On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example)
It is unfortunate that lower-skilled Z players (e.g. Symbol) did rack up underserving wins and the game developed to unexpected directions in some aspect, especially in PvZ, but the patch was a necessary one which would have arrived anyway if not then.
It was only bad until Zergs realized that getting a few roaches was worth it - and simcity at natural was not the norm until hellion openers became popular. Point is, it looked bad only until the meta shifted and Zergs began to adapt.
Disagree. I saw many zergs getting streamrolled when they foolishly made roaches. (As a matter of fact, making roaches was considered a suicide, iirc) Many terrans would begin parade pushes right after the initial 2-rax aggression while steadily building extra orbitals and upgrading on two ebays. No mines or tanks were necessary. Mass marines and a few marauders were all they needed. Zergs were lucky to get a few mutas before the parade snowballed out of control, and even then eventually would starve out of gas or got further behind in upgrades. Many games were slow-death animations. Only a few exceptionally gifted zergs were able to fight toe-to-toe to many generic code S terrans.
Did people forget all those games? It was quite a similar situation of TvP today where T is left defensively guessing in many games, only to die to mass zealots eventually.
Again, I am not advocating patchzergs here. I myself quite disliked them. Like many TSL zergs who commenced roach rush every game while putting down 3rd hatchery as "insurance." I don't think those are a problem today.
What the Queen patch really did was showcasing the true power of Infestors (in all matchups). They were powerful units already but zergs could never quite get there before dying. Infestors are properly nerfed subsequently.
Likewise, it would be an absurd thing to say Z is overpowered in HOTS due to the queen patch that happened in WOL when people already saw the game could be difficult for Z due to a single new unit (WM). Mines and queens have no relations. I already said that I was unsure whether the mine nerf (and its degree) was a good thing or not.
One thing I am certain is that some maps today are pervertly anti-Terran. And thanks to the loser-pick-the-next format, many Z's and P's are picking T-killing maps. This needs to be addressed in some way.
On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example)
It is unfortunate that lower-skilled Z players (e.g. Symbol) did rack up underserving wins and the game developed to unexpected directions in some aspect, especially in PvZ, but the patch was a necessary one which would have arrived anyway if not then.
It was only bad until Zergs realized that getting a few roaches was worth it - and simcity at natural was not the norm until hellion openers became popular. Point is, it looked bad only until the meta shifted and Zergs began to adapt.
making roaches put you behind on the third timing and lair timing. zerg adapted by doing roach ling baneling all ins
On May 03 2014 11:40 Thieving Magpie wrote: Pre-queen nerf TvZ was dead 50/50 for many months. Many Zerg Whined that the win rates meant nothing and that zerg's wins were qualitatively better.
On May 03 2014 11:40 Thieving Magpie wrote: Pre-queen nerf TvZ was dead 50/50 for many months. Many Zerg Whined that the win rates meant nothing and that zerg's wins were qualitatively better.
But balance wise it was dead even.
Pre-queen buff, you mean.
Yes, buff. My bad.
It did seem visually (at the time) that Zerg was always on the back foot (that can't be denied) but the win rates revealed the truth.
In essence, the roles of each race was heavily defined in the matchup and lead to a lot of sequence based games that made both terrains and zerg's always feel like their race was disadvantaged.
It was also the best TvZ sc2 has ever had visually.
On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example
The only reason it looked that way was because the meta at the time meant that Terran was generally proactive and Zerg was generally reactive, which was fine considering Zerg's macro mechanics much more easily permit a reactive playstyle. There was also the fact that there were still a lot of Terrans in Code S that were still slowly being filtered out as the Terran dominance from 2010 and a large part of 2011 faded. But make no mistake, the matchup was balance-wise in an extremely good spot and the matchup was very fleshed out with a diverse early game, an actual midgame, and varying lategame. The patch destroyed all of that, and anyone with eyes could see that TvZ was much better both in terms of balance and entertainment in the months before it than in the year following it.
On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example)
It is unfortunate that lower-skilled Z players (e.g. Symbol) did rack up underserving wins and the game developed to unexpected directions in some aspect, especially in PvZ, but the patch was a necessary one which would have arrived anyway if not then.
