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On July 18 2012 22:59 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2012 19:32 Big J wrote:On July 18 2012 18:43 wcr.4fun wrote:On July 18 2012 12:27 Reborn8u wrote:
I've been saying for over a year, that when zergs started to actually micro at the level that top toss, and terran players have been since almost release, that zerg would seem unstoppable. Up until just the last few months I've been watching the "best" zerg players in the world not even micro back infestors after the energy was used,letting them die pointlessly. Not target firing things like sentries. Not abusing burrow (with trapping units, delaying expansions ect). Now these are all quite common and they make PvZ a nightmare for toss. When that infestor count stays high, or your 3rd gets delayed because of a burrowed ling, or your 2 base gate all in at zergs 3rd gets stopped because of roach burrow. I agree completely with the fact that (most) top zergs actually have 'horrible' unit control (compared to terran/protoss). But have you bothered watching through their point of view? Zerg macro is more intense than protoss' or terran's imo. Zergs have more bases. Zergs have creep spread, overlord spread and inject larvae. Especially when defending, zerg's units come from 3 different places and most often when the attack is going on very close to a zerg base, you can see how hard it is to coordinate those units. Protoss just warp in, in the exact position they want. Nobody really cares about chronoboost. Terrans mule mechanic is easier than inject larvae and also more forgiving, even if they get supplyblocked they can throw down supply. Unit production of terran is probably the same as for zerg (mechanically intense). At least, that's how I see it. Look at TLOs stream and watch him microing groups of units around during combat quite hard. But when you actually juat watch the game, it could as well be just the zergling's AI that just led to better surrounds in this combat a lot of times what is left is often times that you see his overlords rally towards the open field, because he seems to make this rally point fail quite often. Also I want to add here, that 2months ago when you read any of those PvT balance whine threads, Terrans would say that Protoss does not micro at all in neither of their MUs and at least zergs would have similar APM to Terrans while Protoss would have (how low were their ridicolous claims again?) like 80 (?) APM in Masters. It's bullshit accusations and those arguments get quite boring. but the Terrans had and still have a point. TvP is actually extremely difficult sub-high Masters because you sumply don't have the APM to do perfect army control and macro at the same time. At the highest level, TvP is balanced because everyone is extremely good and extremely fast, which means that decent army control is a given. The difference in P/TvZ is that there aren't even theoretical strategies that Toss/Terran players can do to get reliably even with Zerg.
micro well enough that banelings and fungals are not very costefficient, just like you have to do against Templar/Colossus?
Hit timings that are good vs current Zerg styles (like the shield timing, like prehive timings), just like you do before Templar/Colossus count get too high?
And I mean, theoretically (if we wanna talk bullshit like that) a bot Terran could split front rows fast enough to make banelings and infestors singlefire units but keep backrows and units that are out of range of infestors and banelings very clumped and that way marines would beat ANY zerg unit prebroodlod and no zerg could hold anything.
Similar with perfect blink+stalkerkite control+FFs. Thing is, the game is neither possible to perfectly control, perfectly scout, perfectly macro, perfectly position and perfectly (theoretically) balance and therefore we have to go by what we get:
experience. And the current experience is that Protoss and Zergs among all levels have very balanced stats against each other, similarily Terrans and Protoss.
And I'm not only talking tournament winrates (which we see are balanced), ladder winrates (which blizzard says are balanced, apart from TvZ lately), but also from things like 1 Terran, 1 Zerg, 2 Protoss in the top 4 of GSL; 1 Zerg, 1 Terran champions, 2 Protoss runner ups etc etc.
No matter how often you say: "Zerg could simply do X to not lose against Y", it's a fact that Zergs do lose against Y quite often and unless you switch to zerg and proof me wrong by "ez pz"-winning a GSL title in the next seasons to proof that you are the guy who understands zerg better than all the DRGs, Stephanos and NesTeas.
This arguementation of people that "you just do X and hold Y" is just so plainly stupid. The game is not balanced like that. The game is balanced in a way that it works, and it could as well be that "you just have to do Z to beat X", but we don't know and can't know.
Also maps have sooo much influence on this game. It could as well be that 3hatch openings in ZvP are not even viable on, let's say Cloud Kingdom due to, let's say Immortal/Sentry, but because it's viable on all the other maps and it's able to defend that rush when we don't have perfect play of both players (which we always have), noone has figuered out this (possible) fact yet and noone might ever, but surprisingly often this build might work.
