Balance patch this week - Hellbats nerfed, Banshees buffed…

On July 16 2013 06:02 Plansix wrote:

I don't agree and think terran has some of the most robust scouting in the game, including scans. Its not perfect, but what is? As a protoss, I have played blind when a terran has denied me the scouting information I need by sniping and obs. Or it arrives a second to late and you see half an army with no medivacs and you know that 2 of them are out there, comming for it.

Once again, the grass is always greener. I am sure zergs could tell me how bad it is for them too and how hard it is to scout protoss all-in. I could tell stories about how many roach rushes I have lost to because both my scouting probes got picked off.

On July 16 2013 20:23 Sissors wrote:

Scan has many uses, and I really like it as Terran. However you can call it alot, but robust is not on that list. The area is early game simply too small not to be a coin flip. That's why similar to what others mentioned prefer to just use a mule and blindly make missile turrets. That is pretty much always a better idea than scanning and praying you see something useful.

But you imply that Terran has some other very 'robust' scouting methods, care to inform us which they are?

yes in the end we might have the same TvP than we had in WoL, only with Terrans needing to invest a bit more into early game (static) defence (because of possible DT and oracle play) and protoss needing to invest less because of MSC. seems fair, no

On July 16 2013 06:39 sneirac wrote:
I don't necessarily disagree with you, my reply was solely to the onesidedness with which most terrans look at that game/that series.

As for anything else, i agree that Protoss early/mid opportunities might be overpowered, but as of now i just don't see the it as a huge issue. Yes with Naniwa and the other P that all inned his way through the group stages (was it duckdeok?) and Genius in GSTL a pattern is starting to emerge. But with the picture you're painting it looks like Terrans aren't winning anything against Protoss and that i just don't see (yet).

If you look at the recent results in Korea, TvZ appears to be a much bigger problem than TvP. Again that may change but for now there just doesn't seem to be a need to do anything.
The much bigger problem however is what can actually be done about it. Do you think that a cheaper turret/no Ebay requirement (believe Naruto and/or Morrow were asking for that) would give Terran the security against allins? Because most Terrans i see are just asking for removal of the Planetary Nexus and with the current balance in Korea that might just remove Protoss from top level competition entirely.

I would also advise you to try to look at things from the P/Z side sometimes. You speak of you're ladder experiences/frustrations, try to think of those of the other races. I'm sure a lot of Zergs can tell you about their problems with Mines and a lot of Protoss will tell you how the wiffed their first Storm / Thermal Lance was just not ready and just lost outright to the first Stim/Medivac push. All these are subjective opinions, all these may or may not be correct to whatever extent, but the Pro results are so far not showing it (I think).

On July 16 2013 07:34 Doublemint wrote:
There is quite a bit of inconsistency here I am afraid. I went through the trouble and watched the game, Polt made quite a few crucial mistakes.

First of all he very early and smartly scouted with an scv and saw the 10gate coming, furthermore blocked the natural with an ebay - he did not cancel mind you. The trouble terran could face by going 1 rax reaper expand is that the bunker could be up late - and it was late but not because Squirtle was so fast at his base but because Polt - god knows why - put it on the lowground next to his ramp. this aggression is virtually over if the bunker is "up" and a couple of marines are inside.

Fine, did not happen, Squirtle did a bit of damage, killed a couple of Marines and SCVs for a zealot and 2 stalkers - I would not consider this going very well for the Toss.

After that you pointed out Polt had to guess so much - there are like 3 possible 1 base allins or busts possible - via air with oracles/VRs, by going Immos or a Blink allin(which is terrible btw on belshir since you have like 2 entry points, one is going up the ramp...) So Squirtle went Immo with a proxy robo. Polt knew an allin had to come, since the ebay was still there, and had to gather info what it was. The Reaper did fine by going to the main and scouting a bit around seeing the 3 gates now KNOWING something is coming - BUT not sending an SCV or Marine out for more info,even worse, going for a useless and expensive sensor tower(which according to Liquipedia is 125/100 and not 150/125 but nvm.) is baffling to be honest - Lucifron in this regard did a better job by scouting rather infamous proxy positions in the game against Naniwa.