It was only bad until Zergs realized that getting a few roaches was worth it - and simcity at natural was not the norm until hellion openers became popular. Point is, it looked bad only until the meta shifted and Zergs began to adapt.
making roaches put you behind on the third timing and lair timing. zerg adapted by doing roach ling baneling all ins
Behind by super greedy Zerg standards, maybe. Spending a few extra resources and larva on defense puts Zerg behind, sure, but by how much? How do you explain the way those extra resources and larva saved resulted in the untouchable, unkillable Brood/Infestor deathball?
Queen buff sped up Zergs' third timing and lair timing. Zergs took early thirds and just rallied queens to defend it. Spines if any aggression scouted. The gas and larva saved from not getting roaches sped up tech timings. More queens also resulted in more creep. Creep is godly, now we know - but just watch early SC2 professional games and you will notice it lacking.
Unchecked early game econ results in a more robust mid-game and much much easier transition to Broodlords. Basetrades would favour Zergs - that's right, and they say never basetrade a Terran. The low econ scenario of basetrades made infestors into gods of versatility and endurance. They could challenge multitude of threats - air, ground, structure using energy as resource. Marines can do the same - but not when there is no econ to reproduce, and they require hefty medivac support to heal stim damage and seige-tank support against banelings.
I don't remember the overall win rates, but I remember top zerg players had barely 50%+ win rates v. T when they had much higher win rates against P or in mirror. On the other hand, it was not hard to find terrans with 60%+ win rates against zergs in code S when their mirror or v. P stats were mediocre.
On May 03 2014 12:04 usethis2 wrote: I don't remember the overall win rates, but I remember top zerg players had barely 50%+ win rates v. T when they had much higher win rates against P or in mirror. On the other hand, it was not hard to find terrans with 60%+ win rates against zergs in code S when their mirror or v. P stats were mediocre.
That's where you're wrong actually.
MMA, MVP, and few other terrains had 60%-80% vs all races, but the overall win rates of TvZ across all tournaments was 50/50
ZvT was DRG's best matchup, Losira was makin a name for himself for kinetic lair heavy ZvT, both players required ridiculously high APM just to not die in the first few minutes of the game. It was intense all game long,
The only problem was the predictable proactivity levels, Terran was always the proactive race in early game, Zerg always the proactive race in the mid game. Any Terran or Zerg who bucked the trend immediately died.
On May 03 2014 12:04 usethis2 wrote: I don't remember the overall win rates, but I remember top zerg players had barely 50%+ win rates v. T when they had much higher win rates against P or in mirror. On the other hand, it was not hard to find terrans with 60%+ win rates against zergs in code S when their mirror or v. P stats were mediocre.
Yeah this was pretty true, DRG had around 62-63% iirc and he was the highest ZvT winrate (at least vs high caliber players) but his ZvP winrate was even higher at the time. Leenock Losira and Life were known for good ZvT as well.
The top Terran players typically had around a 60% winrate in either TvZ or TvP but very rarely both.
edit: Forgot about CoCa and Curious who were also doing pretty well around this time.
On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example)
It is unfortunate that lower-skilled Z players (e.g. Symbol) did rack up underserving wins and the game developed to unexpected directions in some aspect, especially in PvZ, but the patch was a necessary one which would have arrived anyway if not then.
It was only bad until Zergs realized that getting a few roaches was worth it - and simcity at natural was not the norm until hellion openers became popular. Point is, it looked bad only until the meta shifted and Zergs began to adapt.
making roaches put you behind on the third timing and lair timing. zerg adapted by doing roach ling baneling all ins
By the standards of the time, you would not be behind when opening with a few roaches. Two base speed into third or two base roach with a evo wall into third was quite standard. Typically it simply involved getting just enough roaches (usually like 3-5) to push away hellions to allow the third to be safely built. Heck, Losira was doing 6 queen openings in some games (pre-patch!) and he still didn't get a third as fast as what became standard after the queen patch. The balance percentages and race distributions going into the season where the queen patch would later start to affect things were about as even as one could hope for. All the best Zerg players had adapted their play to easily handle hellion openings. The queen patch just made it so they could do the same defence far cheaper (no gas!) and without needing basically any larva to be dedicated to holding many early pressures. That resulted in Zerg players teching crazy fast and basically being able to skip the mid-game in some cases.
