[D] TvP and defenders advantage - Page 15

This thread is just so sad on so many levels. We saw the inklings of it a few weeks ago when terrans started whining that no one seemed to give their heros the same adulation that any victorious protoss or zerg got. Now minor balance changes are an attempt to generate the same racial sympathy and unity the other two races have.

On November 30 2011 10:13 coL.drewbie wrote:
heh i like this thread, I have lots of problems agaisnt protoss right now and I hate how my ONLY build is 1 rax gasless expand vs protoss, nothing else seems to work. I think that the OP is wrong about the defenders advantage though, if the protoss wants to attack into a terran and the terran seems it coming then they can lay down EMPs, and its really hard for P to attack ( although EMP got nerfed super hard T_T ) The problem for me lategame vs protoss, is that IMO protoss just requires less APM than terran in the end game. I find myself losing to 100 apm protosses that just sit and camp to max, then send 1 probe to make pylons all over the map + a warp prism and then just start warping shit in all over the place until my army gets out of position and the protoss moves in with their main army. Terran requires so much more apm in the fights, and drops all have to be perfectly microd because protoss just warps in units as soon as they see the drop, you have to pick up and move somewhere else with 2+ different drops at the same time. Also in fights protoss just has to A move and then go back to macroing, the T has to spread units perfectly and perfect EMPs and then kite the zealots which I think is quite unfair. I think that's why korean terrans have been having an easier time TvP than foreigner terrans, because they have ridiculous apm and can multitask a lot better and handle all the fighting / macroing / multipronged attacks.

On November 30 2011 10:13 coL.drewbie wrote:
heh i like this thread, I have lots of problems agaisnt protoss right now and I hate how my ONLY build is 1 rax gasless expand vs protoss, nothing else seems to work. I think that the OP is wrong about the defenders advantage though, if the protoss wants to attack into a terran and the terran seems it coming then they can lay down EMPs, and its really hard for P to attack ( although EMP got nerfed super hard T_T ) The problem for me lategame vs protoss, is that IMO protoss just requires less APM than terran in the end game. I find myself losing to 100 apm protosses that just sit and camp to max, then send 1 probe to make pylons all over the map + a warp prism and then just start warping shit in all over the place until my army gets out of position and the protoss moves in with their main army. Terran requires so much more apm in the fights, and drops all have to be perfectly microd because protoss just warps in units as soon as they see the drop, you have to pick up and move somewhere else with 2+ different drops at the same time. Also in fights protoss just has to A move and then go back to macroing, the T has to spread units perfectly and perfect EMPs and then kite the zealots which I think is quite unfair. I think that's why korean terrans have been having an easier time TvP than foreigner terrans, because they have ridiculous apm and can multitask a lot better and handle all the fighting / macroing / multipronged attacks.

On November 30 2011 10:17 ZenithM wrote:


To be fair, 100 APM post patch is actually good enough even for pros. If it's pre patch, it's definitely low, but post patch, the best multitaskers in the games have 110-140 max (basing myself on pro korean replays, MMA vs MVP, HuK vs Aria, etc...).

On November 30 2011 10:44 mordk wrote:
I think neither race has a clear advantage in the matchup, but that's not because the matchup is balanced, but because it's broken as hell. Almost equally broken actually.

What I dislike about the OP is that he focuses only on Protoss' strengths in the matchup while completely disregarding Terran's strenghts, which are indeed many.

In the early game, Terran has a CLEAR advantage. Terran allins have time and time again demonstrated how powerful they are vs Protoss, simply because they have the ability to dictate what the protoss does. Keep in mind, for example, that a well executed 1-1-1 on a favorable mapmust be blind counteredor it WILL kill you as Protoss, because when the scout gets there you're already dead. The fact that a build must be blind countered only prooves how broken early game TvP is.

In the mid game it's somewhat even, with early ghost timings giving a slight advantage to terran, related to the amount of sentries protoss can muster to hold the EMPs, this is also the usual timing in which ghosts will destroy Protoss in a straight up fight, so P will usually turtle. This means that barring some drops or other such things, this is probably the most boring stage in any matchup, absolutely nothing happens at this point. Protoss builds an army, Terran builds ghosts/vikings depending on what he scouts.

In the late game is when everything is actually most broken. Given how units clump together, both EMPs and Storm are overpowered, and can make or break the matchup. Ghost/HT micro isn't exciting or fun to watch. In this regard it should be noted that because of each race scouting and detection capabilities, and mobility differences between units, ghosts have an inherent advantage against HTs, but at the same time, once Protoss has enough chargelots it doesn't matter because they pretty much just don't die at all.

All in all, the matchup is boring, broken as hell, usually determined by a single battle, or even a single drop, since the matchup is so fragile there's no way to recover from a sniped charge/storm/thermal lance upgrade. There's no dynamics in the game, nothing to make it interesting to watch.