Then the actual attack with 3 immos,like 4 sentries and some other gateway units occured - Polt had hardly any trouble deflecting it by having enough units and scaring Squirtle away with a lot of bunkers - and be ahead eco wise since he has 2 orbitals and mules are pretty good in these kind of situations. However Squirtle killing the supply depot on the ramp and a couple of bunkers expanded behind while containing Polt who had to wait for medivacs.

Looking at the VOD it was not a "coinflip" going for the DTs after all this but rather a calculated risk as Squirtle killed everything blocking the entry to Polts base and in addition saw a sensor tower but no turrets up. When - finally - Polt moved out he of course wanted this to be his turn to throw the punches and went for the natural in full force while being vulnerable at home. While attacking the natural everything fell completely apart for him and he did not concentrate on either front but it spiraled into a quick gg.

Mind you - before Polt attacked they were both on around equal eco but not tech - Squirtle had gateway Immortal army and DTs but no splash and no upgrades --> MMM under normal circumstances rapes this and I guess that's also the reason why Polt went in full force while in midfight got his attention diverted towards DTs slashing at his eco.

Scrappy game with a bit of luck for Squirtle, but Polt far from playing optimally.

//edit: this is the game in question for people interested in the discussion.

+ Show Spoiler +

On July 16 2013 22:57 TheDwf wrote:

?? Where did I say such a thing?


25 less minerals on detection would help a bit, but would change nothing about the bigger picture, i. e. a distorted risk/reward ratio for gimmicks and MSC + chrono/warp making it too easy to recover from semi-failures.


It's not about "only me," any high level Terran, or any Terran actually, will tell you the same thing about early game in TvP. Ask any of the Terran pros who post on the forums and I'm 100% confident they will tell you the exact same thing.

I have no particular trouble imagining what the other races think, and they're free to talk about their issues as well.

Oh and for the record, losing to a simple Medivac push doesn't happen at high level without a major blunder from the Protoss and it's been like that for ages. At any rate this has nothing to do with a lottery issue, Protoss has total control about this (unlike Terran for the raised issue).


Yes, 125/100, my bad.

Perfect play doesn't exist, so you can always point out to mistakes. Again, I'm not claiming the Terran played perfectly and still lost. My points are (1) that the margin of error is much, much thinner for one side, while the other side enjoys transitions/buybacks it should never get and (2) those attacks are way easier to execute than to defend so they still have strong chances to win even when scouted, which makes zero sense. Plus it's not enough to say that "Polt made mistakes"; what's more interesting is: could he have avoided those? For that he needed information, and he couldn't get this.

For instance, the Reaper would have to search for approximatively half of the map to find the proxy building. There's no doubt you might find the building eventually, but then what if you find it only 30 seconds before the attack hits? You have no Forcefields to buy time and you can't warp/chrono +15 Marines to suddenly invest everything in "army".

The fact there is a limited amount of all-ins available does not change anything to the fact there is no universal answer: units compositions and building placement differ to defend some of them. For example, you want a Turret at the front and in your mineral line against Oracles/Voids, but that's a complete and possibly game-ending waste of money against Stalkers or Immortals. You want mostly Marines against air-based threats while you absolutely need 2 rax maraus if you have no Tanks against Stalkers. If you have not the information about Blink Stalkers and you go pure Marines, you're in a terrible spot; no doubt Bel'shir Vestige isn't a particularly hot map for Blink, but believe me they can still prevail frontally by brute force as unupgraded Marines crawling in Time Warp are stupidly inefficient while the Protoss advantage grows wave after wave because he produces faster than you + retains his units while you lose yours. Similarly, if you blindly go 2 rax maraus on top of your reactor rax and it happens to be Voids, you run into troubles because Marauders are useless against air and inefficient against the Zealot wall. The flexibility to reactively assign all your resources quickly into the needed area just isn't there, which is why Terran needs the information in advance to prepare accordingly.

