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On June 30 2014 23:33 blackbrrd wrote:
Since it's terran that have problems with the TvZ and TvP matchup, I think the changes should be done on terran units, not Protoss and Zerg. Any changes done to those two races would affect their matchup, which seems pretty even at the moment.
Changing the stim timing has been suggested, and might be enough? It would be cool if they could buff some late game tech as well, like Battlecruisers, which never gets used.
I agree tier 3 terran units are rather weak.
Thor : Only good againts muta, very slow.
Battlecruiser : Takes ages to produce, too expensive, too slow, easily countered with mass anti-air
Both don't have AOE except for thor for shooting mutas, very slow movement and slow to rebuild
Compare this to Ultra which is very fast (after the buff), has AOE, it can easily follow the rest of zerg army, easily rebuild if you have the resource.
Collosus and archon (both with AOE) are fast enough to follow with protoss deathball. While collosus is not easily replacable, it's worth it to make them. Archon relatively easy to rebuild if you have the resource.
Tier 2 units for terran are also not as useful as zerg and toss in an army composition. I had to laugh to see how easy for Hero's immortal to dodge Maru's seeker missile. Seen it fail too many times on many occasions. Ghost only use againts Protoss. Tanks only useful on certain occasion (except againts another terran), and pretty immobile.
In short, Terran is not rewarded for staying for late game, since their tier 3 units are weak and don't go with the rest of the army composition.
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Northern Ireland461 Posts
If I can fault this article for one thing, it is probably going to give people an excuse to not critique their own play where they should.
Losing a match-up with the mentality ''It's OP so it was inevitable,'' can be toxic to improvement.
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On June 30 2014 23:31 [PkF] Wire wrote:
The point I didn't like about the post is how long it harped upon its theme. The current problems of Terran can be summarized very quickly and deftly :
1) in TvP : the versatiliy of Protoss early game + the strength of the early lategame Protoss army with 4-5 colossi + templars (something I actually disagree with, I think the only problem is the diversity of Protoss early game options ranging from blink/stargate all-ins to 6 min double forge).
2) in TvZ : vulnerability of heavy macro builds to all-ins while the Zerg can drone up quite easily on 3 bases + the lack of a good AOE unit to deal with mutas and banelings.
Patch 2.0.12 is the source of both problems (nerf of mine + oracle becoming much stronger than it needed to be) and sadly it has already led to so many useless patches (+shields damage for mine, servos removal...) that I'm now unsure the solution would just consist in reverting that patch.
Still, I'd like to see a balance test map with oracle speed buff reverted and mine enhanced a bit so that it could kill more banelings. Will never happen though, Blizzard will always prefer to put layers of bandaids over a previous mistake rather than just correcting the mistake itself. Expect more uncalled for and strange buffs to Terran like "marauder is now immune to muta splash and takes half damage from Photon Overcharge. We hope this will allow Terran to put heavy marauder pressure in the early game" or "medivacs can now hold 8 vikings. We think viking drop harass is really cool and hope it'll encourage this kind of moves at the highest level" in the near future.
Oh, and by the way, I forgot a patch that is so needed it hurts : Time Warp needs to go. Seriously. Protoss can do without that spell just fine. Recall and Overcharge are already EXTREMELY good. At least make it a 100/100 research or give it to fully fledged Mothership.
I really like how everything you say is backed up with VODs and logic. Good post, thanks for this. This is the kind of posts TL needs
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On June 30 2014 21:26 Bishopine wrote:
Terran is fine as it is. WM had to be nerfed (against mass zealots) as well as Hellbats 2-shoting workers.
Zerg and especially Protoss figure out new strats and timings which make them more viable and unpredictable. Terrans on the other hand play standard and... thats it! If it isnt a gold float on Habitation Station or a proxy 2-raxx there´s nothing Terran do these days to surprise their opponents. Get creative instead of whining.
Probably an account made just for trolling (2 posts). Surely no one is stupid enough to think that Terran pro players, whose livelihoods depend on winning, haven't tried everything when practicing against their Z&P training partners. Blizz has only given a limited tool-set to Terran players, use any of Terran's non-core units and you are royally screwed.
