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Let's not make confusions, but when the game is both boring and imbalanced (and imbalanced in a way the most boring matchups become more frequent), it doesn't make for a good viewer experience.
And I was specifically talking about end of 2012, thank god Zerg isn't like that anymore.
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On December 09 2014 21:38 ZenithM wrote:
Let's not make confusions, but when the game is both boring and imbalanced (and imbalanced in a way the most boring matchups become more frequent), it doesn't make for a good viewer experience.
And I was specifically talking about end of 2012, thank god Zerg isn't like that anymore.
Best games of 2012/13 thread:
2013:
6/7 games 2013 were TvZ, the other one being PvZ.
2012:
14/40games 2012 were TvZ, 6 PvZ, 6 ZvZ.
(handcounted, might contain small mistakes)
That pure boredom TvZ being the best matchup in 2012-13... That insane decrease in PvZ and ZvZ quality through the queen patch (not, PvZ was bad all along; just watch Protoss two base allinning or two base turtling for the 1.5half years before... and ZvZ was never good but 2012 was definitely it's best state with various openings/strategies and transitions breaking out of pure ling/bling or roach wars).
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On December 09 2014 21:38 ZenithM wrote:
Let's not make confusions, but when the game is both boring and imbalanced (and imbalanced in a way the most boring matchups become more frequent), it doesn't make for a good viewer experience.
And I was specifically talking about end of 2012, thank god Zerg isn't like that anymore.
pfft, I loved mid-2012 - early 2013 ZvZ. Will never understand the disdain for the matchup during that period...
PvZ was mostly agonizing though D;
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TvZ was enjoyable because of how many players top Terrans had to struggle against to win. It made for good storylines. Nowadays, a top Terran just stomps a mid-level Zerg, no contest, some would argue too easily, but in the good old days, you could have an epic Mvp vs Vortix or a Taeja vs SortOf for the ages.
We live in such boring times, I now realize it.
Ok I'll stop now, I'm rarely this confrontational, but reading about BL/infestors and end of 2012 just wakes something inside me I didn't know existed.
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On December 09 2014 21:38 ZenithM wrote:
Let's not make confusions, but when the game is both boring and imbalanced (and imbalanced in a way the most boring matchups become more frequent), it doesn't make for a good viewer experience.
And I was specifically talking about end of 2012, thank god Zerg isn't like that anymore.
I found ZvZ boring but ZvT and ZvP fun to watch.
Now, I find PvP just as boring as ZvZ was then, maybe even more. In ZvZ we sometimes had explosive baneling wars.
TvT was fun for a while but since there was so much of it for first two years of WoL I lost all will to watch it anymore.
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On December 09 2014 10:09 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2014 06:51 plogamer wrote:On December 09 2014 01:04 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 00:20 FanaticCZ wrote:On December 08 2014 20:06 Gwavajuice wrote:On December 08 2014 12:57 meenamjah wrote:On December 08 2014 12:11 starslayer wrote:
so now that life won wcs, parting won hsc, forgg won DH, SOS won hot6, and either toss or terran will win IEM can we say the game is pretty balanced and new maps that help zerg would make it just about perfect. is this really needed i mean come on this is just silly. seriously, what's wrong with those idiots? first, they refuse to fix the obviously broken infestor for, what, almost two years?. and now they're just nerfing and buffing without giving things enough time to settle. just when other races were adjusting to terran, they completely nerf terran into the ground. so they buff terran. now that everyone's adjusting to it again, they're gonna nerf. the stupidity is mind boggling. What is stupidity? BL+infestor era was like 6 months long, it started when the queens got the range buffs after ghost got nerfed. First Zerg win was Leenock at MLG in august 2012, then Life in October in Code S. When ghost could snipe BL/ultras nobody was ranting at the infestor, it was actually a necessary tool to keep zergs alive. Watch MMA vs DRG finals if you don't remember. Plus the last monthes don't count much cause all devs were working on HOTS which was released in march 2013. Balance is not perfect, maybe, but before calling people idiots or stupids try to at least sound smart yourself... This new mine change is not so big and probably won't make blink all ins or zealot/archons pushes OP again, at least I hope so. The real big issue is the map pool, they seem to have heard this. So let's wait and see. Not true. The first zerg win (Top 3 was all zergs - Violet, Symbol, Stephano) was Violet at the MLG Spring Arena 2 about a week or so after the patch, then DRG won the MLG Spring Championship and also Nerchio won (wtf) the HSC V vs MC and YongHwa at the time when MC was on the way to his 3rd GSL finals and had won Red Bull Austin. And if it wasnt for Mvp he wouldve won even the IEM Cologne shortly after. I cant even believe how silly that sounds today that a foreign zerg would get into the finals of a premier tournament few times in a row vs top KR players of that time. And the time frame is actually from May 2012 to March 2013 (remember RorO winning the last WoL GSL in March?). yeah, those insanely imbalanced first 3months after the queen patch, when zerg won 3 of 12 tournaments. Completely broken, I mean 25% going to 33% of the players? What insanity!!! BL/Infestor only started showing somewhat around the time when Life beat Mvp in GSL finals. Before that it was just the continued whining that had already started mid 2011 when BL/Infestor first popped up. Only somewhere in the third quarter of 2012 it started to show that the strategy - and strategies leading up to it - really could be played to a very hard to beat perfection. Also, while you are at it with foreign players. Funny story, just one month before that unthinkable thing happened with top3 all-zerg ("omg, that must mean complete imbalance of the game", regardless of the tournament quality or size so this too, right?) a foreign Terran did the unthinkable and won Premier Tournament. Even more, BL/Infestor was so broken that even foreign Protoss players like Grubby or Mana made it to Premier finals (and Mana even won). No, seriously. The truth is that back in 2012 the best