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I'm fairly certain that the major problem in SC2 is that everyone is supporting a race instead of supporting a game.
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On September 02 2013 21:20 Big J wrote:
Mech/tank is too weak. Solution? Buff Mech/tank and/or nerf its strongest counters.
Buffing tank not only would hit roach/hydra hard by making marine/tank stronger but also do very little for mech as immortals/void-rays/tempests/vipers/mutas will still be hard-countering it.
And you can't go around nerfing that many units as you'll wreck ZvP.
Especially since some units/abilities almost need to be reworked entirely like blinding cloud.
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I am not entirely convinced that TvZ is as unbalanced as MC thinks but he is totally right that the MU needs more diversity. Make mech viable and try to make Roach-Hydra useful.
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Guys, this is a bit offtopic, but still..
This guy, saddaromma, reminds me of this guy "Roboroadkill" and his thread on bnet forums:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/9793010029?page=1
It is really funny and sad at the same time, I suggest you to go through first few pages (at least 3-4) if you have time and then watch him laddering here:
http://www.twitch.tv/roboroadkill/b/453465915
I personally find it insane how twisted human brain can possibly get.
edit: On topic, I'd like more Korean pros to speak so open about their view on SC2..
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Thanks a lot to Terry for the translate. I would say some words, but maybe quoting this is the most solid and short post I could ever made:
On September 02 2013 12:38 Master of DalK wrote:
OMG MC this is why we all love you <3
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I think it's too late to fix TvZ now, they need to do some major changes in my opinion. Probably will be possible only with the next sc2 expansion..
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On September 02 2013 21:28 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 21:20 Big J wrote:
Mech/tank is too weak. Solution? Buff Mech/tank and/or nerf its strongest counters. Buffing tank not only would hit roach/hydra hard by making marine/tank stronger
Thats kinda the point, making both marine tank and pure mech stronger.
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I always liked MC (even if i used to play zerg) and it's nice to read such info on the state SC2.
I quit SC2 when HoTS came out because i felt the same thing as that progamer, although i'm not a very good player.
Z feels wrong to me, struggling the whole game trying to eventually win, one mistake and you are done for, units feels weak.Not that i think game is totally imba but Z feels off really.
Never posted much here since balance discussion is heavily moderated and i prefer to read the pros talking about it anyway.
I think the same way as MC, SC2 has great potential but is a bit boring, even more as Z, to watch and play.
I hope Blizz will make good decisions.
MHO
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On September 02 2013 20:28 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 20:20 Vanadiel wrote:
He can probably play terran in offracen better than you'll ever do and understand SC2 better than anyone her, the fact that he talk about a match up he doesn't play in pro match means he is unbiased on this subject. "Terrans are basically immune to the roach attacks" "Terrans don’t even need to scout." "This allows Terrans to just send their boosted medivacs to harass. They don’t care if they lose it because it’s not risky at all" "Ultralisks -> meal for marauders, broodlords -> meal for vikings." So knowledgeable, so unbiased.
Yet, all more or less true. But hey, it's only the most successful sc2 progammer, which lives and practice with terran likes MVP, he sure doesn't understand Terran match up and should learn from the teamliquid forum.
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On September 02 2013 21:43 Vanadiel wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 20:28 TheDwf wrote:On September 02 2013 20:20 Vanadiel wrote:
He can probably play terran in offracen better than you'll ever do and understand SC2 better than anyone her, the fact that he talk about a match up he doesn't play in pro match means he is unbiased on this subject. "Terrans are basically immune to the roach attacks" "Terrans don’t even need to scout." "This allows Terrans to just send their boosted medivacs to harass. They don’t care if they lose it because it’s not risky at all" "Ultralisks -> meal for marauders, broodlords -> meal for vikings." So knowledgeable, so unbiased. Yet, all more or less true. But hey, it's only the most successful sc2 progammer, which lives and practice with terran likes MVP, he sure doesn't understand Terran match up and should learn from the teamliquid forum.
All of those quotes are painfully simplistic or simply flat out wrong; but hey, since it's MC talking it must be the absolute truth and we should all kneel before him!
