Yes there is hope. It's called Trap. Until he chokes yet again, probably the next match.. But he is in the top 3 at least that is achievement itself in these times
I think the root of this issue, ultimately, is Blizzards complete disregard for this game.
Which honestly is a shame, Starcraft 2 is awesome from both a playing and watching stand point, the community deserves better and has for a long time. This game not having it's own dedicated balance team that engages the community and actively seeks to tune towards a healthier metagame is quite frankly bullshit.
Threads like these I think are a testament to the passion of the community. Not sure why that isn't enough for Blizzard, I mean does their PR issues really prevent them from having 2 people on a balance team or something?
I haven't read the entire thread, so this might already have been brought up: I get the feeling Protoss is struggling because it can't skirmish with fast units in early-mid. Terran can run around with stimmed bio and pick em up with boosted medivacs, Zerg can run around with speedlings or speed roach/ravager. Both T and Z can disengage with no or minimal losses, P can't (recall is slow and costs a lot of energy). This means P leaving their base is a commitment. The result of this is that P has fewer OPPORTUNITIES to inflict damage in the mid game - instead it comes down to committed timing attacks (in particular in PvZ) where a bad engagement = loss.
In short: Gateway units offer less opportunities for mid game damage compared to T/Z. The mid game offensive that does exist - adept glaives v Z, blink stalker v T - relies on specific timings and is not equivalent to Z/T's sustained opportunities.
Edit> Also Terran is fine in the TSL8 while Protoss is dead, right? What did I tell you! But Terrans still have the hero marine they need!
Oh has Protoss sucked for five years? Well, Terran has not done well in this one tournament! It's been a full four weeks since Maru won Dreamhack Masters, two months since Cure won GSL!
Not even getting into how many top Terrans got their losses in TvT in that tournament either. Maru and Cure both got knocked out of the upper bracket in TvT upsets, and along with Clem that makes every Terran to win a Premier in 2021 got put in the same corner of the lower bracket and had to knock each other out (along with Dream and Special).
Are you even fucking reading the thread?
I am. Did you have an issue you wanted to bring up?
On December 11 2021 03:31 Pentarp wrote:
On November 19 2021 21:11 deacon.frost wrote:
On November 19 2021 18:16 RKC wrote:
On November 19 2021 18:06 Nebuchad wrote:
On November 19 2021 15:28 Charoisaur wrote:
On November 19 2021 06:40 Nebuchad wrote:
On November 19 2021 04:07 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] in 2016 and 2017 Toss was still doing fine with 3 Starleague victories. In 2018 Maru and Serral won everything and 2019 had undeniably atrocious balance. But from 2020 on the balance is fine imo, Toss won a lot of tier 2 events (Trap) and reached numerous finals in tier 1 events, despite a lot of their top players leaving for military (herO, Classic and now Stats)
Really I don't get how someone can watch the tournaments these past 2 years and come to the conclusion: "yep, Protoss is unplayable garbage, no point watching this" !!??
Your issue is that you're trying to have a balance conversation so you need to defend your race, but again the people who are serious aren't talking about balance.
It is super obvious to everyone, including you, that the best protoss players right now are the least likely to win a tournament against the best terrans and the best zergs, and this by a large margin. You can obtain that knowledge in any number of ways, you can watch tournaments, you can hear casters talking about the players, you can check statistical results of the best players of each race...
This doesn't demonstrate that the game has to change in any way. You're taking a larger conversation and you're trying to fit it into your "don't nerf my race" agenda where it doesn't belong.
I'm not the one who makes it into a balance discussion!!?? I try to understand the people thinking it's a balance problem, as I don't see it.
Also you can stop your attempts trying to discredit me by claiming I'm biased, I don't even have a race, I'm playing random for the last 3-4 years already. Can we stop the unnecessary ad hominems and focus on the arguments?
A bunch of people came into this thread to say that the best protoss players were weaker in skill than the best zergs and the best terrans. You had no issue with any of their posts. I said it could be that or it could be balance. You had issue with my posts. Some other people are convinced that it's balance. You had issue with their posts.
Sure sounds like your issue is people who talk about balance.
Spot on.
I'm not sure what exactly is the cause of the problem. But the problem is there - Toss has been struggling to win top tier competitions in LoTV. Like you, I'm concerned about the diversity of the game. Balance is not the focus here.
I'm also frustrated as you are why some people seem to be denying that there is actually a problem at all (or trying to shift the focus to some other problem).
(I don't care about low level ladder stats, or lower tier competitions. That's not the problem - or may be a different problem altogether.)
What kind of problem are we talking about? Was soO getting into finals and not winning a race problem? Balance problem? Are Protoss players who get to the finals and can't win them if their lives depend on it a problem we can solve?
Out of the 3 Code S tournaments this year Protoss was in the 2 finals. IEM Katowice - Protoss was in the finals.
If we count only these "top tier tournaments" - we had 4 of them, 3 zergs, 3 protosses and 2 terrans in the finals
"But what about BO7 and Protoss?!" - well, you see, GSL semis are BO7 so if they can get pass that, they're not so bad in BO7-ing.
Let's ignore that Trap actually really won some tournaments this year, he has what, 5 titles? Let's check this years premier tournaments (yes, NA included) Trap - 7 appearances, 5 victories (0 Tier 1) Reynor - 4, 2 (IEM) Serral - 4, 2 (0) Neeb - 3, 2 (0) and yes, all NA Clem - 3, 2 (0) Scarlett - 3, 1 (0) and yes, all NA Maru - 3, 1 (0) Rogue - 2, 1 (GSL) Zoun - 2, 0 (0) Zest - 2, 0 (0) Cure - 1, 1 (GSL) Dark - 1, 1 (GSL) Solar - 1, 0 (0)
Totally per race Protoss: 11, 5 with NA +3, 2 Zerg: 12, 6 (IEM, Code S, Code S) with NA +3, 1 Terran: 7, 4 (Code S)
I don't know, to me it seems we have a Terran problem. The least amount of victories in the premier tournaments, the least amount of presence in the finals. FFS with the NA they have half the finals.
Also out of 4 tier 1 tournaments(how you people here call it) 3 were taken by zergs, so to me it seems that Protoss is fine, Zergs too stronk and Terran not stronk enough.
Edit> Back, when I was tracking this since the "Patch Zerg era", I used to say that Protoss is the race of Kongs, the most finals, the worst w/r. Terrans are Yoda race - do or do not. You either win or don't bother to the finals at all. And Zergs take the most important titles while being good at winning elsewhere as well.
As it seems valid for 2021.
AND NO ONE REPLIED TO THIS POST IN A MEANINGFUL WAY. You whiners are a fucking joke.
Thank you for your non-whiny, meaningful response, not-a-fucking-joke person.
You still don't have a reply to the post I quoted. Thank you for your waste of our time.
To the mods, I apologize for my outburst. You do see this guy isn't replying to meaningful posts in the thread either. I am upset because our standard for discourse is circumvented with cheap weasel tricks.
There is no strawman narrative that Protoss are "simply not as good". To argue this existence is to acknowledge a small minority, if any. NO REASONABLE SC2 FAN ARGUES THIS. Again, another outburst.
Protoss are getting bum-rushed by Queen walks. Simply that.
But, Protoss are still well represented despite this agonizing plea that there is "simply no hope". Maru was called the "Terran hope" because it was only Maru. Yes, TY and Cure have followed up. But before that, there was no other hope for Terrans. If Maru got injured like Byun and so many other Terran pros, would you see this thread?
And I include foreign Terran's alopecia as a a form of injury.
No, we simply learned to count our blessings. So understand why I have no sympathy for those who cry about a lack of hope when they get a slightest hint that their race can be struggling. Welcome to Terran. Welcome to SC2. Count your blessings in your HIGH REPRESENTATION IN ALL OTHER LEVELS OF PLAY, INCLUDING GRAND FINALS.
Sorry you won't have a fucking Gold medal with a million (exaggeration) silvers and bronzes.
The post you said nobody replied to in a meaningful way was discussed some days later by the very person you lashed out against:
On December 07 2021 17:24 kajtarp wrote: I don't know. If we take last GSL Finals as example, Zest didn't lose because of his race. He had bad decisions, and bad unit control troughout the match. He could have won, but failed to execute his strategies. Or if we take Trap's final or semifinal losses, how many times did he lose because his race is underpowered and not simply because Maru/Rogue/Dark/Serral/Reynor was the better player that day?
Many other have tried but failed. They just want to hear Protoss weak, Terran and Zerg stronk.
