[GSL] Race Winrate Graphs

On October 14 2011 01:23 Alejandrisha wrote:

Oh so you're saying protoss is not as appealing to professional games? I think you're on to something here!

On October 14 2011 01:22 Caesarion wrote:
Thanks for this. To think July actually looked promising.

Does it include Code A btw?

On October 14 2011 01:22 Fleebu wrote:
Maybe you should also look at the percentage of people in Korea who actually play Protoss...

On October 14 2011 01:22 Fleebu wrote:
Maybe you should also look at the percentage of people in Korea who actually play Protoss...

On October 14 2011 01:31 Alejandrisha wrote:


this is the kind of reasoning that blows my mind

On October 14 2011 01:31 Alejandrisha wrote:


this is the kind of reasoning that blows my mind

On October 14 2011 01:31 windsupernova wrote:
Just what i was saying. TvZ is fine. P is doing badly in both of its MUs atm.

Does this include GSTL? Or are you only including GSL Sponsor tournaments?

But then off course Zergs are going to ignore that Terran against Zerg is fine and jump on the T OP bandwagon.

On October 14 2011 01:24 InFi.asc wrote:


on top of that this is a winning percentage. doesn't matter how many people play a race

On October 14 2011 01:35 Nouar wrote:

Yes it does. Let's say there are 40% terrans, 35% zergs and 25% protoss *players*, there is a higher chance to have more top terrans than top protoss.... Hence a higher win rate percentage for terrans vs protoss since there are more good terrans than good protoss...


Before being flamed, I have to add : YES I do think toss a doing worse for a reason, not ONLY more terrans etc... but it DOES play a role *as well*, mathematically speaking.

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 01:40 Arcanne wrote:


Where did you acquire such great logic? Must be your education.

On October 14 2011 01:33 Caesarion wrote:


His sig says that he's a masters protoss. It's most likely sarcasm directed at those who seem to think percentage of terrans should affect winrates.

On October 14 2011 01:41 InFi.asc wrote:


Please don't turn this into a flame fest and please consider if someone might be using sarcasm

On October 14 2011 01:35 Nouar wrote:

Yes it does. Let's say there are 40% terrans, 35% zergs and 25% protoss *players*, there is a higher chance to have more top terrans than top protoss.... Hence a higher win rate percentage for terrans vs protoss since there are more good terrans than good protoss...


Before being flamed, I have to add : YES I do think toss a doing worse for a reason, not ONLY more terrans etc... but it DOES play a role *as well*, mathematically speaking.

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 01:43 Arcanne wrote:


I'm not being sarcastic. I want to know.

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 01:43 bbm wrote:


I don't follow.... surely there is a higher chance to have more rubbish terrans than rubbish protoss for the same reason? If you assume that each match is against another random person from the pool (it's not, but to model that would be far too complex and a waste of time), and you assume that race and skill are independent, then how could you hope to conclude that more terran means more anything?

On October 14 2011 01:46 Logros wrote:

Well I guess his point is that of the Terrans playing in the GSL, more would be highly skilled. Those extra rubbish Terrans wouldn't be getting into the GSL to play against the rubbish Protoss. However this is not the case as the race % are something like 36% T, 33% P, 31% Z. When you then look at the race % in Code S it's pretty obvious that something is wrong...

On October 14 2011 02:03 usethis2 wrote:
If you're going to use percentage you should not cut the graph at the top. I have no vested interest in certain races' win rates but these types of graphs that people make in TL.net bother me because the posters all seem to have ulterior/sensational motives - because that's what manipulated graphs normally do.

There are cases where practical reasons (e.g. legibility) might be a hurdle for accurate graphs, but this isn't such a case.

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 01:46 naut1c wrote:
give it some time... protoss players have to develop... do some insane warp prism harassment

On October 14 2011 02:09 Caesarion wrote:
For anyone interested, I was looking at the ESV Korean Weekly stats which should provide a good picture of players trying to break into Code A.

In the Ro64:
#10: 30P 16T 18Z
#11: 23P 19T 21Z
#12: 24P 20T 20Z

On October 14 2011 02:09 TiTanIum_ wrote:
I´m random, and I have to say, the hardest race is Terran. You have far too many options, far too many decisions to make, far too much information to gather, and having all that just makes the game harder, not easier. Protoss is the easiest race for me to play, followed by zerg, and if you don´t know the other races well enough, you shouldn´t talk about balance. Try it out: if you are protoss or zerg, play as terran a couple of times and you´ll see how much harder it is.

So stop whining about balance. I mean, if you are not pro, you are not in the level to choose a race. Play as all of them.

On October 14 2011 02:12 ZenithM wrote:


Well... at least they're trying. All hope is not lost.

On October 14 2011 02:09 TiTanIum_ wrote:
I´m random, and I have to say, the hardest race is Terran. You have far too many options, far too many decisions to make, far too much information to gather, and having all that just makes the game harder, not easier. Protoss is the easiest race for me to play, followed by zerg, and if you don´t know the other races well enough, you shouldn´t talk about balance. Try it out: if you are protoss or zerg, play as terran a couple of times and you´ll see how much harder it is.