The post was too long for a lot of people to read though and veered towards whine in places. However, there are many solid points in it. I want to win a match because I am better, or executed a better strategy, than my opponent, not because I selected Zerg or Protoss on the start screen.
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On June 30 2014 23:33 blackbrrd wrote:
Since it's terran that have problems with the TvZ and TvP matchup, I think the changes should be done on terran units, not Protoss and Zerg. Any changes done to those two races would affect their matchup, which seems pretty even at the moment.
Changing the stim timing has been suggested, and might be enough? It would be cool if they could buff some late game tech as well, like Battlecruisers, which never gets used.
Decent factory/starport units would be a start. After 4+ years, I'm just sick of watching terran play bio. It would be awesome if we can have multiple top players in all races doing well at the same time with different styles.
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On July 01 2014 00:26 mongoose22 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2014 22:24 Faust852 wrote:On June 30 2014 22:21 DinoMight wrote:On June 30 2014 14:53 Chaggi wrote:On June 30 2014 14:24 DinoMight wrote:
The front page of TL is no place for thedwf's balance whine. Let him write that crap in the balance discussion section as he has been doing forever.
Sure, he put a lot of work into the piece, and there are a lot of links to games and statistics etc. that "prove" his point. But at the end of the day, it's not written like a research paper. It's written like balance whine.
I'm disappointed TL would features such an article on its front page. It wouldn't be a Balance topic without the great DinoMight chiming in with the most general blanket statements of why an argument is invalid. I guess now I just have a reputation I need to maintain or something? Read my post please. I didn't say his argument was invalid. I said it was written like balance whine. The tone of the article has an extreme Terran bias and therefore makes it hard to read objectively. He could have written all the same things without sounding like a whiny Terran player and people (myself included) would take it a lot more seriously. In that case I wouldn't mind having it posted on the front page of TL, since it's actually a very long detailed article with lots of references and supporting videos. You should look at the definition of editorial. I have to bring this up: Many of you have a warped idea of what an editorial means. The definition of an editorial is: a newspaper or magazine article that gives the opinions of the editors or publishers; also : an expression of opinion that resembles such an article <a television editorial>It's an article that gives the opinion of someone associated with a publication. So the concerns that this does or does not reflect poorly on TeamLiquid are because it has been elevated to the status of an editorial, rather than a user post. The direct association to TeamLiquid is not just handled by the disclaimer, because to be an editorial it should be vetted and determined to be of high enough quality to be considered an editorial, and judgment of its quality reflects back both on the author and the TL editors. Also, the definition of an editorial has nothing to do with the tone of the editorial, just that it is an opinion piece. Criticizing the tone, accuracy, and objectivity of this or any other editorial is completely fair play, and it's very much fair to ask whether the author has an objective opinion, which is not mutually exclusive with having an opinion at all.
WHAT?????!!!!! Editorials are subjective by nature. Criticizing an editorial for objectivity is asinine.
The point of an editorial is to give a subjective opinion. The news has to be objective. Editorials give a subjective outlet to the editors, journalists and guests. Newspapers frequently carry different editorials by different editors with clashing viewpoints. Are you seriously suggesting that means the newspaper believes in all those contrasting viewpoints?
And then there are guest editorials. News publications would often have guests write editorials. The guests are usually there to give a different or even contrasting perspective to the ones given by the editors. Frequently, these guest editorials are written as rebuttals to the publications' own editorials. There is nothing objective about editorials at all and it's extremely stupid to suggest otherwise.
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This is a amazing article. I have a lot of respect for TL for letting this go through. I know they don't like balance discussions and this is showing they are finally making a opinion on the state of terran.
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On July 01 2014 01:32 andrewlt wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2014 23:33 blackbrrd wrote:
Since it's terran that have problems with the TvZ and TvP matchup, I think the changes should be done on terran units, not Protoss and Zerg. Any changes done to those two races would affect their matchup, which seems pretty even at the moment.
Changing the stim timing has been suggested, and might be enough? It would be cool if they could buff some late game tech as well, like Battlecruisers, which never gets used. Decent factory/starport units would be a start. After 4+ years, I'm just sick of watching terran play bio. It would be awesome if we can have multiple top players in all races doing well at the same time with different styles.
