Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 368

On October 31 2012 23:25 Azzur wrote:
See my previous posts on the solution to infestors as a support for your post:

On October 31 2012 23:34 opus55 wrote:


Yeah, did not see your post; I of course think that this could help the game, but who knows which problems we would get then? For example, what does Zerg against Protoss deathballs containing a lot of voidrays?

My point was a different one: We (=the community) tend to judge too quickly and to complain too loudly. We should try to get a little bit more patient with what Blizzard does.

On October 31 2012 23:10 SlixSC wrote:
Just calculated the win rate in Korea for October (including today's matches):

TvZ: 36% T - 64% Z
TvP: 48% T - 52% P
ZvP: 48% P - 52% Z

http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/sc2-korean/games (+ matches played today)

make of it what you want

On October 31 2012 23:10 SlixSC wrote:
Just calculated the win rate in Korea for October (including today's matches):

TvZ: 36% T - 64% Z
TvP: 48% T - 52% P
ZvP: 48% P - 52% Z

http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/sc2-korean/games (+ matches played today)

make of it what you want

On November 01 2012 00:02 Fission wrote:


Provide proof of your calculations, please.

On November 01 2012 00:02 Fission wrote:


Provide proof of your calculations, please.

On November 01 2012 00:14 Fission wrote:
You can't just make up wild and incredibly unlikely claims and expect everybody to just take your word for it. TvZ is probably closer to 50:50 in reality.

On November 01 2012 00:14 Fission wrote:
You can't just make up wild and incredibly unlikely claims and expect everybody to just take your word for it. TvZ is probably closer to 50:50 in reality.

The burden of proof isn't on me to prove you wrong, its on you to demonstrate how you arrived at those numbers. I think you completely made it up to try to elicit sympathy for T, which is doing just fine.

On November 01 2012 00:14 Fission wrote:
You can't just make up wild and incredibly unlikely claims and expect everybody to just take your word for it. TvZ is probably closer to 50:50 in reality.

On October 31 2012 18:05 Talack wrote:
Fungal should only affect biological air units. For the love of god make them break up their death balls with different units rather than mass ling/infestor/brood lord...

On November 01 2012 00:18 vthree wrote:



Considering those don't seem like random numbers, it is likely he ran a script on the TLPD data, do you want to see the script?

On November 01 2012 00:20 Fission wrote:


Script and exact tournies chosen to be counted would suffice. I will create my own numbers later after work.

On November 01 2012 00:29 sieksdekciw wrote:
I seriously think the balance sheet showing 50% is not what we should strive for.

We should strive for balance at the skill level. That is a very hard task since skill is very hard to measure. A relative measure of skill is how easy it is to do something vs how effective it is. Here shines the glaring (imbalanced?) discrepancy between terran and zerg/toss. Terran CAN beat zerg and toss, but it requires a disproportional amount of effort as compared to the zerg/toss player. Let's review the most common actions in common compositions today.

Zerg (Muta Ling Bling) vs Terran (Marine Thor Tank)

Zerg has to:

1. Move lings, Move blings, Move mutas.
2. Once the appropriate amount of surround is done, forget about the lings, follow big clumps of marines with blings
3. Magic box mutas and leave them be, if they clump, try to make them not clump

Terran has to:
1. Siege tanks, focus clumps of blings
2. Stim and spread marines
3. Stutter left and right if applicable, additional spread

In both cases, both compositions are fairly micro intensive, while it might be slightly harder for terran as it requires more effort to split than to forget about your lings. But all in all we can clearly see how both compositions require some effort to play decently with. So, this makes up for interesting matches as viewers can appreciate the skill in both sides. Sadly, zergs rarely favor the muta ling bling composition nowadays.

Moving on to

Zerg (Cracklings Infestor Ultra) vs Terran(Marine Marauder Tank Medivac)

Zerg has to:
1. A move, while keeping the ultras together with lings so lings draw marauder fire
2. Use fungals

Terran has to:
1. Split, stim, stutter
2. Can use the tanks in front to kill extended infestors (in which case he loses his tanks) or siege them and focus fire infestors


We are now closing the inherent problem which is it is far harder to dodge a spell than it is to place it properly. The 9 range fungal as well it being instant and preventing micro for 4 seconds attribute to the amount of effort for the zerg in that engagement far less than terran.

And we are on to the most common combination

Zerg (Ling Infestor BroodLord Corruptor) vs Terran (Marine, Tank, Viking)

Zerg has to.

1. A move brood lords and corruptors
2. Don't overextend with infestors and try to hit big blobs of vikings or marines, and optionally put an infested terran or two

Terran has to:

1. Split marines
2. Split vikings
3. Siege tanks when infestors are in range and try to snipe them, in other case, don't siege the tanks as they will wipe out the marines
4. Continue kiting Corruptors with Vikings WHILE stutter stepping marines and watching not to get fungalled.

If you play a micro battle and try to use the above combinations, you will see that it requires significantly less effort to control the zerg army than the terran army.

Consider other things:
Terran's two marines can't beat a zealot if unmicroed, hell, they don't even come close
Terran's hellions, if unmicroed will die to a moved lings
Vikings have to kite corruptors and avoid fungals. Corruptors have to just attack the vikings.
Zerg could split their banes to an extent to prevent siege splash. Zerg doesn't do it since it doesn't really matter as their army is that much better. If terran doesn't dodge blings/fungals/storms, he is dead.

Basically we see that terran units are worth very little if left to fend for themselves compared to their zerg/toss counterparts. It would be nice if Blizzard either increases the micro requirement on zerg/toss players (good) or add a move units to terran (bad).

Bottom line, in my opinion, If the amount of effort required to win as terran is disproportionately more than to win as zerg and toss, even if the win percentages show 50%, the game has some inherent balance problems.

On November 01 2012 00:33 vthree wrote:


Ok, just did the numbers. Games are the ones in that link GSL, GSTL, OSL for October. ZvT is 48 - 27. And I did it the old fashion way by counting.

On November 01 2012 00:39 Bellazuk wrote:
I think your conception is biased on your army composition. Late game zerg , need to deal with, pdds, seeker missile, thor in range of corruptor and infestor in range of siege tank. And banshee thor and tank, need detection, focus fire banshee, save your overseer from thors, don't evecute roachs into tank and banshee. Having that said, Terran only a clicked with couple scvs repairing micro along the way. I can't really agree with the concept Terran has to micro insane. Sure thing if you go bio then you need to micro but then u'll have the most cost effective unit of all time

On November 01 2012 00:39 Bellazuk wrote:
I think your conception is biased on your army composition. Late game zerg , need to deal with...
save your overseer from thors,...