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I don't have enough experience/knowledge to rank difficulty across all skill levels. However in terms of mechanics I don't think zerg is as hard to play as people make it seem. Really, the only thing you have to do is inject larva. If you do that, than almost all other sins can be forgiven. While it is never good to get supply blocked or to miss production cycles with any race, as long as you keep up with larva injects, as zerg you can easily catch-up in your production/macro.
(Yes you also have to spread creep but I see it as no different than protoss having to sim city their base and building forward pylons, or for terrans managing their add-ons. Zergs have so few buildings to build in general no doubt makes it easier for them.)
TL;DR - inject larva and you will be fine as far as mechanics are concerned. Obviously you still have to make the right unit composition, have game sense and timings but this is more or less the same for all races.
My 2 cents.
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Wow people actually think Zerg is difficult to play at bronze-diamond levels? Most protoss / terrans dont even think to wall off in bronze so zerglings can end the game at any time in lower leagues. And even then any engagement is good for a zerg because their units require 0 micro to be effective. I never knew team liquid was so zerg biased.
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TLADT24920 Posts
I voted Zerg up to and including Plat, Terran for diamond and masters then Protoss for GM and pro. Zerg has extra mechanics that a player has to keep up with so most low level players will forget to do their injects, spread their creep, balance drones/army, etc.... where as you can just make workers/units as T/P.
Once you hit diamond/masters and try to break into diamond from Plat, Terran is definitely the hardest race. I feel with Zerg and Protoss, you can recover faster from mistakes due to wrapgates(you can also chronoboost them*) and the larvae mechanism, so, if you forgot to make some units, etc.... you can make a gazillion slings while he makes his way to your base. From my experience(mid Plat), once my Zerg opponent has secured his third, no amount of harass has helped me win the game unless we engage and I come out on top to which he gg's or leaves. Once infestors or BLs are out on the field, I rarely win my games(need more ghost practice) unless he makes a big mistake(running his 10-12 infestors around and only spawning 1 ITs XD <--- happened before XD).
As for GM and pro level, I feel like Protoss is the hardest but not crazy far from Terran since most players at this level would have their MM micro up to par and would do multiple drops, etc.... and that would stretch the Protoss army. That and having to rely on sentries really become crucial at this point. Even though with Zerg, you can't scout well like Terran and to a lesser extent Protoss, but, once you secure your exp and drone up a bit, get an evo incase of cloak units for spores, work on expanding, etc.... I think Zerg is essentially an unstoppable race. The larvae mechanism really makes the race a swarmy race and allow the ability to make a ton of units which can't be matched by T/P unless they have a lot of production structures. That doesn't take into account how creep spread gives vision among other things
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I made it to masters playing random but gave up mostly because zerg was to hard. Settled with p but my terran is actually very close despite having much less practice with it. So I'm really surprised to see terran as "hardest" on diamond-masters level.
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The winner for each poll actually represents which race in that league/group is whining the most on teamliquid.net instead of playing the game right now.
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On October 03 2011 01:21 iKlutz wrote: I think we should distinguish between which race is hardest to play and which race is hardest to win with. The "win with" parts brings balance in to it a bit so for grandmaster i'd probably vote protoss as hardest to win with but i think either zerg or terran is actually harder to play if that makes any sense.
Thats what I was going for, I was attempting to talk about the difficulty in playing the race on a design and style basis, not based on balance. Interestingly, there have been posts on how for example Zerg is the hardest race to play at lower levels because of the mechanics required, and at the same time others saying Protoss is hardest at the pro level because they are being crushed lately.
So the first 3 polls are being answered the way I intended, but the last poll is being answered with a different mindset. Hmm.
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MID diamond and below: zerg based off mechanics purely player's have too low of apm to do things that are necessary to the success of the zerg race. mid diamond-mid masters: i honestly don't know. top masters/gm/pro: depends your relative definition of whats difficullt zerg requires the most apm due to larva injecting, spreading creep, constantly poking proding w/ your zerglings to get any scouting info possible and even the slightest decisions have the biggest impact. protoss is almost purely decision making as the race takes almost no apm to play, however, to an extent their decisions are slightly less impactful as zerg's, yet are still very "impactful." lastly, terran it has always been considered the easiest race to play pro for quite some time.
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On October 03 2011 01:35 BroboCop wrote: MID diamond and below: zerg based off mechanics purely player's have too low of apm to do things that are necessary to the success of the zerg race. mid diamond-mid masters: i honestly don't know. top masters/gm/pro: depends your relative definition of whats difficullt zerg requires the most apm due to larva injecting, spreading creep, constantly poking proding w/ your zerglings to get any scouting info possible and even the slightest decisions have the biggest impact. protoss is almost purely decision making as the race takes almost no apm to play, however, to an extent their decisions are slightly less impactful as zerg's, yet are still very "impactful." lastly, terran it has always been considered the easiest race to play pro for quite some time.
wah i am surprised at the results given that majority of TLers are zergs. And most zergs hate protoss, often crediting their lose to imbalance. Since I play protoss I am probably bias. But split seconds wrong decision can lead to my death. Even lings run by is gg.
ehh, protoss requires no apm to play? early game stalkers kiting can take away almost all your apm. mid game blink stalkers harass and warp prism with templar? Don't forget you need to hotkey your pylon to switch screen and warp in units for reinforcements. Try playing protoss dude.