So stop whining about balance. I mean, if you are not pro, you are not in the level to choose a race. Play as all of them.

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 02:09 Alejandrisha wrote:

IDK if that will matter since Terran already have Charizard and Zerg have Venusaur in MVP and Nestea :p

On October 14 2011 02:03 usethis2 wrote:
If you're going to use percentage you should not cut the graph at the top. I have no vested interest in certain races' win rates but these types of graphs that people make in TL.net bother me because the posters all seem to have ulterior/sensational motives - because that's what manipulated graphs normally do.

There are cases where practical reasons (e.g. legibility) might be a hurdle for accurate graphs, but this isn't such a case.

On October 14 2011 02:23 Sanchonator wrote:
protoss peaks when MC wins

On October 14 2011 02:09 TiTanIum_ wrote:
I´m random, and I have to say, the hardest race is Terran. You have far too many options, far too many decisions to make, far too much information to gather, and having all that just makes the game harder, not easier. Protoss is the easiest race for me to play, followed by zerg, and if you don´t know the other races well enough, you shouldn´t talk about balance. Try it out: if you are protoss or zerg, play as terran a couple of times and you´ll see how much harder it is.

So stop whining about balance. I mean, if you are not pro, you are not in the level to choose a race. Play as all of them.

On October 14 2011 02:29 talismania wrote:
those graphs are suspiciously curvy... can you just show the raw data instead of this bs smoothed version?

On October 14 2011 02:09 Caesarion wrote:
For anyone interested, I was looking at the ESV Korean Weekly stats which should provide a good picture of players trying to break into Code A.

In the Ro64:
#10: 30P 16T 18Z
#11: 23P 19T 21Z
#12: 24P 20T 20Z

On October 14 2011 02:53 Phats wrote:
Weird how the graph was most balanced in July and then LEAST balanced 1 month later. What changes occured around that period of time?

On October 14 2011 01:27 Carras wrote:
lol you can actually see mc´s championships there

On October 14 2011 02:42 ilikeLIONZ wrote:
MC owning the graphs, other than him not a single toss did very well in the GSL. i'm really tired of that.

On October 14 2011 02:57 Wuster wrote:
I'm curious what meta/patch changes happened in PvT between January and December to cause Protoss to go from 2 in the final 4! MC FF's imba! Hongun's all-ins too good! to Protoss barely winning.

On October 14 2011 02:59 labbe wrote:
We should just have a sticky thread where people can post statistics so we can stop having a new stat-thread every day.

On October 14 2011 02:57 Wuster wrote:


Controversially, you could say that MC has dragged Protoss as a whole down. Reason being, Korea is a very copy-cat scene (the only real exception is the tank/marine vs mech split for TvT). And MC always had a really timing/micro heavy style, so people who weren't as sharp as him couldn't pull it off and eventually when people learned timing defenses, then those other Protoss' disappeared too (Alicia comes to mind - I still best remember him for straight up killing MVP when poking with a 3-gate expo).

Maybe this is reading too much into MC's fall from grace and yes I'm kind of ripping off what Wolf said, but players sure like to follow the example of their best players (how many NA zergs only respect macro ala Idra?). And Genius/Hongun, who never played like MC, are the two most consistent Protoss players (as in Code S every season knock on wood).

On October 14 2011 03:17 dschneid wrote:
There's a huge lack of stats knowledge here and it's sad that these graphs get put on display when people don't know how to read them. For people who said sample size doesn't matter because these are win percentages, it doesn't matter that percentages are normalized for sample size, sample size still effects how much weight outliers hold as well as the general significance of the number.

Put some confidence intervals around these, make note of possible selection bias, and tell me the overall sample sizes (a few hundred at best? That's not that much in the realm of stats)...

Bottom line you can only make a few inferences from these but no sound conclusions.

On October 14 2011 03:17 dschneid wrote:
There's a huge lack of stats knowledge here and it's sad that these graphs get put on display when people don't know how to read them. For people who said sample size doesn't matter because these are win percentages, it doesn't matter that percentages are normalized for sample size, sample size still effects how much weight outliers hold as well as the general significance of the number.

Put some confidence intervals around these, make note of possible selection bias, and tell me the overall sample sizes (a few hundred at best? That's not that much in the realm of stats)...

Bottom line you can only make a few inferences from these but no sound conclusions.

On October 14 2011 02:57 Wuster wrote:


Controversially, you could say that MC has dragged Protoss as a whole down. Reason being, Korea is a very copy-cat scene (the only real exception is the tank/marine vs mech split for TvT). And MC always had a really timing/micro heavy style, so people who weren't as sharp as him couldn't pull it off and eventually when people learned timing defenses, then those other Protoss' disappeared too (Alicia comes to mind - I still best remember him for straight up killing MVP when poking with a 3-gate expo).

Maybe this is reading too much into MC's fall from grace and yes I'm kind of ripping off what Wolf said, but players sure like to follow the example of their best players (how many NA zergs only respect macro ala Idra?). And Genius/Hongun, who never played like MC, are the two most consistent Protoss players (as in Code S every season knock on wood).

