Zerg players just cry because everybody cries and that kind of bullshit, but you're wrong. There is no other way to put it.
People like the guy I quoted above are saying things which are not true, but which they perceive to be true and perception is a powerful weapon. If you start the match already intimidated by the fact that its a Terran you will play less effectively.
That's just not true. I don't know what else I can say to you, but that's just not true at all. You're generalizing very much and I'll say it again: You're wrong.
And by the way, the same thing with Zerg you can see with Protoss. All we had was basically Huk and White-Ra (and occasionally Tester, but he's Korean so he doesn't play most of the tournaments) and that was it.
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On August 27 2010 03:55 Zerksys wrote:
4. Idk who but someone commented earlier about bunkers. Bunker salvage completely needs to be reworked so that it takes more time and only returns 75 percent of the resources. To those who will argue against this I say to you: let zerg players have the ability to salvage our spine cralwers and get 50 minerals back plus the drone. Then i'll be satisfied with the "no cost" bunkers.
If the spine crawler needed to have 4 zerglings inside it to work and was fixed structure that could never move then yeah you have a comparison. Spine crawlers can move around and do more dps than a bunker with 2 marauders in it with the damage to 2 shot a marine.
Salvage should take longer however you are at least right there, 10 seconds would be reasonable.
But it's just stupid whines like this that make so many players scoff at Zerg players complaining about imbalance.
If you focused on the core problems instead crying about everything then more people would tend to take it seriously.
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To be honest I've actually stopped laddering consistantly because zerg is just not fun to play competatively. I have a lot of fun screwing around in 3v3 and 4v4, but in 1v1 even when I win a ZvT it feels like all I'm doing is capitalizing on their glaring mistakes, which isn't so much a good feeling. For ZvZ it feels like luck+tiring micro, and ZvP I actually really enjoy. 1 out of 3 being enjoyable isn't gonna keep me at this game for long.
Right now I play a game or 2 every few days, but I'm pretty much waiting for the patch to come out to see whether I'm gonna try to maintain a low bonus pool after that or not.
I'm ~500 diamond right now, but I got to that a week or 2 after release, back before I dropped off from playing.
This is all from a person who plays competatively for fun, I play in my spare time, no scheduled play-times or anything, so those with more drive to succeed will probably be able to keep at it and play zerg at the higher levels, but to the casual competative player, zerg is just a headache.
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This is a fantastic thread!! When the heck will a patch come out? These issues couldn't hardly be any more obvious.
It's quite shocking how few options a zerg player has.
Ideas for solving some of these problems:
1: Hatchery should cost less (200-250), this may give the zerg an economical advantage. Thus forcing terran to react. I also think protoss and terran's HQ should cost far less and thereby making 2- base builds far more doable
2: Roaches shouldn't excist, but should be replaced with BW hydras. So hydras will be a tier 1 option (after spawning pool).
3: Delete the overlord movement speed upgrade, and give them a speed buff. This may help scouting a turtle terran.
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Not that I can justify zerg being weaker than the other races.
Some suggestions though:
use burrow not just for scouting/regen, but also for other attacks (sneak/killing reinforcements)
more multitask is needed, even if the mechanics are already strenuous
needs more base backstab / effect new nydus strategies
mech/mmm ball slowing, (may want to use mutas to attack nat/expos)
aggressive expansion taking, to increase the zerg macro and maximize
I'm not suggesting or saying a zerg player can manage or do all these. I'm just thinking strategywise zerg is proabably gonna have to rely on some/all of above to be competitive.
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With all the suggestions to add lurkers and stuff back to the zerg.. Really? If I wanted to play BW, I would. This is still a new game. Lets try thinking of new things before we decide the old ones will just be better.
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This thread is amazing... as i wanted to write my own bitchy threads after dropping some games to T's recently.
30+ roaches attacking his planetary fortress while his army is out and it actually gained health from all the SCV's repairing it.
I was watching the day9 daily 141 artosis vs some random Terran and artosis uses roach burrow (yeah no detection) + baneling drop to own a T army midgame; ends up with a 60 food advantage and the T comes back with the exact same army composition and wins a midgame battle.
Artosis is on his way to brood lords and uses them to retake the lead because the T was too stupid to have vikings by that point in the game. If the T had had vikings, or at least a reactored starport, he might've won, even though artosis was on 6 bases and his opponent on 3.
Day9 doesn't mention it, but his opponent made mistakes, and thus artosis was able to take advantage of it and win. What if a terran doesn't make mistakes? What if he has detection and you can't get a roach burrow off. What if he makes vikings about the same time you make brood lords ( You lose BTW.)
/whine
i think what a lot of zergs are struggling with is "is it unbalanced? or am i just not that good?" And that is where the frustration is coming from.