Bunker lowground is the correct decision against zeal/stalk/MSC agression if you have a wall. This, again, is another stupid coinflip [the coinflip lies in the fact you'd want a wall against certain things (e. g. proxy 10/10), and no wall against others (stalks/MSC pokes, Blink Stalkers, Voids all-ins), but obviously you have no way to know before deciding] resulting from the fact MSC is (a) an air unit and (b) was gifted with a cheap AoE disabler lasting way too long. MSC gives vision to the stalks, which can then fire at the depots and the rax (which cannot be lifted because you have your reactor there, a precious infrastructure), and you can't do anything about that before a long time if you don't have a bunker lowground. This is a lesson every Terran learnt the hard way: never try to challenge zeal/stalks/MSC with a small pack of Marines. Even a SCV pull is super inefficient as Protoss just casts Time Warp on the ramp and hits & run with his stalks, resuming his attack on the wall as soon as you retreat.

What I meant with "Polt was punished for playing right," even if he presumably guessed wrong for what kind of all-in was coming, was that he did everything people calling LucifroN "greedy" suggested: slowed down his tech, continuously produced troops, cut SCVs. His reward? Ends up behind against 11' Nexus…

DTs raiding by foot is virtually always hit or miss. Either there's a Turret in front of the base or there isn't. That's that. No doubt Squirtle did it on purpose because Terran is pigeonholed into predictable agression, so countering with DTs or Prisms attacks warping Zealots when the Medivac push moves out is becoming more and more common. But just like in many other cases, HotS changed the risk/reward ratio for DTs in a stupid way: cheaper Dark shrine + MSC allowing much more tech-heavy builds and earlier gas and extra safety = the risk is much lower while the reward (potentially ending the game with crippling damage) is still the same, thus promoting those coinflips because they've become low-risk attempts at accidentally winning the game. In WoL, DTs were high risk, because the building was expensive and Protoss' builds were held in respect by a variety of agressive Terran options now virtually all dead to a 100/100 core tech unit; 5'40 dual forge or having as many tech buildings as units at 7' was completely out of question, now it can be standard with the MSC… When DTs failed in WoL, Terrans had reliable ways to punish that. Which, again, was working as intended: when you invest 400+ gas into something which fails, or at least doesn't yield enough results, it should matter. In HotS… not enough. Which is why you now see so many more Dark shrines in PvT than in the past.

By the way Protoss doesn't need splash at all to slaughter a Medivac push: Squirtle had "only" Zealots without Charge, 5 Sentries with mass energy and stalks/immos and it was more than enough to convincingly bash Polt's army (even without the 2 Cannons it would have been enough). Under a certain supply threshold, splash is optional to deal with bio because unlike what the cliché says for years, gate units don't "suck". Also, why do you say Squirtle had no tech? He had a Council searching Charge, had access to Archons via DTs and had a single Forge searching +1 armor. Polt didn't commit because he thought "bio wins no splash," I would say he attacked because he knew he was behind and the brick wall would only get thicker the more he waited. Dropping Protoss on 2 bases is bound to fail when he has as much army supply as you and doesn't move his whole army for a drop in the main while you rally the rest in the natural to snipe the Nexus or something.

On July 17 2013 00:02 VayneAuthority wrote:
the problem with TvP is that you live and die by the mine in that matchup and even pro terrans are still figuring them out, so at gold to masters or whatever it is a pretty huge fucking problem of a matchup.

PvZ is equally hard though so in the end I feel like in broodwar it balances out with every race having their hard and easy MU.

On July 16 2013 23:42 Markwerf wrote:


stop whining so much really, you're throwing around all these nonsense facts. Protoss has some all-ins but they are really not that difficult to stop in PvT hence you don't see them much in pro PvT where it's much more standard for protoss to try and defend and take it to lategame. Besides that there is basically only immortal/sentry all-ins, voidray/oracle all-ins and blink all-ins. Robo and stargate all-ins are both just stopped with bunkers at the front, the only difference with stargate is that you have to be wary of oracles harassing your mineral line which even if you don't have a turret is not too hard to stop by a quick scv pull. If you're unsure just 1 turret in the main mineral line and 1 turret near the natural with some bunkers stop any all-in but blink.. That is if the map is good for blink, if there is only a single entry like bel shir this stops blink too. However any map good for blink is also easy to use reaper scouts... Blink strats are easily scouted by the unit composition they go and gas timings and all you need to do against them is go marauders.
For your information by the way, production speeds off barracks are about the same as warpgates... Reactor rax, 4 marines every 50 seconds, warpgate 2 zealots every 56 seconds. Techlab rax 2 marauders every 60 seconds, warpgate 2 stalkers every 64 seconds..
It's just how it is with every matchup, one race has more solid timing attacks, other has better harassment options. Bio is based around harass and mobility thus the other race has mostly timings and defensive play as option. Mech should be viable to fix this, unfortunately it isn't..