I mean you can always say the other player just played better, let's take e.g. 2018 when terran outside of maru didn't do well i guess the other players just always played better
Note also that when people say "in 2018 outside of Maru Terran didn't do well" nobody jumps in to say "ACTUALLY Ty and Innovation got to the finals so Terran was doing fine" or "GSL S3 was TvT so even without Maru Terran still would have won" or "half of the players in S2 Round of 8 were Terrans so they're actually performing above average" and all that nonsense.
And at least if you play like Maru you actually win. Try having to play like Trap.
2018 Premier tournaments: 9 zerg titles, 2 2nd places -> 11 zergs in the finals 4 Terran titles, 2 2nd places -> 6 terrans in the finals 2 Protoss titles ,10 2nd places -> 12 Protoss in the finals
I wonder why people felt Terran was weak, when the finals representation was 11:6:12 (Z : T : P)
2021 Premier tournaments: 5 Protoss titles, 6 2nd places (+2/1 if NA) 6 Zerg titles, 6 2nd places (+1/2 if NA) 4 Terran titles, 4 2nd places 12:8:11 Z/T/P
I wonder why I state that Terran is as bad if not in worse situation.
No one's wondering why people felt Terran was weak in 2018, I'm wondering why people won't acknowledge Protoss is weak now.
I noticed you didn't count the titles separately in your non Trap/Maru column. Didn't like what it showed?
Incidentally, using only 2021 stats is also misrepresenting how long Protoss has sucked.
2019-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments: 8 Protoss titles 9 Terran titles 20 Zerg titles
Pretty even, right? But that's entirely carried by Trap's monstrous early 2021 performance. So here's without that Trap/Maru carry factor (not even going to bother with Zerg, they've got a billion champions):
2 Protoss titles 5 Terran titles
Trap represents 3/4 of all Protoss titles for the period, Maru not even half of Terran's.
But you may consider this unfair, since I stopped just before 2018, Maru's obvious carry year. I did this because summer 2019 is how far back you have to go to include any not-Trap Protoss champions, but let's keep it going up to 2017, winter 2017 being the last time Protoss won an actual GSL, so that I don't unfairly misrepresent Maru's Terran dominance.
2017-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments:
14 Protoss titles 19 Terran titles 28 Zerg titles
Without Trap/Maru
8 Protoss titles 11 Terran titles
So even including Maru's best year, and two years where Trap won literally nothing, they come out mostly even carrying around 42% of their race's titles, and with Terran performing better on either end: Maru did better than Trap, and non-Maru Terran did better than non-Trap Protoss.
I would certainly say that thanks to Trap's amazing performance, Protoss had a better year than Terran in 2021, but it's an outlier. Protoss has been consistently doing the worst for half of StarCraft II's existence. That's not having a bad year or individual variance among players.
As you say, "Damn it".
It didn't quote the post you highlighted, but the content is overlapping.
"We have a Terran problem" got countered with "Protoss has been carried by Trap". 2017-2021, titles for Terrans 11, and titles for Protoss 8 (Maru and Trap excluded). Maru had 8 and Trap had 6 in that time period. Protss had fewer titles and Trap had a bigger percentage of Protoss titles than Maru had of Terran titles. This statistic included the latest code S win by a Protoss. It did not, however, include 2nd places.
The post you quoted also discussed hypocrisy of not crying imbalance when soO was a repeat 2nd place. I can discuss that here. Big tournaments soO didn't get to the finals had Zerg winners. Life won, Solar won, and Dark won Starleagues. I think even soulkey won a few months before soO rose up. Why cry "Zerg is weak!" when Zerg is winning?
Regarding the Maru carry and being the hope of Terran: Maru has been the Last Terran (TM) since PvProleague, when Maru was the only Terran in Code S ro16. The Blink era and 10 sight range on Mothership core, that is the start of "play like Maru". This was before LotV, years before 2018. The old meme was that Maru only played well when other Terran players struggled, thus he either got knocked out early or was the Last Terran (TM).
Protoss has struggled for several years in a row. Terran has had bad times this year and long ago in the past. Recently ByuN won Blizzcon in 2016. That year had several Terran players doing well. The four horsemen started there. INno fell of a bit but TIME rose up as a real contender. GumiHo was playing mech vs Protoss and Bunny experimented with aggro builds. TY was nearly a dominating force that other Terran players could copy. There were several years of great Terran hope. There was such a long period of good Terran play that GumiHo and ByuN have manage to leave and come back from mandatory service. Dream has been great in team leagues, SpeCiaL has performed well in code S, Clem appeared, Big Gabe weekly is a thing. Terran has had hope for several years. That both Terran and Protoss are struggling this year can be coincidence. Terrans have more represented champions and Protoss have, well, Trap.
The frustration you seem to have about Terran is likely similar to the reason for this thread to be started.
His post was never made in a direct reply to the post I quoted. Why? Because those numbers don't fit his finely manicured stats. Instead of debating those numbers, he went on and made his own post with "non foreigner only premier tournament" stats. Classic confirmation bias. Keep cutting the data until it fits your agenda.
in 2016 and 2017 Toss was still doing more than fine though with 3 Starleague wins and lots of other wins and even a foreogner (Neeb) winning a korean cup. The Protoss underperformance started in 2018 when Maru and Serral won everything, then continued into 2019 when PvZ was massively imbalanced and then in 2020 lots of the top Protoss players were in military (Classic and herO with Stats soon to follow)
Also I did a quick count and noticed that in the finals of tier 1 tournaments (GSL Code S and World Championships) Protoss is currently on a 14 (!!) match losing streak, which is honestly insane but also shows that they have absolutely no problem reaching the finals. So the question is, how do you fix that they are struggling at that one specific stage only? without turning everything into PvP and forcing a Protoss winner via a PvP finals?
Like BisuDagger said, it could be that Toss pros are overperforming despite being underdogs. The fact that only Trap can really roll with the punches adds weight to this theory.
The final is the stage that really matters in any sport or competition. If you're not first, you're good as last.
Terran may well be struggling as well, and their success is down to also one player (Maru). But I think most people will agree that PvZ is tougher than TvZ, so the dominance of Zergs makes it even harder for Toss than Terran.
Anyway, all this is theorycrafting. I'm not sure what theory to believe, but the problem is not as clear-cut to dismiss Toss as being an underdog in LoTV (due to game design, meta, or whatever immutable race-based reason). After all, this is an assymmetrical game, so there shouldn't be any surprise if some races have it easier than others.
On December 12 2021 13:55 Seacow wrote: I haven't read the entire thread, so this might already have been brought up: I get the feeling Protoss is struggling because it can't skirmish with fast units in early-mid. Terran can run around with stimmed bio and pick em up with boosted medivacs, Zerg can run around with speedlings or speed roach/ravager. Both T and Z can disengage with no or minimal losses, P can't (recall is slow and costs a lot of energy). This means P leaving their base is a commitment. The result of this is that P has fewer OPPORTUNITIES to inflict damage in the mid game - instead it comes down to committed timing attacks (in particular in PvZ) where a bad engagement = loss.
In short: Gateway units offer less opportunities for mid game damage compared to T/Z. The mid game offensive that does exist - adept glaives v Z, blink stalker v T - relies on specific timings and is not equivalent to Z/T's sustained opportunities.
What do you think about this reasoning?
I think it’s a pretty solid line of reasoning. I wish it weren’t the case but I think to create that state would take the kind of radical changes that just seem extremely unlikely given the stage we’re at.
It’s less of an issue in PvT, it can still be risky to poke and shark but Terran doesn’t have the sustained speed Zerg do. They can and do pounce with stim/medivac boost but they have to pick their moments.
Plus as the game stretches out Protoss can end up with a mobility advantage as with more bases to defend Zealots and blink DTs can be giant pains in the arse.
Zerg on the other hand basically everything is faster than Toss units, a good player has great map vision with creep, which makes units even faster. In addition, unlike PvT a Zerg can have a much superior eco too and just outright more stuff on the map.
It’s both super risky to be out on the map doing anything bar committed pressure, and Protoss tend not to have the spare cash to send waves and waves of manlots and DTs that may trade inefficiently like they can in PvT where they can keep incomes even or in their favour
On December 12 2021 18:19 Charoisaur wrote: @fanatic templar
in 2016 and 2017 Toss was still doing more than fine though with 3 Starleague wins and lots of other wins and even a foreogner (Neeb) winning a korean cup.