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On July 18 2012 23:37 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2012 22:59 Shiori wrote:On July 18 2012 19:32 Big J wrote:On July 18 2012 18:43 wcr.4fun wrote:On July 18 2012 12:27 Reborn8u wrote:
I've been saying for over a year, that when zergs started to actually micro at the level that top toss, and terran players have been since almost release, that zerg would seem unstoppable. Up until just the last few months I've been watching the "best" zerg players in the world not even micro back infestors after the energy was used,letting them die pointlessly. Not target firing things like sentries. Not abusing burrow (with trapping units, delaying expansions ect). Now these are all quite common and they make PvZ a nightmare for toss. When that infestor count stays high, or your 3rd gets delayed because of a burrowed ling, or your 2 base gate all in at zergs 3rd gets stopped because of roach burrow. I agree completely with the fact that (most) top zergs actually have 'horrible' unit control (compared to terran/protoss). But have you bothered watching through their point of view? Zerg macro is more intense than protoss' or terran's imo. Zergs have more bases. Zergs have creep spread, overlord spread and inject larvae. Especially when defending, zerg's units come from 3 different places and most often when the attack is going on very close to a zerg base, you can see how hard it is to coordinate those units. Protoss just warp in, in the exact position they want. Nobody really cares about chronoboost. Terrans mule mechanic is easier than inject larvae and also more forgiving, even if they get supplyblocked they can throw down supply. Unit production of terran is probably the same as for zerg (mechanically intense). At least, that's how I see it. Look at TLOs stream and watch him microing groups of units around during combat quite hard. But when you actually juat watch the game, it could as well be just the zergling's AI that just led to better surrounds in this combat a lot of times what is left is often times that you see his overlords rally towards the open field, because he seems to make this rally point fail quite often. Also I want to add here, that 2months ago when you read any of those PvT balance whine threads, Terrans would say that Protoss does not micro at all in neither of their MUs and at least zergs would have similar APM to Terrans while Protoss would have (how low were their ridicolous claims again?) like 80 (?) APM in Masters. It's bullshit accusations and those arguments get quite boring. but the Terrans had and still have a point. TvP is actually extremely difficult sub-high Masters because you sumply don't have the APM to do perfect army control and macro at the same time. At the highest level, TvP is balanced because everyone is extremely good and extremely fast, which means that decent army control is a given. The difference in P/TvZ is that there aren't even theoretical strategies that Toss/Terran players can do to get reliably even with Zerg. micro well enough that banelings and fungals are not very costefficient, just like you have to do against Templar/Colossus? Hit timings that are good vs current Zerg styles (like the shield timing, like prehive timings), just like you do before Templar/Colossus count get too high? And I mean, theoretically (if we wanna talk bullshit like that) a bot Terran could split front rows fast enough to make banelings and infestors singlefire units but keep backrows and units that are out of range of infestors and banelings very clumped and that way marines would beat ANY zerg unit prebroodlod and no zerg could hold anything. Similar with perfect blink+stalkerkite control+FFs. Thing is, the game is neither possible to perfectly control, perfectly scout, perfectly macro, perfectly position and perfectly (theoretically) balance and therefore we have to go by what we get: experience. And the current experience is that Protoss and Zergs among all levels have very balanced stats against each other, similarily Terrans and Protoss. And I'm not only talking tournament winrates (which we see are balanced), ladder winrates (which blizzard says are balanced, apart from TvZ lately), but also from things like 1 Terran, 1 Zerg, 2 Protoss in the top 4 of GSL; 1 Zerg, 1 Terran champions, 2 Protoss runner ups etc etc. No matter how often you say: "Zerg could simply do X to not lose against Y", it's a fact that Zergs do lose against Y quite often and unless you switch to zerg and proof me wrong by "ez pz"-winning a GSL title in the next seasons to proof that you are the guy who understands zerg better than all the DRGs, Stephanos and NesTeas. This arguementation of people that "you just do X and hold Y" is just so plainly stupid. The game is not balanced like that. The game is balanced in a way that it works, and it could as well be that "you just have to do Z to beat X", but we don't know and can't know. Also maps have sooo much influence on this game. It could as well be that 3hatch openings in ZvP are not even viable on, let's say Cloud Kingdom due to, let's say Immortal/Sentry, but because it's viable on all the other maps and it's able to defend that rush when we don't have perfect play of both players (which we always have), noone has figuered out this (possible) fact yet and noone might ever, but surprisingly often this build might work.
No. Pre-Hive timings and shield timings are very often held in the current metagame because the response has been totally figured out. For pre-Hive Colossi pushes, you make Spines and Corruptors until your BLs are out. If the Protoss tries to press the issue, he's all-in and you just need to take out his Colossi. Most Protoss players will back off now and take a 4th because they know their army can't engage the freshly hatched BLs without more Stalkers and AoE.