Koreans weren't that much better than the best foreigners - and most often when foreigners did well in tournaments the Korean line-up was rather weak. Mana, Bunny and Nerchio had great runs, mostly over foreigners. MaNa beating forgg was as much of an upset as Grubby beating MC. Nerchio won a Premier tournament without ever encountering a Korean and got second in one in which he encountered. Nerchio beat MC and violet (regardless how imbalanced you think BL/Infestor was, ZvZ was balanced and beating top Korean Zergs as Zerg had nothing to do with imbalance, rather just showcases that that the skill-level was really much closer) to lose against Mvp in the finals. And even if we look to the top-foreigners these days (e.g. Snute and Bunny), they can still take matches of those former top players like MC, Hyun, Stardust or even the new Korean top players like Flash or TRUE. You're defending queen range patch by arbitrarily setting a 3 month cut-off period. Anyone could see a problem with that. BL/infestor was horrible, and you're trying to down-play it. BL/infestor's biggest victim was TvZ and you use PvZ to defend it. End even then, it was mainly archon-toilet for Protoss to stand a chance in late-game. Foreigner vs Korean ZvZ results were indicative of the lower skill-cap for the race. And even so, Korean Zergs of the highest calibre stayed in Korea. Most pros attribute Koreans in EU ladder for closing the skill gap, not increasing the skill gap (In reference to region locking, but the point is that skill gap is seen as smaller now than before in EU). That Bl/Inf was too strong is undeniable. But that circlejerking about it is absolute crap. Not one statistic indicates that that era was worse than 2011 or early 2014, yet people like you keep pretending it was the pinnacle of imbalance and should have been burned with fire before it even happened. It's funny,
I have one, look at second graph here
http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/
May 2012- February 2013 is only extended period of one race domination outside of 2010 (which i don't think is considered balance period of sc2 history)
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On December 09 2014 19:18 ZenithM wrote:
it's undeniable that the queen patch almost killed Starcraft 2 as a legitimate competitive game
Well if it's undeniable...
On December 09 2014 19:18 ZenithM wrote:I'm fine with Terran getting nerfed, because that's the way it always has been,
Terrans, the eternal victims of the blizzard nerf bat. No matter how many buffs they get, no matter their winrates, no matter the tournaments they win, they always have to cry about being over nerfed...
On December 10 2014 02:25 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2014 10:09 Big J wrote:
That Bl/Inf was too strong is undeniable. But that circlejerking about it is absolute crap. Not one statistic indicates that that era was worse than 2011 or early 2014, yet people like you keep pretending it was the pinnacle of imbalance and should have been burned with fire before it even happened. It's funny, I have one, look at second graph here http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/May 2012- February 2013 is only extended period of one race domination outside of 2010 (which i don't think is considered balance period of sc2 history)
To use the usual terran arguments when this graph is reversed:
- Aligulac isn't a good way to judge balance
- winrates aren't everything
- some terrans still managed to win/go far in tournaments, so there was obviously no real problem
- it was a long time ago, the skill level was very different, it has no relevance now
- just because it was this way in the past does not mean it should be this way for another race now
If TheDwf was zerg, he would probably have tons of numbers to throw at you, proving that zerg didn't actually win that much. They may even have been underpowered. Besides at the time, a lot of zerg players were simply better than their terran counterparts. Also, maps.
And all of this just because Blizzard *thinks* about reducing the buff that mines got for TvP back before their only nerf was reverted? Wow, terrans really don't like getting nerfs. Strange for a race that's supposedly always getting nerfed. They should be used to it by now.
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After watching some tournaments the past couple weeks I think it is pretty clear that terran does not need a nerf and that the map pool needs fixed. Marineking winning vs a bunch of poorly executed protoss allins hardly proves anything.
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On December 10 2014 02:25 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2014 10:09 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 06:51 plogamer wrote:On December 09 2014 01:04 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 00:20 FanaticCZ wrote:On December 08 2014 20:06 Gwavajuice wrote:On December 08 2014 12:57 meenamjah wrote:On December 08 2014 12:11 starslayer wrote:
so now that life won wcs, parting won hsc, forgg won DH, SOS won hot6, and either toss or terran will win IEM can we say the game is pretty balanced and new maps that help zerg would make it just about perfect. is this really needed i mean come on this is just silly. seriously, what's wrong with those idiots? first, they refuse to fix the obviously broken infestor for, what, almost two years?. and now they're just nerfing and buffing without giving things enough time to settle. just when other races were adjusting to terran, they completely nerf terran into the ground. so they buff terran. now that everyone's adjusting to it again, they're gonna nerf. the stupidity is mind boggling. What is stupidity? BL+infestor era was like 6 months long, it started when the queens got the range buffs after ghost got nerfed. First Zerg win was Leenock at MLG in august 2012, then Life in October in Code S. When ghost could snipe BL/ultras nobody was ranting at the infestor, it was actually a necessary tool to keep zergs alive. Watch MMA vs DRG finals if you don't remember. Plus the last monthes don't count much cause all devs were working on HOTS which was released in march 2013. Balance is not perfect, maybe, but before calling people idiots or stupids try to at least sound smart yourself... This new mine change is not so big and probably won't make blink all ins or zealot/archons pushes OP again, at least I hope so. The real big issue is the map pool, they seem to have heard this. So let's wait and see. Not true. The first zerg win (Top 3 was all zergs - Violet, Symbol, Stephano) was Violet at the MLG Spring Arena 2 about a week or so after the patch, then