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*sigh* the answer is not to nerf MMMM. It is to raise the skill ceiling of Zerg units. Ultralisks and broodlords are A-Move units. It feels like the only Zerg units that have a high skill ceiling are zerglings, banelings, and mutalisks.
One odd thing I found about MC's post is that he did not like that marauders are Terran's response to Ultralisks, and Vikings are the Terran's response to Broodlord. Ignoring the fact that the Viking is pretty damn high on the terran tech tree, due to race mechanics, there are only two ways to avoid having lower-tier Terran units countering higher-tier Zerg units. Either 1) Thors, Banshees, Ravens, and Battlecruisers need significant buffs (tech reactors and build time decreases, for starters) or 2) There need to be some really significant buffs to bio available later in the game to accompany a general bio nerf, which would make Terran want to reach Tier 3 the same way that Zerg wants to reach Tier 3. I'm pretty sure anything like #2 would destroy TvP though.
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I have so much respect for MC after reading this. That was excellent. Thank you again for translating this  The integrity of the Sc2 community needs to remain strong!
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On September 02 2013 21:20 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 21:07 MasterOfPuppets wrote:On September 02 2013 21:05 Markwerf wrote:
General problem is just that the tweaking that happens is focussed too much on balance instead of diversity and balance at the same time.
Otherwise we'd be having viable mech already and more meaningfull transitions. Terran is stuck too much into hyperaggressive bio styles and Z too much on lair massing just because the benefit of teching further doesn't pay off well enough. I doubt fixing that without a massive game design overhaul is even possible, let alone likely, and even if Blizzard would be willing to concede and do that, it would most likely not be until LotV beta that we can see some significant changes. Why do you need a massive game overhaul for that? There are not fundamental problems that need to be adressed to create more variety, just balance problems. Like MC says, the matchup was better in WoL (though more imbalanced). E.g.: Mech/tank is too weak. Solution? Buff Mech/tank and/or nerf its strongest counters. Bio/Mine forces a zerg into muta/ling/bling. Solution? Tweak other zerg units so that they become stronger against those Terran units.
Actually no. Because that's basically what Blizzard have been doing. You don't want hard counters. You don't want a rock-paper-scissors game where this style is very strong against this style but very weak against this style. You want multiple styles to be more or less viable as long as the player is skilled enough to pull it off.
And SC2 simply isn't designed in that way. It feels like Terran has by far the most options, with the other races lagging quite a bit behind. And so whenever Terrans discover a new strategy, Zerg and Protoss have to play reactionary, but it would appear they're not quite as versatile or adaptable, and so balance changes are made. And whether Blizzard outright buffs the current Zerg/Protoss style, or buffs a different one, it's still mostly one style that works consistently at the top level. For Terran it doesn't fucking matter that mech is not viable when there are so many different flavors of bio and bionic that work, so many little variations in both early, mid and late game that can be made work with the necessary skill and on the right map.
As for TvZ (and TvT) the reason they were so good is because they allowed for this variety, at least during late 2011 and early 2012. This is why people enjoyed watching players like Mvp, MMA, MarineKing, Bomber duke it out versus DongRaeGu, NesTea, Leenock etc. because they could do a number of different builds and subtle variations on a style and also had the skill to pull it off. This goes for both TvZ and the ZvT side. Of course, this was before the times of Broodlord Infestor every game into a-move and mostly win, or the TvZ mid-game sCfOu/Bomber push (now with mines) every game and mostly win.