As for your comments about TvP, you're dead wrong. Terrans don't win TvP by attack before Templar/Colossi are out in numbers. They win by microing well, getting good engagements, sniping Observers/Colossi, EMPing well, and getting a good concave. Terran doesn't actually need to hit timings against Protoss to stay in the game. In a solid macro game with both sides trading and pressuring each other, you can't really say who's going to win. That's what makes Parting vs MKP so exciting to watch.
I'm fully aware of the fact that Zergs often lose to timings and all-ins, but if you actually bother to read their interviews after the fact, even they admit that they lost because they made a mistake in control or had a tactical blunder. Stephano is a pretty good example of this. He lost 0-2 to Mana after being all-inned twice in a row, recognized his error, and then crushed every (better) Protoss at NASL by not make the same mistakes against all-ins. It's not simple in the sense that you or I can easily hold an MC all-in, but it's easy in the sense that the mechanical requirement is low, so a pro player can recognize where they went wrong and just work on fixing it.
Nobody gives a fuck about the winrate statistics because they're totally useless, don't tell you anything about which strategies win, include complete metagame plays like the games in the GSL (Naniwa vs MVP, for example, says nothing about TvP balance because it was mostly metagaming) and include a great deal of totally skewed matchups (on top of the Korean stats having a really low sample size). The best way to look at balance is look and say: what are the strategies currently being used? Are they working 50% of the time or more or less? When they work, is it because the strategy is too strong or because the victim played poorly? What other possible tech paths have not yet been explored? What other paths does this strategy force the opponent to stay away from?
These questions tell you what's going on in a matchup. If you apply it to PvZ, you get "well, Protoss is all-inning most of the time, and Zerg is Roach/Linging most of the time. If the Protoss all-in isn't scouted, it usually wins; if the Zerg engages Immortal/Sentry poorly, he usually loses. If Protoss does something other than Immortal/Sentry, he is usually behind. If Protoss is counterattacked after opening with a light pressure, he often loses, not due to poor control, but due to a lack of units at home. Due to the power of Roach/Ling, and its capacity to transition into 3base Roach maxes, Protoss is forced to get a quick Robo. This leaves them somewhat more vulnerable to Ling/Infestor and Mutalisk styles, even if they scout the Zerg with their Obs. Stargate and Blink openings are very weak because they are vulnerable to counterattacks and are very costly. Roach/Ling allows for transition into virtually anything depending on how much the Zerg player commits.
Ergo, Zerg controls the flow of the matchup, and Protoss has to rely on tricks to try and be competitive."
Just because the tricks sometimes work doesn't mean that the matchup is balanced, because Protoss players are forced to be extremely creative all the time whereas Zergs are just played completely standard every single game. Going back to the analogy I gave earlier: suppose we're playing a game where I have to make you laugh. If you laugh, I win. If you don't, you win. Whether or not I happen to go 50/50 with you in the first 20 jokes doesn't imply that the game is balanced, because my job requires me to continually think of new ways to make you laugh and yours simply consists in keeping a cool head. Yours is a passive task which requires no extra thought whereas mine is a creative task, which is necessarily limited and gives a higher rate of failure even if I'm astoundingly funny.
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On July 18 2012 23:34 iky43210 wrote:
sc2 is reasonably "balanced". Some people are just too dramatic
It was way more "balanced" pre-patch, but even in this sad state of terran, people will turn around like always
quotes since sc2 balance is different from broodwar, as it is more like a tuck-of-war
Also I have been playing around with whale's 5 reaper opening, and it seem to have alot of potential (at least for now). Currently have a problem with transitioning, but I can see this working out well to stop those crazy fast expand, force roaches/lings productions, and stop creep expand
I don't understand, how do you keep your reapers from getting killed by the queens? Queens have the same range now, no?
2 -> 4 -> 6 queens should be able to hold any form of reaper agression? Sorry if I'm being ignorant, hadn't heard of this 'whale reaper opening' before.
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TvZ comes down to micro, sure. The problem is that if terran gets caught once, they lose. There is no way for zerg to get caught in a similar way. Making the match-up insanely fragile for the terran if his units are not split well at every moment in time. The point of TvP being slightly more fair for the terran is that you can run out of storms, spread while colossus are on you, and kite zealots. Once you are hit with fungal, that's it, there is nothing more to do but gg. Sure if there was literal perfect micro and a terran never got caught, he has a chance of winning before BL comes out. Then again I am pretty sure everyone I have ever talked to says terran has to drop and harass to remain even with the other two races, specifically zerg. While Zerg don't have to do anything except have enough when a push comes to clean up an army, and due to their macro mechanics can choose to just overrun their opponent if they see fit.