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It's a bit funny how everybody keeps explaining how the Z should defend against T's timing pushes.
I believe evrebody forgets the fundamental differences between the races. Zerg is not supposed to defent against timing pushes - Zerg is meant to be constantly on the offensive, trying to balance between economy and pure rage power.
Zerg units are cheaper, generical and good only in numbers (they cannon stand against thie counters, not should they be able to) - which means that Zerg must have more units than his opponent in order to be on equal part, which leads to Zerg mush have more resources and map control, hance Zerg MUST expand or it's almost automatic gg.
I am in any case say that we should take the opportunity from terrans to harrass zerg, not their timing pushes as that's the fundamental idea behind their race and their general strategy to suvival - harass, keep in check, counter etc.
But when you take the opportunity from to FE, you take away the possibility of proper scouting, keep him inside/near his bases, due to creep mechanincs and being on defensive until t3 kicks, you take away the possiility to contain his enemy AND put him in defense, while lacking the units to do, something it's clearly very wrong here and all the ignorant people should at least acknowledge there are issues and simply tell everybody l2p.
I recently watched a TvZ (don't remember exactly, but I beleve with StC) the terran walled off and constantly harrased the Z with: reapers, then helions, than upgraded hellions, than thor drop, the overlord hunting with vikings, then MMM drop (and all of this following T's natural build order) - the Z did not stand a chance and I was clearly thinking the it was nothing less of a heroic to stay alive after all this harrasess/ Now tell me isn't is supposed to be the other way around - terran with his excelent defence in his base/s trying to break out and the Zerg trying to harrass him?
Also, when the one race takes very low micro/macro skills (1a MMM & stacking mules) and the other race MUST have pefect micro/macro (flanking, spells, creep, larva to name a few) to be in par, than HOW IS THE GAME NOT IMBALANCED?
When all you can do in early/mid game is to HOPE to get the right compostion of troos/economy and not being able to project anything on your opponet, who will do what he want regardless of anything you do, then HOW IS THE GAME NOT IMBALANCED?
And btw I do play random - protoss is ok for me, always a challange. Zerg I am in love with, but against terren, I am most certainly doomed, coz all i can do is mass something hopping i guessed right or FE and pray the T is ignorant and will let me live to mid game. But If i get terran it's the most boring - I know exactly what I need ot get - MMM/+Some factory to enhace and I am going to win unless I screw something very very badly.
I don't expect he game to balanced any time soon as the perfect balance it's going to take couple years, as it was the case for SC:BW, but Z is a really bad shape right now and IMHO some very quick buffs should be made very soon, just to equalize things, until better solutions are incorporated.
--- Edit: typos
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I am not a high rated player, but I do think about the game a lot and watch a ton of pro replays. My observation is that top level zergs have a tough time surviving mass reaper even if they play perfectly, and their opponent makes one or two blunders. My suggestion isn't groundbreaking, and it doesn't break PvT. Just slow the acceleration on the reaper so that its more difficult to kite speedlings on creep.
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On August 27 2010 03:42 heishe wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 03:05 brad drac wrote:
2 out of the top 3 in the IEM were zerg, That is true, but can't you see that it is always these 2 Zerg that score high in tournaments, while literally every tournament a new "pro terran" pops up? It's obvious that at least IdrA is just mile above the Terrans he's losinga gainst, and I'd say the same for Dimaga. You literally see not a SINGLE other Zerg except Dimaga and Idra go deep in major tournaments, while in every tournament you see, there's a new player in the ro8 or even ro4 that nobody expected and guess what? He's Terran. SarenS is a good example. He was a nobody before IEM, and even though he had solid mechanics, imo he solely made it that far because he can abuse the ridiculous amount of Terran strategies very good. Mass reaper into hellion/banshee? lol yeah try to pull something like that off with zerg. Also, do you know how the German ESL Pro Series looks like (a SC2 league)? Believe me, you don't want to.
Did you actually watch all the IEM games? The only terran idra lost more than one game to was morrow, and if you watch the replays it's very clear to see that morrow straight up outplayed him, regardless of imbalance. He was relentlessly aggressive, causing idra's normally dominant macro to slip up big time. I really don't think it's fair to call morrow a lesser player after his performance. He played superbly, far better than idra did on the day.
The matches that gave me serious doubts about the actual balance situation(previously I'd just assumed it was imba given how widespread the belief was) was dimaga vs. demuslim. They're both excellent players, most certainly top tier. They're also clan mates(even 2v2 partners) and probably practice together all the time, and because of this are likely of very close skill levels. Demuslim used the full cavalcade of terran openers, and dimaga was able to react appropriately to every one. Neither player made any major mistakes, both played very well, but dimaga still took the series 3-2. Watching idra just straight up snap the neck of every terran player he met(very few games were even close) other than morrow really reinforced that. Even madfrog put up a decent showing despite his comparatively weak macro.
