On April 08 2013 10:06 BaaL` wrote: Pretty big selection bias? Games where T is winning already are much more likely to have 10+ widow mines, as the pushes would not get shut down and so the mines never get mopped up.
A 10% difference is nothing really if you consider any statistical effects.
I thought so too. If the terran is winning, why not make more mines? I would, and I'm a zerg player :D
On April 09 2013 12:38 nak0z wrote: Here is a great replay of how imbalance the widow mine is, it is extremely difficult to harass terran at the mid game due to widow mine placement, 1 widow mine and you are fcked.
My opponent has 58% win rate in TVP, 33% in TVT, 67% in TVZ by abusing widow mine.
Terran uses it offensively and you are !@#$ed, you are forced to engage and hope for terran miss micro their units and hope for a bingo.
I wonder what is Blizzard thinking and why do they even have to carefully observe the abusive unit in higher level game play, QXC literately mass widow mine with 2 base and beat Idra with 5 base. Stephano loses to QXC non stop widow mine harass while massing up battlecruisers.
It's really boring to watch too. I've started turning off the stream whenever Idra/Stephano hit QXC.
I love watching it, anything is better then the NR20 of TvZ in WOL.
It may become that again very quickly. If the best thing a zerg can do is NOT move out of his base it's going to become a NR scenario. The game has only been out a month. At the moment I see a lot of zergs just going through the permutations of "what do I do about this?" so far nothing is really clicking. If the trend keeps up it's going to become a turtle fest for zerg.
Nope, terrans will still be attacking even if the zerg turtles.
On April 09 2013 12:38 nak0z wrote: Here is a great replay of how imbalance the widow mine is, it is extremely difficult to harass terran at the mid game due to widow mine placement, 1 widow mine and you are fcked.
My opponent has 58% win rate in TVP, 33% in TVT, 67% in TVZ by abusing widow mine.
Terran uses it offensively and you are !@#$ed, you are forced to engage and hope for terran miss micro their units and hope for a bingo.
I wonder what is Blizzard thinking and why do they even have to carefully observe the abusive unit in higher level game play, QXC literately mass widow mine with 2 base and beat Idra with 5 base. Stephano loses to QXC non stop widow mine harass while massing up battlecruisers.
It's really boring to watch too. I've started turning off the stream whenever Idra/Stephano hit QXC.
I love watching it, anything is better then the NR20 of TvZ in WOL.
It may become that again very quickly. If the best thing a zerg can do is NOT move out of his base it's going to become a NR scenario. The game has only been out a month. At the moment I see a lot of zergs just going through the permutations of "what do I do about this?" so far nothing is really clicking. If the trend keeps up it's going to become a turtle fest for zerg.
Hm maybe in wol it would work.. but they can still attack if we turtle in hots =D
On April 08 2013 10:30 opterown wrote: i bet if you compared games with over/under ten mutalisks, or over/under ten high templar, etc you would get similar stats
Yes. 10 is such an arbitrary number. This is such an arbitrary analysis. Now go get winrates for ZvT where Zerg builds more than 10 Ultralisks. There was no ZvX winrate thread in WoL when Zergs built more than 10 Infestors...
Furthermore, I play Master/GM Zergs and there is still a lot of sloppy play in unnecessarily losing units to WMs. Similar to when T isn't watching their army and loses everything to banes.
I think it's also important to note that "less then 10 widow mines" also includes games where Terran didn't make a single one, but in fact the Widow Mine is a very important unit in TvZ now and it's not a problem that they are losing when not making a single widow mine. (also cheeses are included in this where no widow mine gets produced) Imagine a statistic "more than 10 marines" ofc the result would be even more extreme because it's even more of a pivotal unit. That doesn't mean at all it's imba.
On April 08 2013 10:06 BaaL` wrote: Games where T is winning already are much more likely to have 10+ widow mines
These stats are for >10 widow mines produced. They don't all have to be alive at the same time.
That said, I agree that there absolutely must be some selection bias effect here, and correlation is not causation. However I thought the stats were still interesting. In particular, two effects that seem beyond the dread reach of selection bias are:
the relative absence of widow mines in TvP and TvT, and
the increasing presence of widow mines in higher league TvZ
Both of those facts suggest that the players themselves think mass widow mines are useful for TvZ. So it's at least a quantitative statement on the state of the metagame. Perhaps obvious to people who watch high-level TvZ a lot, but it's nice to see stats to back up what people say.