Earlier in Starcraft2 it wouldn't actually have been possible to buff factory/starport because bio was so strong in itself. How many games haven't we seen with pure the typical MMM play? Someone mentioned buffing the Thor as well as the Battlecruiser. I think that might create some interesting transitions.
I think that both Protoss and Zerg have very strong end-game units. Zerg with Swarm host/Infestor/Viper/Broodlord/ and Protoss with Colossi/High Templar/Archon/Tempest/Mothership. To combat this, Terran has mostly MMMM and some support from Viking/Ghost.
I particularily like Protoss endgame. They have to really fine tune their composition to beat Zerg endgame. If they are too slow with the Colossi -> Storm ->Tempest transitioning and they don't buy enough time, they die. Most of the games don't end up with hour long stalemates either. The addition of Tempest really put the games on a timer.
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I'd like to hear Blizzard's opinion on this. From my pov, Terran has been underrepresented since 2012. Even during the times where Terrans were doing well, it was always a small group of elite Korean terrans winning, not a global trend where all Terrans were dominating.
I feel that the total lack of Terran at the peak of foreign SC2 has been ignored for way too long. It has always been Zergs and Protoss that were the foreign hope that had a shot at taking games off Koreans. It's too much of a stretch to claim it's a complete coincidence that there has been so so little Terran for 3 straight years now. I'd like for Blizzard to stop denying there's a skill discrepancy to playing Terran as compared to the other two races and that it stretches throughout SC2's leagues.
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cute balance whine post where correlation = causality
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On July 01 2014 02:02 Saechiis wrote:
I'd like to hear Blizzard's opinion on this. From my pov, Terran has been underrepresented since 2012. Even during the times where Terrans were doing well, it was always a small group of elite Korean terrans winning, not a global trend where all Terrans were dominating.
I feel that the total lack of Terran at the peak of foreign SC2 has been ignored for way too long. It has always been Zergs and Protoss that were the foreign hope that had a shot at taking games off Koreans. It's too much of a stretch to claim it's a complete coincidence that there has been so so little Terran for 3 straight years now. I'd like for Blizzard to stop denying there's a skill discrepancy to playing Terran as compared to the other two races and that it stretches throughout SC2's leagues.
I'm sure Blizzard would bring up a recent Taeja victory to justify Terran as an equal to P or Z, but this article goes way more in depth and really brings the stats out to light.
Makes me wonder... They have surely known what this article brings up for a long time, but as with statistics, you can pick and choose what data goes into the model to get the most desirable result..
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It looks like nearly everyone agrees that the game has some problems and we're approaching the stage where we present balance suggestions.
- Buffing mech or air by adding extra damage to shields to increase the variety of terran build orders in only the TvP matchup. Biomech, ghostmech, airmech, maybe these can be viable at a high level.
- Reduce sensor tower to 50 gas to defend blink all ins and also subtly buff mech, since you generally need sensor towers when you go mech. Would be an acceptable change for TvZ I think.
- Remove engineering bay requirement for turrets to counter proxy oracle's low risk and high reward when combined with MSC's overcharge to defend. Also another subtle buff to mech (faster 3rd CC or 3rd & 4th gas). This wouldn't affect TvZ in a meaningful way.
I'm sure most of you have heard these already, but maybe if we repeat the good suggestions over and over, dave will get the hint?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/DbRvWcl.png)
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I agree that the MSC has fundamentally changed TvP, and the stats are convincing case that it's changed in a bad way. The editorial's case about the MSC is convincing.
I don't think the case has been made that changes to the races in HotS are responsible for lack of symmetrical success in TvZ. Banelings have been banelings for four years. The speedroach timing does not seem all that common to me in professional TvZ; certainly not some "broken" build that auto-wins games. I believe (working off memory) the main changes for zerg since WoL are infestor nerf; hydra speed; muta regen; swarmhost; overseer speed. I don't see any of these undercutting the staple TvZ strategies. Infestor nerf helped terrans; hydras are rarely used in ZvT; muta regen has not changed how mutas are played (they are still for drop defense/harassment, can't run them into a main army); swarmhosts only come in against terran mech if ever.
I'm not good enough nor have I thought about the question enough to have the answer but I don't think the case has been made for race changes. Perhaps it's the maps. The overall character of the map pool has changed a huge amount since Wings.