Yes, in 2016 and 2017, Protoss did fine. Well within the range of expectations. I was there, and I was certainly not complaining at the time. Worse than Terran though so I don't know what you mean by "more than fine", and by the end of 2017 you see Rogue's emergence as well. Anyway, you're right that taking these years in isolation does not support the notion that Protoss is too weak, but since I'm arguing that Protoss has underperformed over the whole of Legacy of the Void, I have to include them, and including them validates my position, because as one would expect, there has been variance in metagame and individual performance over the six years of LotV. And these? These years up Protoss doing fine? These are the higher end of that variance.
The Protoss underperformance started in 2018 when Maru and Serral won everything, then continued into 2019 when PvZ was massively imbalanced and then in 2020 lots of the top Protoss players were in military (Classic and herO with Stats soon to follow)
We agree on the pattern, but disagree on where the baseline is. Also, why are you including "soon to follow" Stats as an excuse for Protoss doing terrible in 2020? He was there and playing for the whole of 2020, made some of those final losses that you're fond of.
Edit> Also Terran is fine in the TSL8 while Protoss is dead, right? What did I tell you! But Terrans still have the hero marine they need!
Oh has Protoss sucked for five years? Well, Terran has not done well in this one tournament! It's been a full four weeks since Maru won Dreamhack Masters, two months since Cure won GSL!
Not even getting into how many top Terrans got their losses in TvT in that tournament either. Maru and Cure both got knocked out of the upper bracket in TvT upsets, and along with Clem that makes every Terran to win a Premier in 2021 got put in the same corner of the lower bracket and had to knock each other out (along with Dream and Special).
Are you even fucking reading the thread?
I am. Did you have an issue you wanted to bring up?
On December 11 2021 03:31 Pentarp wrote:
On November 19 2021 21:11 deacon.frost wrote:
On November 19 2021 18:16 RKC wrote:
On November 19 2021 18:06 Nebuchad wrote:
On November 19 2021 15:28 Charoisaur wrote:
On November 19 2021 06:40 Nebuchad wrote: [quote]
Your issue is that you're trying to have a balance conversation so you need to defend your race, but again the people who are serious aren't talking about balance.
It is super obvious to everyone, including you, that the best protoss players right now are the least likely to win a tournament against the best terrans and the best zergs, and this by a large margin. You can obtain that knowledge in any number of ways, you can watch tournaments, you can hear casters talking about the players, you can check statistical results of the best players of each race...
This doesn't demonstrate that the game has to change in any way. You're taking a larger conversation and you're trying to fit it into your "don't nerf my race" agenda where it doesn't belong.
I'm not the one who makes it into a balance discussion!!?? I try to understand the people thinking it's a balance problem, as I don't see it.
Also you can stop your attempts trying to discredit me by claiming I'm biased, I don't even have a race, I'm playing random for the last 3-4 years already. Can we stop the unnecessary ad hominems and focus on the arguments?
A bunch of people came into this thread to say that the best protoss players were weaker in skill than the best zergs and the best terrans. You had no issue with any of their posts. I said it could be that or it could be balance. You had issue with my posts. Some other people are convinced that it's balance. You had issue with their posts.
Sure sounds like your issue is people who talk about balance.
Spot on.
I'm not sure what exactly is the cause of the problem. But the problem is there - Toss has been struggling to win top tier competitions in LoTV. Like you, I'm concerned about the diversity of the game. Balance is not the focus here.
I'm also frustrated as you are why some people seem to be denying that there is actually a problem at all (or trying to shift the focus to some other problem).
(I don't care about low level ladder stats, or lower tier competitions. That's not the problem - or may be a different problem altogether.)
What kind of problem are we talking about? Was soO getting into finals and not winning a race problem? Balance problem? Are Protoss players who get to the finals and can't win them if their lives depend on it a problem we can solve?
Out of the 3 Code S tournaments this year Protoss was in the 2 finals. IEM Katowice - Protoss was in the finals.
If we count only these "top tier tournaments" - we had 4 of them, 3 zergs, 3 protosses and 2 terrans in the finals
"But what about BO7 and Protoss?!" - well, you see, GSL semis are BO7 so if they can get pass that, they're not so bad in BO7-ing.
Let's ignore that Trap actually really won some tournaments this year, he has what, 5 titles? Let's check this years premier tournaments (yes, NA included) Trap - 7 appearances, 5 victories (0 Tier 1) Reynor - 4, 2 (IEM) Serral - 4, 2 (0) Neeb - 3, 2 (0) and yes, all NA Clem - 3, 2 (0) Scarlett - 3, 1 (0) and yes, all NA Maru - 3, 1 (0) Rogue - 2, 1 (GSL) Zoun - 2, 0 (0) Zest - 2, 0 (0) Cure - 1, 1 (GSL) Dark - 1, 1 (GSL) Solar - 1, 0 (0)
Totally per race Protoss: 11, 5 with NA +3, 2 Zerg: 12, 6 (IEM, Code S, Code S) with NA +3, 1 Terran: 7, 4 (Code S)
I don't know, to me it seems we have a Terran problem. The least amount of victories in the premier tournaments, the least amount of presence in the finals. FFS with the NA they have half the finals.
Also out of 4 tier 1 tournaments(how you people here call it) 3 were taken by zergs, so to me it seems that Protoss is fine, Zergs too stronk and Terran not stronk enough.
Edit> Back, when I was tracking this since the "Patch Zerg era", I used to say that Protoss is the race of Kongs, the most finals, the worst w/r. Terrans are Yoda race - do or do not. You either win or don't bother to the finals at all. And Zergs take the most important titles while being good at winning elsewhere as well.
As it seems valid for 2021.
AND NO ONE REPLIED TO THIS POST IN A MEANINGFUL WAY. You whiners are a fucking joke.
Thank you for your non-whiny, meaningful response, not-a-fucking-joke person.
You still don't have a reply to the post I quoted. Thank you for your waste of our time.
To the mods, I apologize for my outburst. You do see this guy isn't replying to meaningful posts in the thread either. I am upset because our standard for discourse is circumvented with cheap weasel tricks.
There is no strawman narrative that Protoss are "simply not as good". To argue this existence is to acknowledge a small minority, if any. NO REASONABLE SC2 FAN ARGUES THIS. Again, another outburst.
Protoss are getting bum-rushed by Queen walks. Simply that.
But, Protoss are still well represented despite this agonizing plea that there is "simply no hope". Maru was called the "Terran hope" because it was only Maru. Yes, TY and Cure have followed up. But before that, there was no other hope for Terrans. If Maru got injured like Byun and so many other Terran pros, would you see this thread?
And I include foreign Terran's alopecia as a a form of injury.
No, we simply learned to count our blessings. So understand why I have no sympathy for those who cry about a lack of hope when they get a slightest hint that their race can be struggling. Welcome to Terran. Welcome to SC2. Count your blessings in your HIGH REPRESENTATION IN ALL OTHER LEVELS OF PLAY, INCLUDING GRAND FINALS.
Sorry you won't have a fucking Gold medal with a million (exaggeration) silvers and bronzes.
The post you said nobody replied to in a meaningful way was discussed some days later by the very person you lashed out against:
On December 08 2021 23:46 Fanatic-Templar wrote:
On December 08 2021 19:20 deacon.frost wrote:
On December 08 2021 03:45 Fanatic-Templar wrote:
On December 07 2021 19:17 darklycid wrote:
On December 07 2021 19:14 deacon.frost wrote:
On December 07 2021 17:24 kajtarp wrote: I don't know. If we take last GSL Finals as example, Zest didn't lose because of his race. He had bad decisions, and bad unit control troughout the match. He could have won, but failed to execute his strategies. Or if we take Trap's final or semifinal losses, how many times did he lose because his race is underpowered and not simply because Maru/Rogue/Dark/Serral/Reynor was the better player that day?
Many other have tried but failed. They just want to hear Protoss weak, Terran and Zerg stronk.
I mean you can always say the other player just played better, let's take e.g. 2018 when terran outside of maru didn't do well i guess the other players just always played better
Note also that when people say "in 2018 outside of Maru Terran didn't do well" nobody jumps in to say "ACTUALLY Ty and Innovation got to the finals so Terran was doing fine" or "GSL S3 was TvT so even without Maru Terran still would have won" or "half of the players in S2 Round of 8 were Terrans so they're actually performing above average" and all that nonsense.
And at least if you play like Maru you actually win. Try having to play like Trap.
2018 Premier tournaments: 9 zerg titles, 2 2nd places -> 11 zergs in the finals 4 Terran titles, 2 2nd places -> 6 terrans in the finals 2 Protoss titles ,10 2nd places -> 12 Protoss in the finals
I wonder why people felt Terran was weak, when the finals representation was 11:6:12 (Z : T : P)
2021 Premier tournaments: 5 Protoss titles, 6 2nd places (+2/1 if NA) 6 Zerg titles, 6 2nd places (+1/2 if NA) 4 Terran titles, 4 2nd places 12:8:11 Z/T/P
I wonder why I state that Terran is as bad if not in worse situation.