Reaper openings will deny a 3rd, but if he is roach rushing you or staying on two base for a while, you are dead and wasting money. Better to invest that gas into an actual useful tech and hope you can deny the third.
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On July 19 2012 00:17 wcr.4fun wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2012 23:34 iky43210 wrote:
sc2 is reasonably "balanced". Some people are just too dramatic
It was way more "balanced" pre-patch, but even in this sad state of terran, people will turn around like always
quotes since sc2 balance is different from broodwar, as it is more like a tuck-of-war
Also I have been playing around with whale's 5 reaper opening, and it seem to have alot of potential (at least for now). Currently have a problem with transitioning, but I can see this working out well to stop those crazy fast expand, force roaches/lings productions, and stop creep expand I don't understand, how do you keep your reapers from getting killed by the queens? Queens have the same range now, no? 2 -> 4 -> 6 queens should be able to hold any form of reaper agression? Sorry if I'm being ignorant, hadn't heard of this 'whale reaper opening' before.
you don't engage a ton of queens with mana to transfuse, you skip em. Take a look at the whales build in the strategy (I'll find the link a bit later).
and u add a medivac to your 5-7 reaper, and 1 viking to snipe random overlords. Most of the time they have 2 queens in the battle front spreading creep, you can snipe those. Or you can go to their main and second (or third) base to snipe the single inject queen. reapers with speed easily outrun queens and medivac for outrunning sticky situations or quick drone snipes.
problem with the current hellion is that they can't kill hatch, queens, spines, or bypass them. Good micro reapers can negate most of those problems and can force/kill many lings as well.
Though it is also the surprise factor. Gonna play around with it more. Be prepare to gg if you lose your reapers as they take forever to make
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Well it is very interesting seeing the reaper get some usages again. Let's hope it proves to be good. I always liked the reaper actually. A very interesting unit.
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On July 19 2012 00:40 SnowFox2ne1 wrote:
TvZ comes down to micro, sure. The problem is that if terran gets caught once, they lose. There is no way for zerg to get caught in a similar way. Making the match-up insanely fragile for the terran if his units are not split well at every moment in time. The point of TvP being slightly more fair for the terran is that you can run out of storms, spread while colossus are on you, and kite zealots. Once you are hit with fungal, that's it, there is nothing more to do but gg. Sure if there was literal perfect micro and a terran never got caught, he has a chance of winning before BL comes out. Then again I am pretty sure everyone I have ever talked to says terran has to drop and harass to remain even with the other two races, specifically zerg. While Zerg don't have to do anything except have enough when a push comes to clean up an army, and due to their macro mechanics can choose to just overrun their opponent if they see fit.
Reaper openings will deny a 3rd, but if he is roach rushing you or staying on two base for a while, you are dead and wasting money. Better to invest that gas into an actual useful tech and hope you can deny the third.
One of the reasons why Terran is usually the only one to harass is that Terran defense is just so good that it is often not worth for Zerg to commit resource & larvae for harassment.
Terran walls off, then Zerg can't get in until wall is broken.
Terran builds a Missile Turret, then 10 mutalisks can't kill it when mass repaired.
Terran builds a Bunker near mineral line, then 20 lings can't kill it when repaired from behind.
Terran builds a Planetary Fortress, then 50 lings can't kill it.
Stimmed marines are ranged, with air/ground attack, and have 3.37 movement speed, so it can reinforce attacked point relatively fast.
Also, drop tech is not something you get anyways unlike medivac for Terran.
Therefore, reward for making drones is often much higher than that for attacking with units for harassment.
I can think of roach baneling pressure or all-in as an exception because this can kill the wall, but it commits so much more resource than 1 medivac worth or 2 medivac worth of units.
If Terran defense becomes weaker, then you might see more Zerg trying to harass Terran. But you don't want weaker defense as Terran right? Then, not much we can do about it.
This is game design fault if anything. If there are more cost efficient way to harass Terran, then many Zerg would do it.
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The amount of Zerg-OP whining is astounding here. (as well as accompanying theory crafts) It's interesting because I see very little balance QQ in Korean forums these days. And I personally think the game is more balanced than ever before right now.
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On July 19 2012 01:38 usethis2 wrote:It's interesting because I see very little balance QQ in Korean forums these day
playxp jinging disagrees.
http://www.playxp.com/sc2/jingjing/
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wow, I'm really surprised that it's so Protoss favored in recent months. I'd have expected it to be Terran.
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On July 19 2012 01:49 Tachion wrote:wow, I'm really surprised that it's so Protoss favored in recent months. I'd have expected it to be Terran.