I think the huge swings in PvX are weird; how the hell do you balance a race that goes to 60% win rates then down to 30% winrates month to month?

Some of it though is caused by patch changes, like the Roach range buff in Open 2, Fungal buff in May all caused PvZ to tank immediately, but they more or less bounced back the season after.

Obviously, PvT hasn't bounced back from August yet; but 1-1-1 isn't a patch change so that's not too surprising. PvZ is starting to come back though, so that's a good sign.

I'm curious what meta/patch changes happened in PvT between January and December to cause Protoss to go from 2 in the final 4! MC FF's imba! Hongun's all-ins too good! to Protoss barely winning.



Inca, Genius, Hongun and Anypro have all made deep GSL runs (only Genius has missed on a Ro4 on that list). It's not like there are a lot of non-Nestea zergs that make GSL finals either (just Fruitdealer and Losira).

On October 14 2011 03:39 dschneid wrote:
It's fine to hypothesize, I won't even argue against it, that's why I said it was fine to infer but that people shouldn't be drawing conclusions and clamoring for changes etc when this data set is not at all representative of the daily match ups they face (unless you're a pro, this doesn't even apply to you, what you'd want to see is the data for win rates on your basic ladder, split out by league and server).

Furthermore, you can't really account for the selection bias. Everyone seems to be jumping to the conclusion that the best players play T because it's the best race? Maybe not, maybe it's the hardest and they like a challenge. I don't know as i'm not pro and I've never talked with one. Either way you have to be careful.

On October 14 2011 02:57 Wuster wrote:


Controversially, you could say that MC has dragged Protoss as a whole down. Reason being, Korea is a very copy-cat scene (the only real exception is the tank/marine vs mech split for TvT). And MC always had a really timing/micro heavy style, so people who weren't as sharp as him couldn't pull it off and eventually when people learned timing defenses, then those other Protoss' disappeared too (Alicia comes to mind - I still best remember him for straight up killing MVP when poking with a 3-gate expo).

Maybe this is reading too much into MC's fall from grace and yes I'm kind of ripping off what Wolf said, but players sure like to follow the example of their best players (how many NA zergs only respect macro ala Idra?). And Genius/Hongun, who never played like MC, are the two most consistent Protoss players (as in Code S every season knock on wood).

I think the huge swings in PvX are weird; how the hell do you balance a race that goes to 60% win rates then down to 30% winrates month to month?

Some of it though is caused by patch changes, like the Roach range buff in Open 2, Fungal buff in May all caused PvZ to tank immediately, but they more or less bounced back the season after.

Obviously, PvT hasn't bounced back from August yet; but 1-1-1 isn't a patch change so that's not too surprising. PvZ is starting to come back though, so that's a good sign.

I'm curious what meta/patch changes happened in PvT between January and December to cause Protoss to go from 2 in the final 4! MC FF's imba! Hongun's all-ins too good! to Protoss barely winning.



Inca, Genius, Hongun and Anypro have all made deep GSL runs (only Genius has missed on a Ro4 on that list). It's not like there are a lot of non-Nestea zergs that make GSL finals either (just Fruitdealer and Losira).

On October 14 2011 03:36 Sabu113 wrote:


Right now I think the standard response would be that it's foolish to ignore the story around the stats. Most arguments about balance have observations about why the game is the way it is and stats merely augment the argument by pointing out something that seems abnormal.

Just to make this post/ thread a little productive, how do you feel about psych studies? They can have <50 obs in a study and still make definitive claims.

What assumptions do we have to make to make these stats into something worthwhile on their own? If we recorded the data in a different way to run a regression what lag should we throw onto a metagame variable.

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 03:47 NicolBolas wrote:


Stats that don't mean anything don't suddenly gain meaning just because you put some theorycraft next to them. Either the stats are real statistics that have actual value, or they are junk. There's no real middle-ground here.

On October 14 2011 03:17 dschneid wrote:
There's a huge lack of stats knowledge here and it's sad that these graphs get put on display when people don't know how to read them. For people who said sample size doesn't matter because these are win percentages, it doesn't matter that percentages are normalized for sample size, sample size still effects how much weight outliers hold as well as the general significance of the number.

Put some confidence intervals around these, make note of possible selection bias, and tell me the overall sample sizes (a few hundred at best? That's not that much in the realm of stats)...

Bottom line you can only make a few inferences from these but no sound conclusions.

On October 14 2011 03:17 dschneid wrote:
There's a huge lack of stats knowledge here and it's sad that these graphs get put on display when people don't know how to read them. For people who said sample size doesn't matter because these are win percentages, it doesn't matter that percentages are normalized for sample size, sample size still effects how much weight outliers hold as well as the general significance of the number.

Put some confidence intervals around these, make note of possible selection bias, and tell me the overall sample sizes (a few hundred at best? That's not that much in the realm of stats)...

Bottom line you can only make a few inferences from these but no sound conclusions.

On October 14 2011 03:03 SeaSwift wrote:


I like how you say that timing pushes have been figured out but Hongun has never played like MC and has remained a consistent Protoss player.

