Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 101

Unless you don't like TvT. In which case, you might actually hate this GSL. And you might have hated the past couple GSLs as well. Wait, why's that you ask? Well, my uninformed friend, out of the 32 players in GSL October Code S, there are 7 Zergs, 5 Protoss, and 20 Terrans. That's right. 20. That is 63% of the player pool. In GSL August, there were 8 Zergs, 9 Protoss, and 15 Terrans. Still 47% of the players. July? 47%. May? 14T 10P 8Z. Hey, there we go. Terran is only 44%, and the final was a ZvP.

Well we all see the trend over the past 3 months. Lots of Terrans. There were only 6 games played in GSL August that didn't feature a Terran player.

Now don't get me wrong, I love a good TvT, which recently has been all of them. If you haven't already, watch the GSL August Code S finals between IM.MVP and oGs.Top. That is, as Tastosis said, the most developed TvT play in the history of Starcraft 2. It was beautiful, stunning, engaging, and innovative.

However, in the interest of variety (the spice of life!) and for the good of Starcraft 2 as a competitve game, I feel like there needs to be a more balanced (# players per race) way to do this. Obviously you can't just kick out Terran and bring in some code A junkie (cough cough, DRG ) To the contrary, the way GSL works is that better players move up into Code S, worse players get demoted (eventually) to Code A, So by virtue of better play, the number of Terrans in Code S has been increasing, and has been out of proportion (which would be 33.3% in a perfect world) for a couple of months now. Obviously there will never be a perfect worl, and there shouldn't be. But is it really whining about imbalance when I see that 50-55% of the top players in the world over the past 3 months are Terran?

It has been said the Terran simply has the best players in the world. And I'm not saying that flat out is wrong. I am in the opinion that MVP is the M.V.P. of Starcraft 2 at the moment.

Are other top Terrans simply the better players? Examining GSL August, we have Ryung, MMA, Top, Keen, Noblesse, Bomber, Polt, Virus, Supernova, Nada, Happy, asd, Alive, Byun, Clide and Ensnare. When I look at this list, a few names stand out as good players: MVP, MMA, Ryung, Bomber, Polt, Nada, and Byun (Artosis will argue that Clide should be on that list, but I don't see it yet).
I don't particularly see Happy, asd, Ensnare, aLive, and Virus as great Terrans. (Obviously this is the GSL and they are all amazing, I'm strictly comparing them to other GSL participants.) I see them on the level as many of the amazing players in the up/downs and code A: Tassadar, Jookto, Sage, YuGiOh, sC (T) and MC (at the moment anyways).

But wait, all those Terrans (except the health hampered sC) are in Code S. Why's that? A couple reasons I think.
1) The power of the 1/1/1. This is the GSL and players want to win. Hence, T will use 1/1/1 against P.
2) Players who were good at TvT have a chance to excel (this is a loop, because as more Terrans start winning, there will be more Terrans to play against).
3) Terran diversity in options. Terrans have a ton of builds that can be used successfully at high levels of play against Protoss, that rely on Macro and superior mechanics to execute and abuse to their full potential. Protoss? They have templar (extremely susceptible to EMP/Snipe), archons (nullified by emps), zealots (ability to tank nullified by 50% by emps) and Collosus (extremely susceptible to Vikings). Hence, the protoss has some options, but all of them are hardcountered by the Ghost or the Viking (the viking being cheap/easy to produce very quickly). But wait, says the platinum 4v4 mass void rayer, what about my Void rays, they're OP? It's called marines and/or vikings. The tier 1 unit can easily shut down the Void rays given proper use of stim and positioning (I'm not talking about VR all-ins).


So Terrans have an edge on Protoss I say? Statistics say. GSL August, PvT was 34.5%. (gogo Huk beating Nada!). That's pretty darn steep, and needs addressment.

What about TvZ? A lot of Zergs are excellent at the matchup, and many a diamond Terran are calling Infestor/Broolord OP (to which I would say, go watch MVP vs July). Well in fact, this matchup in GSL August featured a 55.5% win rate for Zerg. So all our Zergies are happy, because that's pretty balanced (lets call the extra 5% for Zerg the "Nestea effect").

So apparently it's PvT that needs a change. Something has to give. There are a few options as I see it:
1) Protoss innovation. Simple as that. Zergs innovated (eventually) in reaction to the deathball, Terrans innovated in response to... other Terrans doing the same thing (if Tank=Tank and Hellion > Marine, which comp do you think is better? Tank/hellion or tank/marine? ). What kind of innovation? Don't ask me, I'm a lowly Zerg. Perhaps some more usage of Warp prisms, especially with the new Shield energy buff coming in 1.4.
2) Nerf Terran, ie. Ghosts. Ghosts counter literally every unit a protoss has, and their buildings, with EMP. It's the nature of the beast. What to do? My vote: decrease the range on Ghost spells. At this stage in SC, the ghost outranges all other spellcasters, especially with EMPs. I'm not exactly sure how a Protoss can feedback ghosts effectively if they are out of energy before they get into range.
3) Buff Protoss. There have been a couple threads on this recently, and they all make me not like Protoss as a race in general, so I won't go into this. The only thing I can half-suggest is for guardian shield to block incoming spells? (Which would be awesome).
This would protect zealots, archons, and high templar, however, I'm not sure if that would be balanced in its own right.

I'm not sure which of the following will happen. If nothing happens, then by default number 1 will have to happen (or Protoss will keep getting roflstomp-EMPed).

Anyways, this is all turning out to be very long and probably very boring. I'm sure that other people have already thought of this stuff and more, but I figured I would write it down and be the sacrificial lamb that claims T to be imbalanced. The stats don't lie! (actually they do, but that's another discussion altogether).

As a closing note: this doesn't apply to the lower levels, say, Diamond and below (maybe not to masters either, but I'm not in Masters so I can't vouch for it).

Anyways, have fun flaming me or whatever you want to do (I know my gold league Protoss will support me! And maybe IdrA). GLHF TL! (except you MVP... you don't need luck).