1 Month later... Is Queen Range still too strong [TvZ]? -…

On June 23 2012 06:51 _PulSe_ wrote:
Warning: wall of text incoming

The way I feel one should look at this is from the perspective of how Blizzard wants their game to play out. They have stated that they regard balance not only on a unit vs unit basis but also on a timing basis.

"In non-mirror matches we intentionally work to provide diverse strategies that make use of asymmetric design to produce varied, fun and interesting games, while maintaining excellent overall balance. That does mean that at different stages of the game, one race might have tools which represent an advantage against the others--though it’s important that those advantages can always be mitigated by good play." -Daxxarri

I understand that this quote was in relation to the TvP matchup, however, there are a lot of similarities recently in the late game play of TvP and TvZ. Terran trying to find a perfect engagement and trying to abuse lack of mobility. They've stated they'd like Terran to be very strong in the early and mid-game while trading off for a weaker end game. Their philosophy was that Terrans should push their early and mid-game advantage before the opponent achieves a superior unit composition which allows them to arrive in the late game in a favorable position with which they can continue to batter down the opposition and win.

If we can extrapolate anything from this it’s that Terran has to use the same general strategy in both matchups, that is, do damage early and do your best to ride that advantage into the late game for the win. We can also gather from this that they want certain races to be weaker in certain stages of the game. I do speak from speculation here; however, I believe Terran is balanced with zerg in the ultra-early game and in the mid game Terran needs to apply pressure before the swarm takes over in order to be able to secure a win against an even-skilled opponent.

How I believe the T is supposed to deal this damage is through superior cost effectiveness and through map control, slowly trading both of these aspects to the Z by the end game to Infestors and Broods. At this point, hopefully, T has efficiently traded armies and/or managed to affect the economy of the Z enough to put him at an advantage against the Z in the late-game and can, as is said a considerable amount in this community, “get more ahead” to secure the win.

This is where I feel Blizzard has acted completely contradictory to their balance philosophy. At the rate of the current metagame, in order for Terrans to keep themselves at an even remotely close pace with Zerg they have been forced to take extremely potentially vulnerable early fast expansions. This is where the queen buff shines as well. Early with a range 3 on queens it was considerable easier for T to take this early FE and not be paranoid about a possible all in from the Z because it was easily possible to keep your SCV alive around the base to hopefully scout if early gasses are going down. This isn’t even close to plausible any more as the range buff to the queen allows them to easily down initial scvs if they pool first and to keep scouting units out of their main. This isn’t the most important change however.

The current metagame with the queen buff has created a scenario that in order for a T to deal any sort of damage to a Z they have to trade an economic or timing advantage later. Creating scenarios in which the T has to deal a considerable amount of damage with their opening gambit in order to break even with the Z. With this buff Blizzard is essentially telling Ts that they aren’t supposed to safely pressure greedy Zs in the early game as queens can very easily repel bunkers now with ling support.

The Hellion opening was very good for as it allowed to T to safely pressure a FEing zerg(which is nearly every game) by forcing Z to create bit of army units and forcing spine crawlers. The hellions could deal with Queens as they had them out ranged and could stutter step them in and out to exploit holes in the Zerg’s defense. It wasn’t an over committal to Hellions and it allowed the T to establish an early Factory tech, All the while preventing the early spread of creep. This early prevention of creep also allowed a 1-1 timing or a tank timing later in the midgame to be more powerful as it allowed the T to move much closer to the Z base without having to slow down and begin killing tumors also saving more scans.
With the patch the Zerg metagame has adapted and Zs have been opening with the early 4-6 queen builds. Where Queens couldn’t leave the safety of Spine Crawlers previously they can now venture forth on the map and fight early hellion pressure.

Aside. The only adaptation from T I have seen is maybe possibly a 2 reactor hellion build that gets out 10 hellions super quick for an almost all-in attack. The problem with this is that now the choice to get out hellions isn’t so much of a transition as it is a commitment to hellions, which in turn forces the T to deal actual damage or the T will be considerably behind in tech and timing. Turning a solid light pressure build into a build committed to deal damage.

Aside. Marine openers can be dealt with 4+ queens plus a round of zerglings from the Z. Also if the T loses his early group of Marines he will be completely unable to keep up with the unit production of Zerg and he can overwhelm him early for the gg and at the least it will make his push later very susceptible to a Muta defense.

Aside. Banshee openers are also beeing thwarted rasther easily as well. If a T does it on 1 base it might as well be an all-in. If they execute it after taking an FE its delayed enough that now zerg is normally getting 2 fast evo chambers anyway. They will have the min nessecarry for spores easily and while starting with 6 queens anyway there isnt much of an issue.

Now with the Queens being able to deal with hellion builds and the fact that Zs are getting nearly 6 now it allows Queens to move out and spread creep earlier.

With the earlier creep spread we have what we have been seeing a considerably lot of lately. Which is by 10:-- mark over half the map is covered in creep. This creates another problem as the supposed strong mid game push from T has to slow down and clear creep before it can create a situation where the engagement is T favored with less creep around. Making T mid game pushes even weaker as they are arriving at the Zs natural or third even later giving the Z considerably more time to prepare and set up flanks.

Behind all this the Zerg is free to make rounds and rounds of drones almost unsusceptible to pressure. And this is where I believe we are now AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF PLAY which is key. What can T do? Well if I knew that I wouldn’t have been typing about the problems and would have been typing out the solutions.

Now back to Blizzard’s philosophy. They state they want asymmetric balance between the races. However, every nerf Terrans have been receiving is from Blizzard saying that these things are too strong early/mid game. The Z has problems defending T early to mid-game. Z has problems scouting in the early game. If T clearly doesn’t have an advantage late game, which no one really disputes, and Blizzard keeps nerfing ways for T to punish Z and do damage early to mid-game. T commiting in the early game is to economically unviable if it doesnt do enough damage. And now T is losing their mid-game timings as Zerg is achieving their Late-game composition earlier and earlier. Blizzard has consistantly been balancing this game to force almost all match-ups into the lategame where T, which they have admitted, doesnt have the strongest of armies.Where exactly is Terran supposed to be asymmetrically balanced with Zerg at this point?

T all-ins get nerfed and some deservedly so. But where have the nerfs been to the damage Banelings do to buildings to help Terran ability to mitigate those all-ins? Where has any nerfs to early roach all-ins been? These all-ins are very common on the ladder play and very commonly earn the Z a win on a consistent basis and also allow the Zerg to transition from them into follow-up pushes that also very consistently get the gg. But when Terran has any reliable all-ins to do damage to the Zerg or even put pressure on Zerg early it for some reason is a sign that Blizzard doesn’t agree with the metagame and they have to step in to stop it without allowing the metagame to reset itself

I will agree that nerfs and buffs are certainly nessesary for SC2, however sometimes I wish that Blizzard would mind their own business and/or incorporate pro players opinions into their beta testing for patches. The fighting Game community does this on a regular basis and it has certainly showed as of late with very balanced very fun games.

To the people saying it is too early to discuss whether or not this change has affected the state of the game. I ask why was this change made in the first place? What about the state of the game warranted a change of this magnitude to the matchup?

Ok.... and there we go for people who needed it broken down more for you. And people asking why T doesn’t just do this or that. I'm sure i missed several points as I'm certainly not a GSL champion, however this seems to be the ghist from my POV