On July 01 2014 11:51 SC2BF3Love wrote: I remember reading something like this about Protoss not winning anything back on WOL era, and Terran weere doing just super fine, now its their time to suffer (lost) some games and make other builds or whatever.
Firstly "it was imbalanced in the other direction previously" is not a good argument for keeping balance the way it is.
Secondly, as was pointed out in the OP, Terran is currently worse off than any other race has been in the history of SC2.
On July 01 2014 13:07 CakeSauc3 wrote: In the past, whenever the game was fairly balanced, those feelings didn't exist. Even if a Terran hero lost, it felt good to see someone else having legitimately beaten him. I was happy for DRG. I cheered for Nestea. I rooted for MC. I even wanted Squirtle to beat Mvp. But once the Infestor Broodlord days began... once the realization that the best of the best of Terran couldn't win anymore... those feelings disappeared for me. Matches went from exciting to hopeless. Defeats went from honorable to disgusting. Watching my Terran champions lose to unbeatable opponents who had seemingly come out of nowhere, the "Patch Zergs", hurt SC2 a lot for me. And while HOTS stabilized the game again for a while, and I could begin to watch the game with excitement and passion, and cheer for Protoss and even Zerg again, the state of the game has once again slipped back into despair.
But that's the problem, you legitimately think Terrans were the best players and that the game was balanced at a previous time instead of recognizing that Terran was OP for a very long time. Broodlord/Infestor was the time when the game actually had the highest race diversity among premier tournament winners, and it was still a time when the game was very broken and imbalanced.
People's terran heroes benefited from imbalance much like the patch zergs and it can reasonably be concluded that Blizzard has failed to adequately balance the game at all its stages, not just in 2014.
Oh, I definitely think Terran was OP for a time. Early through mid 2011 especially. It seems like after that, though, there was a time when the game was in a great state, but then Blizzard patched it to hell in mid 2012 and it's never fully recovered since.
However, I'm sure I'm biased. I'm sure I'm not the most objective spectator and player ever. I was only ever a low Masters player at best, and while I have logged nearly as many games playing Random as I have as Terran to understand the other races and have spent plenty of time learning Protoss and Zerg builds, I still consider Terran my go-to race. But I can tell you how I feel. And I think I can tell you that many other players feel the same as me.
I agree with your last statement, too. It's sad that there always seems to be one race getting the glory, one other race competing but mostly failing while the last race has to simply observe from the sidelines.
I already posted about early 2012 but it really feels like people have nostalgia glasses on. Out of the first 13 tournaments of 2014, Protoss won 9. Out of the first 13 tournaments of 2012, Terran won 8.
Anyway my point with all this is that I don't think Blizzard will find the sweet spot where Terran can win tournaments but isn't too strong. They'll either keep doing small patches that don't help Terran enough, or overshoot by imbalancing the game in the other direction, like they did with the queen patch.
A great article and an awesome read that took me three days!
I'm an old guy and a silver league weekend player, but if I have time I watch pro SC2 from time to time. I hope the writer reads this as I see one missing part that is way uneven in TvP. Namely - drops!
As silly as it sounds, Protoss has better tools to do this risk free. Warp prism is a little investment and unless these are storm drops/immortal drops/sentry drops (where one needs the actual unit or necessary energy), a failed warp-in is a cheap way out.
Medivacs have boost, they have more use than just drops (so one builds them anyway), but warping 15 zealots in the late game in a random place or a couple of DTs in any stage or even on-creep reinforcements vs Zerg (ok, this is a different matchup, but still) is just one more nail in the coffin...
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.
The only match up where Terran is favored is TvT. I can honestly not tell if some of these posts are just trolling anymore - the record of Premier/Major tournaments for 2014 show Terran to be non-existent and the patch will not have much impact on this. Your own personal troubles against Terran are not reflective of the balance situation, only your own inadequacies.
Against Zerg something needs to be done about Muta flocks and their insane health regeneration. Buffing WMs will not work as most pros have an overseer with the flock. Turrets are useless as soon as the flock gets to a 7 or more and Thors are too expensive and slow. Push out as Terran and there is an extremely high risk that your base will be wrecked by a Muta counter-attack whilst you are still trying to clear creep in the middle of the map. Nerfing Muta regen would be welcome.