No one's wondering why people felt Terran was weak in 2018, I'm wondering why people won't acknowledge Protoss is weak now.
I noticed you didn't count the titles separately in your non Trap/Maru column. Didn't like what it showed?
Incidentally, using only 2021 stats is also misrepresenting how long Protoss has sucked.
2019-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments: 8 Protoss titles 9 Terran titles 20 Zerg titles
Pretty even, right? But that's entirely carried by Trap's monstrous early 2021 performance. So here's without that Trap/Maru carry factor (not even going to bother with Zerg, they've got a billion champions):
2 Protoss titles 5 Terran titles
Trap represents 3/4 of all Protoss titles for the period, Maru not even half of Terran's.
But you may consider this unfair, since I stopped just before 2018, Maru's obvious carry year. I did this because summer 2019 is how far back you have to go to include any not-Trap Protoss champions, but let's keep it going up to 2017, winter 2017 being the last time Protoss won an actual GSL, so that I don't unfairly misrepresent Maru's Terran dominance.
2017-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments:
14 Protoss titles 19 Terran titles 28 Zerg titles
Without Trap/Maru
8 Protoss titles 11 Terran titles
So even including Maru's best year, and two years where Trap won literally nothing, they come out mostly even carrying around 42% of their race's titles, and with Terran performing better on either end: Maru did better than Trap, and non-Maru Terran did better than non-Trap Protoss.
I would certainly say that thanks to Trap's amazing performance, Protoss had a better year than Terran in 2021, but it's an outlier. Protoss has been consistently doing the worst for half of StarCraft II's existence. That's not having a bad year or individual variance among players.
As you say, "Damn it".
It didn't quote the post you highlighted, but the content is overlapping.
"We have a Terran problem" got countered with "Protoss has been carried by Trap". 2017-2021, titles for Terrans 11, and titles for Protoss 8 (Maru and Trap excluded). Maru had 8 and Trap had 6 in that time period. Protss had fewer titles and Trap had a bigger percentage of Protoss titles than Maru had of Terran titles. This statistic included the latest code S win by a Protoss. It did not, however, include 2nd places.
The post you quoted also discussed hypocrisy of not crying imbalance when soO was a repeat 2nd place. I can discuss that here. Big tournaments soO didn't get to the finals had Zerg winners. Life won, Solar won, and Dark won Starleagues. I think even soulkey won a few months before soO rose up. Why cry "Zerg is weak!" when Zerg is winning?
Regarding the Maru carry and being the hope of Terran: Maru has been the Last Terran (TM) since PvProleague, when Maru was the only Terran in Code S ro16. The Blink era and 10 sight range on Mothership core, that is the start of "play like Maru". This was before LotV, years before 2018. The old meme was that Maru only played well when other Terran players struggled, thus he either got knocked out early or was the Last Terran (TM).
Protoss has struggled for several years in a row. Terran has had bad times this year and long ago in the past. Recently ByuN won Blizzcon in 2016. That year had several Terran players doing well. The four horsemen started there. INno fell of a bit but TIME rose up as a real contender. GumiHo was playing mech vs Protoss and Bunny experimented with aggro builds. TY was nearly a dominating force that other Terran players could copy. There were several years of great Terran hope. There was such a long period of good Terran play that GumiHo and ByuN have manage to leave and come back from mandatory service. Dream has been great in team leagues, SpeCiaL has performed well in code S, Clem appeared, Big Gabe weekly is a thing. Terran has had hope for several years. That both Terran and Protoss are struggling this year can be coincidence. Terrans have more represented champions and Protoss have, well, Trap.
The frustration you seem to have about Terran is likely similar to the reason for this thread to be started.
His post was never made in a direct reply to the post I quoted. Why? Because those numbers don't fit his finely manicured stats. Instead of debating those numbers, he went on and made his own post with "non foreigner only premier tournament" stats. Classic confirmation bias. Keep cutting the data until it fits your agenda.
Is this a joke? The fact that I have addressed everything in that post doesn't count because I haven't done it in a DIRECT REPLY?
On November 19 2021 21:11 deacon.frost wrote: What kind of problem are we talking about? Was soO getting into finals and not winning a race problem? Balance problem? Are Protoss players who get to the finals and can't win them if their lives depend on it a problem we can solve?
Out of the 3 Code S tournaments this year Protoss was in the 2 finals. IEM Katowice - Protoss was in the finals.
If we count only these "top tier tournaments" - we had 4 of them, 3 zergs, 3 protosses and 2 terrans in the finals
"But what about BO7 and Protoss?!" - well, you see, GSL semis are BO7 so if they can get pass that, they're not so bad in BO7-ing.
Let's ignore that Trap actually really won some tournaments this year, he has what, 5 titles? Let's check this years premier tournaments (yes, NA included) Trap - 7 appearances, 5 victories (0 Tier 1) Reynor - 4, 2 (IEM) Serral - 4, 2 (0) Neeb - 3, 2 (0) and yes, all NA Clem - 3, 2 (0) Scarlett - 3, 1 (0) and yes, all NA Maru - 3, 1 (0) Rogue - 2, 1 (GSL) Zoun - 2, 0 (0) Zest - 2, 0 (0) Cure - 1, 1 (GSL) Dark - 1, 1 (GSL) Solar - 1, 0 (0)
Totally per race Protoss: 11, 5 with NA +3, 2 Zerg: 12, 6 (IEM, Code S, Code S) with NA +3, 1 Terran: 7, 4 (Code S)
I don't know, to me it seems we have a Terran problem. The least amount of victories in the premier tournaments, the least amount of presence in the finals. FFS with the NA they have half the finals.
Also out of 4 tier 1 tournaments(how you people here call it) 3 were taken by zergs, so to me it seems that Protoss is fine, Zergs too stronk and Terran not stronk enough.
Edit> Back, when I was tracking this since the "Patch Zerg era", I used to say that Protoss is the race of Kongs, the most finals, the worst w/r. Terrans are Yoda race - do or do not. You either win or don't bother to the finals at all. And Zergs take the most important titles while being good at winning elsewhere as well.
As it seems valid for 2021.
So, allow me to repeat all the tings I have already said as a DIRECT REPLY for the benefits to Pentarp's personal needs.
Soo and the entire Protoss race are different because Soo is an individual and the entire Protoss race is not. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that an individual has individual problems, and a race has racial problems. This is furthered by the sheer number of individuals in the entire Protoss race over the past five years who would need to have coincidentally simultaneous individual problems.
Yes, if we count winning and losing to be equal, Protoss has been doing fine. However, we do not. We count winning to be superior to losing. So Protoss' great performance in losing tournaments does not compensate for their terrible performance at winning them. There is really no reason to count tournament wins and "finals appearances" as the same thing, except as an attempt to pad Protoss stats.
The claim that Terran has the least amount of tournament victories is false, see spoilered quote. Protoss has in fact won around 3/4 of Terran's titles. This does not grow better by the inclusion of 2016 either.
On December 07 2021 17:24 kajtarp wrote: I don't know. If we take last GSL Finals as example, Zest didn't lose because of his race. He had bad decisions, and bad unit control troughout the match. He could have won, but failed to execute his strategies. Or if we take Trap's final or semifinal losses, how many times did he lose because his race is underpowered and not simply because Maru/Rogue/Dark/Serral/Reynor was the better player that day?
Many other have tried but failed. They just want to hear Protoss weak, Terran and Zerg stronk.
I mean you can always say the other player just played better, let's take e.g. 2018 when terran outside of maru didn't do well i guess the other players just always played better
Note also that when people say "in 2018 outside of Maru Terran didn't do well" nobody jumps in to say "ACTUALLY Ty and Innovation got to the finals so Terran was doing fine" or "GSL S3 was TvT so even without Maru Terran still would have won" or "half of the players in S2 Round of 8 were Terrans so they're actually performing above average" and all that nonsense.
And at least if you play like Maru you actually win. Try having to play like Trap.
2018 Premier tournaments: 9 zerg titles, 2 2nd places -> 11 zergs in the finals 4 Terran titles, 2 2nd places -> 6 terrans in the finals 2 Protoss titles ,10 2nd places -> 12 Protoss in the finals
I wonder why people felt Terran was weak, when the finals representation was 11:6:12 (Z : T : P)
2021 Premier tournaments: 5 Protoss titles, 6 2nd places (+2/1 if NA) 6 Zerg titles, 6 2nd places (+1/2 if NA) 4 Terran titles, 4 2nd places 12:8:11 Z/T/P
I wonder why I state that Terran is as bad if not in worse situation.