It's really sad imo. TvP must be the most boring of all matchups, pretty much everything about it is wrong and stale.

On November 30 2011 10:25 Juanald wrote:
I think if there really was a balance problem youd find community leaders like STOG and ITG would hahve discussed it, protoss have just been practicing for months and have finally started to break even thanks to our brilliant protoss heros. im really saddened to see the top foreign terrans balance whine (jinro drewbie avilo) i expected more tbh imho.

On November 30 2011 11:37 one-one-one wrote:


For calling it "whine" I think it is way more constructive than if you take a random "Terran OP" whine argument.
Drewbie does a very detailed description of his take on the problems in the matchup without whining even once.

And do you honestly expect SotG to affect anything ? Last time I checked there was mostly protosses in there and a zerg who was idrA. Like that bunch of people would ever come to the conclusion that terran was UP before it became a blatantly obvious fact.
In that show they went into great detail discussing the possible effect of a patch. They spent a lot of time dissecting the consequences for PvP and the vision up the ramp change.

The fact that the same patch included the bf hellion nerf was cleared in about a minute. Everyone said they thought it was a good change and that hellions were OP except iNcontroL who didn´t like the change. Day[9] seemed to not have done the math on how it will affect hellion damage vs marines and only said "hmm" when confronted with it.
Said change could have had huge ramifications for TvP since bf hellions had started to appear in some late game pro-level games to deal with chargelots.

So much for them caring about the terran side in TvP ...

On November 30 2011 11:55 ZorBa.G wrote:


I have actually stopped watching SOTG for this very reason. I just get the impression that it really is just a Protoss gangbang. I could be completely wrong, but it's just how I feel after watching the show so many times.

When do they ever regularly have at least 1 Terran on there? I can't even remember the last Terran I had seen on there tbh, Painuser? 1 Terran out of 57 episodes?

Not to mention, the last patch with the emp nerf and cheaper toss ups was discussed for no more then like a minute. I bet if there was a Terran on the show, there would have been more discussion.

On November 30 2011 11:55 ZorBa.G wrote:
I have actually stopped watching SOTG for this very reason. I just get the impression that it really is just a Protoss gangbang. I could be completely wrong, but it's just how I feel after watching the show so many times.

When do they ever regularly have at least 1 Terran on there? I can't even remember the last Terran I had seen on there tbh, Painuser? 1 Terran out of 57 episodes?

Not to mention, the last patch with the emp nerf and cheaper toss ups was discussed for no more then like a minute. I bet if there was a Terran on the show, there would have been more discussion.

On November 29 2011 03:56 Nightshake wrote:


Strong but not cheap as forcefields.


Tanks are just too bad in TvP, only useful in 1/1/1. The main reason is that even if they deal a lot of damage zone, they are too weak against Zealots and deal damage to your own units. They are good to destroy Stalkers, Colossus and Sentrys. The Protoss has simply to build Phenixes and you are in a real disadvantage of mobility and army efficiency.

They are 2 ways to defend properly :

- against a 3/4 Gate Robo all-in, it is pretty much impossible to defend when you have taken your expand. So you have to stay on one base and wait for Medivacs or Ghosts

- for other all-ins, keep one SCV outside your base to scout and be sure when he attacks. Put your VCS in front of the bunkers to prevent Zealots to reach the bunkers, and to make the sentrys use more Forcefields. Basically with good micro, and good multitask, it shouldn't be so hard.

Good luck defeating the Protoss !

On November 30 2011 10:17 ZenithM wrote:


To be fair, 100 APM post patch is actually good enough even for pros. If it's pre patch, it's definitely low, but post patch, the best multitaskers in the game have 110-140 max (basing myself on pro korean replays, MMA vs MVP, HuK vs Aria, etc...).

On November 30 2011 13:00 kofman wrote:

Eh, I doubt that the top korean pros have only 140 max... I mean, I have an average 120 APM when the game is like 20 minutes long, and I'm not grandmaster... I don't know, maybe I just have high APM

On November 30 2011 13:15 ZenithM wrote:


I know, I have 120ish APM too, 160 pre-patch (and I play protoss lol), doesn't make me a good multitasker ;D
I opened up one of my most recent replays of MMA vs MVP, arguably 2 of the strongest mechanical players and multitaskers, 29 minutes game on Tal Darim, going up to 4 bases. They ended up with 132 APM (MVP), and 136 APM (MMA). MMA's average peeked at 144 during the game. I think they have both 220+ pre-patch on that game though, judging from the amount of tapping going on :D

Conclusion: Blizzard's APM doesn't measure shit, except maybe how fast you click on your mouse.

Edit: About the replays if you want to check that out, it's the GSPA finals. Very good games