HongUn has ALWAYS relied on timing pushes. Be it 3gate Void Ray all-in, 4gate all-in, you name it. I think I can count the number of times he has expanded on one hand. He has just been lucky enough so far to face some relatively mediocre players or else beat people on their off-day (vs MC, for example. 3 4gates in a row...). He's the Protoss version of YuGiOh (or YuG1-1-1Oh), but more successful and lucky IMO.

And Genius is just a really solid all-round player, making up for his relatively poor mechanics (compared to MC/MVP et al) with being FAR ahead of his time in the metagame.

On October 14 2011 03:37 K3Nyy wrote:


I dunno if you realize it but timing attacks happen in a lot of games, not just MC's game.

TvZ, the 3 tank timing attack happens in a lot of the games. TvP, Stim/Ghost/2 medivac timings happen all the timing. ZvP, roach ling, etc.

The point is nobody maxes to 200/200 and then goes attack, that's not a macro game. Timing attacks always happens, not just in the Protoss race. The difference is that pretty much all the Protoss timings have been figured out.

On October 14 2011 04:16 ectonym wrote:
Between, say May and Jul, what does SUPER mean? Is June really that awesome? but srsly folks, what's SUPER mean in OP's charts

On October 14 2011 04:16 ectonym wrote:
Between, say May and Jul, what does SUPER mean? Is June really that awesome? but srsly folks, what's SUPER mean in OP's charts

On October 14 2011 04:07 Wuster wrote:
I'm aware that all games feature timing attacks. I watched MC at IPL and he's still delaying his 3rd a long time while he executes 2-base timing x. He's not all-in, but he does bank a lot on his push working. Most of the time if you move out and the timing turns out not to be there, you turn around and try later. MC's seems like he *had* to make the timing work or he's screwed.

On October 14 2011 04:07 Wuster wrote:But then again this might be my bias towards Terran style 100-food pushes to kill the Zerg 3rd versus Protoss' using a void/phoenix to stop the Zerg from putting his 3rd down (which fail so often to oh that 3rd was faster than I thought, oh he has extra queens, oh there are spores...).

On October 14 2011 04:07 Wuster wrote:I think Protoss still has plenty of room to explore with timings, ect. They have Chronoboost after all. It's certainly made double forge look viable in the GSTL playoffs. I really do believe that chronoboost is not well understood right now. I see lots of pro games where it's been 10+ minutes in and the nexus has full energy, certainly there's something you could be doing, if nothing other than powering into a tech switch (chrono buildings or upgrades).

On October 14 2011 01:23 ChroMaTe_ wrote:
Thus why I switched to Terran.

On October 14 2011 04:50 SeaSwift wrote:


Sure, MC does use timing pushes a lot, but I personally feel that it's not just his playstyle: it's a way the Protoss race works. The warp gate mechanic lends itself to timing pushes, with Protoss being pretty much just as good on the offensive as defensive because of no reinforcement time and the ability to reproduce a chunk of your army in 5 seconds after you lose Zealots eg 6gate push. Of course, that's just my opinion.

On October 14 2011 04:50 SeaSwift wrote:


I consider the GSTL to be a bad sample for looking at balance. You often get Code B players matched up against Code S players. The really top players don't seem to take GSTL seriously (Nestea, MVP, Bomber) and just basically use ladder builds. Yes, chronoboost can be used better, but the difference it makes to most timings is minimal - it won't change a strategy from unviable to viable, it won't make an opponent's viable strategy suddenly unviable. It is there for subtle changes, unless of course you are talking about PvP.

On October 14 2011 02:53 dooraven wrote:


1/1/1 happened. Not sure what happened in PvZ though

On October 14 2011 05:00 MrCon wrote:

So you're switched to terran because terran is imbalanced at a skill level you will never attain ?
At your (our) playing level, there is no such thing as imbalance. In fact even at foreigner pro level there is no such thing as imbalance.
Complaining because of too much TvT in GSL I can understand. Complaining because playing protoss or zerg is hard in your (our) wood leagues is the ultimate hypocrisy. Because in our wood leagues, playing every race is fucking hard.

On October 14 2011 05:26 thesauceishot wrote:

What base do you have to say that balance is only a factor at Korean skill level? Please back up your claim.

On October 14 2011 05:00 MrCon wrote:

So you're switched to terran because terran is imbalanced at a skill level you will never attain ?
At your (our) playing level, there is no such thing as imbalance. In fact even at foreigner pro level there is no such thing as imbalance.
Complaining because of too much TvT in GSL I can understand. Complaining because playing protoss or zerg is hard in your (our) wood leagues is the ultimate hypocrisy. Because in our wood leagues, playing every race is fucking hard.

On October 14 2011 04:21 Shiladie wrote:


the super tourny

These graphs will now be mis-represented all over because people never know how to interpret stats...

Yes terran is winning more, and protoss is winning less, this has been known, these stats also support that, but to make more inferences past that is a fallacy.

The interesting things to note are the months MC MVP or Nestea won and the respective race win-rates in those months.

On October 14 2011 05:38 galivet wrote:


You can't generalize across imbalances in this way. Suppose the imbalance were caused by the fact that SCVs build 3 seconds faster than probes. That's an imbalance that would effect every PvT from pro level down to gold.