Mines are supposed to be core units as per designers written intentions in beta. They are supposed to be viable enmass like marines but in most cases they aren't right now. And if in a future meta it turns out they are viable to mass it just fulfills the designers vision of the unit.
On April 08 2013 10:05 Bippzy wrote: Out of curiousity, why did you set the cut off at 10? Did you use a certain build to determine that number? I haven't played or watched much hots yet, so if there is a pretty standard mass widow mine build i feel that should be used as a cutoff.
Still interested that more widow mines is correlated with more wins. But, correlafion doesn't mean causation, especially in an infant metagame.
Because choosing 10 shows his point wheras 5 or 20 may not. The number you pick makes a big differences in the picture you want to paint. (source: 10 years in pharma research with some very manipulative colleagues)
Protoss in broodwar that get 200 supply carrier/arbiter/obs have ~100% win rate vs terran. Zerg in WOL with 20+ Broodlords and 10+ Infestors have ~80% win rate vs terran.
Great point. I dont know if OP had any malicious intent with picking that number but I mech at a masters level vs Z and I normally never have 10 mines before the 15 minute mark or near max supply unless I scout early vipers.That is a pretty long time for a zerg to kill a terran and it happens often.
On April 08 2013 10:48 Emzeeshady wrote: Also, we already knew Widow Mines are really good vs Zerg. This isn't all that informative.
Well there ya go. OP is either wrong or obvious. Or both!
In other news, here's the >10 mutas stats:
well with the muta analysis, have we not reached a similar conclusion for ZvP? 49% with less than 10 mutas, 63% with more than 10 mutas for master level. the GM level is even greater (but with less sample size, of course). so we should also discuss how mutas are very strong in ZvP, stronger than widow mines are in TvZ
nice stats, btw :D commend you on that!
So, you just admitted that his analysis of Widow Mines was correct. And this also explains why every Zerg build Mutalisks in ZvP.
However, the reasoning is pretty simple. In WoL, Storm would eat away at Mutalisk packs, while in HotS a single storm isn't crippling because they can move off and regen. Thus Protoss players are forced more and more into Phoenixes, which is similar to when a Protoss player forces a Zerg into Corrupters, you can switch quickly into ground units and just win.
when did i say it was correct? i said: if you claim that widow mines are strong against zerg, i expect a similar claim for zvp. no such claim has come out. the fact that mutas, another tier 2 unit has even a greater differential in stats should be a bigger concern. therefore by following your line of reasoning, we need to nerf mutas before we nerf widow mines :D
i commend his work and effort, not his analysis or conclusion
I'm going try and explain this as simply as possible.
Reading the OP, we find that people who make 10+ Widow Mines in TvZ have a 10% high winrate based on GGtracker statistics. That is the analysis and the conclusion.
Though the OP states "Of course this doesn't exactly prove that Widow Mines are OP, but at the very least it suggests that getting/preventing mass widow mines is an important part of TvZ" It basically says nothing.
On April 08 2013 10:30 opterown wrote: i bet if you compared games with over/under ten mutalisks, or over/under ten high templar, etc you would get similar stats
And then someone states such statistics. You commend the work and effort. By commending the work and effort, you are basically saying "hey look you did a good job collecting statistics" and that is opposed to doing a bad job, in which the statistics are basically wrong.
Thus, since the analysis and conclusion were based entirely on the collection of statistics and he makes no inference on whether or not Widow Mines are OP, and then you commend the very same process of statistical collection, you have agreed to the conclusion of the OP which is: "that people who make 10+ Widow Mines in TvZ have a 10% high winrate based on GGtracker statistics."
On April 08 2013 10:48 Emzeeshady wrote: Also, we already knew Widow Mines are really good vs Zerg. This isn't all that informative.
Well there ya go. OP is either wrong or obvious. Or both!
In other news, here's the >10 mutas stats:
well with the muta analysis, have we not reached a similar conclusion for ZvP? 49% with less than 10 mutas, 63% with more than 10 mutas for master level. the GM level is even greater (but with less sample size, of course). so we should also discuss how mutas are very strong in ZvP, stronger than widow mines are in TvZ
nice stats, btw :D commend you on that!