Also, please don't assume a player isn't good because you(or the scene at large) don't know him. SC2 is a brand new game, there are going to be a lot of new faces dominating tournaments, TLO being an obvious example. They seem to be mostly terran largely because terran is the most popular race, I'm guessing.
I'm not claiming to know better than anyone. My opinion is formed from playing games as all races and watching a crap ton of high level games. That opinion is that there are most likely some balance issues that need to be addressed(the roach supply nerf and neural parasite time limit really didn't work), the balance is good enough that none of this is gamebreaking, and that in practically all the cases I've seen, the person who plays better wins regardless of their race. I just get depressed when the majority of threads I read break out into torrents of zerg tears. SC2 is a super fun game, I hate to see so many people convincing themselves that they can't enjoy it.
->Zerkys: Pot/kettle/black. A baneling costs 50 minerals less than a marauder. Zerg players don't have to go muta, TLO got plenty of wins going speedling infestor.
->shadowy: Who says zerg is constantly meant to be on the offensive? The slow, vulnerable buildup to a massive overwhelming swarm seems to fit them perfectly in my eyes, and that tends to be how I play.
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On August 27 2010 03:48 MasterAsia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2010 03:05 brad drac wrote:
2 out of the top 3 in the IEM were zerg, despite the fact there were half as many zergs as terrans in the tournament. People are always acting as if zerg being imbalanced is as certain as the sun rising tomorrow and that anyone who disagrees is just an ignorant terran who's afraid of their easy mode being nerfed. This sort of blind certainty without any particularly compelling evidence does noone any favours, especially with all the whining driving players away from zerg.
If you really think terran is so easy to play, why don't you try it. Reaper micro against roaches or queens, or even mass speedlings is not easy to pull off well. Moving out of your base with thors at the same time mutalisks move in means you're going to lose some shit. Getting your siege tanks in the right position at the right time is not really not easy. The only terran strategy that could accurately be described as "a move to win" is MMM, and if any zerg players doesn't know how to deal with that at this stage, you might want to try playing as protoss(the actual easy mode).
I play random at a low diamond level and ZvT is my favourite matchup on both sides. Sure, the first 10 minutes as zerg are a struggle for survival where you can die at any time if you're not super aware and careful, but once I get my mutas out the pendulum swings totally in the other direction, and I can easily contain and outmacro the terran. The midgame push is always going to be difficult to deal with, but it is by no means insurmountable.
I'm not telling anyone to L2P, especially not top diamond players who know all the timings for everything to a tee - as these are the only people whose opinions can actually be considered valid, and that's before factoring in bias - all I'm hoping for is rather than just constantly complaining about everything terran being OP, just accept that this may be the case and try your best to come up with strategies to deal with it(1 hatch muta and 5RR are great examples) until such a time as blizzard manages to get a patch through QA, which I have to imagine is always going to take some time. About 2 weeks before the IEM, I was defeated again and again by the mass reapers build by the same player. (I think dimaga and Idra were aware of that build at almost the same time) I didn't have a solution because the best defend I can possibly come up with is an even. Any mistakes will just result in instant-lose. Then I tried it by playing terran. I admit microing reapers perfectly are not easy. But it is really easy to micro them not extremely bad so that you are still far ahead. (like outranging roaches are so easy for terran and microing roaches not to be destoryed for zerg is really hard) I can kill some zerg players who ranks in the top 200 US and practice 10 hours a day when I play terran for the first time. I guess that's easy enough. Of course the strategy is improving. I usually come up with roaches to get even with the reapers. Yesterday I played one terran who used exactly the same openning but he only made one reaper and he succeeded in letting me believe he was hiding his reapers. Of course I died by the 1-A marauders. There is no way to scout since he do have a reaper and a marine. New methods are being created. Maybe things will change in the following months. We will see.
I don't mean to be presumptuous in my response as I'm fully aware you're a better player than me, but from watching Idra, the best way to cope with reapers seems to be to attempt to maintain a 2:1 reaper to roach ratio while amassing a decent sized speedling force for the inevitable marauder followup, and droning whenever you feel safe about it. If you keep your roaches on creep at all times, pulling back as far as possible as soon as you hit the edge, and never sending your speedlings in unless you're certain you can kill more than half of the reaper ball(ie. when they back themselves into a corner they can't get out of). You will lose units, there's no way around it, but reapers are a rather significant time and resource investment, and once you get roach speed or mutas they become very useless very fast. I believe, but I could be mistaken, the number of roaches you lost should have a good cost to benefit to the now useless and moribund reapers. I can't really tell how well this would work at the top level, anyone who's opened reapers against me in the past has had pathetic micro and I was easily able to beat them with straight speedling/queen.
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EPT