DRG won the MLG Spring Championship and also Nerchio won (wtf) the HSC V vs MC and YongHwa at the time when MC was on the way to his 3rd GSL finals and had won Red Bull Austin. And if it wasnt for Mvp he wouldve won even the IEM Cologne shortly after. I cant even believe how silly that sounds today that a foreign zerg would get into the finals of a premier tournament few times in a row vs top KR players of that time. And the time frame is actually from May 2012 to March 2013 (remember RorO winning the last WoL GSL in March?). yeah, those insanely imbalanced first 3months after the queen patch, when zerg won 3 of 12 tournaments. Completely broken, I mean 25% going to 33% of the players? What insanity!!! BL/Infestor only started showing somewhat around the time when Life beat Mvp in GSL finals. Before that it was just the continued whining that had already started mid 2011 when BL/Infestor first popped up. Only somewhere in the third quarter of 2012 it started to show that the strategy - and strategies leading up to it - really could be played to a very hard to beat perfection. Also, while you are at it with foreign players. Funny story, just one month before that unthinkable thing happened with top3 all-zerg ("omg, that must mean complete imbalance of the game", regardless of the tournament quality or size so this too, right?) a foreign Terran did the unthinkable and won Premier Tournament. Even more, BL/Infestor was so broken that even foreign Protoss players like Grubby or Mana made it to Premier finals (and Mana even won). No, seriously. The truth is that back in 2012 the best Koreans weren't that much better than the best foreigners - and most often when foreigners did well in tournaments the Korean line-up was rather weak. Mana, Bunny and Nerchio had great runs, mostly over foreigners. MaNa beating forgg was as much of an upset as Grubby beating MC. Nerchio won a Premier tournament without ever encountering a Korean and got second in one in which he encountered. Nerchio beat MC and violet (regardless how imbalanced you think BL/Infestor was, ZvZ was balanced and beating top Korean Zergs as Zerg had nothing to do with imbalance, rather just showcases that that the skill-level was really much closer) to lose against Mvp in the finals. And even if we look to the top-foreigners these days (e.g. Snute and Bunny), they can still take matches of those former top players like MC, Hyun, Stardust or even the new Korean top players like Flash or TRUE. You're defending queen range patch by arbitrarily setting a 3 month cut-off period. Anyone could see a problem with that. BL/infestor was horrible, and you're trying to down-play it. BL/infestor's biggest victim was TvZ and you use PvZ to defend it. End even then, it was mainly archon-toilet for Protoss to stand a chance in late-game. Foreigner vs Korean ZvZ results were indicative of the lower skill-cap for the race. And even so, Korean Zergs of the highest calibre stayed in Korea. Most pros attribute Koreans in EU ladder for closing the skill gap, not increasing the skill gap (In reference to region locking, but the point is that skill gap is seen as smaller now than before in EU). That Bl/Inf was too strong is undeniable. But that circlejerking about it is absolute crap. Not one statistic indicates that that era was worse than 2011 or early 2014, yet people like you keep pretending it was the pinnacle of imbalance and should have been burned with fire before it even happened. It's funny, I have one, look at second graph here http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/May 2012- February 2013 is only extended period of one race domination outside of 2010 (which i don't think is considered balance period of sc2 history)
Have you even looked at 2011? Like peeked at it once? TvZ being on 54-55% average for 8months between January and July, awefully compareable to what you call the only extended period of one race domination.
And when you say one race domination, you mean one matchup, right? Because unless you can't read the stats in the period you quote, PvZ was around 47-48% on average which is rather close to balance by metrics of winrate, far from "domination" at least.
And in all of that, the aligulac winrate is your only metric of balance, while other stats weren't as terrible. Look at Premier tournament winners in 2011 or in late 2013 to early 2014 if you want to see a statistic being terribly one-sided. Look at Code S representations in that period if you want to see some stats being terribly off.
Neither of those major statistics representing balance at the top were as bad in BL/Infestor days as they were during other races peak performances.
One imbalance doesn't justify another... and then I hope you may realize that I'm the one here arguing against people who sneak in their backwards balance whines with unjustified phrases such as "worst period" and similar comparisons.
All of those times have had races too strong, could we please move on from trying to mark one as worse as the others to massage our egos. Each one of them was the worst in some way.
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On December 09 2014 19:18 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2014 02:28 Maniak_ wrote:On December 09 2014 00:22 xelnaga_empire wrote:
1) Over buffed Zerg in WoL. Lead to Broodlord/Infestor nightmare and ZvsZ finals and a huge exodus of spectators and fans. What was overly buffed? The queen range that was (and still is) necessary to not die to hellion/hellbat attacks, bunker rushes, reapers and gate allins? Anything else? The only other zerg buff in the year preceding HotS was overlord speed increased from 0.4687 to 0.586 2) Over buffed Protoss in HotS, Again, how? The mothership core that took a year to get nerfed maybe? Phoenix range and Oracle speed? Still not sure it this can be called "over buffed" compared to what the other races got. Especially terran. over nerfed Terran, I'm sure you don't mean this in HotS, since terran has been, by far, the most buffed and least nerfed race since its release. So... what has been over nerfed for terran? Let's see... snipe was nerfed against non-psionic, more than one year before HotS. Three months before, EMP radius got nerfed. Is that far back enough or were there other huge terran nerfs before this that caused the rise of protoss in 2014? While I don't think that the HotS PvP era was as bad as the end of WoL, it's undeniable that the queen patch almost killed Starcraft 2 as a legitimate competitive game and it was only saved by the not-so-timely arrival of HotS and of Kespa players
I deny that. The queen change was essential to allow zergs survive early terran pressure.