That's why we saw many Terran players flat out give up trying their old pressure builds after the queen patch. They didn't work and the Terran would end up even further behind than if they just played greedy. Which was what led to 3CC builds becoming popular, because it was one of the few openings Terran could do in order to keep up with this newly boosted Zerg economy. However, of course, as we saw, Zergs started to punish that too.
On the Protoss front, things were grim too. Suddenly every game was on a timer. Kill Zerg outright by around 14-15 minutes or lose the game in the majority of cases. Which is why we saw so many Pro Protoss players just start all-inning or trying to kill Zergs with pre-hive timings. If the game got past hive tech being done, the entire chances of a Protoss player beating a Zerg, no matter how much better the Protoss was than the Zerg, all relied upon how well a vortex landed. Once Zergs smartened up and started splitting their Broodlords, even archon toilets didn't work. Protoss was just dead in many cases.
On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example)
It is unfortunate that lower-skilled Z players (e.g. Symbol) did rack up underserving wins and the game developed to unexpected directions in some aspect, especially in PvZ, but the patch was a necessary one which would have arrived anyway if not then.
It was only bad until Zergs realized that getting a few roaches was worth it - and simcity at natural was not the norm until hellion openers became popular. Point is, it looked bad only until the meta shifted and Zergs began to adapt.
making roaches put you behind on the third timing and lair timing. zerg adapted by doing roach ling baneling all ins
Behind by super greedy Zerg standards, maybe. Spending a few extra resources and larva on defense puts Zerg behind, sure, but by how much? How do you explain the way those extra resources and larva saved resulted in the untouchable, unkillable Brood/Infestor deathball?
Queen buff sped up Zergs' third timing and lair timing. Zergs took early thirds and just rallied queens to defend it. Spines if any aggression scouted. The gas and larva saved from not getting roaches sped up tech timings. More queens also resulted in more creep. Creep is godly, now we know - but just watch early SC2 professional games and you will notice it lacking.
Unchecked early game econ results in a more robust mid-game and much much easier transition to Broodlords. Basetrades would favour Zergs - that's right, and they say never basetrade a Terran. The low econ scenario of basetrades made infestors into gods of versatility and endurance. They could challenge multitude of threats - air, ground, structure using energy as resource. Marines can do the same - but not when there is no econ to reproduce, and they require hefty medivac support to heal stim damage and seige-tank support against banelings.
Orrrrrrrrr maybe for greedy terran standard, it is fair? terran could finish off his 3rd earlier than zerg's, with double ups, like that's not a huge advantage, which results in huge snowballing from earlier timings and not to mention zerg had a huge tough time scouting all ins due to no map control and slow overlords and spores required evo chamber. pre queen buff means a hellion pressure would also suddenly kill off tonnes of drones and snow ball from there. like that's a good risk/reward for a opening build.
It was either terran having 6 all ins or gain a huge macro advantage via earlier third and zerg has to turtle forever for bl infestors or roach ling baneling all in (which eventually stopped working once the hellion banshee becomes standard)
you don't need to explain to me what early safer opening zerg would lead to faster lair timing. I don't even know why you bring up base trade. once it gets to base trade, the game is already very uneven.
every race can be greedy, terran was a lot greedier than zerg ever was. And Terran parade push was a lot stronger due to the early economy as well, where they can afford to split up armies for more drops etc. just because terran doesn't have bl infestors doesn't mean it was anymore balanced than bl infestors.
you can argue for bl infestors being too easy to get, i can also argue bl infestors was way too hard to get while terran bio was too easily replacable and upgrades snowball too hard. get the idea?
I am amazed how people are bringing up win rates again to support their arguments, I thought we learnt from WoL PvZ already. TvZ back then was all ins vs all ins, rarely get to late game even the amazing MMA vs DRG blizzard cup final had a tonnes of all ins http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/296035-gsl-blizzard-cup-finals-mma-vs-drg-analysis
On May 03 2014 09:30 usethis2 wrote: I am saying the matchup did not look balanced to me prior to the patch. Especially when two very high-level code S players were matched. Every game looked like an uphill battle for the Z unless there was some lucky break. (like many DRG v. Bomber/MKP games at that time, for example)
It is unfortunate that lower-skilled Z players (e.g. Symbol) did rack up underserving wins and the game developed to unexpected directions in some aspect, especially in PvZ, but the patch was a necessary one which would have arrived anyway if not then.