So, you just admitted that his analysis of Widow Mines was correct, you do realize this right?
You cannot both like this method of statistics and attack it at the same time.
My god you're thick. The implication is that it tells us it's strong, not broken. Well no shit Sherlock. There's nothing staggering about any of these spreads, just stating what is best in the metagame.
And when did I ever say that it is was broken?
It is just a statistic. People come in here with an agenda like BaaL' and try to discredit what is obvious. That is what I'm fighting against.
Oh don't try to hide behind that argument. You were (under that handle) making threads left and right in beta forums complaining about widow mines in TvP. Are you trying act as a fair minded individual with no stake or opinion on the mine now? Have you changed your stance since beta and early release?
On April 08 2013 09:59 dsjoerg wrote: Someone on Reddit asked:
I'd be interested to see winrates vs T once there are large numbers of widow mines out. Watching GM streams, it feels like the rate is around 10%, and the mines are allowing (relatively) mediocre players to beat Top8 Zergs nearly every time.....
I thought the answer would be of interest to you all.
GGTracker has 961 Masters TvZ HotS 1v1 Ladder replays. In 616 of those, the Terran produces 10 or fewer widow mines, and wins 49% of the time. In the other 345 games, the Terran produces more than 10 widow mines, and wins 59% of the time.
Of course this doesn't exactly prove that Widow Mines are OP, but at the very least it suggests that getting/preventing mass widow mines is an important part of TvZ.
sample size too small- 59 games at gm level? laughable
sample doesn't represent the community- do you actually know how many different people played those games? out of those 650ish games Idra could have played like 60 games, who has very particular skill characteristics that distinguish him from the other players. statistics don't work that way. this was just an example to prove why it's flawed. a player could build 100000 thousand widow mines if he can't use them well he won't win more games.
sample not homogene- the games are very varied in terms of length, player skill, etc.
we don't actually know if they kill anything at all with those mines, they could be just for muta defense etc. in a significant portion of these games widow mines probably didn't achieve anything at all.
bottom line, what does this little research prove? that in the sample players who build more than 10 widow mines, they won more games. in that sample and nowhere else.
does it prove that widow mines make you win more? NO
exactly
the OP doesn't really prove anything.. and the sample is extremely small -,,-
That's inaccurate--he proves there is correlation which is the first step in making any hypothesis. Proving the hypothesis will require actual evidence but he isn't technically inaccurate.
For example.
I've seen the sun rising every morning since I was a child. Correlation => the sun rises each morning.
After (arbitrary length of time) study, I find out that the earth rotates on an axis and the sun remains stationary.
Correlation is proven false => sun does not rise, the earth spins.
Without the false correlation => there would never have been a study to prove it wrong.
A better analogy to this situation might be:
I've noticed a statistical correlation between the sun rising later and people I see in the street wearing coats => people putting on coats causes the sun to rise later.
Or maybe not. That's the point. All the OP demonstrates is that there's a way to partition the data in GGTracker such that TvZ win rates correlate slightly with widow mine usage. We've already seen a different way of partitioning the same data show no correlation.
The OP also shows a (stronger) correlation where better players (in progressively higher leagues) use more widow mines. Since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't suddenly be in GM if I started making a fuckton of widow mines, we should consider the possibility that better players tending to use more widow mines is partly or wholly responsible for the correlation between widow mines and win rates.
Some readers seem to think that ok, maybe this correlation isn't conclusive, but it's indicative of something and that maybe if we refined how we analysed the data we would get a better fit. Well, do you think if we refined our analysis of coat-wearing - factoring in patterns of length and style and colours and number of buttons on different days of the week, whatever strengthened the correlation - do you think we would ever prove that putting on the right colour and style of coat would affect when the sun rose?
On April 08 2013 09:59 dsjoerg wrote: Someone on Reddit asked:
I'd be interested to see winrates vs T once there are large numbers of widow mines out. Watching GM streams, it feels like the rate is around 10%, and the mines are allowing (relatively) mediocre players to beat Top8 Zergs nearly every time.....
I thought the answer would be of interest to you all.
GGTracker has 961 Masters TvZ HotS 1v1 Ladder replays. In 616 of those, the Terran produces 10 or fewer widow mines, and wins 49% of the time. In the other 345 games, the Terran produces more than 10 widow mines, and wins 59% of the time.