Wrong. You can make up your opinions. But you shouldn't make up your facts. Terran is favored in TvP.
Yeah that website does not even come close to being "fact" or show anything of value in competitive play. Terran is certainly not favored in TVP. Pretty much every high end player/caster will always state Terran has to worry about many things early game, Terran is fine mid game, but once at late game Protoss is favored again vs Terran. Terran's answer has been "don't let protoss get to that point or die.
Don't listen to casters. They are paid to hype the game up, and nothing kills hype like talking about clear and large balance issues. Also, pretty much all casters are ex-pro protoss players or never got to that level to have authority-,-
I just want to throw out that even if the game is imba, casters can't go around saying it during the match. They need to "hype" the game and "hype" the players, even if the casters don't like the players or the game is clearly imba. It would be anti-climatic if Tastosis went on the GSL and said "well, by the looks of it guys, unless P does this one, huge mistake, he's pretty much got the game", the GSL wouldn't attract new viewers. At best, we have Tasteless who will scream "terrran" when Maru got to the semi-finals.
It's not that they're bad at the game or they don't understand things. It's that they're putting on a show and saying things the way they are during the GSL or during PL doesn't help anyone at all. Neither does shitting on swarmhosts when they appear.
Are more people concerned with balance at the highest level for veiwership and entertainment purposes or for the level at which you play at?
Is there such a thing? When I play Terran on ladder after I get to a certain MMR with Zerg, I get destroyed. Thing is, give Taeja that same account with that MMR, he won't get destroyed, he'll destroy the ladder. Is that imba? No, Taeja is just good. Balance it for the highest level only, that's the actual definition of balance anyway. lul
On July 01 2014 12:19 BisuDagger wrote: Are more people concerned with balance at the highest level for veiwership and entertainment purposes or for the level at which you play at?
highest level for me because I believe in the lower levels that perceived imbalance can be overcome with skill, especially in the lower leagues. It might require more work out of some people but it's not like your opponent is playing perfect on the other side and is still exploitable.
Worth noting, many of the micro tricks which were previously regarded as amazing programmer skill are now commonplace in diamond and even plat league.
You simply can't balance the game for everyone. Balancing at the highest level is the way to go.
On July 01 2014 13:53 Shaella wrote: The fact that Maru is still doing so well on Terran speaks to how dominant he would be if Terran wasn't a crippled race.
And it's a fucking shame too.
Every time Maru plays it's incredibly entertaining. The fact we've had to go a whole year without seeing him get past the Ro4 is a shame.
You watch Maru play and even when he loses you just CANNOT deny how good he is. It was the same for Life when he was at his peak.
The fact he's only made one Ro4 since his last OSL win? That says everything that needs to be said about the Terran situation on its own.
Balance it for the highest level only, that's the actual definition of balance anyway. lul
That is false.
A balanced game is designed such that the player of highest skill will generally win. Skill is the loaded question here since it cannot be measured. I think a fair way of going about things would be to say that on average, each race has players of similar skill. Assuming otherwise would be quite a stretch given the number of people who play Starcraft.
In a perfectly balanced game, the median Terran player would be approximately as good as the median protoss player, and the same would be true of the corresponding percentiles. (Ex. the 500th best players of each race would be similar, as would the 1000th best and so on).
But if we jump back to reality, we find the median terran player is more than a league lower than his zerg/protoss counterpart! Equivalently, if you were to randomly choose three people and force them to play starcraft, the one who chooses terran would on average end up a league lower than his zerg/protoss counterpart.
This fact forces one of two conclusions: Terran is underpowered at the average skill level, or people who choose Terran are significantly less skilled than their counterparts.
The latter was often assumed in WoL since campaign players would choose Terran, but that theory loses a lot of steam 5 years after the WoL release. Furthermore, the gap has widened over time, so unless you can justify some reason why terran players are getting less skilled, any argument will be shaky.
There is also a third option, you can just say that nobody cares about balance at lower leagues. I certainly don't think it should be a priority; but, its not healthy to completely ignore 99% of the player-base.
