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I've spent this morning collecting data form Liquipedia, making a table of the racial distributin in the premier tournaments since the release of HotS. In the spreadsheet I calculated the average percentage for each race for a given round (depth) in a tournament, i.e. ro64, ro32, quarterfinals etc.
Without further redue I present the graphs to you:
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b4vrw/d0d2f7faa4.png)
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b4vsq/097b781a5e.png)
And combined into an average for all of HotS
![[image loading]](http://puu.sh/b4w6K/25686a0161.png)
I'm no expert in statistics, so my main motivation for posting this here on TL is to hear your opinion. I find the statistics very interresting, but I'm not sure what to extract from it.
Are individuals like Tajea carrying their race and through that disguising a weak terran race? Why are zergs overrepresented in the early rounds, but underrepresented in the later stages of tournaments? Is protoss actually a stronger race, or is a bigger part of the most talented players playing protoss? Why is the graph seemingly more unbalanced in 2014 than in 2013?
These are questions I find it hard to answer precicely.
There are however certain things I think is important when concidering the statistics/graphs: • The later into a tournament we look, the more will one players individual skill inflict the racial distribution. • The sudden jump the terran line does in 2013 when going from semis to finals is because of the Summer of Taeja (sounds silly, but check it out and it is true). • The statistics for 2014 is not as accurate as the 2013 ones, some tournaments are unfinished. • Also please note that the scale of the vertical axis is linear while the scale on the horizontal axis is logarthmic. • Google spreadsheets wasn't the nicest to work with, but if you see the small bends in the lines you'll be able to identlify ro32, ro16, ro8, ro4 and ro2
I hope I contributed something new. I know some of you are aware of this to a certain extent, but I still think this sums up and presents thing in a nice way. I'm very interrested in hearing your opinions on the matter!
Below is a link to the spreadsheet with the table holding the data that is the base of the graphs:
+ Show Spoiler +
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Wow interesting. That Protoss spike in 2014 lol. Though I think you should have waited until the end of 2014 to do this to have equal representation by year.
Though HotS did come out in March so idk maybe it's even? Either way, results from early 2013 are a product of people still figuring out the game. I think post-WM patch, the game is in a pretty good place balance wise.
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lol poor zergs not wionning much but running deep in tournaments :D
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On August 23 2014 23:48 Hadronsbecrazy wrote: lol poor zergs not wionning much but running deep in tournaments :D
Yeah this is one of the things I think is more caused by individual players rather than race differences
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Interesting, so if we look at the winners, there are really just a bunch of terrans that are carrying the whole race.
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Now we wait for our reborn god to carry the terran race back to its glory
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The change in right portion of graph is only for winner (1 player) so there is big randomness thanks to very little data. Probably random or thanks to few players. Apart from that not much surprising. A lot of Z in early rounds that are weeded out, more protoss, fewer terran.. as expected.
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A lot of tournaments have really weak starting lineups, but by ro4/ro2 they can be of a really high-level caliber.
I think the graph does show the Terran dominance of early hots, and the Protoss dominance of 2014.
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nice, thx !!! Now I would love to see the same graphs without Taeja ...Ok without the 1st of each race to be fair.
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Russian Federation232 Posts
Protoss has win almost every single major tournament and the only one to save the day is Taeja. Half of the top16 people attending WCS in November (8 out of 16) are protoss.
I think this is due to the very forgiving mechanics introduced (Photon overcharge, recall, detection with oracle etc.) that basically always save ass for P players even tho they should be dead, increasing their resiliance in early to mid game where if they messed up they'd tend to die, and hence allowing them to reach late game often and as we all know, late game P is a bit tough to go up against 
These statistics are not very surprising.. for me at least
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On August 24 2014 00:51 Tuczniak wrote: The change in right portion of graph is only for winner (1 player) so there is big randomness thanks to very little data. Probably random or thanks to few players. Apart from that not much surprising. A lot of Z in early rounds that are weeded out, more protoss, fewer terran.. as expected.
Yeah you are absolutely correct, but I couldn't just leave out the winner of tournaments as a part of the stats/graphs either, I felt.
On August 24 2014 00:54 sibs wrote: A lot of tournaments have really weak starting lineups, but by ro4/ro2 they can be of a really high-level caliber.
I think the graph does show the Terran dominance of early hots, and the Protoss dominance of 2014.
The fact that you point out that terrans dominated 2013 is pretty interresting, I didn't realize this before now. Terrans are represetned better in every round after ro64 then they are in the ro64 (some of this may be due to a lower chance for the terrans to face each other). Terrans performing well statistically even though they are outnumbered is an indication of strength, if I understand things properly. Unless Teaja is messing with my head again.
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Graph is a bit funny. Surely the numbers should be that of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 on the x-axis, so as to not obscurate the data. Anyhow by the time you get to 1 you get to the point of a diminishingly small sample. It'll be better that instead of percentages, that you simply showed the number of players on the y-axis.
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So we can basically assume there are less Terran Progamers and Zergs are the most.
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On August 24 2014 02:24 Big J wrote: So we can basically assume there are less Terran Progamers and Zergs are the most.
wasn't that always the situation? i mean yes, at the beginning of WoL there seemed to be a huge number of korean terrans. but after big teams disbanded (oGs, Slayers, Zenex) a lot of those terrans either transitioned into foreign teams or just flat out retired.
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Zerg is either popular or qualifies a lot for tourmanents, prolly both, since zerg representation in GM is high. Then zerg just dies lol. If its not an indication that zerg is weak at the pro level then there are no good zerg pros out there. Nah, its indication of imbalance guys (only at the top). For terran there is abnormal Taeja, for zerg there is no single player carrying the race, but even then the race overall is supposed to be winning more. That or protoss got a ton of Taeja skilled guys.
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Graphs make sense.
Pre HoTS BL/Infestor ruled the world Post HoTS launch MMMM and Hellbat timings became beast Post T Nerf Toss rained supreme with Z a close 2nd Post T rebuff we see some more balance coming back
Really though tournaments could see better distribution, or more sense to a lack of it, if blizzard would just give more ways for better players to win games pre all in or max out timings. As is harassment and smaller level engagements in the mid game just don't feel like they mean enough to decide games at later stages. You can economically get ridiculously ahead and still lose to a very powerful maxed out army just due to Rock smashing the hell out of Scissors. But that goes back to a lack of soft counter dynamics and only hard counter dynamics in SC2 /shrug.
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These graphs seem to imply that Zerg is a popular but terrible race over the course of HoTS. In all cases Zerg has the highest distribution in round of 64, prior to heavy eliminations, and despite this higher representation Zerg still ends up with by far the worst tournament win rate in all time periods. For 2014 it looks like its sitting at about 14% right now. Apparently zerg just isn't that good at the higher levels.
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Na, Zerg is pretty good guys. It still has zhe most second places. It just lost a lot of tournament finals, but there are and were definitely carrying players like Jaedong, Soulkey or soO. The low amount of final wins is probably just a random occurence.
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On August 24 2014 02:00 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Graph is a bit funny. Surely the numbers should be that of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 on the x-axis, so as to not obscurate the data. Anyhow by the time you get to 1 you get to the point of a diminishingly small sample. It'll be better that instead of percentages, that you simply showed the number of players on the y-axis.
I can't fix the x-axis labels, sorry. Google spreadsheets is not the best tool.
And this is how the graph would look like with average number of players instead of percentage, pretty uninformative
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There's a funny bit where the Terran in 2013 is caused by Taeja, while the Zerg for championships are caused by Jaedong & soO. 
That's the problem with sample size as it gets small.
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