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This article is is beyond biased. It is almost dishonest to use pre-patch statistics to support the notion that Terran is underpowered. Since the recent slew of Terran buffs, Terran is now favored in all match ups. Buffed Widow mines and hellbats plus the removal of great blink maps has made a big impact. TL should be ashamed to have this piece anywhere other than in the blog section.
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On July 01 2014 02:52 Salient wrote:
This article is is beyond biased. It is almost dishonest to use pre-patch statistics to support the notion that Terran is underpowered. Since the recent slew of Terran buffs, Terran is now favored in all match ups. Buffed Widow mines and hellbats plus the removal of great blink maps has made a big impact. TL should be ashamed to have this piece anywhere other than in the blog section.
Oracle
Movement speed increased from 3.375 to 4.
Acceleration increased from 2 to 3.
Widow Mine
Sentinel Missiles now deal reduced damage to units caught within its splash radius based on their distance from the target:
40 damage within 1.25 radius [unchanged].
20 damage from 1.25 to 1.5 [down from 40].
10 damage from 1.5 to 1.75 [down from 40].
Armory
Vehicle and Ship Weapon upgrades have been combined.
Siege Tank
Siege Mode attack period decreased from 3.0 to 2.8.
Roach Warren
The Tunneling Claws upgrade now increases burrowed Roach movement speed from 1.41 to 2.
A slew of buffs after the most ridiculous patch ever. ^
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TheDwf speaks the truth.
I just hope that Blizzard realizes how serious the situation really is.
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On July 01 2014 00:52 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2014 00:06 Yes Im Otto wrote:
There still people who think this is a balance whine....unbelievable Well, it is someone complaining about balance. But I'm all for people expressing their opinions in intelligent ways. I just wish people would point the finger at the only group who can actually fix the problem: Blizzard Entertainment.People with clout and status in the community have been so passive aggressive about balance and game design, instead of directly facing Blizzard and saying "you're not doing a good job, and we're not going to support your game unless you do better." We did see bits and pieces of it at the last International, but overall that is the only way anything changes. Just like any nation around the world (or maybe just the US), nothing actually changes until the richest 1% want it to change. We peons are meaningless. The fact is, Blizzard got lucky BW worked out the way it did. And their attempts to balance and design SC2 have left us with this. SC2 is a shell of what it was in WOL, certainly in terms of popularity, I'd argue in game play too.
Well said. The things that more and more peope are realizing where said at the start of WoL. Blizzard is paying for it at the end. All their games are dying because of their arrogance. They just aren't open for the opinion of the public.
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It's eye opening how many people are jumping on the wagon, throwing the "You can't disproof the article so you criticise the tone" around.
The whole article has not a single scientific proof.
Boom it's out.
This is hard to understand if you never took statistic classes and i would go ahead and proof you, but i already did in the last comment, which got greatly ignored so im not taking the time.
I'm not even trying to say that terran is not underpowered but you need to see that the statistical value of the artical equals zero and therefore is balance whine (not even sorry anymore to say that).
To the people going ahead pretending they switched races and went up a league or easily held their level, i switched to terran (from protoss (and zerg before that)) and guess how much i dropped...zero. Not even 1 league, in fact my ranking in the league did not even change by 5%. So let's just call it as it is, the whole other races are so easy to play and the i would be gm with toss is bs and we all know that.
I switched races bc of the constant whines of terrans on ladder telling me how bad i am and that they only lost bc i play an imba race, it got so bad that the terrans leaving games with more than 3k overmins pretending they played so much better and you need to understand that not only does imbalance kill the game but constantly telling other people how much they suck (and im not overexaggerating if i tell you that out of the last 10 tvp i played (the ones i won) at least 8 terrans told me how much i suck and that they are so much better that they would be easily gm with toss) does too. This annoys to no end and ultimately made me quit the game. So really don't do this it's plain stupid.
So long.
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One of best reads since ages! Thank you, i hope it gets the recogintion that reflects the work writing it.
Another argument I like to add is that the Nerf Hammer was on each and every army unit in the T arsenal, and these changes sum up bit by bit and are never reviewed before any other change on another unit made it into the game, at least Blizzard gave us no information about doing so.
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EPT