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I am diamond or low master level Zerg player and I can compete with other diamonds on T or P without playing T/P basically. By competing I mean I probably have 50% winrate overall.
This is just me tho. I just find decision making and macro a lot easier as Terran for example. PvT Is kinda hard tho.
I agree with Terran needing more APM but (lol) it's not that kind of APM that's hard to manage. I mean as T you have to babysit your army 24/7 or you die. You should've mastered that at master/gm level in my opinion. Macro is different from Z but I wouldn'nt EVER say it's hard. Maybe in lower levels.
short said: You can succeed up to masters or diamond with only macro as T or P. Not with zerg (to drone or not to drone?). Also as Zerg you have to make more smaller decisions all the time while wrong decision probably loses you the game (no mules).
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terran has hardest macro. ignoring mules. imo at top level
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people are not able to comprehend the difference between "hardest to play" and "hardest to succeed with"
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Really wish there was an option to hide the poll before showing results to voters. That sort of skews the results I think.
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On October 03 2011 01:29 eugalp wrote: I don't have enough experience/knowledge to rank difficulty across all skill levels. However in terms of mechanics I don't think zerg is as hard to play as people make it seem. Really, the only thing you have to do is inject larva. If you do that, than almost all other sins can be forgiven. While it is never good to get supply blocked or to miss production cycles with any race, as long as you keep up with larva injects, as zerg you can easily catch-up in your production/macro.
(Yes you also have to spread creep but I see it as no different than protoss having to sim city their base and building forward pylons, or for terrans managing their add-ons. Zergs have so few buildings to build in general no doubt makes it easier for them.)
TL;DR - inject larva and you will be fine as far as mechanics are concerned. Obviously you still have to make the right unit composition, have game sense and timings but this is more or less the same for all races.
My 2 cents.
The most difficult part as is knowing when to build units, and what kind of units. Since zerg is the reactionary race you also need to know what's good against the unit composition your opponent is using. And you need to some basic cheese timings and how to spot if your opponent is cheesing you since you can't build units and workers at the same time.
Not to take anything away from terran or protoss, I know how hard it can be tabbing between your production facilities, avoiding supply blocks and building workers all the time.
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On October 03 2011 01:38 msjakofsky wrote: people are not able to comprehend the difference between "hardest to play" and "hardest to succeed with" Yeah, I personally think this is the only reason why Protoss is #1 on the GM/pro poll...
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Vatican City State334 Posts
On October 03 2011 01:31 Passionless wrote: Wow people actually think Zerg is difficult to play at bronze-diamond levels? Most protoss / terrans dont even think to wall off in bronze so zerglings can end the game at any time in lower leagues. And even then any engagement is good for a zerg because their units require 0 micro to be effective. I never knew team liquid was so zerg biased.
Gotta agree with this. I believe the root of it is Idra being so popular, low level Zerg players attempt to mimic his play before they can handle it. If you do aggressive play and cheese as Zerg it's not any more difficult than the other two. Proxy hatches or baneling busts will get you to diamond in 1 day, people don't check their bases or scout.
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Low leagues is harder for Terran/ Zerg, mid leagues (plat-low master) harder for Terran, and Grandmaster is hard for Protoss in the current metagame.
Protoss dominate the lower leagues tbh.
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I seriously laughed when I read the thing about Zergs only needing to make infestors. I agree with all of them except the Protoss being the hardest at the GM level. I don't know if Minigun is GM or not but his play shows you don't even need 100 apm to play Protoss effectively at a high level of play. I guess I think terran would take the most in the GM league
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On October 03 2011 01:45 AnalThermometer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2011 01:31 Passionless wrote: Wow people actually think Zerg is difficult to play at bronze-diamond levels? Most protoss / terrans dont even think to wall off in bronze so zerglings can end the game at any time in lower leagues. And even then any engagement is good for a zerg because their units require 0 micro to be effective. I never knew team liquid was so zerg biased. Gotta agree with this. I believe the root of it is Idra being so popular, low level Zerg players attempt to mimic his play before they can handle it. If you do aggressive play and cheese as Zerg it's not any more difficult than the other two. Proxy hatches or baneling busts will get you to diamond in 1 day, people don't check their bases or scout. 6pool also gets you to masters. Does this mean Zerg is easy?
And even then any engagement is good for a zerg because their units require 0 micro to be effective. Im sure I lose 30% of my games because of hard micro as Z. Its lower actions but more complicated. T/P Simpler but more actions.
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When you get to the very top level of the sc2 pro scene, skill requirements among the three races becomes very gimmicky, in the sense that it is very arbitrary and almost impossible to compare. For example, Terran has I would say the biggest potential for harassment, since they can be the most abusive race when played correctly. However, to set the precedent to this level would be insane, since most tip top players can't execute the type of drop harass on par with MMA. Protoss on the other hand has the greatest micro potential. Watching Liquid Hero micro is fucking insane. Even other tip top Protosses can't do that. Zerg's hardest difficulty is to scout, and their biggest potential for success is easily single-handedly crushing harassment like Nestea, a mistake usually is game-changing. Thus you could say that Terran's harder to play portion revolves around potent harassment, whereas Protoss revolves around intense micro, and finally Zerg has to be extremely careful.
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On October 03 2011 01:40 clazzi wrote: And you need to some basic cheese timings and how to spot if your opponent is cheesing you since you can't build units and workers at the same time.
I always wondered why zerg never tried building some workers and some other units at the same time? Why can it only be pure drones or pure attacking/defending units?
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