Where did all of the terrans go? - Page 98

On March 20 2012 13:34 Yosho wrote:


I personally do believe that terran takes the most skill to play at this moment.

Credentials; Random player and Master league on 1 korean account, 1 europe, 2 north america. All as random and not low masters either. 900+ points on NA and EU. 600+ on Korean.

I thoroughly enjoy most matchups. I dislike TvP the most as it derails the longer the game goes on. I thoroughly enjoy PvT for the same reason. The longer I live, the harder it is to kill me.

A few things to note as to why the terrans are complaining is that when you have this nice death ball from protoss it requires more actions for the terran to counter it. Protoss simply has to attack and focus on storms through *most* leagues at a lower level. While any terran at a lower level has to micro thoroughly vs collasai and zealots while trying to snipe the templar. This scales pretty much through all the leagues.

While protoss CAN improve their deathball micro by retreating more and picking better positioning their race is very forgiving in that when we're positioning vikings, trying to kite your zealots, snipe / emp your army and templar and produce back at home because we can't just reinforce on the battlefield. We're also trying to keep marine / marauder, medivac / viking ratio's to match the protoss as well we can.

When the engagement hits as a protoss I simply attack, warp in units, try to storm at the proper places and for the most part just move around my collasai if they get focused. I have a lot apm needed to fight the other side of the matchup. When one race has to severally outplay the other race as time goes on it grows apparent that there is something wrong in the matchup. If terran does not go into the late game with a severe lead it's rather easy to shut them down.

As a minor example of what I mean, out of all my replays this season I have these ratios.

ZvP - 54%
ZvT - 57%
ZvZ - 55%

PvT 63%
PvP 51%
PvZ 72%

TvZ 56%
TvT 81%
TvP 36% <-

These are over 3 realms, 4 accounts, based on 506 replays.
Over all I'm above average in my win ratio vs high masters / grandmasters. But look at my TvP? It's clear I don't have macro problems with terran as my TvT is amazing. All my other races are fine too. My TvP is such a low percentage that it doesn't seem possible for me to play that bad in 1 matchup out of 9 where I do pretty well in. Especially with only 36%. 506 replays isn't exactly a small sample size either...

I'm not complaining about any races / matchups. I'm just saying as a high rated player, who shows consistency every matchup and does play them all at a high level... This stat is laughable.

On March 20 2012 12:20 drop271 wrote:
I'm a former diamond terran, and have switched to protoss - mostly to try and learn TvP from the other side. I'll go back to Terran eventually of course.

My insight has been that PvP seems much more stable than TvT - imo there are fewer 'oh wtf how can I scout that coming' moments. You still lose 50% of the time I'm sure, but at least you know why and how to correct it. So, from my perspective, PvP seems less frustrating and bewildering than TvT can be.

PvT seems just as hard to play as TvP. Its a great matchup with both sides needing to respond and scout. But it seems a bit less taxing mentally as Toss since the Terrans seem to be in a very stable metagame - they all seem to 1rax expo into FE (with or w/o gas). Occassionally you get a 1/1/1 but you spot that a mile off. In TvP there are (it seems) more openers to accomodate, and you have to cede a good deal of early map control if you FE.

And PvZ is just fun. No banelings to worry about (yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay).

So tl:dr, from my perspective as someone who has switched from T to P, P less frustrating to play at diamond level. I'm NOT saying anything about balance. I'm just saying that the mistakes and changes are a bit clearer than 'fucking reapers' 'fucking banelings' 'fucking dts' 'fucking psi storm' that seems to precede the many Terran ragequits. As a protoss, fewer of my matches seem like a massive armwrestle. But for Terran - TvT, TvP and TvZ can all go late game and be stressful.

But..... this is also why I look forward to going back to Terran. All the matchups are epic (if taxing) encounters

On March 20 2012 15:55 drop271 wrote:


Fair points and well made. However there are two problems for your evidence which stop it from being something conclusive as why terrans shrink at all levels -

Firstly, the common factor in all those games is you. You may just be bad at TvP. It doesn't matter if you are random or whatever, you might just be worse (relatively) at that match up. You may be trying 'proper' builds that the metagame doesn't favour. Either way, its still your personal experience (which you of course admit). I'm sure there are many people that perhaps just 1/1/1 and find TvP easy.

Secondly, they are all experiences at your particular skill level. Even if it is on different servers - your MMR (assuming you play just as well regardless of your account) will find equal skilled opponents on each account. An explanation could be that the micro required at that point of skill is harder for Terran because there 'imbalance' arises from snipe being slightly harder than feedback per se. But if you master both then it balances out etc (just an example). So maybe TvP is harder at your level. We know its not too hard at pro level, and its probably pretty damn easy in bronze with pure stim pushes. So I think your points, aloquently and nicely made, can only apply to a certain strata of SC2

On March 20 2012 14:51 tomatriedes wrote:


How dare you say that!? Don't you know that paying terran takes 1000 times more skill than other races? Don't you know that the only thing holding back every terran whiner in this thread from being in the GSL is the fact that they chose the race they did?