And to say that "the matchup was better in WoL (though more imbalanced)." is absolutely ridiculous. The match-up was better when it wasn't imbalanced, when variety was the norm and the players' talent shined very clearly beyond shadow of a doubt. During the early days of 5rax reaper and 2rax SCV all-in it was fucking terrible. During the late days of BL/infestor it was fucking terrible. Nowadays it's not quite as bad as that, but it's looking to get there. :/
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On September 02 2013 21:25 Sissors wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 21:10 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 20:58 Sissors wrote:On September 02 2013 20:42 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 20:38 Sissors wrote:On September 02 2013 20:11 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 20:04 Sissors wrote:On September 02 2013 19:51 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 19:40 Big J wrote:On September 02 2013 19:29 saddaromma wrote:
[quote]
Dropping helbats onto swarmhosts works pretty well. Can't remember players, but it was a highlevel game. But you will have some roach/hydra or muta too (you don't need a lot, 20 supply of them) with swarm hosts which shuts down dropping onto swarm hosts very well. That's simply where ground mech stops working, but Skycompositions are still too far away to get going at that point imo. Not to mention that the Zerg is very often one step ahead of you in terms of skycompositions from a mutalisk or hydralisk midgame + having the vipers to pull skyunits one by one, which means you need quite some vikings first, before you can even start to add in the AtG units to counter the swarm hosts. The solution is just to make Viper/Swarm Host more even with ground Mech in itself by changing blinding cloud. Zerg can simply drop helbats into your base while you're sieging his natural. How you're gonna defend it? A few spines do that fine. And if needed a few mutas running around to kill the medivacs. On September 02 2013 19:45 vthree wrote:On September 02 2013 19:23 Big J wrote:
[quote]
Well, though I agree with you that Mech is in general not a good strategy in TvZ, I think it is not far from viable. Basically any form of ground army gets beaten by Tank/Thor and with hellions and hellbat(drops) Mech has a much more stable way to harass zerg than in WoL. The dealbreaker are in my opinion Viper's Blinding Clouds, which just shut down tanklines very efficiently, making Mech very weak to certain timings, but also making it very easy to break a Mechpush in the lategame. Especially the Viper/Swarm Host combo that trades energy+locusts against tanks is just too hard to deal with. I don't think it is as simple as looking at unit comps in straight up fights. Even if mech CAN win a 200/200 engagement with the right comp. The immobility of mech up to that points means you are going to be on 3 bases (4th is too hard to defend from mutas/runbys). The zerg is likely on 5 bases with bank and larvae. Even IF you win a fight, unless you retain like 60% of your units, you just can't rebuild you army like the zerg. That is why in WoL, Mvp was famous for going mainly mech on 1 map. The map which had 2 chokes leading to 5 bases where he could use planetaries to defend those chokes with tanks behind. Imagine if you are Protoss with out blink stalkers and storms that can be magic boxed. And see how you can deal with mutas. That is the issue that the mech player faces in the mid game with mutas. Except that widow mines are added specifically to defend from runbys and muta harass. WoL analogy is quite irrelevant now. Yes except that doesn't work. The amount of mines you would need to defend muta harass is staggering and completely not viable. Sure once in a while you will pick off a muta with a mine, but you already need to group widow mines and turrets to even have a chance a widow mine fires. Also your idea of using banshees in midgame is simply bad. On the list of worst units in game banshees are fairly high. Cheaper cloak allowed some more early game shenanigans with banshees, but midgame and later they are still pointless. Put 3 spores around your swarmhosts and they are fine. Sure you can then get 10 banshees to break through that. And then you autolose to the first zerg techswitch. Ok, I'm trying to imagine your theory on mech tvz. Apparently, there are crapton of swarmhosts with vipers at your base, nearly 20 hydralisks to back it up. ~10 mutalisks are harassing your expansions, since few can't kill WM and turrets. Zerg base is covered with spines and spores. zerglings are running by everywhere. Is it platinum level you're talking about? So if you cannot win an argument you go back to trolling? I never claimed it was done all at once, they simply have a whole bunch of methods to screw over a mech player. I never even mentioned vipers with the swarmhosts. I also didn't mention anything about 20 hydralisks. 