No one's wondering why people felt Terran was weak in 2018, I'm wondering why people won't acknowledge Protoss is weak now.
I noticed you didn't count the titles separately in your non Trap/Maru column. Didn't like what it showed?
Incidentally, using only 2021 stats is also misrepresenting how long Protoss has sucked.
2019-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments: 8 Protoss titles 9 Terran titles 20 Zerg titles
Pretty even, right? But that's entirely carried by Trap's monstrous early 2021 performance. So here's without that Trap/Maru carry factor (not even going to bother with Zerg, they've got a billion champions):
2 Protoss titles 5 Terran titles
Trap represents 3/4 of all Protoss titles for the period, Maru not even half of Terran's.
But you may consider this unfair, since I stopped just before 2018, Maru's obvious carry year. I did this because summer 2019 is how far back you have to go to include any not-Trap Protoss champions, but let's keep it going up to 2017, winter 2017 being the last time Protoss won an actual GSL, so that I don't unfairly misrepresent Maru's Terran dominance.
2017-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments:
14 Protoss titles 19 Terran titles 28 Zerg titles
Without Trap/Maru
8 Protoss titles 11 Terran titles
So even including Maru's best year, and two years where Trap won literally nothing, they come out mostly even carrying around 42% of their race's titles, and with Terran performing better on either end: Maru did better than Trap, and non-Maru Terran did better than non-Trap Protoss.
I would certainly say that thanks to Trap's amazing performance, Protoss had a better year than Terran in 2021, but it's an outlier. Protoss has been consistently doing the worst for half of StarCraft II's existence. That's not having a bad year or individual variance among players.
As you say, "Damn it".
As for Zerg doing better than Terrans and Protoss both, yes, that is correct.
Now that I have repeated all these arguments as a DIRECT REPLY, I look forward to the dramatic change this will have on the conversation happening in this thread.
On December 12 2021 18:19 Charoisaur wrote: @fanatic templar
in 2016 and 2017 Toss was still doing more than fine though with 3 Starleague wins and lots of other wins and even a foreogner (Neeb) winning a korean cup.
Yes, in 2016 and 2017, Protoss did fine. Well within the range of expectations. I was there, and I was certainly not complaining at the time. Worse than Terran though so I don't know what you mean by "more than fine", and by the end of 2017 you see Rogue's emergence as well. Anyway, you're right that taking these years in isolation does not support the notion that Protoss is too weak, but since I'm arguing that Protoss has underperformed over the whole of Legacy of the Void, I have to include them, and including them validates my position, because as one would expect, there has been variance in metagame and individual performance over the six years of LotV. And these? These years up Protoss doing fine? These are the higher end of that variance.
The Protoss underperformance started in 2018 when Maru and Serral won everything, then continued into 2019 when PvZ was massively imbalanced and then in 2020 lots of the top Protoss players were in military (Classic and herO with Stats soon to follow)
We agree on the pattern, but disagree on where the baseline is. Also, why are you including "soon to follow" Stats as an excuse for Protoss doing terrible in 2020? He was there and playing for the whole of 2020, made some of those final losses that you're fond of.
On December 12 2021 18:19 Charoisaur wrote: @fanatic templar
in 2016 and 2017 Toss was still doing more than fine though with 3 Starleague wins and lots of other wins and even a foreogner (Neeb) winning a korean cup.
Yes, in 2016 and 2017, Protoss did fine. Well within the range of expectations. I was there, and I was certainly not complaining at the time. Worse than Terran though so I don't know what you mean by "more than fine", and by the end of 2017 you see Rogue's emergence as well. Anyway, you're right that taking these years in isolation does not support the notion that Protoss is too weak, but since I'm arguing that Protoss has underperformed over the whole of Legacy of the Void, I have to include them, and including them validates my position, because as one would expect, there has been variance in metagame and individual performance over the six years of LotV. And these? These years up Protoss doing fine? These are the higher end of that variance.
The Protoss underperformance started in 2018 when Maru and Serral won everything, then continued into 2019 when PvZ was massively imbalanced and then in 2020 lots of the top Protoss players were in military (Classic and herO with Stats soon to follow)
We agree on the pattern, but disagree on where the baseline is. Also, why are you including "soon to follow" Stats as an excuse for Protoss doing terrible in 2020? He was there and playing for the whole of 2020, made some of those final losses that you're fond of.
Edit> Also Terran is fine in the TSL8 while Protoss is dead, right? What did I tell you! But Terrans still have the hero marine they need!
Oh has Protoss sucked for five years? Well, Terran has not done well in this one tournament! It's been a full four weeks since Maru won Dreamhack Masters, two months since Cure won GSL!
Not even getting into how many top Terrans got their losses in TvT in that tournament either. Maru and Cure both got knocked out of the upper bracket in TvT upsets, and along with Clem that makes every Terran to win a Premier in 2021 got put in the same corner of the lower bracket and had to knock each other out (along with Dream and Special).
Are you even fucking reading the thread?
I am. Did you have an issue you wanted to bring up?
On December 11 2021 03:31 Pentarp wrote:
On November 19 2021 21:11 deacon.frost wrote:
On November 19 2021 18:16 RKC wrote:
On November 19 2021 18:06 Nebuchad wrote:
On November 19 2021 15:28 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] I'm not the one who makes it into a balance discussion!!?? I try to understand the people thinking it's a balance problem, as I don't see it.
Also you can stop your attempts trying to discredit me by claiming I'm biased, I don't even have a race, I'm playing random for the last 3-4 years already. Can we stop the unnecessary ad hominems and focus on the arguments?
A bunch of people came into this thread to say that the best protoss players were weaker in skill than the best zergs and the best terrans. You had no issue with any of their posts. I said it could be that or it could be balance. You had issue with my posts. Some other people are convinced that it's balance. You had issue with their posts.
Sure sounds like your issue is people who talk about balance.
Spot on.
I'm not sure what exactly is the cause of the problem. But the problem is there - Toss has been struggling to win top tier competitions in LoTV. Like you, I'm concerned about the diversity of the game. Balance is not the focus here.
I'm also frustrated as you are why some people seem to be denying that there is actually a problem at all (or trying to shift the focus to some other problem).
(I don't care about low level ladder stats, or lower tier competitions. That's not the problem - or may be a different problem altogether.)
What kind of problem are we talking about? Was soO getting into finals and not winning a race problem? Balance problem? Are Protoss players who get to the finals and can't win them if their lives depend on it a problem we can solve?
Out of the 3 Code S tournaments this year Protoss was in the 2 finals. IEM Katowice - Protoss was in the finals.
If we count only these "top tier tournaments" - we had 4 of them, 3 zergs, 3 protosses and 2 terrans in the finals
"But what about BO7 and Protoss?!" - well, you see, GSL semis are BO7 so if they can get pass that, they're not so bad in BO7-ing.
Let's ignore that Trap actually really won some tournaments this year, he has what, 5 titles? Let's check this years premier tournaments (yes, NA included) Trap - 7 appearances, 5 victories (0 Tier 1) Reynor - 4, 2 (IEM) Serral - 4, 2 (0) Neeb - 3, 2 (0) and yes, all NA Clem - 3, 2 (0) Scarlett - 3, 1 (0) and yes, all NA Maru - 3, 1 (0) Rogue - 2, 1 (GSL) Zoun - 2, 0 (0) Zest - 2, 0 (0) Cure - 1, 1 (GSL) Dark - 1, 1 (GSL) Solar - 1, 0 (0)
Totally per race Protoss: 11, 5 with NA +3, 2 Zerg: 12, 6 (IEM, Code S, Code S) with NA +3, 1 Terran: 7, 4 (Code S)
I don't know, to me it seems we have a Terran problem. The least amount of victories in the premier tournaments, the least amount of presence in the finals. FFS with the NA they have half the finals.
Also out of 4 tier 1 tournaments(how you people here call it) 3 were taken by zergs, so to me it seems that Protoss is fine, Zergs too stronk and Terran not stronk enough.
Edit> Back, when I was tracking this since the "Patch Zerg era", I used to say that Protoss is the race of Kongs, the most finals, the worst w/r. Terrans are Yoda race - do or do not. You either win or don't bother to the finals at all. And Zergs take the most important titles while being good at winning elsewhere as well.
As it seems valid for 2021.
AND NO ONE REPLIED TO THIS POST IN A MEANINGFUL WAY. You whiners are a fucking joke.