Imbalance means that one side plays with a handicap. So if you're a low masters protoss, it's possible that you're actually substantially better than other low masters terrans at your same rank -- if you had picked terran instead of protoss as your race, then you might be mid-masters or high-masters for the same amount of time and effort put into the game.

Hence, some people switch races due to imbalance.

On October 14 2011 06:08 Coopa826 wrote:
Hm im not happy with those graphs

look like a very upset toss troll made them up with excel if you ask me.
hmmm nope sryy

On October 14 2011 06:08 Coopa826 wrote:
Hm im not happy with those graphs

look like a very upset toss troll made them up with excel if you ask me.
hmmm nope sryy

On October 14 2011 04:21 Shiladie wrote:


the super tourny

These graphs will now be mis-represented all over because people never know how to interpret stats...

Yes terran is winning more, and protoss is winning less, this has been known, these stats also support that, but to make more inferences past that is a fallacy.

The interesting things to note are the months MC MVP or Nestea won and the respective race win-rates in those months.

On October 14 2011 06:19 Krallman wrote:
I want to see an only code-s graph

On October 14 2011 01:22 Fleebu wrote:
Maybe you should also look at the percentage of people in Korea who actually play Protoss...

On October 14 2011 06:30 Silidons wrote:

Maybe you should look at the amount of people who play SC2 in America rather than South Korea. Obviously Americans are going to have many more better players because so many more of us play.

See what I did there?

When will people stop this ;..;

On October 14 2011 08:10 yotis wrote:
I wonder what would happen to the numbers/graph when winner games would not count. Cause you have dominant players like MVP/MC/Nestea owning their seasons and shifting numbers/graphs to theirs race advantage.

On October 14 2011 08:10 yotis wrote:
I wonder what would happen to the numbers/graph when winner games would not count. Cause you have dominant players like MVP/MC/Nestea owning their seasons and shifting numbers/graphs to theirs race advantage.

On October 14 2011 08:10 yotis wrote:
I wonder what would happen to the numbers/graph when winner games would not count. Cause you have dominant players like MVP/MC/Nestea owning their seasons and shifting numbers/graphs to theirs race advantage.

On October 14 2011 06:26 Clog wrote:


Yeah that's the thing that bugs me most about things like this - where the winner of the tournament racks up a huge amount of wins that can nullify the quick losses of at least several other players of his race in earlier rounds.
Example - Assume Terran is the weakest race by far. MKP, Ryung, Keen, NaDa, Virus, Supernova, and MMA all go 0-2 in their Groups. They just can't win a game because terran is so bad. However, MVP, being a complete boss goes undefeated through the entire bracket 14-0 + Show Spoiler + by being so much better than anyone else he plays. Total Terran W/L = 14/14, or 50%. I think the statistical term for something like this is Selection Bias (players losing provide fewer data points), but I'm not totally sure if that's completely right. And of course the example is exaggerated as well.

So that's a complicated way to explain why we see zerg / protoss / terran peak a little when Nestea / MC / MVP won, respectively. I would love to see the data normalized to each player. In theory it should be a bit more representative on balance. + Show Spoiler +

On October 14 2011 08:15 Expurgate wrote:


If you remove winners from the statistics, all races have a 0% win rate

On October 14 2011 03:37 K3Nyy wrote:


I dunno if you realize it but timing attacks happen in a lot of games, not just MC's game.

TvZ, the 3 tank timing attack happens in a lot of the games. TvP, Stim/Ghost/2 medivac timings happen all the timing. ZvP, roach ling, etc.

The point is nobody maxes to 200/200 and then goes attack, that's not a macro game. Timing attacks always happens, not just in the Protoss race. The difference is that pretty much all the Protoss timings have been figured out.

On October 14 2011 04:59 Reborn8u wrote:


More like

On October 14 2011 08:08 Skwid1g wrote:


You made no sense, while his does.

If there is 1 Protoss player for every 1,000 Terran players you should expect too see a higher Terran win %. There are more Terrans innovating and finding solutions to problems, a better chance to find a Flash, etc. America might have more players, but they have less experience and less practice.

But in all honesty the difference is like 2-3%, so it shouldn't create that big of a disparity. Honestly, Terran's win-rate is fueled a lot by players like MVP that are just straight up better, and also the fact that a good deal of BW Toss/Zergs switched to Terran because of Terran dominance in BW and in the Beta days. Just looking at win-rates in the GSL would be a terrible way to balance the game.

On October 14 2011 01:22 Alejandrisha wrote:

He doesn't really watch the GSL I've talked to him about it haha

On October 14 2011 08:22 Corrupted wrote:
Should add team league...a few protoss's kicked some serious ass there.

On October 14 2011 08:15 happyness wrote:


Uh with that example, isn't that because most of those are TvT's?

On October 14 2011 01:29 Roxy wrote:
Very Interesting

It is a shame that all of the skilled players chose terran.. wish i could see some protoss innovate new strategies but alas all of the protoss players are scrubs

I guess they just pick terran because it is the hardest race to play and we all know koreans love high APM

On October 14 2011 01:22 Fleebu wrote:
Maybe you should also look at the percentage of people in Korea who actually play Protoss...