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On December 10 2014 03:09 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2014 02:25 keglu wrote:On December 09 2014 10:09 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 06:51 plogamer wrote:On December 09 2014 01:04 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 00:20 FanaticCZ wrote:On December 08 2014 20:06 Gwavajuice wrote:On December 08 2014 12:57 meenamjah wrote:On December 08 2014 12:11 starslayer wrote:
so now that life won wcs, parting won hsc, forgg won DH, SOS won hot6, and either toss or terran will win IEM can we say the game is pretty balanced and new maps that help zerg would make it just about perfect. is this really needed i mean come on this is just silly. seriously, what's wrong with those idiots? first, they refuse to fix the obviously broken infestor for, what, almost two years?. and now they're just nerfing and buffing without giving things enough time to settle. just when other races were adjusting to terran, they completely nerf terran into the ground. so they buff terran. now that everyone's adjusting to it again, they're gonna nerf. the stupidity is mind boggling. What is stupidity? BL+infestor era was like 6 months long, it started when the queens got the range buffs after ghost got nerfed. First Zerg win was Leenock at MLG in august 2012, then Life in October in Code S. When ghost could snipe BL/ultras nobody was ranting at the infestor, it was actually a necessary tool to keep zergs alive. Watch MMA vs DRG finals if you don't remember. Plus the last monthes don't count much cause all devs were working on HOTS which was released in march 2013. Balance is not perfect, maybe, but before calling people idiots or stupids try to at least sound smart yourself... This new mine change is not so big and probably won't make blink all ins or zealot/archons pushes OP again, at least I hope so. The real big issue is the map pool, they seem to have heard this. So let's wait and see. Not true. The first zerg win (Top 3 was all zergs - Violet, Symbol, Stephano) was Violet at the MLG Spring Arena 2 about a week or so after the patch, then DRG won the MLG Spring Championship and also Nerchio won (wtf) the HSC V vs MC and YongHwa at the time when MC was on the way to his 3rd GSL finals and had won Red Bull Austin. And if it wasnt for Mvp he wouldve won even the IEM Cologne shortly after. I cant even believe how silly that sounds today that a foreign zerg would get into the finals of a premier tournament few times in a row vs top KR players of that time. And the time frame is actually from May 2012 to March 2013 (remember RorO winning the last WoL GSL in March?). yeah, those insanely imbalanced first 3months after the queen patch, when zerg won 3 of 12 tournaments. Completely broken, I mean 25% going to 33% of the players? What insanity!!! BL/Infestor only started showing somewhat around the time when Life beat Mvp in GSL finals. Before that it was just the continued whining that had already started mid 2011 when BL/Infestor first popped up. Only somewhere in the third quarter of 2012 it started to show that the strategy - and strategies leading up to it - really could be played to a very hard to beat perfection. Also, while you are at it with foreign players. Funny story, just one month before that unthinkable thing happened with top3 all-zerg ("omg, that must mean complete imbalance of the game", regardless of the tournament quality or size so this too, right?) a foreign Terran did the unthinkable and won Premier Tournament. Even more, BL/Infestor was so broken that even foreign Protoss players like Grubby or Mana made it to Premier finals (and Mana even won). No, seriously. The truth is that back in 2012 the best Koreans weren't that much better than the best foreigners - and most often when foreigners did well in tournaments the Korean line-up was rather weak. Mana, Bunny and Nerchio had great runs, mostly over foreigners. MaNa beating forgg was as much of an upset as Grubby beating MC. Nerchio won a Premier tournament without ever encountering a Korean and got second in one in which he encountered. Nerchio beat MC and violet (regardless how imbalanced you think BL/Infestor was, ZvZ was balanced and beating top Korean Zergs as Zerg had nothing to do with imbalance, rather just showcases that that the skill-level was really much closer) to lose against Mvp in the finals. And even if we look to the top-foreigners these days (e.g. Snute and Bunny), they can still take matches of those former top players like MC, Hyun, Stardust or even the new Korean top players like Flash or TRUE. You're defending queen range patch by arbitrarily setting a 3 month cut-off period. Anyone could see a problem with that. BL/infestor was horrible, and you're trying to down-play it. BL/infestor's biggest victim was TvZ and you use PvZ to defend it. End even then, it was mainly archon-toilet for Protoss to stand a chance in late-game. Foreigner vs Korean ZvZ results were indicative of the lower skill-cap for the race. And even so, Korean Zergs of the highest calibre stayed in Korea. Most pros attribute Koreans in EU ladder for closing the skill gap, not increasing the skill gap (In reference to region locking, but the point is that skill gap is seen as smaller now than before in EU). That Bl/Inf was too strong is undeniable. But that circlejerking about it is absolute crap. Not one statistic indicates that that era was worse than 2011 or early 2014, yet people like you keep pretending it was the pinnacle of imbalance and should have been burned with fire before it even happened. It's funny, I have one, look at second graph here http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/May 2012- February 2013 is only extended period of one race domination outside of 2010 (which i don't think is considered balance period of sc2 history) Have you even looked at 2011? Like peeked at it once? TvZ being on 54-55% average for 8months between January and July, awefully compareable to what you call the only extended period of one race domination. And when you say one race domination, you mean one matchup, right? Because unless you can't read the stats in the period you quote, PvZ was around 47-48% on average which is rather close to balance by metrics of winrate, far from "domination" at least. And in all of that, the aligulac winrate is your only metric of balance, while other stats weren't as terrible. Look at Premier tournament winners in 2011 or in late 2013 to early 2014 if you want to see a statistic being terribly one-sided. Look at Code S representations in that period if you want to see some stats being terribly off. Neither of those major statistics representing balance at the top were as bad in BL/Infestor days as they were during other races peak performances. One imbalance doesn't justify another... and then I hope you may realize that I'm the one here arguing against people who sneak in their backwards balance whines with unjustified phrases such as "worst period" and similar comparisons. All of those times have had races too strong, could we please move on from trying to mark one as worse as the others to massage our egos. Each one of them was the worst in some way.