Thank you for your non-whiny, meaningful response, not-a-fucking-joke person.
You still don't have a reply to the post I quoted. Thank you for your waste of our time.
To the mods, I apologize for my outburst. You do see this guy isn't replying to meaningful posts in the thread either. I am upset because our standard for discourse is circumvented with cheap weasel tricks.
There is no strawman narrative that Protoss are "simply not as good". To argue this existence is to acknowledge a small minority, if any. NO REASONABLE SC2 FAN ARGUES THIS. Again, another outburst.
Protoss are getting bum-rushed by Queen walks. Simply that.
But, Protoss are still well represented despite this agonizing plea that there is "simply no hope". Maru was called the "Terran hope" because it was only Maru. Yes, TY and Cure have followed up. But before that, there was no other hope for Terrans. If Maru got injured like Byun and so many other Terran pros, would you see this thread?
And I include foreign Terran's alopecia as a a form of injury.
No, we simply learned to count our blessings. So understand why I have no sympathy for those who cry about a lack of hope when they get a slightest hint that their race can be struggling. Welcome to Terran. Welcome to SC2. Count your blessings in your HIGH REPRESENTATION IN ALL OTHER LEVELS OF PLAY, INCLUDING GRAND FINALS.
Sorry you won't have a fucking Gold medal with a million (exaggeration) silvers and bronzes.
The post you said nobody replied to in a meaningful way was discussed some days later by the very person you lashed out against:
On December 08 2021 23:46 Fanatic-Templar wrote:
On December 08 2021 19:20 deacon.frost wrote:
On December 08 2021 03:45 Fanatic-Templar wrote:
On December 07 2021 19:17 darklycid wrote:
On December 07 2021 19:14 deacon.frost wrote:
On December 07 2021 17:24 kajtarp wrote: I don't know. If we take last GSL Finals as example, Zest didn't lose because of his race. He had bad decisions, and bad unit control troughout the match. He could have won, but failed to execute his strategies. Or if we take Trap's final or semifinal losses, how many times did he lose because his race is underpowered and not simply because Maru/Rogue/Dark/Serral/Reynor was the better player that day?
Many other have tried but failed. They just want to hear Protoss weak, Terran and Zerg stronk.
I mean you can always say the other player just played better, let's take e.g. 2018 when terran outside of maru didn't do well i guess the other players just always played better
Note also that when people say "in 2018 outside of Maru Terran didn't do well" nobody jumps in to say "ACTUALLY Ty and Innovation got to the finals so Terran was doing fine" or "GSL S3 was TvT so even without Maru Terran still would have won" or "half of the players in S2 Round of 8 were Terrans so they're actually performing above average" and all that nonsense.
And at least if you play like Maru you actually win. Try having to play like Trap.
2018 Premier tournaments: 9 zerg titles, 2 2nd places -> 11 zergs in the finals 4 Terran titles, 2 2nd places -> 6 terrans in the finals 2 Protoss titles ,10 2nd places -> 12 Protoss in the finals
I wonder why people felt Terran was weak, when the finals representation was 11:6:12 (Z : T : P)
2021 Premier tournaments: 5 Protoss titles, 6 2nd places (+2/1 if NA) 6 Zerg titles, 6 2nd places (+1/2 if NA) 4 Terran titles, 4 2nd places 12:8:11 Z/T/P
I wonder why I state that Terran is as bad if not in worse situation.
No one's wondering why people felt Terran was weak in 2018, I'm wondering why people won't acknowledge Protoss is weak now.
I noticed you didn't count the titles separately in your non Trap/Maru column. Didn't like what it showed?
Incidentally, using only 2021 stats is also misrepresenting how long Protoss has sucked.
2019-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments: 8 Protoss titles 9 Terran titles 20 Zerg titles
Pretty even, right? But that's entirely carried by Trap's monstrous early 2021 performance. So here's without that Trap/Maru carry factor (not even going to bother with Zerg, they've got a billion champions):
2 Protoss titles 5 Terran titles
Trap represents 3/4 of all Protoss titles for the period, Maru not even half of Terran's.
But you may consider this unfair, since I stopped just before 2018, Maru's obvious carry year. I did this because summer 2019 is how far back you have to go to include any not-Trap Protoss champions, but let's keep it going up to 2017, winter 2017 being the last time Protoss won an actual GSL, so that I don't unfairly misrepresent Maru's Terran dominance.
2017-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments:
14 Protoss titles 19 Terran titles 28 Zerg titles
Without Trap/Maru
8 Protoss titles 11 Terran titles
So even including Maru's best year, and two years where Trap won literally nothing, they come out mostly even carrying around 42% of their race's titles, and with Terran performing better on either end: Maru did better than Trap, and non-Maru Terran did better than non-Trap Protoss.
I would certainly say that thanks to Trap's amazing performance, Protoss had a better year than Terran in 2021, but it's an outlier. Protoss has been consistently doing the worst for half of StarCraft II's existence. That's not having a bad year or individual variance among players.
As you say, "Damn it".
It didn't quote the post you highlighted, but the content is overlapping.
"We have a Terran problem" got countered with "Protoss has been carried by Trap". 2017-2021, titles for Terrans 11, and titles for Protoss 8 (Maru and Trap excluded). Maru had 8 and Trap had 6 in that time period. Protss had fewer titles and Trap had a bigger percentage of Protoss titles than Maru had of Terran titles. This statistic included the latest code S win by a Protoss. It did not, however, include 2nd places.
The post you quoted also discussed hypocrisy of not crying imbalance when soO was a repeat 2nd place. I can discuss that here. Big tournaments soO didn't get to the finals had Zerg winners. Life won, Solar won, and Dark won Starleagues. I think even soulkey won a few months before soO rose up. Why cry "Zerg is weak!" when Zerg is winning?
Regarding the Maru carry and being the hope of Terran: Maru has been the Last Terran (TM) since PvProleague, when Maru was the only Terran in Code S ro16. The Blink era and 10 sight range on Mothership core, that is the start of "play like Maru". This was before LotV, years before 2018. The old meme was that Maru only played well when other Terran players struggled, thus he either got knocked out early or was the Last Terran (TM).
Protoss has struggled for several years in a row. Terran has had bad times this year and long ago in the past. Recently ByuN won Blizzcon in 2016. That year had several Terran players doing well. The four horsemen started there. INno fell of a bit but TIME rose up as a real contender. GumiHo was playing mech vs Protoss and Bunny experimented with aggro builds. TY was nearly a dominating force that other Terran players could copy. There were several years of great Terran hope. There was such a long period of good Terran play that GumiHo and ByuN have manage to leave and come back from mandatory service. Dream has been great in team leagues, SpeCiaL has performed well in code S, Clem appeared, Big Gabe weekly is a thing. Terran has had hope for several years. That both Terran and Protoss are struggling this year can be coincidence. Terrans have more represented champions and Protoss have, well, Trap.
The frustration you seem to have about Terran is likely similar to the reason for this thread to be started.
His post was never made in a direct reply to the post I quoted. Why? Because those numbers don't fit his finely manicured stats. Instead of debating those numbers, he went on and made his own post with "non foreigner only premier tournament" stats. Classic confirmation bias. Keep cutting the data until it fits your agenda.
Is this a joke? The fact that I have addressed everything in that post doesn't count because I haven't done it in a DIRECT REPLY?
On November 19 2021 21:11 deacon.frost wrote: What kind of problem are we talking about? Was soO getting into finals and not winning a race problem? Balance problem? Are Protoss players who get to the finals and can't win them if their lives depend on it a problem we can solve?
Out of the 3 Code S tournaments this year Protoss was in the 2 finals. IEM Katowice - Protoss was in the finals.
If we count only these "top tier tournaments" - we had 4 of them, 3 zergs, 3 protosses and 2 terrans in the finals
"But what about BO7 and Protoss?!" - well, you see, GSL semis are BO7 so if they can get pass that, they're not so bad in BO7-ing.
Let's ignore that Trap actually really won some tournaments this year, he has what, 5 titles? Let's check this years premier tournaments (yes, NA included) Trap - 7 appearances, 5 victories (0 Tier 1) Reynor - 4, 2 (IEM) Serral - 4, 2 (0) Neeb - 3, 2 (0) and yes, all NA Clem - 3, 2 (0) Scarlett - 3, 1 (0) and yes, all NA Maru - 3, 1 (0) Rogue - 2, 1 (GSL) Zoun - 2, 0 (0) Zest - 2, 0 (0) Cure - 1, 1 (GSL) Dark - 1, 1 (GSL) Solar - 1, 0 (0)
Totally per race Protoss: 11, 5 with NA +3, 2 Zerg: 12, 6 (IEM, Code S, Code S) with NA +3, 1 Terran: 7, 4 (Code S)
I don't know, to me it seems we have a Terran problem. The least amount of victories in the premier tournaments, the least amount of presence in the finals. FFS with the NA they have half the finals.