The reason lower league players lose games is because they're bad, not their races.
Terran is indeed probably harder to play right than Zerg or Protoss, because of their design. In games where everyone is playing like crap, there's no such thing as balance though.
But the absence of news from David Kim or Dustin Browder, the lateness to announce the new map pool and it being mostly community driven shows signs of Blizzard drifting apart from SC2.
They would be right tho, focusing on Hearthstone and Heroes is what matters to the company. So I think the situation with terran is even more dreadfull. No fix seems to be coming
I mostly weep for Zerg, the race I love, for it will never achieve the masterful levels of its full potential if it is not challenged to the max.
On July 01 2014 03:58 Melliflue wrote: I have a few complaints about this article. As others have pointed out the tone is unnecessarily aggressive. This can make it off-putting to anyone who does not already agree with the writer. Comments such as
Boost Medivacs were broken for sure, there could be no other explanation. Did you see how fast they are? Hell, he even had some units in position yet could do nothing to stop them. Such is the effect of novelty against the unprepared: the winning side looks untouchable, and therefore is OP by necessity.
can be very aggravating when the message could be explained directly. Would the writer lose too much by simply writing that people complained about boost medivacs but the other races learnt to adapt without needing boost medivacs to be nerfed?
The writer's chosen tone is very emotionally charged when the topic already brings up strong emotions in plenty of people and so this makes reasonable discussion much more difficult. When trying to convince other people of your beliefs (and I presume that is the intention of this article) then how the message is delivered is important.
Besides the tone, there is also the use of statistics. For example, TheDwf uses the winners of premier tournaments as evidence of how bad things became for Terran, but the winners of the the premier tournaments in HotS before the cut-off date TheDwf chose is as follows;
So that's 4 champions for Protoss, 5 champions for Zerg and 8 for Terran. The number of wins: 4 for Protoss, 5 for Zerg, and 12 for Terran.
Terran went from winning over 57% of the titles to under 20%, which is a massive swing. But if this is purely a result of the balance patches and map changes as TheDwf seems to suggest then maybe Blizzard should be very careful with any new balance patches for fear of creating another massive swing. Previous evidence supports the theory that small changes can have massive consequences. Maybe Blizzard are right to keep trying small changes and giving them time to see how things work out.
Another example of misleading statistics; The graph about “Amount of times non-Koreans won series against Koreans (non-mirrors)” does not say how much times non-Koreans lost against Koreans and without that we don't know what the ratio is of wins for non-Koreans against Koreans is, which is a more useful statistic.
The third major complaint I have with the article is that no other possible explanations for Terran's recent lack of success seem to be considered. TheDwf chose September 2013 for the start of the demise of Terran and around that time there was another big change in the SC2 world, namely the first season of Pro-League finished in August 2013 and KeSPA started sending it's players to an increasing number of foreign tournaments. If we omit those players who switched to SC2 with KeSPA then TheDwf's list of champions shrinks to
Protoss HerO MC PartinG San
4 different winners for 4 titles.
Zerg HyuN Life (x2)
2 different winners for 3 titles.
Terran TaeJa (x4)
It is still TaeJa carrying the Terrans but the effect of the KeSPA switch players could be important. This makes we wonder where the KeSPA switch Terrans are. Only Bogus/INnoVation has had any success out of the KeSPA switch Terrans, and he lost form after moving to Acer. Maybe the rise of these KeSPA switch players and absence of KeSPA switch Terrans has contributed to the recent Terran problems.
Why there are not as many KeSPA switch Terrans could be down to balance, but could also be something about the way Brood War Terran plays compared to SC2 Terran that means the BW skillset for BW Terrans is not as helpful for playing Terran in SC2. TaeJa and Maru, the two often held up as the hopes for Terran to win a tournament, never played BW professionally.
This rise of the KeSPA switch players would help explain other factors, such as why the individual results of certain individual players became worse in that period. The level of competition rose so many players started to fall away.