Of course this doesn't exactly prove that Widow Mines are OP, but at the very least it suggests that getting/preventing mass widow mines is an important part of TvZ.
sample size too small- 59 games at gm level? laughable
sample doesn't represent the community- do you actually know how many different people played those games? out of those 650ish games Idra could have played like 60 games, who has very particular skill characteristics that distinguish him from the other players. statistics don't work that way. this was just an example to prove why it's flawed. a player could build 100000 thousand widow mines if he can't use them well he won't win more games.
sample not homogene- the games are very varied in terms of length, player skill, etc.
we don't actually know if they kill anything at all with those mines, they could be just for muta defense etc. in a significant portion of these games widow mines probably didn't achieve anything at all.
bottom line, what does this little research prove? that in the sample players who build more than 10 widow mines, they won more games. in that sample and nowhere else.
does it prove that widow mines make you win more? NO
exactly
the OP doesn't really prove anything.. and the sample is extremely small -,,-
That's inaccurate--he proves there is correlation which is the first step in making any hypothesis. Proving the hypothesis will require actual evidence but he isn't technically inaccurate.
For example.
I've seen the sun rising every morning since I was a child. Correlation => the sun rises each morning.
After (arbitrary length of time) study, I find out that the earth rotates on an axis and the sun remains stationary.
Correlation is proven false => sun does not rise, the earth spins.
Without the false correlation => there would never have been a study to prove it wrong.
A better analogy to this situation might be:
I've noticed a statistical correlation between the sun rising later and people I see in the street wearing coats => people putting on coats causes the sun to rise later.
Or maybe not. That's the point. All the OP demonstrates is that there's a way to partition the data in GGTracker such that TvZ win rates correlate slightly with widow mine usage. We've already seen a different way of partitioning the same data show no correlation.
The OP also shows a (stronger) correlation where better players (in progressively higher leagues) use more widow mines. Since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't suddenly be in GM if I started making a fuckton of widow mines, we should consider the possibility that better players tending to use more widow mines is partly or wholly responsible for the correlation between widow mines and win rates.
Some readers seem to think that ok, maybe this correlation isn't conclusive, but it's indicative of something and that maybe if we refined how we analysed the data we would get a better fit. Well, do you think if we refined our analysis of coat-wearing - factoring in patterns of length and style and colours and number of buttons on different days of the week, whatever strengthened the correlation - do you think we would ever prove that putting on the right colour and style of coat would affect when the sun rose?
Lol
Yes, that would be a more "accurate" example than mine
On April 09 2013 06:52 Addicted2Dreaming wrote: lol you really think stats pertaining to master plays should bear any weight on anything?
you realize masters are the top 2% of the player base? compared to pros most masters players aren't good at all but seen on a global level just being in masters league makes you very good at starcraft. top. two. percent.
dude ive been top master for the past 3 seasons. ive played thousands of games against players comprising the higher end of the master spectrum. pretty sure im capable of gauging their skill levels and effectively weighing them against those of the korean pros and some foreigners like stephano, scarlett, etc. 'very good' and 'top 2%' are about just as useful as being bronze and dont come so much as even remotely close to cutting it. trust me, in every game i play there is plenty of room for improvement and optimization with respect to both parties.
These are not very good statistics at all and certainly not to draw conclusions from. The number may be artificially higher due to the fact of the player being more ahead and thus building more widow mines. This is just not indicative of anything.
On April 09 2013 01:19 tenklavir wrote: From this you can effectively conclude that WM% has no effect on Win rate.
Hey, look, you just drew a conclusion from the data. That's pretty cool. That's the point of sharing stats.
Since some of the feedback is that this is because Terrans make more WM's when they're ahead, what about looking at games where the Terran collects fewer resources than the Zerg but produces 10+ WMs? Or games where the Terran's army value is lower than the Zerg but produces 10+WMs?
Not that any of this data is conclusive, or indicative of actual game balance for some of the reasons you've stated, but it's still an interesting discussion.
On April 09 2013 01:19 tenklavir wrote: From this you can effectively conclude that WM% has no effect on Win rate.
Hey, look, you just drew a conclusion from the data. That's pretty cool. That's the point of sharing stats.
Since some of the feedback is that this is because Terrans make more WM's when they're ahead, what about looking at games where the Terran collects fewer resources than the Zerg but produces 10+ WMs? Or games where the Terran's army value is lower than the Zerg but produces 10+WMs?
