EPTIn the end i'd say the biggest problems for tosses rn is being consistent.
The future of Protoss. Is there any hope? - Page 4
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darklycid
2761 Posts
In the end i'd say the biggest problems for tosses rn is being consistent. | ||
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MarianoSC2
Slovakia1855 Posts
On one hand, Protoss is the race with the lowest skill ceiling, and there just arent as many top Protosses as there are Zergs. Situation wont improve with Zest leaving, but Classic has the potential to replace him at least. On the other hand, Protoss is really doing well in many tournaments with the same top player pool as GSL or Katowice. The fact they seem to struggle in bo7 format specifically I think has 2 factors. The bigger one is the way the race works, the bags of tricks which are necessary to consistently beat especially Zergs (and Terrans to some extent) just run out by the time the Protoss gets through such a long tough drawn out brackets. And another issue is that by now, its probably also a mental problem. Top Protosses apparently just stopped believing they could win in these scenarios or they have the low probability of win in their heads which is affecting their play. Nevertheless as long as Protoss still win tournaments and are doing good in prize money and are well represented in the brackets overall thorough the year, think we can conclude that Protoss is fine. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland18072 Posts
On November 15 2021 01:47 Teoita wrote: I would be interested to see what the Protoss win rate is as a function of series duration.I wouldn't be surprised if it went from being pretty good in Bo3s (we can always open the Great Book in a pinch), to average in Bo5s, to pretty crap in Bo7s. In general, I feel like if you take a given map Protoss is kind of always fine (regardless of player skill), but when you add the extra layer of players figuring out each other's style, Protoss becomes more exploitable than either Terran or Zerg. If that were true, that would easily explain why Protoss does so well in ladder (it's all an isolated Bo1), can actually get to the end of tournaments more or less, but then just consistently falls apart in finals. It’s long been my base hypothesis and well, belief that this is the case. I’d love to see the data, although I think you’d have to filter out ESL weeklies, where it’s a total marathon and the stakes aren’t quite so high and the top players use it as much to stay in shape ‘Wombat’s Law’ held for quite some time in which depending on the bracket if a Protoss defeats a Zerg in a Bo5+, in a big weekend tournament, they will lose to the next Zerg they play if that happens. A lot of caveats to be a law, but I think it speaks to Protoss having to scrape everything they can from their builds and strats, and that being pretty exploitable by the next Zerg. If you’re the race that is most reliant on tight builds and subterfuge, it would stand to reason that the more builds you have to keep tight, the harder it gets as the number of sets increase. Likewise revealing your hand and bottoming out trying to get through a Ro8/Ro4 and the next opponent has a fair idea of your hand. Not impossible, and PvT isn’t quite the same dynamic, Protoss have some of the flexibility there, but against the super Zergs of Serral/Dark/Rogue etc calibre it is bloody difficult for any Protoss to run a PvZ gauntlet if it comes up . | ||
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Xamo
Spain775 Posts
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Drfilip
Sweden556 Posts
Also, spoiler warning. I use data from last week's tourney. 1. Which are the tier 1 tournaments? Classifying tier 1 tournaments seem very hard. Looks to me as a totally arbitrary choice. I will focus on individual tournaments only. Am I correct in assuming that the tier 1 tournaments are GSL code S, DH season finals and IEM Katowice? Do we have 3 code S, 3 Masters and one global final, summing to 7 tier 1 tournaments in a year? That gives us at most 7 different winners. For racial balance, that's 2 wins each + a wild card. 2. Which are the tier 2 tournaments? Are they the premier tournaments that aren't tier 1? I assume so. liquipedia is showing 18 premier events already done in 2021, 7 of which are tier 1. We have had 11 tier 2 tournaments this year, with 3 more to come, assuming nothing else comes up. 11 tournaments gives a bit less than 4 wins per race. 3. What is the racial distribution of winners in t1 and t2 tournaments respectively? For tier 1 we have 5 Zergs and 2 Terrans. Terran has the expected amount while Zerg took all of the Protoss wins. For tier 2 we have 2 Zergs, 2 Terrans, and 7 Protoss. Protoss is overrepresenting in t2. Collectively for premier tournaments we hav 7 Zerg wins, 4 Terran, and 7 Protoss wins. Protoss is still overrepresenting. 