I am not trying to claim this is the sole reason for Terran's problems but I wanted to give an example of another factor that may have contributed, but TheDwf's article seems to imply that all of Terran's problems are due to the balance of the game. From a research point of view, it seems as though TheDwf started with the belief that Terran is under-powered and then looked for evidence to support that view, rather than trying to collect evidence and then see what conclusions can be drawn from it.
Overall, I understand that this is an editorial and not a reflection on the beliefs of TL's staff collectively but I am disappointed that they would feature the article because I suspect the main consequence of this article will be an increase in balance complaints from Terrans.
We had a Terran Kespa Champion other than Inno. Classic.
I don't see how that is relevant. I suggested that there is something about Terran in SC2 that makes it harder for former BW pros than Protoss or Zerg, which is why there are more successful Protoss and Zerg players from that set of players who switched with KeSPA than there are Terran players. That a Terran BW pro has had success in SC2 with Protoss does not contradict that hypothesis.
On July 01 2014 03:58 Melliflue wrote: It is still TaeJa carrying the Terrans but the effect of the KeSPA switch players could be important. This makes we wonder where the KeSPA switch Terrans are. Only Bogus/INnoVation has had any success out of the KeSPA switch Terrans, and he lost form after moving to Acer. Maybe the rise of these KeSPA switch players and absence of KeSPA switch Terrans has contributed to the recent Terran problems.
Why there are not as many KeSPA switch Terrans could be down to balance, but could also be something about the way Brood War Terran plays compared to SC2 Terran that means the BW skillset for BW Terrans is not as helpful for playing Terran in SC2. TaeJa and Maru, the two often held up as the hopes for Terran to win a tournament, never played BW professionally.
The problem is that there are literally only two terrans that matter, Taeja and Maru, when all of the tier 2 has disappeared, you know there's a real problem
Yes, that's a problem. But I was trying to ask why is that the case. There may be other contributing factors besides balance. And I am not trying to say the game is balanced, just that it is possible it is not the only factor. But the article implies all of Terran's problems are due to an imbalanced game.
On July 01 2014 12:19 BisuDagger wrote: Are more people concerned with balance at the highest level for veiwership and entertainment purposes or for the level at which you play at?
I am concerned with the highest level. I don't play though so I have no personal interest in any other level
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.
The only match up where Terran is favored is TvT. I can honestly not tell if some of these posts are just trolling anymore - the record of Premier/Major tournaments for 2014 show Terran to be non-existent and the patch will not have much impact on this. Your own personal troubles against Terran are not reflective of the balance situation, only your own inadequacies.
Against Zerg something needs to be done about Muta flocks and their insane health regeneration. Buffing WMs will not work as most pros have an overseer with the flock. Turrets are useless as soon as the flock gets to a 7 or more and Thors are too expensive and slow. Push out as Terran and there is an extremely high risk that your base will be wrecked by a Muta counter-attack whilst you are still trying to clear creep in the middle of the map. Nerfing Muta regen would be welcome.
Wrong. You can make up your opinions. But you shouldn't make up your facts. Terran is favored in TvP.
Yeah that website does not even come close to being "fact" or show anything of value in competitive play. Terran is certainly not favored in TVP. Pretty much every high end player/caster will always state Terran has to worry about many things early game, Terran is fine mid game, but once at late game Protoss is favored again vs Terran. Terran's answer has been "don't let protoss get to that point or die.
Don't listen to casters. They are paid to hype the game up, and nothing kills hype like talking about clear and large balance issues. Also, pretty much all casters are ex-pro protoss players or never got to that level to have authority-,-
I just want to throw out that even if the game is imba, casters can't go around saying it during the match. They need to "hype" the game and "hype" the players, even if the casters don't like the players or the game is clearly imba. It would be anti-climatic if Tastosis went on the GSL and said "well, by the looks of it guys, unless P does this one, huge mistake, he's pretty much got the game", the GSL wouldn't attract new viewers. At best, we have Tasteless who will scream "terrran" when Maru got to the semi-finals.
It's not that they're bad at the game or they don't understand things. It's that they're putting on a show and saying things the way they are during the GSL or during PL doesn't help anyone at all. Neither does shitting on swarmhosts when they appear.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. The comments of casters (and pros) as well as comments in LR threads and in previews/reviews are far more off-putting to me than the balance problems. Blizzard are making changes (nerfed Time Warp, Mothership Core vision range, buffed Ghosts, Hellbats/Hellions) and after making a change they wait a couple of months before making another to see how the change affects things.