On October 14 2011 08:36 Clog wrote:


Well that was assuming they aren't playing mirror matchups. You obviously don't count those. A better example would be Open Season 1 with Zerg. For that season, Zerg has around a 50% win rate as shown on the OP's graph. But if you average out every zerg's win percentage from that season (I went through and did the calculations myself), ignoring mirror matchups, it came out to around 33%, which I feel is much more representative of the balance of zerg at that time.

The little hypothetical scenario I made up was just to show how a skilled player that gets far into the tournament can overshadow a large number of players of the same race getting crushed in terms of the race's overall win - loss.

On October 14 2011 03:05 FeyFey wrote:
well the korean winrates will be t favored for some time unless you buff the other races into an overpowered state. The game evolves still and with that many terrans the chance is super high for a new strat. And as there are only a few protoss and zerg players you have to face ... you don't have to fear to much surprises and don't have to train 2 or 3 different zerg players styles.

On October 14 2011 08:36 Clog wrote:


Well that was assuming they aren't playing mirror matchups. You obviously don't count those. A better example would be Open Season 1 with Zerg. For that season, Zerg has around a 50% win rate as shown on the OP's graph. But if you average out every zerg's win percentage from that season (I went through and did the calculations myself), ignoring mirror matchups, it came out to around 33%, which I feel is much more representative of the balance of zerg at that time.

The little hypothetical scenario I made up was just to show how a skilled player that gets far into the tournament can overshadow a large number of players of the same race getting crushed in terms of the race's overall win - loss.

On October 14 2011 08:24 BronzeKnee wrote:


I am always shocked when I read this. Not watching the GSL means you aren't watching SC2 at the highest level, and if you are involved with balancing SC2, it is a travesty that you do so without watching the GSL. It would be the same thing as if the people who decided on what the rule changes should happen next season in the NFL didn't actually watch the NFL last season, and only watched High School and College Games (provided all three had the same set of rules).

I wonder if he wonders why all these Koreans come over to MLG and win everything... or why a Korean from the Open Bracket took on a Korean in the NASL Finals... yet he isn't balancing the game based on their play...

On October 14 2011 03:14 Fig wrote:
I believe that the main problem with protoss is just how obvious it is to play. Think back to the beginning of the game. The races that did well were the ones that were most intuitive. Zergs were learning to spit larva perfectly, and Terrans stuck to mmm, because it was found to be super powerful. Tosses showed their trump cards (colossi, voidrays, and HTs) much sooner than the other races. Because they were ahead of the game with using their other units, the other races started losing a ton and protoss seemed too powerful. Therefore HTs and voidrays were nerfed, and only after that did we start to see spellcasters from the other races. These nerfs plus change in strategy from the other races acted to add insult to injury, and now the result is what we see now.

On October 14 2011 01:22 Alejandrisha wrote:

He doesn't really watch the GSL I've talked to him about it haha

On October 14 2011 09:54 Jemesatui wrote:
Wow a serious lack of understanding of statistics here. First off, ofcourse the number of players playing a race matters in these stats. If you have a pool of 100 terrans, 20 Zergs and 10 protoss in a tournament, and a Protoss doesn't finish in the top 10, does that mean terran imba? No, it doesn't.
Take the Olympic for example. Countries with a higher population e.g china and the U.S always finish with the highest medals. Yes ofcourse talent and training is a factor, but also largely the large population allows for greater numbers of talented trained individuals hence greater results.

The stats are useless because they are bias. The Korean Terran population is far greater than Protoss. This means that if the game is perfectly balanced, there will be more Terran winning than Protoss. That's just how it works.
HOWEVER this also doesn't mean Terran isn't overpowered. The only way you could get close to an unbiased result would be collecting a RANDOM sample of THE SAME amount of each race, and seeing the results.
Now let's say blizzard knows this, and that's why they hesitate on making buffs and nerfs. You cannot base balance based on win and loss rates alone, because doing so is a complete statistical failure.
Personally I DO think terran is overpowered, but my opinion isn't really important here. If you want to use statistics as a reference point, you're going to have to get a lot more complicated before any reasonable observations can be made....

On October 14 2011 10:11 Reborn8u wrote:


Wait a second, isn't the GSL full of terrans because they knocked out the protoss players over time? It's not a random sample group we're talking about. And GM in Korea is pretty evenly spread between races, last time I checked. It's just that the top it is full of Terran. "The stats are useless because they are bias" no actually your post is useless because it is bias.

The fact that every stat and graph I've ever seen shows Terran dominance since release is statistically significant. Any graph I've ever seen shows terran having higher peaks and less severe valleys. This whole "better players pick terran" is moronic and I've seen 0 proof of that. Plenty of former BW pro's didn't pick terran but get smashed no name terrans.

This whole "balance doesn't affect lower levels" is crap too. If it is imbalanced at the very top, that imbalance would ripple through most mid-high level play. Meaning that a player picking the overpowered race will do better than he would as the other races. Especially when most of those less skilled players are watching the top players and copying there strategies and play styles. In starcraft 2 the dissemination of ideas is very fast.