10 mutas aren't even a problem, some turrets deal with that fine, and why am I seriously replying on a troll? Do you even know what trolling is? Someone disagreeing or not understanding you doesn't mean trolling. Lets think of a scenario. I went mech, tanks, helbats, vikings, medivacs. Put turrets and widow mines to defend my expansions. And gearing up to 2-2 push. Whats your move? Yep I know what trolling is, your post was trolling. It had nothing to do with disagreeing. Get some 20-30 mutas, harass the shit out of you (nop, widow mines and turrets aren't going to stop that). Happily expand since you are stuck trying to defend mutas, tech switch to either broodlords or ultras, attack you until you are dead. or Get whole bunch of swarmhosts, with a few roach/hydra to defend against drops on top of them. Burrow, release locusts, move, burrow again. At home you will then need some spores/spines. Meanwhile tech to vipers. As soon as vipers are there put blinding cloud on tanks which need to be clumped up to deal with locusts, proceed to kill all tanks with locusts. or Same but now add broodlords and some corrupters. Funny thing: tanks need to be unsieged vs broodlords and sieged vs locusts. or Roach hydra army, with some early pushes you can really ruin terrans day if he took third fast. If he didn't he is way behind economically. Meanwhile expand, get vipers, gg. In your description you have siege tanks but no thors, so then this isn't the best idea. You completely lack any kind of air defense so mutas make more sense. If you got a bunch of thors then roach hydra do fine. and (with the whole bunch of them) load 32 cracklings into a bunch of ovis. Drop them in terrans base when his 200/200 army moves out. Important part here is that a zerg player should be way ahead economically vs a terran mech player, since the zerg should have complete map control. 1. Mutas are easily repelled with couple of widow mines and 3-4 turrets. 2. You'll be killed before you reach broodlords. If you mean to rush to them. 3. You get swarmhosts/roach/hydra/spores/spines/viper and you think terran will have bunch of clumped up tanks meantime? 4. Tanks are known counter to roach/hydra. 5. Helbats eat cracklings. All of your assumption that zerg beats mech terran is around zerg getting literally every tech tree. And you call me troll. 1. Really? 20-30 mutas repelled by a few turrets and widow mines? They one shot both, widow mines before they can fire. Against 10 mutas turrets do fine, if they get more than turrets become insufficient and you need thor(s). Really your lack of experience shows pretty badly here if you think muta flocks are repelled by a few widow mines and 3-4 turrets. 2. I don't mean to rush them, you are happily playing with swarmhosts and meanwhile slowly teching to broods. 3. Oh your tanks aren't bunched up? Nevermind then, just stay on swarmhost tech and win the game directly because your tanks are dying one at a time. You cannot just spread out your tanks. Against ling/bling that works, because then you trade your first tanks so your tanks behind can keep firing longer. Trading tanks against free units is a bad idea. 4. With just a few tanks roach/hydra is known to walk right over them. When you got many tanks, yes. Tanks are known to be surpringly bad when under blinding cloud... 5. Good. Now those slow ass hellbats in the middle of the map will eat the cracklings in your base. Sadly they arent there.
you are just theorycrafting very hard, arent you? there's GM players who make TvZ mech work and have practical answers to all your theories.
everyone thinks it's not viable because koreans arent going mech. i dont know. like saddaromma said, maybe koreans go 4M because it's stronger than mech, while mech could still be viable.
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On September 02 2013 21:50 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 21:43 Vanadiel wrote:On September 02 2013 20:28 TheDwf wrote:On September 02 2013 20:20 Vanadiel wrote:
He can probably play terran in offracen better than you'll ever do and understand SC2 better than anyone her, the fact that he talk about a match up he doesn't play in pro match means he is unbiased on this subject. "Terrans are basically immune to the roach attacks" "Terrans don’t even need to scout." "This allows Terrans to just send their boosted medivacs to harass. They don’t care if they lose it because it’s not risky at all" "Ultralisks -> meal for marauders, broodlords -> meal for vikings." So knowledgeable, so unbiased. Yet, all more or less true. But hey, it's only the most successful sc2 progammer, which lives and practice with terran likes MVP, he sure doesn't understand Terran match up and should learn from the teamliquid forum. All of those quotes are painfully simplistic or simply flat out wrong; but hey, since it's MC talking it must be the absolute truth and we should all kneel before him!
terrans are basically immune to roach attacks. thats why pro zergs dont do them a lot these days. timings got figured out, scouting got figured out, terrans play a bit less greedy (some at least do).
terrans dont need to scout and can blindly go CC first and scout with their harrass units (helions). not a single scan or reaper is needed. just helions that you want anyway to deny creep and threaten Z to get extra queens. after that maybe 1 scan is done to scout for spire, often times not even that since MMMM + in case of attack bunkers and lifting of OCs is enough.