The balance comments have reached the stage for me where I don't want Terrans in tournaments because of the inevitable comments whenever a Terran plays. I don't think the issue should be ignored altogether but similarly I don't want it to be such a dominating topic.
Balance it for the highest level only, that's the actual definition of balance anyway. lul
That is false.
A balanced game is designed such that the player of highest skill will generally win. Skill is the loaded question here since it cannot be measured. I think a fair way of going about things would be to say that on average, each race has players of similar skill. Assuming otherwise would be quite a stretch given the number of people who play Starcraft.
In a perfectly balanced game, the median Terran player would be approximately as good as the median protoss player, and the same would be true of the corresponding percentiles. (Ex. the 500th best players of each race would be similar, as would the 1000th best and so on).
But if we jump back to reality, we find the median terran player is more than a league lower than his zerg/protoss counterpart! Equivalently, if you were to randomly choose three people and force them to play starcraft, the one who chooses terran would on average end up a league lower than his zerg/protoss counterpart.
This fact forces one of two conclusions: Terran is underpowered at the average skill level, or people who choose Terran are significantly less skilled than their counterparts.
The latter was often assumed in WoL since campaign players would choose Terran, but that theory loses a lot of steam 5 years after the WoL release. Furthermore, the gap has widened over time, so unless you can justify some reason why terran players are getting less skilled, any argument will be shaky.
There is also a third option, you can just say that nobody cares about balance at lower leagues. I certainly don't think it should be a priority; but, its not healthy to completely ignore 99% of the player-base.
Lol, and the proof of this reality is? A full league behind where they should be? That's some serious circlejerking.
just a side question (and sorry for abusing that thread for it) i think we can all agree that idra was the most vocal ZERG player when it comes to balance and " my race is broken" then we have avilo who is (though i find him incredibly entertaining) the TERRAN player with the most balance whining
was there/ is there a Toss player who is known for complaining about balance all the time?
i don't want to stir up shit, just curious because i cannot think of one.
On July 01 2014 03:58 Melliflue wrote: I have a few complaints about this article. As others have pointed out the tone is unnecessarily aggressive. This can make it off-putting to anyone who does not already agree with the writer. Comments such as
Boost Medivacs were broken for sure, there could be no other explanation. Did you see how fast they are? Hell, he even had some units in position yet could do nothing to stop them. Such is the effect of novelty against the unprepared: the winning side looks untouchable, and therefore is OP by necessity.
can be very aggravating when the message could be explained directly. Would the writer lose too much by simply writing that people complained about boost medivacs but the other races learnt to adapt without needing boost medivacs to be nerfed?
The writer's chosen tone is very emotionally charged when the topic already brings up strong emotions in plenty of people and so this makes reasonable discussion much more difficult. When trying to convince other people of your beliefs (and I presume that is the intention of this article) then how the message is delivered is important.
Besides the tone, there is also the use of statistics. For example, TheDwf uses the winners of premier tournaments as evidence of how bad things became for Terran, but the winners of the the premier tournaments in HotS before the cut-off date TheDwf chose is as follows;
So that's 4 champions for Protoss, 5 champions for Zerg and 8 for Terran. The number of wins: 4 for Protoss, 5 for Zerg, and 12 for Terran.
Terran went from winning over 57% of the titles to under 20%, which is a massive swing. But if this is purely a result of the balance patches and map changes as TheDwf seems to suggest then maybe Blizzard should be very careful with any new balance patches for fear of creating another massive swing. Previous evidence supports the theory that small changes can have massive consequences. Maybe Blizzard are right to keep trying small changes and giving them time to see how things work out.
Another example of misleading statistics; The graph about “Amount of times non-Koreans won series against Koreans (non-mirrors)” does not say how much times non-Koreans lost against Koreans and without that we don't know what the ratio is of wins for non-Koreans against Koreans is, which is a more useful statistic.