On October 14 2011 09:58 Zealot Lord wrote:
Back when Terran players only used nothing but MMM, yes templars with amulet looked too strong; but what about now though? Its quite clear to me that some of the things which used to be considered imbalanced are most likely no longer overpowered with pro players improving at such a fast rate, as they change the effectiveness of different units. I am 100% sure that had the game begun with players that could use snipe as well as they could with ghosts now, they would have never taken out khydarian amulet.

On October 14 2011 10:22 Daralii wrote:

Flux Vanes is another thing. It was removed because void ray all ins were too good in 2v2, but with the 6 second spore crawler burrow time and the incredible strength of fungal, I have to think Blizz could afford to bring it back.

On October 14 2011 10:23 sopporku wrote:


VRs are already tough as shit for zerg to deal with and it derails zerg completely.

On October 14 2011 10:23 sopporku wrote:


VRs are already tough as shit for zerg to deal with and it derails zerg completely.

On October 14 2011 10:26 Fig wrote:

where is your proof for this? It is much more widely accepted that FFE voidray openings vs Zerg are terrible nowadays.

On October 14 2011 08:36 Clog wrote:


Well that was assuming they aren't playing mirror matchups. You obviously don't count those. A better example would be Open Season 1 with Zerg. For that season, Zerg has around a 50% win rate as shown on the OP's graph. But if you average out every zerg's win percentage from that season (I went through and did the calculations myself), ignoring mirror matchups, it came out to around 33%, which I feel is much more representative of the balance of zerg at that time.

The little hypothetical scenario I made up was just to show how a skilled player that gets far into the tournament can overshadow a large number of players of the same race getting crushed in terms of the race's overall win - loss.

On October 14 2011 10:28 provrorsbarn wrote:
Im ignoring the first couple of seasons (1-2) cuz nobody knew what they where doing.....
But its pretty interesting that the protoss winpercentage is changing so much in such a short amount of time.....both up and down....(about 15-18%/per season)
While the other races are getting a more stable winrate precentage over time....(4-6 %)

On October 14 2011 10:31 ComaDose wrote:
sad protoss
I don't think this represents balance just the preferences of the best players.

On October 14 2011 10:29 sopporku wrote:


because an FFE opening brings it out too slow.

tell me, how's that kiting of spores working out? zerg must spend all his time microing spores around his base and then ultimately never doing any damage because the VRs just run off and laugh while attacking some drones or tech buildings? 7 range is bullshit for a unit that can "charge" to do 1000000 damage, even to unarmored. 1 VR kills 1 queen. It takes far more micro and multitasking for a zerg to defend VRs early game than it takes to lolchronospam VRs.

the person who wins is the person who forces the other to waste time not macroing. VRs do just that, because protoss gains map control, because protoss can insta-kill any tech buildings you try to put up until you mass quieens, derailing 150 minerals per queen from teching, because spores dont shoot immediately and require 6 seconds at which point a VR flies off and you have to uproot again and chase.

I don't see or understand why anyone can point to spores as the reason zerg should be fine against air early game. it costs drones/larvae/minerals, and then it doesn't even shoot unless the protoss is stupid enough to sit there and be shot by it. spores can be kited infinity times. queens can be focused down and killed, particularly by a VR player who precharges on other buildings to get charged damage on queens.

On October 14 2011 10:39 Fig wrote:

You are ridiculous. Where did you come from? You must be watching people play SC2 in an alternate dimension. Or maybe you are watching from back in beta when void rays actually had high charged DPS. You obviously have never played toss, or you would know that void rays cost 250/150, and as such should be able to take out a 150 mineral queen, which they just barely do. Putting two queens up against a void ray is closer in value (still far in zerg's favor), and they win that battle easily. And as the GSL has shown, even just massing queens works against voidrays.

Also, everything zerg has (minus queens) costs drones/larvae/minerals, that's how the race works. If you are complaining about that, switch to a race that doesn't have drones or larvae.

On October 14 2011 10:11 Reborn8u wrote:

Wait a second, isn't the GSL full of terrans because they knocked out the protoss players over time? It's not a random sample group we're talking about. And GM in Korea is pretty evenly spread between races, last time I checked. It's just that the top it is full of Terran. "The stats are useless because they are bias" no actually your post is useless because it is bias.

The fact that every stat and graph I've ever seen shows Terran dominance since release is statistically significant. Any graph I've ever seen shows terran having higher peaks and less severe valleys. This whole "better players pick terran" is moronic and I've seen 0 proof of that. Plenty of former BW pro's didn't pick terran but get smashed no name terrans.

This whole "balance doesn't affect lower levels" is crap too. If it is imbalanced at the very top, that imbalance would ripple through most mid-high level play. Meaning that a player picking the overpowered race will do better than he would as the other races. Especially when most of those less skilled players are watching the top players and copying there strategies and play styles. In starcraft 2 the dissemination of ideas is very fast.

On October 14 2011 01:38 Tsubbi wrote:
every day new terran domination data pops up, every non terran know, every terran knows, nothing happens. have high doubt that anything will change before the addon :/

as torch once said, terran isn't imba, its just better

or yellows first reaction to terran: a dropship that can heal? what kind of imba unit is this?