It was only bad until Zergs realized that getting a few roaches was worth it - and simcity at natural was not the norm until hellion openers became popular. Point is, it looked bad only until the meta shifted and Zergs began to adapt.
making roaches put you behind on the third timing and lair timing. zerg adapted by doing roach ling baneling all ins
Behind by super greedy Zerg standards, maybe. Spending a few extra resources and larva on defense puts Zerg behind, sure, but by how much? How do you explain the way those extra resources and larva saved resulted in the untouchable, unkillable Brood/Infestor deathball?
Queen buff sped up Zergs' third timing and lair timing. Zergs took early thirds and just rallied queens to defend it. Spines if any aggression scouted. The gas and larva saved from not getting roaches sped up tech timings. More queens also resulted in more creep. Creep is godly, now we know - but just watch early SC2 professional games and you will notice it lacking.
Unchecked early game econ results in a more robust mid-game and much much easier transition to Broodlords. Basetrades would favour Zergs - that's right, and they say never basetrade a Terran. The low econ scenario of basetrades made infestors into gods of versatility and endurance. They could challenge multitude of threats - air, ground, structure using energy as resource. Marines can do the same - but not when there is no econ to reproduce, and they require hefty medivac support to heal stim damage and seige-tank support against banelings.
Orrrrrrrrr maybe for greedy terran standard, it is fair? terran could finish off his 3rd earlier than zerg's, like that's not a huge advantage, which results in huge snowballing from earlier timings and not to mention zerg had a huge tough time scouting all ins due to no map control and slow overlords and spores required evo chamber. pre queen buff means a hellion pressure would also suddenly kill off tonnes of drones and snow ball from there. like that's a good risk/reward for a opening build.
It was either terran having 6 all ins or gain a huge macro advantage via earlier third and zerg has to turtle forever for bl infestors or roach ling baneling all in (which eventually stopped working once the hellion banshee becomes standard)
you don't need to explain to me what early safer opening zerg would lead to faster lair timing. I don't even know why you bring up base trade. once it gets to base trade, the game is already very uneven.
every race can be greedy, terran was a lot greedier than zerg ever was. And Terran parade push was a lot stronger due to the early economy as well, where they can afford to split up armies for more drops etc. just because terran doesn't have bl infestors doesn't mean it was anymore balanced than bl infestors.
you can argue for bl infestors being too easy to get, i can also argue bl infestors was way too hard to get while terran bio was too easily replacable and upgrades snowball too hard. get the idea?
Or we try to constrain our arguments to facts, that's a nice idea too.
On May 03 2014 12:04 usethis2 wrote: I don't remember the overall win rates, but I remember top zerg players had barely 50%+ win rates v. T when they had much higher win rates against P or in mirror. On the other hand, it was not hard to find terrans with 60%+ win rates against zergs in code S when their mirror or v. P stats were mediocre.
That's where you're wrong actually.
MMA, MVP, and few other terrains had 60%-80% vs all races, but the overall win rates of TvZ across all tournaments was 50/50
ZvT was DRG's best matchup, Losira was makin a name for himself for kinetic lair heavy ZvT, both players required ridiculously high APM just to not die in the first few minutes of the game. It was intense all game long,
The only problem was the predictable proactivity levels, Terran was always the proactive race in early game, Zerg always the proactive race in the mid game. Any Terran or Zerg who bucked the trend immediately died.
There are so many random terrans that killed champion-level zergs so I refuse to believe that revisionism. Just off the top of my head:
Z
Kyrix (one of my favorite zergs in WOL) Nestea Losira DRG Leenock Life
T
oGS_Supernova MVPsC stc Yoda Happy Keen Ryung MMA MVP MKP Polt Jjakji aLive asd_fOU Heart Virus Taeja Any other terran from Slayers
I am sure some people will argue those are not some random Terrans - I won't argue against inherent subjective stuff but what's indisputable is that the top zergs were never safe against any code S terran and they did take losses while many champion level terrans rarely lost to non-champion level zergs. It was after the queen patch where a better zerg had visibly higher chances against lesser Ts. (I agree there were many patchzergs, however, especially in foreign scenes)
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/think_logically.png)