From what i see in second graph is that each line is race and not matchup. So second graph combines both matchups for each race.
For single matchups you are right, early 2011 was bad but it was also trending towards 50/50, TvZ in 2012/2013 never showed any sings of recovery until HOTS. Actually 6 months after patch it was at worst state with winrates below 43% twice.
If you prefer to use tournaments winners it's ok, i just pointed out that there is at least one single statistic supporting this notion.
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On December 10 2014 03:27 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2014 03:09 Big J wrote:On December 10 2014 02:25 keglu wrote:On December 09 2014 10:09 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 06:51 plogamer wrote:On December 09 2014 01:04 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 00:20 FanaticCZ wrote:On December 08 2014 20:06 Gwavajuice wrote:On December 08 2014 12:57 meenamjah wrote:On December 08 2014 12:11 starslayer wrote:
so now that life won wcs, parting won hsc, forgg won DH, SOS won hot6, and either toss or terran will win IEM can we say the game is pretty balanced and new maps that help zerg would make it just about perfect. is this really needed i mean come on this is just silly. seriously, what's wrong with those idiots? first, they refuse to fix the obviously broken infestor for, what, almost two years?. and now they're just nerfing and buffing without giving things enough time to settle. just when other races were adjusting to terran, they completely nerf terran into the ground. so they buff terran. now that everyone's adjusting to it again, they're gonna nerf. the stupidity is mind boggling. What is stupidity? BL+infestor era was like 6 months long, it started when the queens got the range buffs after ghost got nerfed. First Zerg win was Leenock at MLG in august 2012, then Life in October in Code S. When ghost could snipe BL/ultras nobody was ranting at the infestor, it was actually a necessary tool to keep zergs alive. Watch MMA vs DRG finals if you don't remember. Plus the last monthes don't count much cause all devs were working on HOTS which was released in march 2013. Balance is not perfect, maybe, but before calling people idiots or stupids try to at least sound smart yourself... This new mine change is not so big and probably won't make blink all ins or zealot/archons pushes OP again, at least I hope so. The real big issue is the map pool, they seem to have heard this. So let's wait and see. Not true. The first zerg win (Top 3 was all zergs - Violet, Symbol, Stephano) was Violet at the MLG Spring Arena 2 about a week or so after the patch, then DRG won the MLG Spring Championship and also Nerchio won (wtf) the HSC V vs MC and YongHwa at the time when MC was on the way to his 3rd GSL finals and had won Red Bull Austin. And if it wasnt for Mvp he wouldve won even the IEM Cologne shortly after. I cant even believe how silly that sounds today that a foreign zerg would get into the finals of a premier tournament few times in a row vs top KR players of that time. And the time frame is actually from May 2012 to March 2013 (remember RorO winning the last WoL GSL in March?). yeah, those insanely imbalanced first 3months after the queen patch, when zerg won 3 of 12 tournaments. Completely broken, I mean 25% going to 33% of the players? What insanity!!! BL/Infestor only started showing somewhat around the time when Life beat Mvp in GSL finals. Before that it was just the continued whining that had already started mid 2011 when BL/Infestor first popped up. Only somewhere in the third quarter of 2012 it started to show that the strategy - and strategies leading up to it - really could be played to a very hard to beat perfection. Also, while you are at it with foreign players. Funny story, just one month before that unthinkable thing happened with top3 all-zerg ("omg, that must mean complete imbalance of the game", regardless of the tournament quality or size so this too, right?) a foreign Terran did the unthinkable and won Premier Tournament. Even more, BL/Infestor was so broken that even foreign Protoss players like Grubby or Mana made it to Premier finals (and Mana even won). No, seriously. The truth is that back in 2012 the best Koreans weren't that much better than the best foreigners - and most often when foreigners did well in tournaments the Korean line-up was rather weak. Mana, Bunny and Nerchio had great runs, mostly over foreigners. MaNa beating forgg was as much of an upset as Grubby beating MC. Nerchio won a Premier tournament without ever encountering a Korean and got second in one in which he encountered. Nerchio beat MC and violet (regardless how imbalanced you think BL/Infestor was, ZvZ was balanced and beating top Korean Zergs as Zerg had nothing to do with imbalance, rather just showcases that that the skill-level was really much closer) to lose against Mvp in the finals. And even if we look to the top-foreigners these days (e.g. Snute and Bunny), they can still take matches of those former top players like MC, Hyun, Stardust or even the new Korean top players like Flash or TRUE. You're defending queen range patch by arbitrarily setting a 3 month cut-off period. Anyone could see a problem with that. BL/infestor was horrible, and you're trying to down-play it. BL/infestor's biggest victim was TvZ and you use PvZ to defend it. End even then, it was mainly archon-toilet for Protoss to stand a chance in late-game. Foreigner vs Korean ZvZ results were indicative of the lower skill-cap for the race. And even so, Korean Zergs of the highest calibre stayed in Korea. Most pros attribute Koreans in EU ladder for closing the skill gap, not increasing the skill gap (In reference to region locking, but the point is that skill gap is seen as smaller now than before in EU). That Bl/Inf was too strong is undeniable. But that circlejerking about it is absolute crap. Not one statistic indicates that that era was worse than 2011 or early 2014, yet people like you keep pretending it was the pinnacle of imbalance and should have been burned with fire before it even happened. It's funny, I have one, look at second graph here http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/May 2012- February 2013 is only extended period of one race domination outside of 2010 (which i don't think is considered balance period of sc2 history) Have you even looked at 2011? Like peeked at it once? TvZ being on 54-55% average for 8months between January and July, awefully compareable to what you call the only extended period of one race domination. And when you say one race domination, you mean one matchup, right? Because unless you can't read the stats in the period you quote, PvZ was around 47-48% on average which is rather close to balance by metrics of winrate, far from "domination" at least. And in all of that, the aligulac winrate is your only metric of balance, while other stats weren't as terrible. Look at Premier tournament winners in 2011 or in late 2013 to early 2014 if you want to see a statistic being terribly one-sided. Look at Code S representations in that period if you want to see some stats being terribly off. Neither of those major statistics representing balance at the top were as bad in BL/Infestor days as they were during other races peak performances. One imbalance doesn't justify another... and then I hope you may realize that I'm the one here arguing against people who sneak in their backwards balance whines with unjustified phrases such as "worst period" and similar comparisons. All of those times have had races too strong, could we please move on from trying to mark one as worse as the others to massage our egos. Each one of them was the worst in some way. From what i see in second graph is that each line is race and not matchup. So second graph combines both matchups for each race. For single matchups you are right, early 2011 was bad but it was also trending towards 50/50, TvZ in 2012/2013 never showed any sings of recovery until HOTS. Actually 6 months after patch it was at worst state with winrates below 43% twice.