On October 14 2011 11:33 oxxo wrote:


P has/had the most options for all-ins.

On October 14 2011 11:39 Codeskye wrote:



protoss? you think so?

are you kidding me?

On October 14 2011 07:53 Serpico wrote:
Please remove warpgates and larva inject so you can make individual units stronger. It just feels bad to have to have shitty units at certain points in the game because of those mechanics. I understand the swarm thing is a theme for zerg....but just make it fun to play rather than trying too hard to match that theme. Warpgates just suck because of how much the turn the defender's advantage on its head and force gateway units to be subpar.

On October 14 2011 11:33 oxxo wrote:
Interesting to see the changes as the metagame evolved.

P is not 1-dimensional. P has/had the most options for all-ins. People learned to defend them. Code S Ps have not changed their game very much since early SC2 while T/Z have evolved tremendously. It'll be fine once the bad Ps are kicked out of Code S and the good ones make it in.

On October 14 2011 10:11 Reborn8u wrote:

Wait a second, isn't the GSL full of terrans because they knocked out the protoss players over time? It's not a random sample group we're talking about. And GM in Korea is pretty evenly spread between races, last time I checked. It's just that the top it is full of Terran. "The stats are useless because they are bias" no actually your post is useless because it is bias.

The fact that every stat and graph I've ever seen shows Terran dominance since release is statistically significant. Any graph I've ever seen shows terran having higher peaks and less severe valleys. This whole "better players pick terran" is moronic and I've seen 0 proof of that. Plenty of former BW pro's didn't pick terran but get smashed no name terrans.

This whole "balance doesn't affect lower levels" is crap too. If it is imbalanced at the very top, that imbalance would ripple through most mid-high level play. Meaning that a player picking the overpowered race will do better than he would as the other races. Especially when most of those less skilled players are watching the top players and copying there strategies and play styles. In starcraft 2 the dissemination of ideas is very fast.

On October 14 2011 12:04 Daralii wrote:
Colossi and sentries exist to attempt to balance out the weakness of gateway units. It all goes back to the warp gate.

On October 14 2011 12:36 Fanatic-Templar wrote:


Yes, but if we have to lose one of Colossi or Warp tech to get stronger Gateway units, then I'd easily choose to sacrifice Colossi. At least we could get Khaydarin Amulet back.

On October 14 2011 12:55 The KY wrote:


May I be the first to say fuuuuck the Amulet. Kill a whole protoss army and then arrive at their base to 4 fully charged HTs with storm and 10 chargelots?

Buff toss some other way please.

On October 14 2011 13:01 Fig wrote:

I'm sorry that you just want to win in one huge blob vs blob battle that lasts less than 5 seconds. Those are so fun to watch. Heaven forbid that the toss have a chance at getting back in the game.

On October 14 2011 13:05 The KY wrote:


...what are you talking about?

If you kill the opponents whole army and keep your own, you should have an advantage. KA didn't allow that. KA was OP. It got removed. No discussion needed - it's gone and isn't coming back and I am happy about that.

If you are behind and you want to get back in the game, you have to outplay your opponent. T click isn't outplaying your opponent.

Before I get some bullshit reply about how Terran can do this and that - I play terran and toss and I think terran is a bit OP. KA was still dumb.

On October 14 2011 13:10 iamke55 wrote:

Then do you also think the planetary fortress should be removed? Does the same thing as KA except you only have to pay the 150 gas once.

On October 14 2011 10:29 sopporku wrote:


because an FFE opening brings it out too slow.

tell me, how's that kiting of spores working out? zerg must spend all his time microing spores around his base and then ultimately never doing any damage because the VRs just run off and laugh while attacking some drones or tech buildings? 7 range is bullshit for a unit that can "charge" to do 1000000 damage, even to unarmored. 1 VR kills 1 queen. It takes far more micro and multitasking for a zerg to defend VRs early game than it takes to lolchronospam VRs.

the person who wins is the person who forces the other to waste time not macroing. VRs do just that, because protoss gains map control, because protoss can insta-kill any tech buildings you try to put up until you mass quieens, derailing 150 minerals per queen from teching, because spores dont shoot immediately and require 6 seconds at which point a VR flies off and you have to uproot again and chase.

I don't see or understand why anyone can point to spores as the reason zerg should be fine against air early game. it costs drones/larvae/minerals, and then it doesn't even shoot unless the protoss is stupid enough to sit there and be shot by it. spores can be kited infinity times. queens can be focused down and killed, particularly by a VR player who precharges on other buildings to get charged damage on queens.


If protoss air openings are so bad, why am I seeing more and more protoss using them on ladder? 9 out of 10 will do it.

bad openings are bad, refined openings put the proof in the pudding of the shit that is VR. theres a reason flux vanes were removed.

On October 14 2011 13:17 Yuppi wrote:
Give ous KA back its not like protoss was overpowered or dominated when we had it...

On October 14 2011 03:53 WickedSkies wrote:

I completely agree with every single word in your post!