The third major complaint I have with the article is that no other possible explanations for Terran's recent lack of success seem to be considered. TheDwf chose September 2013 for the start of the demise of Terran and around that time there was another big change in the SC2 world, namely the first season of Pro-League finished in August 2013 and KeSPA started sending it's players to an increasing number of foreign tournaments. If we omit those players who switched to SC2 with KeSPA then TheDwf's list of champions shrinks to
Protoss HerO MC PartinG San
4 different winners for 4 titles.
Zerg HyuN Life (x2)
2 different winners for 3 titles.
Terran TaeJa (x4)
It is still TaeJa carrying the Terrans but the effect of the KeSPA switch players could be important. This makes we wonder where the KeSPA switch Terrans are. Only Bogus/INnoVation has had any success out of the KeSPA switch Terrans, and he lost form after moving to Acer. Maybe the rise of these KeSPA switch players and absence of KeSPA switch Terrans has contributed to the recent Terran problems.
Why there are not as many KeSPA switch Terrans could be down to balance, but could also be something about the way Brood War Terran plays compared to SC2 Terran that means the BW skillset for BW Terrans is not as helpful for playing Terran in SC2. TaeJa and Maru, the two often held up as the hopes for Terran to win a tournament, never played BW professionally.
This rise of the KeSPA switch players would help explain other factors, such as why the individual results of certain individual players became worse in that period. The level of competition rose so many players started to fall away.
I am not trying to claim this is the sole reason for Terran's problems but I wanted to give an example of another factor that may have contributed, but TheDwf's article seems to imply that all of Terran's problems are due to the balance of the game. From a research point of view, it seems as though TheDwf started with the belief that Terran is under-powered and then looked for evidence to support that view, rather than trying to collect evidence and then see what conclusions can be drawn from it.
Overall, I understand that this is an editorial and not a reflection on the beliefs of TL's staff collectively but I am disappointed that they would feature the article because I suspect the main consequence of this article will be an increase in balance complaints from Terrans.
We had a Terran Kespa Champion other than Inno. Classic.
I don't see how that is relevant. I suggested that there is something about Terran in SC2 that makes it harder for former BW pros than Protoss or Zerg, which is why there are more successful Protoss and Zerg players from that set of players who switched with KeSPA than there are Terran players. That a Terran BW pro has had success in SC2 with Protoss does not contradict that hypothesis.
On July 01 2014 03:58 Melliflue wrote: It is still TaeJa carrying the Terrans but the effect of the KeSPA switch players could be important. This makes we wonder where the KeSPA switch Terrans are. Only Bogus/INnoVation has had any success out of the KeSPA switch Terrans, and he lost form after moving to Acer. Maybe the rise of these KeSPA switch players and absence of KeSPA switch Terrans has contributed to the recent Terran problems.
Why there are not as many KeSPA switch Terrans could be down to balance, but could also be something about the way Brood War Terran plays compared to SC2 Terran that means the BW skillset for BW Terrans is not as helpful for playing Terran in SC2. TaeJa and Maru, the two often held up as the hopes for Terran to win a tournament, never played BW professionally.
The problem is that there are literally only two terrans that matter, Taeja and Maru, when all of the tier 2 has disappeared, you know there's a real problem
Yes, that's a problem. But I was trying to ask why is that the case. There may be other contributing factors besides balance. And I am not trying to say the game is balanced, just that it is possible it is not the only factor. But the article implies all of Terran's problems are due to an imbalanced game.
I have a theory that it has less to do with BW players and more to do with the mechanics of SC2..
SC2 is fundamentally different than SC1 in one very precise way. Things are just way more MOBILE in SC2 than they were in SC1. Zerg units move at the speed of light on creep, Protoss have colossi that can walk over cliffs, stalkers that blink, and warp ins they can use to get units to the front line in a jiffy.
Then there's Terran. Terran has 2 units for its mobility. It has Reapers, but they're early game units only ever used for scouting. It has medivacs, but they're nothing really new because BW had dropships.
So Terran simply isn't as mobile as the other two races. Zerg spreads creep and gets its reinforcements to the frontline fast, 'Toss just warps them in right there. Terran has to walk all the way across the map. With slow units. This also applies to base defense. Zerg can send lings there in a flash, Toss can warp in some zealots to deal with harass, Terran has to basically pull back the entire army.