Also out of 4 tier 1 tournaments(how you people here call it) 3 were taken by zergs, so to me it seems that Protoss is fine, Zergs too stronk and Terran not stronk enough.
Edit> Back, when I was tracking this since the "Patch Zerg era", I used to say that Protoss is the race of Kongs, the most finals, the worst w/r. Terrans are Yoda race - do or do not. You either win or don't bother to the finals at all. And Zergs take the most important titles while being good at winning elsewhere as well.
As it seems valid for 2021.
So, allow me to repeat all the tings I have already said as a DIRECT REPLY for the benefits to Pentarp's personal needs.
Soo and the entire Protoss race are different because Soo is an individual and the entire Protoss race is not. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that an individual has individual problems, and a race has racial problems. This is furthered by the sheer number of individuals in the entire Protoss race over the past five years who would need to have coincidentally simultaneous individual problems.
Yes, if we count winning and losing to be equal, Protoss has been doing fine. However, we do not. We count winning to be superior to losing. So Protoss' great performance in losing tournaments does not compensate for their terrible performance at winning them. There is really no reason to count tournament wins and "finals appearances" as the same thing, except as an attempt to pad Protoss stats.
The claim that Terran has the least amount of tournament victories is false, see spoilered quote. Protoss has in fact won around 3/4 of Terran's titles. This does not grow better by the inclusion of 2016 either.
On December 07 2021 17:24 kajtarp wrote: I don't know. If we take last GSL Finals as example, Zest didn't lose because of his race. He had bad decisions, and bad unit control troughout the match. He could have won, but failed to execute his strategies. Or if we take Trap's final or semifinal losses, how many times did he lose because his race is underpowered and not simply because Maru/Rogue/Dark/Serral/Reynor was the better player that day?
Many other have tried but failed. They just want to hear Protoss weak, Terran and Zerg stronk.
I mean you can always say the other player just played better, let's take e.g. 2018 when terran outside of maru didn't do well i guess the other players just always played better
Note also that when people say "in 2018 outside of Maru Terran didn't do well" nobody jumps in to say "ACTUALLY Ty and Innovation got to the finals so Terran was doing fine" or "GSL S3 was TvT so even without Maru Terran still would have won" or "half of the players in S2 Round of 8 were Terrans so they're actually performing above average" and all that nonsense.
And at least if you play like Maru you actually win. Try having to play like Trap.
2018 Premier tournaments: 9 zerg titles, 2 2nd places -> 11 zergs in the finals 4 Terran titles, 2 2nd places -> 6 terrans in the finals 2 Protoss titles ,10 2nd places -> 12 Protoss in the finals
I wonder why people felt Terran was weak, when the finals representation was 11:6:12 (Z : T : P)
2021 Premier tournaments: 5 Protoss titles, 6 2nd places (+2/1 if NA) 6 Zerg titles, 6 2nd places (+1/2 if NA) 4 Terran titles, 4 2nd places 12:8:11 Z/T/P
I wonder why I state that Terran is as bad if not in worse situation.
No one's wondering why people felt Terran was weak in 2018, I'm wondering why people won't acknowledge Protoss is weak now.
I noticed you didn't count the titles separately in your non Trap/Maru column. Didn't like what it showed?
Incidentally, using only 2021 stats is also misrepresenting how long Protoss has sucked.
2019-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments: 8 Protoss titles 9 Terran titles 20 Zerg titles
Pretty even, right? But that's entirely carried by Trap's monstrous early 2021 performance. So here's without that Trap/Maru carry factor (not even going to bother with Zerg, they've got a billion champions):
2 Protoss titles 5 Terran titles
Trap represents 3/4 of all Protoss titles for the period, Maru not even half of Terran's.
But you may consider this unfair, since I stopped just before 2018, Maru's obvious carry year. I did this because summer 2019 is how far back you have to go to include any not-Trap Protoss champions, but let's keep it going up to 2017, winter 2017 being the last time Protoss won an actual GSL, so that I don't unfairly misrepresent Maru's Terran dominance.
2017-2021 non foreigner only Premier tournaments:
14 Protoss titles 19 Terran titles 28 Zerg titles
Without Trap/Maru
8 Protoss titles 11 Terran titles
So even including Maru's best year, and two years where Trap won literally nothing, they come out mostly even carrying around 42% of their race's titles, and with Terran performing better on either end: Maru did better than Trap, and non-Maru Terran did better than non-Trap Protoss.
I would certainly say that thanks to Trap's amazing performance, Protoss had a better year than Terran in 2021, but it's an outlier. Protoss has been consistently doing the worst for half of StarCraft II's existence. That's not having a bad year or individual variance among players.
As you say, "Damn it".
As for Zerg doing better than Terrans and Protoss both, yes, that is correct.
Now that I have repeated all these arguments as a DIRECT REPLY, I look forward to the dramatic change this will have on the conversation happening in this thread.
That's why I don't focus only at titles, that brings only the victor and it doesn't care about the runner up. it's very shortsighted. And statistically it would be better to compare it against BO7/5/3 and against RO8/4 too. if you focus just at the titles calling 8vs11 (if no Maru/Trap) not even when zergs have double that is pathetic excuse to focus only at Protoss. yet again I will reinforce what I say.
It is not just Protoss being FUBAR, it's Terran as well. Only Zergs are fine.
The answer to your question is there. Protoss is doing bad at the best level because the top 5 of the race has done consistently worse than the top 5 of the other two races since 2018.
You obviously don't care about that, but it's getting tiresome that you guys keep pretending you don't know what you're talking about.
I think the problem for protoss is just being bad against zerg... its fine vs terran if not better, but I think very few people who believe the race is strong enough versus zerg play protoss at a high level. Also the fast expanding nature of LOTV just helps zerg imo thats what the race is designed to do.
There's not even enough data to say that. It could also be that the very top of zerg players is just better than the very top of protoss players at the game. We cannot positively state that if Serral had chosen protoss instead of zerg he wouldn't be dominating, there's no direct evidence of that.
All we can state is that there's not a ton of hope and that we should behave accordingly.
Thats why observation, logic, and actual in game experience with the races at a high level are important instead of just being a pure data nerd. You hear that all the time there's not enough data to tell this, not enough data to claim that...
There's no level of observation or logic that will allow you to answer this type of question, and if you've ever heard 80% of pros talk you know that in game experience increases your bias rather than the quality of your data.
That I can't agree with, there's almost always a way to answer anything correctly that we can directly experience. Wombat and Fanatic Templar had very good posts to counter you.
Also the simplest strong evidence of protoss's weakness in this matchup is Serral. I'm watching him 4-0 Trap right now in TSL 8, the only protoss who has been very successful this year. Serral almost always absolutely demolishes protoss in particular while he struggles plenty vs terran and zerg. He shows just how helpless protoss is when zerg plays correctly.
On December 13 2021 01:01 deacon.frost wrote: That's why I don't focus only at titles, that brings only the victor and it doesn't care about the runner up.
Uh, yeah? That's why I focus only at the titles? Not caring about the runner-up is deliberate, because winning and losing is not equal performance.
On December 13 2021 01:01 deacon.frost wrote: it's very shortsighted. And statistically it would be better to compare it against BO7/5/3 and against RO8/4 too. if you focus just at the titles calling 8vs11 (if no Maru/Trap) not even when zergs have double that is pathetic excuse to focus only at Protoss. yet again I will reinforce what I say.
It is not just Protoss being FUBAR, it's Terran as well. Only Zergs are fine.
Is it really that hard to understand that?
No? I literally said that Zerg was doing better than both? So if Terran is FUBAR, what does it mean that Protoss is doing considerably worse than Terran?
The answer to your question is there. Protoss is doing bad at the best level because the top 5 of the race has done consistently worse than the top 5 of the other two races since 2018.
You obviously don't care about that, but it's getting tiresome that you guys keep pretending you don't know what you're talking about.
I think the problem for protoss is just being bad against zerg... its fine vs terran if not better, but I think very few people who believe the race is strong enough versus zerg play protoss at a high level. Also the fast expanding nature of LOTV just helps zerg imo thats what the race is designed to do.
There's not even enough data to say that. It could also be that the very top of zerg players is just better than the very top of protoss players at the game. We cannot positively state that if Serral had chosen protoss instead of zerg he wouldn't be dominating, there's no direct evidence of that.