terrans can harrass with medivacs with very few risk: speedboost is faster than mutas, mutas are on one side of the map, drop on the other, send out 2-3 drops at once, losing drop is only 500/100 which is 1 muta + 16 lings = not much.
and yeah with hardcore nerfed infestors even the better HOTS ultra get killed offcreep by marauders. oncreep and with queensupport its fine if you get to lategame on equal footing (which is another problem right now). BLs just got laughably bad in HOTS: infestor nerfed to ground, speedvacs vs BLs = good unit, ravens are now awesome, maps got even bigger.
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thanks Terry for the translation, and thanks MC for this post
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On September 02 2013 21:26 Nebuchad wrote:
I'm fairly certain that the major problem in SC2 is that everyone is supporting a race instead of supporting a game.
This is very true imho. No matter who wins the balance whine is there immediatly.
I would love it if everyone would be forced to play random. This would raise the skill ceilling immensely and pretty much kill all the balance whine.
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On September 02 2013 21:25 Sissors wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2013 21:10 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 20:58 Sissors wrote:On September 02 2013 20:42 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 20:38 Sissors wrote:On September 02 2013 20:11 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 20:04 Sissors wrote:On September 02 2013 19:51 saddaromma wrote:On September 02 2013 19:40 Big J wrote:On September 02 2013 19:29 saddaromma wrote:
[quote]
Dropping helbats onto swarmhosts works pretty well. Can't remember players, but it was a highlevel game. But you will have some roach/hydra or muta too (you don't need a lot, 20 supply of them) with swarm hosts which shuts down dropping onto swarm hosts very well. That's simply where ground mech stops working, but Skycompositions are still too far away to get going at that point imo. Not to mention that the Zerg is very often one step ahead of you in terms of skycompositions from a mutalisk or hydralisk midgame + having the vipers to pull skyunits one by one, which means you need quite some vikings first, before you can even start to add in the AtG units to counter the swarm hosts. The solution is just to make Viper/Swarm Host more even with ground Mech in itself by changing blinding cloud. Zerg can simply drop helbats into your base while you're sieging his natural. How you're gonna defend it? A few spines do that fine. And if needed a few mutas running around to kill the medivacs. On September 02 2013 19:45 vthree wrote:On September 02 2013 19:23 Big J wrote:
[quote]
Well, though I agree with you that Mech is in general not a good strategy in TvZ, I think it is not far from viable. Basically any form of ground army gets beaten by Tank/Thor and with hellions and hellbat(drops) Mech has a much more stable way to harass zerg than in WoL. The dealbreaker are in my opinion Viper's Blinding Clouds, which just shut down tanklines very efficiently, making Mech very weak to certain timings, but also making it very easy to break a Mechpush in the lategame. Especially the Viper/Swarm Host combo that trades energy+locusts against tanks is just too hard to deal with. I don't think it is as simple as looking at unit comps in straight up fights. Even if mech CAN win a 200/200 engagement with the right comp. The immobility of mech up to that points means you are going to be on 3 bases (4th is too hard to defend from mutas/runbys). The zerg is likely on 5 bases with bank and larvae. Even IF you win a fight, unless you retain like 60% of your units, you just can't rebuild you army like the zerg. That is why in WoL, Mvp was famous for going mainly mech on 1 map. The map which had 2 chokes leading to 5 bases where he could use planetaries to defend those chokes with tanks behind. Imagine if you are Protoss with out blink stalkers and storms that can be magic boxed. And see how you can deal with mutas. That is the issue that the mech player faces in the mid game with mutas. Except that widow mines are added specifically to defend from runbys and muta harass. WoL analogy is quite irrelevant now. Yes except that doesn't work. The amount of mines you would need to defend muta harass is staggering and completely not viable. Sure once in a while you will pick off a muta with a mine, but you already need to group widow mines and turrets to even have a chance a widow mine fires. Also your idea of using banshees in midgame is simply bad. On the list of worst units in game banshees are fairly high. Cheaper cloak allowed