On July 16 2013 23:42 Markwerf wrote:
stop whining so much really, you're throwing around all these nonsense facts. Protoss has some all-ins but they are really not that difficult to stop in PvT hence you don't see them much in pro PvT where it's much more standard for protoss to try and defend and take it to lategame. Besides that there is basically only immortal/sentry all-ins, voidray/oracle all-ins and blink all-ins. Robo and stargate all-ins are both just stopped with bunkers at the front, the only difference with stargate is that you have to be wary of oracles harassing your mineral line which even if you don't have a turret is not too hard to stop by a quick scv pull. If you're unsure just 1 turret in the main mineral line and 1 turret near the natural with some bunkers stop any all-in but blink.. That is if the map is good for blink, if there is only a single entry like bel shir this stops blink too. However any map good for blink is also easy to use reaper scouts... Blink strats are easily scouted by the unit composition they go and gas timings and all you need to do against them is go marauders.
For your information by the way, production speeds off barracks are about the same as warpgates... Reactor rax, 4 marines every 50 seconds, warpgate 2 zealots every 56 seconds. Techlab rax 2 marauders every 60 seconds, warpgate 2 stalkers every 64 seconds..
It's just how it is with every matchup, one race has more solid timing attacks, other has better harassment options. Bio is based around harass and mobility thus the other race has mostly timings and defensive play as option. Mech should be viable to fix this, unfortunately it isn't..

On January 09 2012 23:43 Markwerf wrote:
Z guesses the T opening or gets a lucky overlord through and is ahead or misreads and is behind against some timing or greedy build. T builds like this one just differentiate so late that it's total frustation playing against them given how many options T has.

On July 16 2013 23:42 Markwerf wrote:


stop whining so much really, you're throwing around all these nonsense facts. Protoss has some all-ins but they are really not that difficult to stop in PvT hence you don't see them much in pro PvT where it's much more standard for protoss to try and defend and take it to lategame. Besides that there is basically only immortal/sentry all-ins, voidray/oracle all-ins and blink all-ins. Robo and stargate all-ins are both just stopped with bunkers at the front, the only difference with stargate is that you have to be wary of oracles harassing your mineral line which even if you don't have a turret is not too hard to stop by a quick scv pull. If you're unsure just 1 turret in the main mineral line and 1 turret near the natural with some bunkers stop any all-in but blink.. That is if the map is good for blink, if there is only a single entry like bel shir this stops blink too. However any map good for blink is also easy to use reaper scouts... Blink strats are easily scouted by the unit composition they go and gas timings and all you need to do against them is go marauders.
For your information by the way, production speeds off barracks are about the same as warpgates... Reactor rax, 4 marines every 50 seconds, warpgate 2 zealots every 56 seconds. Techlab rax 2 marauders every 60 seconds, warpgate 2 stalkers every 64 seconds..
It's just how it is with every matchup, one race has more solid timing attacks, other has better harassment options. Bio is based around harass and mobility thus the other race has mostly timings and defensive play as option. Mech should be viable to fix this, unfortunately it isn't..

On July 17 2013 00:29 Nebuchad wrote:
I think the main problem with TvP is that a lot of terran viewers are extremely aware of how the terran race is harder to play than the protoss race, and this awareness messes with their vision of the game. Because of it, they deduce that every time they lose it's because of how easy protoss is, and every time they win it's because of their skill overcoming the hardness of the match-up.

That game when jjakji lost to Trust ; some people used it to show how the immortal all-in is too strong, when in reality, jjakji defended the all-in just fine, then cancelled his bunkers, went in the middle of the map, lost 12 units and 2 medivacs for no reason, and then lost to the push while his bunkers were reconstructed.

Or when Myungsik beat Innovation, and most people were amazed at how well he played (even plogamer, who frequently argues that protoss is imbalanced, said something about good control from Myungsik), and in the middle of this TheDwf came in and said this looked like half his ladder games vs protoss (and Naruto defended him).