All we can state is that there's not a ton of hope and that we should behave accordingly.
Thats why observation, logic, and actual in game experience with the races at a high level are important instead of just being a pure data nerd. You hear that all the time there's not enough data to tell this, not enough data to claim that...
There's no level of observation or logic that will allow you to answer this type of question, and if you've ever heard 80% of pros talk you know that in game experience increases your bias rather than the quality of your data.
That I can't agree with, there's almost always a way to answer anything correctly that we can directly experience. Wombat and Fanatic Templar had very good posts to counter you.
Also the simplest strong evidence of protoss's weakness in this matchup is Serral. I'm watching him 4-0 Trap right now in TSL 8, the only protoss who has been very successful this year. Serral almost always absolutely demolishes protoss in particular while he struggles plenty vs terran and zerg. He shows just how helpless protoss is when zerg plays correctly.
I don't know what argument you think you're answering but it's not the argument I have. It is obvious that protoss is by miles the weakest race at the very highest level of play. This doesn't answer the question of whether it happens because protoss is weak or because the few people who have enough skill to be at the highest level of play, let's say 5 or 6 people, just coincidentally all happened to not pick protoss at the start of the game years ago.
This is a question that can't be answered. We cannot directly experience a world in which Serral chose to play protoss instead of zerg. That's the entirety of the issue. Maybe if Serral was protoss and Trap was zerg Serral would still have 4-0ed in this match, and we would be having a thread about how zerg can't win at the top level. Or maybe not. It's impossible to say.
We don't have to say it, however, since either way the end result is that protoss is not winning, and you and I are rooting for protoss. As a consequence, I once again did the sane thing this afternoon and I didn't watch Trap play vs Serral, which means I had a much happier afternoon than you
Yea Serral just obliterated Trap, it didn't even look close in any of the matches. It honestly looked like Serral was playing against some B level EU Protoss, not the best current Protoss in the world.
On December 12 2021 13:55 Seacow wrote: I haven't read the entire thread, so this might already have been brought up: I get the feeling Protoss is struggling because it can't skirmish with fast units in early-mid. Terran can run around with stimmed bio and pick em up with boosted medivacs, Zerg can run around with speedlings or speed roach/ravager. Both T and Z can disengage with no or minimal losses, P can't (recall is slow and costs a lot of energy). This means P leaving their base is a commitment. The result of this is that P has fewer OPPORTUNITIES to inflict damage in the mid game - instead it comes down to committed timing attacks (in particular in PvZ) where a bad engagement = loss.
In short: Gateway units offer less opportunities for mid game damage compared to T/Z. The mid game offensive that does exist - adept glaives v Z, blink stalker v T - relies on specific timings and is not equivalent to Z/T's sustained opportunities.
What do you think about this reasoning?
I think it’s a pretty solid line of reasoning. I wish it weren’t the case but I think to create that state would take the kind of radical changes that just seem extremely unlikely given the stage we’re at.
It’s less of an issue in PvT, it can still be risky to poke and shark but Terran doesn’t have the sustained speed Zerg do. They can and do pounce with stim/medivac boost but they have to pick their moments.
Plus as the game stretches out Protoss can end up with a mobility advantage as with more bases to defend Zealots and blink DTs can be giant pains in the arse.
Zerg on the other hand basically everything is faster than Toss units, a good player has great map vision with creep, which makes units even faster. In addition, unlike PvT a Zerg can have a much superior eco too and just outright more stuff on the map.
It’s both super risky to be out on the map doing anything bar committed pressure, and Protoss tend not to have the spare cash to send waves and waves of manlots and DTs that may trade inefficiently like they can in PvT where they can keep incomes even or in their favour
I wonder if it'd be a good buff to increase the carrying capacity for warp prisms, or reduce their build time
On December 12 2021 13:55 Seacow wrote: I haven't read the entire thread, so this might already have been brought up: I get the feeling Protoss is struggling because it can't skirmish with fast units in early-mid. Terran can run around with stimmed bio and pick em up with boosted medivacs, Zerg can run around with speedlings or speed roach/ravager. Both T and Z can disengage with no or minimal losses, P can't (recall is slow and costs a lot of energy). This means P leaving their base is a commitment. The result of this is that P has fewer OPPORTUNITIES to inflict damage in the mid game - instead it comes down to committed timing attacks (in particular in PvZ) where a bad engagement = loss.
In short: Gateway units offer less opportunities for mid game damage compared to T/Z. The mid game offensive that does exist - adept glaives v Z, blink stalker v T - relies on specific timings and is not equivalent to Z/T's sustained opportunities.
What do you think about this reasoning?
I think it’s a pretty solid line of reasoning. I wish it weren’t the case but I think to create that state would take the kind of radical changes that just seem extremely unlikely given the stage we’re at.
It’s less of an issue in PvT, it can still be risky to poke and shark but Terran doesn’t have the sustained speed Zerg do. They can and do pounce with stim/medivac boost but they have to pick their moments.
Plus as the game stretches out Protoss can end up with a mobility advantage as with more bases to defend Zealots and blink DTs can be giant pains in the arse.
Zerg on the other hand basically everything is faster than Toss units, a good player has great map vision with creep, which makes units even faster. In addition, unlike PvT a Zerg can have a much superior eco too and just outright more stuff on the map.
It’s both super risky to be out on the map doing anything bar committed pressure, and Protoss tend not to have the spare cash to send waves and waves of manlots and DTs that may trade inefficiently like they can in PvT where they can keep incomes even or in their favour
I wonder if it'd be a good buff to increase the carrying capacity for warp prisms, or reduce their build time
why get fancy and not just revert the unnecessary cost increase they got?
The answer to your question is there. Protoss is doing bad at the best level because the top 5 of the race has done consistently worse than the top 5 of the other two races since 2018.
You obviously don't care about that, but it's getting tiresome that you guys keep pretending you don't know what you're talking about.
I think the problem for protoss is just being bad against zerg... its fine vs terran if not better, but I think very few people who believe the race is strong enough versus zerg play protoss at a high level. Also the fast expanding nature of LOTV just helps zerg imo thats what the race is designed to do.
There's not even enough data to say that. It could also be that the very top of zerg players is just better than the very top of protoss players at the game. We cannot positively state that if Serral had chosen protoss instead of zerg he wouldn't be dominating, there's no direct evidence of that.
All we can state is that there's not a ton of hope and that we should behave accordingly.
Thats why observation, logic, and actual in game experience with the races at a high level are important instead of just being a pure data nerd. You hear that all the time there's not enough data to tell this, not enough data to claim that...
There's no level of observation or logic that will allow you to answer this type of question, and if you've ever heard 80% of pros talk you know that in game experience increases your bias rather than the quality of your data.
That I can't agree with, there's almost always a way to answer anything correctly that we can directly experience. Wombat and Fanatic Templar had very good posts to counter you.
Also the simplest strong evidence of protoss's weakness in this matchup is Serral. I'm watching him 4-0 Trap right now in TSL 8, the only protoss who has been very successful this year. Serral almost always absolutely demolishes protoss in particular while he struggles plenty vs terran and zerg. He shows just how helpless protoss is when zerg plays correctly.
I don't know what argument you think you're answering but it's not the argument I have. It is obvious that protoss is by miles the weakest race at the very highest level of play. This doesn't answer the question of whether it happens because protoss is weak or because the few people who have enough skill to be at the highest level of play, let's say 5 or 6 people, just coincidentally all happened to not pick protoss at the start of the game years ago.
This is a question that can't be answered. We cannot directly experience a world in which Serral chose to play protoss instead of zerg. That's the entirety of the issue. Maybe if Serral was protoss and Trap was zerg Serral would still have 4-0ed in this match, and we would be having a thread about how zerg can't win at the top level. Or maybe not. It's impossible to say.
We don't have to say it, however, since either way the end result is that protoss is not winning, and you and I are rooting for protoss. As a consequence, I once again did the sane thing this afternoon and I didn't watch Trap play vs Serral, which means I had a much happier afternoon than you
Well, what changed since the first half of the year?
Maps, the form of Protoss, the form of everybody else. Nothing else did change since Trap was winning everything left and right, with Zoun and Zest close to win shit either(remember, Zest got the 2nd place of IEM). So what has changed? Honestly?
I think the maps are better for zergs than the previous map pool, even if it doesn't seem like it.
Maybe protoss was figured out?
But saying after 2021 that Protoss is the weakest is a good one.
Winnings/2021
2521
601
213
EPT
What did I tell you! But Terrans still have the hero marine they need! 