some more early game shenanigans with banshees, but midgame and later they are still pointless. Put 3 spores around your swarmhosts and they are fine. Sure you can then get 10 banshees to break through that. And then you autolose to the first zerg techswitch. Ok, I'm trying to imagine your theory on mech tvz. Apparently, there are crapton of swarmhosts with vipers at your base, nearly 20 hydralisks to back it up. ~10 mutalisks are harassing your expansions, since few can't kill WM and turrets. Zerg base is covered with spines and spores. zerglings are running by everywhere. Is it platinum level you're talking about? So if you cannot win an argument you go back to trolling? I never claimed it was done all at once, they simply have a whole bunch of methods to screw over a mech player. I never even mentioned vipers with the swarmhosts. I also didn't mention anything about 20 hydralisks. 10 mutas aren't even a problem, some turrets deal with that fine, and why am I seriously replying on a troll? Do you even know what trolling is? Someone disagreeing or not understanding you doesn't mean trolling. Lets think of a scenario. I went mech, tanks, helbats, vikings, medivacs. Put turrets and widow mines to defend my expansions. And gearing up to 2-2 push. Whats your move? Yep I know what trolling is, your post was trolling. It had nothing to do with disagreeing. Get some 20-30 mutas, harass the shit out of you (nop, widow mines and turrets aren't going to stop that). Happily expand since you are stuck trying to defend mutas, tech switch to either broodlords or ultras, attack you until you are dead. or Get whole bunch of swarmhosts, with a few roach/hydra to defend against drops on top of them. Burrow, release locusts, move, burrow again. At home you will then need some spores/spines. Meanwhile tech to vipers. As soon as vipers are there put blinding cloud on tanks which need to be clumped up to deal with locusts, proceed to kill all tanks with locusts. or Same but now add broodlords and some corrupters. Funny thing: tanks need to be unsieged vs broodlords and sieged vs locusts. or Roach hydra army, with some early pushes you can really ruin terrans day if he took third fast. If he didn't he is way behind economically. Meanwhile expand, get vipers, gg. In your description you have siege tanks but no thors, so then this isn't the best idea. You completely lack any kind of air defense so mutas make more sense. If you got a bunch of thors then roach hydra do fine. and (with the whole bunch of them) load 32 cracklings into a bunch of ovis. Drop them in terrans base when his 200/200 army moves out. Important part here is that a zerg player should be way ahead economically vs a terran mech player, since the zerg should have complete map control. 1. Mutas are easily repelled with couple of widow mines and 3-4 turrets. 2. You'll be killed before you reach broodlords. If you mean to rush to them. 3. You get swarmhosts/roach/hydra/spores/spines/viper and you think terran will have bunch of clumped up tanks meantime? 4. Tanks are known counter to roach/hydra. 5. Helbats eat cracklings. All of your assumption that zerg beats mech terran is around zerg getting literally every tech tree. And you call me troll. 1. Really? 20-30 mutas repelled by a few turrets and widow mines? They one shot both, widow mines before they can fire. Against 10 mutas turrets do fine, if they get more than turrets become insufficient and you need thor(s). Really your lack of experience shows pretty badly here if you think muta flocks are repelled by a few widow mines and 3-4 turrets. 2. I don't mean to rush them, you are happily playing with swarmhosts and meanwhile slowly teching to broods. 3. Oh your tanks aren't bunched up? Nevermind then, just stay on swarmhost tech and win the game directly because your tanks are dying one at a time. You cannot just spread out your tanks. Against ling/bling that works, because then you trade your first tanks so your tanks behind can keep firing longer. Trading tanks against free units is a bad idea. 4. With just a few tanks roach/hydra is known to walk right over them. When you got many tanks, yes. Tanks are known to be surpringly bad when under blinding cloud... 5. Good. Now those slow ass hellbats in the middle of the map will eat the cracklings in your base. Sadly they arent there.
do you really think zergs at pro level will let terran safely get 20-30 mutas. This sole assumption makes your whole argument pointless.
Apparently by your understanding meching terran has only turrets, tanks, couple of widow mines and helbats w/o medivacs standing in the middle of the map. And zerg is free to make anything he pleases at anytime.
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EPT