If you're convinced that the terran deserves to win more because he has the hardest task, then you can't see protoss playing well. You just see a wall of "master+ protoss" doing the same shit every game, and it can only be balanced once terran wins every single game, because they deserve it more.

On July 17 2013 00:53 TeeTS wrote:


You are right in most of your points here. I think though, that in all matchups there should be the possibility of a strong early game attack on both sides (not just light harassment that you defend with a handful of units) to keep both players honest to their scouting, map vision and defence.
The worst thing that can happen to a protoss in early game right now, is a widow mine drop. And here you have so much time to react (much more than for an orcale btw.). Even if you just pull your probes, when the widow mines are already out, you are fine. This is all. The rest goes right to to the trashcan. In TvZ there is nothing but a proxy 2rax (yeah it still works here and there and the reason is either that it is really broken or some zergs are just to lazy to learn defending it correctly). If Terran builds one baracks in the main, zerg just knows "oh fine, i'm safe for the first 10-12 minutes of the game and can do whatever i want here".
On the Terran side in TvP there are various strong 1base plays, that you have to be aware of and the prominent 2base charge zealot/archon/storm allin. It's very hard to get a good read onto the protoss here, because the production facilities are normally widely spread out (so getting a read of the number of gates f.e. is really hard, but that's usually the big point if a protoss goes 2base allin or grabs a 3rd) and most allins are proxied, and some clever protoss go for non standard proxy locations.
TvZ is even worse. there seem to be endless possibilities and timings for baneling busts. All of them have kill potential and most of them even offer a smooth transition into a normal game. (damage is most of the time guaranteed). You don't have to be greedy to die to them. Even if you're not going for a 3rd CC but are staying on the wrong early game comp, may decide your death.
And if you have a day, where you get allined by Protoss and Zerg 10times in a row and can only defend it 2 or 3 times, is really frustrating.
I play high and mid master opponents and I suppose these guys are not dumb (most of them at least). So why do they use these allins so often? Because they are easy to read and to hold? If this were the case, then noone would play them.

On July 17 2013 00:53 TeeTS wrote:


You are right in most of your points here. I think though, that in all matchups there should be the possibility of a strong early game attack on both sides (not just light harassment that you defend with a handful of units) to keep both players honest to their scouting, map vision and defence.
The worst thing that can happen to a protoss in early game right now, is a widow mine drop. And here you have so much time to react (much more than for an orcale btw.). Even if you just pull your probes, when the widow mines are already out, you are fine. This is all. The rest goes right to to the trashcan. In TvZ there is nothing but a proxy 2rax (yeah it still works here and there and the reason is either that it is really broken or some zergs are just to lazy to learn defending it correctly). If Terran builds one baracks in the main, zerg just knows "oh fine, i'm safe for the first 10-12 minutes of the game and can do whatever i want here".
On the Terran side in TvP there are various strong 1base plays, that you have to be aware of and the prominent 2base charge zealot/archon/storm allin. It's very hard to get a good read onto the protoss here, because the production facilities are normally widely spread out (so getting a read of the number of gates f.e. is really hard, but that's usually the big point if a protoss goes 2base allin or grabs a 3rd) and most allins are proxied, and some clever protoss go for non standard proxy locations.
TvZ is even worse. there seem to be endless possibilities and timings for baneling busts. All of them have kill potential and most of them even offer a smooth transition into a normal game. (damage is most of the time guaranteed). You don't have to be greedy to die to them. Even if you're not going for a 3rd CC but are staying on the wrong early game comp, may decide your death.
And if you have a day, where you get allined by Protoss and Zerg 10times in a row and can only defend it 2 or 3 times, is really frustrating.
I play high and mid master opponents and I suppose these guys are not dumb (most of them at least). So why do they use these allins so often? Because they are easy to read and to hold? If this were the case, then noone would play them.

On July 17 2013 00:59 Plansix wrote:

Yeah, the last thing we want is boring match ups where its so easy to scout that no agression works at any time and everyone is forced into a macro build. Remember the days when we could all go 1 gate/rax FE and not give a shit. Those were terrible.

And the argument that terran is harder to play that the other races just gets so old. It is almost approval to whine about playing the game, even if you have a personal 50/50 win rate against everyone.