If you read the description on Aligulac's page:
However, as ratings catch up to the performances of the players, this chart will tend toward equilibrium, even if balance never changes.
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On December 10 2014 03:27 keglu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2014 03:09 Big J wrote:On December 10 2014 02:25 keglu wrote:On December 09 2014 10:09 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 06:51 plogamer wrote:On December 09 2014 01:04 Big J wrote:On December 09 2014 00:20 FanaticCZ wrote:On December 08 2014 20:06 Gwavajuice wrote:On December 08 2014 12:57 meenamjah wrote:On December 08 2014 12:11 starslayer wrote:
so now that life won wcs, parting won hsc, forgg won DH, SOS won hot6, and either toss or terran will win IEM can we say the game is pretty balanced and new maps that help zerg would make it just about perfect. is this really needed i mean come on this is just silly. seriously, what's wrong with those idiots? first, they refuse to fix the obviously broken infestor for, what, almost two years?. and now they're just nerfing and buffing without giving things enough time to settle. just when other races were adjusting to terran, they completely nerf terran into the ground. so they buff terran. now that everyone's adjusting to it again, they're gonna nerf. the stupidity is mind boggling. What is stupidity? BL+infestor era was like 6 months long, it started when the queens got the range buffs after ghost got nerfed. First Zerg win was Leenock at MLG in august 2012, then Life in October in Code S. When ghost could snipe BL/ultras nobody was ranting at the infestor, it was actually a necessary tool to keep zergs alive. Watch MMA vs DRG finals if you don't remember. Plus the last monthes don't count much cause all devs were working on HOTS which was released in march 2013. Balance is not perfect, maybe, but before calling people idiots or stupids try to at least sound smart yourself... This new mine change is not so big and probably won't make blink all ins or zealot/archons pushes OP again, at least I hope so. The real big issue is the map pool, they seem to have heard this. So let's wait and see. Not true. The first zerg win (Top 3 was all zergs - Violet, Symbol, Stephano) was Violet at the MLG Spring Arena 2 about a week or so after the patch, then DRG won the MLG Spring Championship and also Nerchio won (wtf) the HSC V vs MC and YongHwa at the time when MC was on the way to his 3rd GSL finals and had won Red Bull Austin. And if it wasnt for Mvp he wouldve won even the IEM Cologne shortly after. I cant even believe how silly that sounds today that a foreign zerg would get into the finals of a premier tournament few times in a row vs top KR players of that time. And the time frame is actually from May 2012 to March 2013 (remember RorO winning the last WoL GSL in March?). yeah, those insanely imbalanced first 3months after the queen patch, when zerg won 3 of 12 tournaments. Completely broken, I mean 25% going to 33% of the players? What insanity!!! BL/Infestor only started showing somewhat around the time when Life beat Mvp in GSL finals. Before that it was just the continued whining that had already started mid 2011 when BL/Infestor first popped up. Only somewhere in the third quarter of 2012 it started to show that the strategy - and strategies leading up to it - really could be played to a very hard to beat perfection. Also, while you are at it with foreign players. Funny story, just one month before that unthinkable thing happened with top3 all-zerg ("omg, that must mean complete imbalance of the game", regardless of the tournament quality or size so this too, right?) a foreign Terran did the unthinkable and won Premier Tournament. Even more, BL/Infestor was so broken that even foreign Protoss players like Grubby or Mana made it to Premier finals (and Mana even won). No, seriously. The truth is that back in 2012 the best Koreans weren't that much better than the best foreigners - and most often when foreigners did well in tournaments the Korean line-up was rather weak. Mana, Bunny and Nerchio had great runs, mostly over foreigners. MaNa beating forgg was as much of an upset as Grubby beating MC. Nerchio won a Premier tournament without ever encountering a Korean and got second in one in which he encountered. Nerchio beat MC and violet (regardless how imbalanced you think BL/Infestor was, ZvZ was balanced and beating top Korean Zergs as Zerg had nothing to do with imbalance, rather just showcases that that the skill-level was really much closer) to lose against Mvp in the finals. And even if we look to the top-foreigners these days (e.g. Snute and Bunny), they can still take matches of those former top players like MC, Hyun, Stardust or even the new Korean top players like Flash or TRUE. You're defending queen range patch by arbitrarily setting a 3 month cut-off period. Anyone could see a problem with that. BL/infestor was horrible, and you're trying to down-play it. BL/infestor's biggest victim was TvZ and you use PvZ to defend it. End even then, it was mainly archon-toilet for Protoss to stand a chance in late-game. Foreigner vs Korean ZvZ results were indicative of the lower skill-cap for the race. And even so, Korean Zergs of the highest calibre stayed in Korea. Most pros attribute Koreans in EU ladder for closing the skill gap, not increasing the skill gap (In reference to region locking, but the point is that skill gap is seen as smaller now than before in EU). That Bl/Inf was too strong is undeniable. But that circlejerking about it is absolute crap. Not one statistic indicates that that era was worse than 2011 or early 2014, yet people like you keep pretending it was the pinnacle of imbalance and should have been burned with fire before it even happened. It's funny, I have one, look at second graph here http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/May 2012- February 2013 is only extended period of one race domination outside of 2010 (which i don't think is considered balance period of sc2 history) Have you even looked at 2011? Like peeked at it once? TvZ being on 54-55% average for 8months between January and July, awefully