See. this is the real thing that makes Terran weaker in lategame in the design on SC2. They simply can't keep a fight going like the other two races can. However Blizzard has exacerbated this problem by making sure Terran lategame units like BC and the like are just plain bad.
Its not that BW players can't adapt, its that in HotS Zerg and Protoss have unreal lategame power due to the ability to just reinforce, and when Terran doesn't have the strength to just crush in the early (Haha, Photon overcharge), and can't push through in the midgame anymore (mine nerf. PHOTON OVERCHARGE), it just becomes so, so hard for a terran to win at that level. They don't have to outplay their opponent by a little, they have to do it by a -lot-
And keep in mind, i don't play. I'm just a spectator. MMMM crushing everything wasn't very interesting to watch either.
Blizzard needs to look away from those units, and look at the rest of the spectrum of Terran units. Reapers fall off so incredibly fast as a unit, as do Hellions/Hellbats that they're rarely seen, when even Zealots and Zerglings make it far into the lategame of Zerg and Toss. Ravens are incredibly rare and fragile, Battlecruisers are nonexistant. Ghosts just can't keep up, Seige tanks get off 1 shot and then die, Banshees are similar to Reapers, with only 2-3 appearing to harass in the occasional game. Thors are crap against everything but mutalisks
Terran's unit compositions are by far the least diverse in the entire game, while Zerg and Toss can make use of almost every unit in their arsenal (ok, Carriers are extinct, and warp prisms are rarely seen.. But still!)
This is just another reason why balancing by winrate is horrid, when all spectators see is MMMM, with the occasional Reaper, hellion scout team, and maybe a few vikings for the Colossi, Terran is on the knife's edge of balance, because they have so little to fall back on when MMMM becomes weaker, there's no alternative because Mech is trash, and its impossible to transition to airran.
I guess tl;dr its frustrating seeing Terran have crappy lategame units when the game's mechanics already make it hard for them to have a strong lategame in comparison with Zerg and Toss. Those units should be buffed so that its not just MMMM.
Also, on why Maru is the only successful Terran in korea
Terrans usually can't cheese effectively right now, its too predictable and thus risky and weak, while toss cheese is unpredictable and therefore stronger and safer.
Maru is the exception because he has literally no fear. He cheeses in absurd ways. He'll spam reapers at you, he'll just rush a banshee out.
HE'LL BUILD A RAX IN YOUR BASE. NO FEAR.
And he backs that up with amazing micro/macro. He's exceptional in that regard. Thats why he's the best terran in the world.
On June 30 2014 22:11 Ctone23 wrote: Bring the warhound back and make the anit-air a research option
Or is there a solution at all?
There is a shit ton of solutions available. A shit ton. MSC : Make twilight required/Reduce range of Overcharge/Time of Timewarp/Time of Overcharge Mutas : Reduce Regen ability. Roaches : Good question, but all in all I think this unit need to be deleted or redesign at LotV since its a most boring unit with fun at all. HTs : Storm cost 100/FB cost 75/HT cost 100/150 instead of 50/150 /Storm deal 80 damage over 6 instead of 4s. WMs : up it by a bit (not like old WM but a middle between old and new. Thors : Smaller and maybe a bit faster. DTs : Bring the fucking cost back to what it was in WoL omg. Oracles : Bring back old speed please. Tanks : Make them deal more damage but with much slower attack maybe (same dps overall).
I don't know, there is so much that can be done to tweak the game in the right way. Just pick a couple here and I'm pretty sure the game will be good to play and watch again.
Without commenting on the other suggestions, I would certainly not miss the roach if it was taken away. Not that I don't build it, but it doesn't make for fun games. Or make then viable mainly as burrow-move units or something...
Well, terran players are perfectly ok with their race being imba at the beginning of each expansion "you know, for some time (months) it will take other races to adapt". I guess they should be equally ok with other races being stronger now, once they have adapted (till another major patch / expansion). Otherwise it's just unfair and tournament wins would be shifted in favor of terran too much.
EPT