The Korean's loves to whine, just like the rest of us. We just don't hear about it as much, but I also hear that trees fall in the forest when I am not there.
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And look how many people vote? Nowadays it's just a few same die-hard mid-schoolers who vote everyday.
Besides which such votes don't have bearing on what I observed and stated. That QQ chart has never been 33/33/33.
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On July 19 2012 01:49 Tachion wrote:wow, I'm really surprised that it's so Protoss favored in recent months. I'd have expected it to be Terran.
The green color is Terran, and blue color is Protoss.
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On July 19 2012 02:01 usethis2 wrote:And look at how many people vote? Nowadays it's just a few same die-hard mid-schoolers who vote every day. Besides which such votes don't have bearing on what I observed and stated. That QQ chart has never been 33/33/33.
But for the game to be truly balanced, all races must whine equally every day. Didn't you know that was the true measure of balance?
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On July 19 2012 02:09 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2012 02:01 usethis2 wrote:On July 19 2012 01:46 ganil wrote:On July 19 2012 01:38 usethis2 wrote:It's interesting because I see very little balance QQ in Korean forums these day playxp jinging disagrees. http://www.playxp.com/sc2/jingjing/ And look at how many people vote? Nowadays it's just a few same die-hard mid-schoolers who vote every day. Besides which such votes don't have bearing on what I observed and stated. That QQ chart has never been 33/33/33. But for the game to be truly balanced, all races must whine equally every day. Didn't you know that was the true measure of balance?
I guess I didn't. 
Another interesting (but not surprising) point is that while there was/is a reason to QQ for T players following the latest patch, it seems like most whines here are coming from P players or their fans. They comment on their perception on TvZ in a sentence or two and go on to whine on PvZ with walls of text.
I said it's not surprising. I think many of you also know why.
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On July 19 2012 02:18 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2012 02:09 Plansix wrote:On July 19 2012 02:01 usethis2 wrote:On July 19 2012 01:46 ganil wrote:On July 19 2012 01:38 usethis2 wrote:It's interesting because I see very little balance QQ in Korean forums these day playxp jinging disagrees. http://www.playxp.com/sc2/jingjing/ And look at how many people vote? Nowadays it's just a few same die-hard mid-schoolers who vote every day. Besides which such votes don't have bearing on what I observed and stated. That QQ chart has never been 33/33/33. But for the game to be truly balanced, all races must whine equally every day. Didn't you know that was the true measure of balance? I guess I didn't. Another interesting (but not surprising) point is that while there was/is a reason to QQ for T players following the latest patch, it seems like most whines here are coming from P players or their fans. They comment on their perception on TvZ in a sentence or two and go on to whine on PvZ with walls of text. I said it's not surprising. I think many of you also know why.
Is it because one race requires more decision making and thought than rote mechanical clicking?
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On July 19 2012 02:18 usethis2 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2012 02:09 Plansix wrote:On July 19 2012 02:01 usethis2 wrote:On July 19 2012 01:46 ganil wrote:On July 19 2012 01:38 usethis2 wrote:It's interesting because I see very little balance QQ in Korean forums these day playxp jinging disagrees. http://www.playxp.com/sc2/jingjing/ And look at how many people vote? Nowadays it's just a few same die-hard mid-schoolers who vote every day. Besides which such votes don't have bearing on what I observed and stated. That QQ chart has never been 33/33/33. But for the game to be truly balanced, all races must whine equally every day. Didn't you know that was the true measure of balance? I guess I didn't. Another interesting (but not surprising) point is that while there was/is a reason to QQ for T players following the latest patch, it seems like most whines here are coming from P players or their fans. They comment on their perception on TvZ in a sentence or two and go on to whine on PvZ with walls of text. I said it's not surprising. I think many of you also know why.
Protoss players have been lamenting the state of PvZ for practically a year. It's just now that Terrans are encountering the same problems we are (once you can no longer pressure you're fucked, basically) we're showing that the same problems are wrong with TvZ as well.
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to be fair TvP isn't that much better either. You'll see the same TvZ problem if somehow blizzard buff protoss early and mid game and protoss can safely enter late game all the time.
terran t3 just sucks
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On July 19 2012 02:47 iky43210 wrote:
to be fair TvP isn't that much better either. You'll see the same TvZ problem if somehow blizzard buff protoss early and mid game and protoss can safely enter late game all the time.
terran t3 just sucks
TvP is fine if you have good fundamentals and good micro. It's definitely harder for Terrans at sub high Masters level, but at the highest level it's completely balanced, though a bit stale.
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EPT