compareable to what you call the only extended period of one race domination. And when you say one race domination, you mean one matchup, right? Because unless you can't read the stats in the period you quote, PvZ was around 47-48% on average which is rather close to balance by metrics of winrate, far from "domination" at least. And in all of that, the aligulac winrate is your only metric of balance, while other stats weren't as terrible. Look at Premier tournament winners in 2011 or in late 2013 to early 2014 if you want to see a statistic being terribly one-sided. Look at Code S representations in that period if you want to see some stats being terribly off. Neither of those major statistics representing balance at the top were as bad in BL/Infestor days as they were during other races peak performances. One imbalance doesn't justify another... and then I hope you may realize that I'm the one here arguing against people who sneak in their backwards balance whines with unjustified phrases such as "worst period" and similar comparisons. All of those times have had races too strong, could we please move on from trying to mark one as worse as the others to massage our egos. Each one of them was the worst in some way. From what i see in second graph is that each line is race and not matchup. So second graph combines both matchups for each race. For single matchups you are right, early 2011 was bad but it was also trending towards 50/50, TvZ in 2012/2013 never showed any sings of recovery until HOTS. Actually 6 months after patch it was at worst state with winrates below 43% twice. If you prefer to use tournaments winners it's ok, i just pointed out that there is at least one single statistic supporting this notion.
It wasnt trending towards 50/50 for no reason if you remember SC2's patching process.
Blizzard should have patched in 2012-13 too. David Kim even admitted it was a huge mistake not to.
I'm actually never looking at that other graph so i didnt even see it, sorry.
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On December 10 2014 03:14 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On December 09 2014 19:18 ZenithM wrote:On December 09 2014 02:28 Maniak_ wrote:On December 09 2014 00:22 xelnaga_empire wrote:
1) Over buffed Zerg in WoL. Lead to Broodlord/Infestor nightmare and ZvsZ finals and a huge exodus of spectators and fans. What was overly buffed? The queen range that was (and still is) necessary to not die to hellion/hellbat attacks, bunker rushes, reapers and gate allins? Anything else? The only other zerg buff in the year preceding HotS was overlord speed increased from 0.4687 to 0.586 2) Over buffed Protoss in HotS, Again, how? The mothership core that took a year to get nerfed maybe? Phoenix range and Oracle speed? Still not sure it this can be called "over buffed" compared to what the other races got. Especially terran. over nerfed Terran, I'm sure you don't mean this in HotS, since terran has been, by far, the most buffed and least nerfed race since its release. So... what has been over nerfed for terran? Let's see... snipe was nerfed against non-psionic, more than one year before HotS. Three months before, EMP radius got nerfed. Is that far back enough or were there other huge terran nerfs before this that caused the rise of protoss in 2014? While I don't think that the HotS PvP era was as bad as the end of WoL, it's undeniable that the queen patch almost killed Starcraft 2 as a legitimate competitive game and it was only saved by the not-so-timely arrival of HotS and of Kespa players I deny that. The queen change was essential to allow zergs survive early terran pressure.
Essential as in "give them a 65% winrate instead of the meager 49% they had before". You Zerg gentlemen sure know how to spin a tale. I'll easily acknowledge that Terran is strong right now, but you could at least acknowledge that the queen patch created somewhat of a little mess in this game's balance back then.
Edit: Before somebody actually quotes me on the 65% like a smartass, I just meant to say that the game was less balanced after that patch than it was before. Some maps actually displayed a 62+% zerg winrate in ZvT, of that I'm pretty sure. Was it Daybreak?
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On December 10 2014 08:54 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2014 03:14 [F_]aths wrote:On December 09 2014 19:18 ZenithM wrote:On December 09 2014 02:28 Maniak_ wrote:On December 09 2014 00:22 xelnaga_empire wrote:
1) Over buffed Zerg in WoL. Lead to Broodlord/Infestor nightmare and ZvsZ finals and a huge exodus of spectators and fans. What was overly buffed? The queen range that was (and still is) necessary to not die to hellion/hellbat attacks, bunker rushes, reapers and gate allins? Anything else? The only other zerg buff in the year preceding HotS was overlord speed increased from 0.4687 to 0.586 2) Over buffed Protoss in HotS, Again, how? The mothership core that took a year to get nerfed maybe? Phoenix range and Oracle speed? Still not sure it this can be called "over buffed" compared to what the other races got. Especially terran. over nerfed Terran, I'm sure you don't mean this in HotS, since terran has been, by far, the most buffed and least nerfed race since its release. So... what has been over nerfed for terran? Let's see... snipe was nerfed against non-psionic, more than one year before HotS. Three months before, EMP radius got nerfed. Is that far back enough or were there other huge terran nerfs before this that caused the rise of protoss in 2014? While I don't think that the HotS PvP era was as bad as the end of WoL, it's undeniable that the queen patch almost killed Starcraft 2 as a legitimate competitive game and it was only saved by the not-so-timely arrival of HotS and of Kespa players I deny that. The queen change was essential to allow zergs survive early terran pressure. Essential as in "give them a 65% winrate instead of the meager 49% they had before". You Zerg gentlemen sure know how to spin a tale. I'll easily acknowledge that Terran is strong right now, but you could at least acknowledge that the queen patch created somewhat of a little mess in this game's balance back then.