Not that any of this data is conclusive, or indicative of actual game balance for some of the reasons you've stated, but it's still an interesting discussion.
It would be more accurate to simply write a action report for 100+ TvZ matches and do a write up on how effective or ineffective WM are in each of them with how and why it was efficient/inefficient. Then have about 100 people each doing 100 write ups and have that be a small sampling of a regional area. Collect about 100 regions and do a study of all the write ups and see the overall effect of WM in the TvZ matchup.
Watching GM streams, it feels like the rate is around 10%, and the mines are allowing (relatively) mediocre players to beat Top8 Zergs nearly every time.....
Thanks for including a random redditor's completely unsubstantiated statements. Care to NAME these top 8 zergs losing to mediocre terrans every time?
Hi - I'm the "unsubstantiated redditor", and my observations were based on watching streams over the weekend.
How does Stephano/TLO/Kane sound to you (Kane is not pro, but Top8 on NA and usually wins way more than he loses), TLO and Stephano you may have heard of.
As I said in reddit: The 10% percent is a perception of mine, and I'm seeing Stephano/TLO/Kane/etc find it very hard to beat Terrans at all, losing to lower-ranked players, and also getting hammered by players of equal level e.g. see Stephano vs Demuslim (where you would hope to see 50/50 over several matches, but Stephano won maybe 1 match out of 8).
Those aren't top zergs. If stephano and TLO can't deal with mass widow mines on the NA ladder, then maybe they should watch what's been going on in Korea. Scarlett beat MVP, she deactivated widow mines with infested terrans. GSL group A Roro vs Bomber game two, Bomber made a lot of mines and but was never able to handle Roro's macro/micro. MLG finals Life vs Flash speaks for itself. GSL group C ST.Curious vs MKP, curious beat marine marauder medivac mine with simple ling bling muta, twice in a row. For whatever reasons, none of these korean terrans are just sitting back on a reactored factory and making mass widow mines. Perhaps because they know better than to throw their games away against zergs that know what they're doing. All this talk about scrubs beating pros is nonsense. Regardless of what Stephano's record was in 2011-2012, he's still unproven in HoTs and hasn't won anything yet, so it's a bit much blind fanboyism to expect that he should be untouchable in an expansion with new units and strategies.
can we have the same statistics please with games of 5+ colossi or 5+ ultras and see the winrate differences with 5 or lower? Point is: it will look the same. you could do the same with marines and would get the same or most other core army units for that matter so i dont really see that the mines are in a direct relation to wins earned.
Maybe players aren't experienced enough vs WM yet? I just watched Curious dismantle MKP and one of the tricks he used was putting an overseer in his control group with his mutas. He just flew around and picked off mines while poking and trying to get some damage in on MKP's economy. Surely there are many other effective strategies vs WM yet to be discovered.
On April 09 2013 23:17 mau5mat wrote: Terrible statistical testing
OK, this thread has had enough of the "this is not significant" BS. Let us pull back the foreskin of ignorance and apply the steel wool of enlightenment.
data: 0.6 * 345 and 345 number of successes = 207, number of trials = 345, p-value = 0.0001203 alternative hypothesis: true probability of success is greater than 0.5 95 percent confidence interval: 0.5546467 1.0000000 sample estimates: probability of success 0.6
So, given the sample, the probability that there is actually a 50% winrate if more than 10 widow mines have been produced @ 10 minutes is 0.000123 (translation: really fuckin' small). There is a 95% probability that the winrate is between 0.5546 and 1.000.
Note, this does not say that the widow mine production caused the win, but it pretty definitely shows that in games where the WMs were produced in these volumes, the winrate was very likely higher than 55%.
I have a question about the QXC widow mine stuff, based on some of the posts here. So apparently it's really good in TVZ to do what QXC does, based on his games vs Idra + Stephano, in which he crushes them. My question is if it is simply an amazing strat, and not the result of some other factors at play, then why did I not see this strat employed in high level games, such as GSL quals and other Korean pro games? Do the Terrans at that level simply know less than QXC, or is QXC's success only possible vs. players like Idra + Stephano?
Excuse my ignorance, I'm just kinda lost. Should probably start watching more HOTS in general.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JIgXeQb.png)