I don't understand how anybody could have looked at 2012 with anything but disdain.
"They'll do something other than open with reactored hellions", they said...as if there was some kind of undiscovered, secret strategy, burried by years of ineptitude and laziness, just waiting for a kespaterran to dig it up so that terrans could have a 50 / 50 winrate.
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On December 10 2014 08:54 ZenithM wrote:
I'll easily acknowledge that Terran is strong right now, but you could at least acknowledge that the queen patch created somewhat of a little mess in this game's balance back then.
Sure, but look at the timing of what followed.
Queen patch in May 2012, they let the game settle, nerfed the infestors a bit 4 months later and gave free HSM to terrans (the first of a loooong list of free upgrades, but let's ignore that), then they let the game settle, and nerfed the infestors again another 4 months later.
We'll never know if it'd have been enough since HotS came out two months afterwards, with yet more nerfs to infestors and a whole slew of new units and buffs all over the place (the biggest ones for terran, but let's ignore that).
Point is, they patched, waited to see what would happen, patched a little, waited again, patched a little, waited again. Precisely what terrans have been asking for since their buffs in july (strangely not before, but let's ignore that).
Did Blizzard wait too long or patched too timidly? Maybe. It's always much easier to judge in hindsight. But they did what has been asked of them, what's still being asked of them now, and what they said they're still intending to do.
So what is the problem exactly?
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On December 10 2014 08:54 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2014 03:14 [F_]aths wrote:On December 09 2014 19:18 ZenithM wrote:On December 09 2014 02:28 Maniak_ wrote:On December 09 2014 00:22 xelnaga_empire wrote:
1) Over buffed Zerg in WoL. Lead to Broodlord/Infestor nightmare and ZvsZ finals and a huge exodus of spectators and fans. What was overly buffed? The queen range that was (and still is) necessary to not die to hellion/hellbat attacks, bunker rushes, reapers and gate allins? Anything else? The only other zerg buff in the year preceding HotS was overlord speed increased from 0.4687 to 0.586 2) Over buffed Protoss in HotS, Again, how? The mothership core that took a year to get nerfed maybe? Phoenix range and Oracle speed? Still not sure it this can be called "over buffed" compared to what the other races got. Especially terran. over nerfed Terran, I'm sure you don't mean this in HotS, since terran has been, by far, the most buffed and least nerfed race since its release. So... what has been over nerfed for terran? Let's see... snipe was nerfed against non-psionic, more than one year before HotS. Three months before, EMP radius got nerfed. Is that far back enough or were there other huge terran nerfs before this that caused the rise of protoss in 2014? While I don't think that the HotS PvP era was as bad as the end of WoL, it's undeniable that the queen patch almost killed Starcraft 2 as a legitimate competitive game and it was only saved by the not-so-timely arrival of HotS and of Kespa players I deny that. The queen change was essential to allow zergs survive early terran pressure. Essential as in "give them a 65% winrate instead of the meager 49% they had before". You Zerg gentlemen sure know how to spin a tale. I'll easily acknowledge that Terran is strong right now, but you could at least acknowledge that the queen patch created somewhat of a little mess in this game's balance back then. Edit: Before somebody actually quotes me on the 65% like a smartass, I just meant to say that the game was less balanced after that patch than it was before. Some maps actually displayed a 62+% zerg winrate in ZvT, of that I'm pretty sure. Was it Daybreak?
It took time for the terrans to adapt, that is true. That does not mean the game itself was more imbalanced. It could mean that the terrans abused a weakness of the zerg and were not creative enough to adapt quickly.
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On December 10 2014 00:54 ZenithM wrote:
TvZ was enjoyable because of how many players top Terrans had to struggle against to win. It made for good storylines. Nowadays, a top Terran just stomps a mid-level Zerg, no contest, some would argue too easily, but in the good old days, you could have an epic Mvp vs Vortix or a Taeja vs SortOf for the ages.
We live in such boring times, I now realize it.
Ok I'll stop now, I'm rarely this confrontational, but reading about BL/infestors and end of 2012 just wakes something inside me I didn't know existed.
Yup. Even if the Zerg was able to survive late game and got to broodlords, smart Terrans would have a handful of Vikings and Ravens ready. WoL ZvT wasn't as badly broken as it is now currently. Now, you see Zergs hold on to their lives when Terran comes knocking on their doorstep, and when you see that one widow mine blow up 20 banelings, you know the game has been decided. So anti-climatic.
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On December 10 2014 02:52 Maniak_ wrote:
Terrans, the eternal victims of the blizzard nerf bat. No matter how many buffs they get, no matter their winrates, no matter the tournaments they win, they always have to cry about being over nerfed...
I just want Blizzard to give Terrans perma-invisible marines that has ultralisk armor to see whether these T posters would still viciously deny that their race isn't advantageous lmao
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On December 10 2014 11:24 parkufarku wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2014 02:52 Maniak_ wrote:
Terrans, the eternal victims of the blizzard nerf bat. No matter how many buffs they get, no matter their winrates, no matter the tournaments they win, they always have to cry about being over nerfed...
I just want Blizzard to give Terrans perma-invisible marines that has ultralisk armor to see whether these T posters would still viciously deny that their race isn't advantageous lmao
sounds fair.
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EPT