7 is more than the expected 6. 4. Do we only care about the winners? The individual winners of the tier 1 tournaments are  Maru, Cure,  Dark, Rogue, Serral and Reynor(2).The winners of tier 2 tournaments are Scarlett, Serral,  Neeb(2), Clem(2), and Trap(5).Maru lost vs Serral on his way to win. Maru and Serral lost an equal amount of matches, but Serral didn't make it into top 4 while Maru won. Cure did a similar thing, losing to Rogue early on. Rogue was beaten in the semifinal. Rogue and Serral won vs the eventual winner. Doesn't this mean that they are better? Not necessarily because we have a lot of single and double eliminations in our tournaments. If we truly want to know who are the best we should do a round robin that lets everyone play everyone else. This is not feasible for weekenders. We let stability go to the wayside and let volatility come in order to be both entertaining and save a lot of time and effort. The sport is only professional because it has entertainment value. But this does lead to a winner-take-all mentality. The winner won because they didn't lose (even though the winner did lose in some cases). Winning without losing means they are the best. 5. With the mindset "the winner is the best," how do we account for everyone that was defeated by the winner before the grand final? Some people only lose vs the winner. Are the ones losing early worse players than the ones who lose later on? Herd mentality says YES. Stats was worse than Maru in IEM Katowice 2021. Stats didn't get to the ro8 while Maru got to the semifinals. Both lost a single elimination bo5 vs Reynor 3-2. I'd argue that since Stats lost vs the winner and Maru lost vs the winner, and (if we ignore the way to get there, as we do with the winners e.g. Cure and Maru) they won all the way to Reynor. Therefore, Stats and Maru did equally well.If the amount of wins matters, then Maru did do better than Stats. But we'd also get the neat features of double elimination brackets. Feature 1: If you lose the first match and advance through the ranks in the lower bracket and lose in the Ro4 you'd have won more matches than the player that was in the winners bracket and lost in the Ro4. Both players are losing in the Ro4 but the lower bracket hero has won more matches while the upper bracket elite won fewer. Feature 2: There will be an upper bracket finals. If the loser wins in the lower bracket and advances to the grand finals and wins it, then the 1st place and 2nd place player will have both lost vs each other and nobody else. There isn't a strong argument for why the runner up is worse than the winner. We've had the runner up with a 7-4 win ratio vs the winner, losing 3-4 in the grand finals but winning 4-0 in the upper bracket. 6. What was the racial distribution of top 8 in all tier 1 tournaments? IEM Katowice 2021 Ro8: 2P, 3T, 3Z Ro4: 2P, 1T, 1Z Ro2: 1P, 1Z Ro1: 1Z GSL Code S, season 1 Ro8: 3P, 4T, 1Z Ro4: 1P, 2T, 1Z Ro2: 1T, 1Z Ro1: 1Z GSL Code S, season 2 Ro8: 4P, 1T, 3Z Ro4: 2P, 1T, 1Z Ro2: 1P, 1Z Ro1: 1Z Dream Hack Masters Summer Finals Ro8: 5T, 3Z Ro4: 2T, 2Z Ro2: 1T, 1Z Ro1: 1Z GSL Code S, season 3 Ro8: 3P, 3T, 2Z Ro4: 2P, 1T, 1Z Ro2: 1P, 1T Ro1: 1T Dream Hack Masters Fall Finals Ro8: 2P, 4T, 2Z Ro4: 2P, 1T, 1Z Ro2: 1P, 1Z Ro1: 1Z Dream Hack Masters Winter Finals Ro8: 2P, 2T, 4Z Ro4: 2T, 2Z Ro2: 1T, 1Z Ro1: 1T The balanced outcome is that Ro8 has 3 players each of two races and 2 players of the third race. That happened twice, with Summer finals being the biggest deviant, having no Protoss players. Code S seasons 1 and 2 had a single player for one of the races. That's a notable deviation as well. For Ro4 it should be a 2/1/1 ratio. Summer finals and Winter finals are the only ones deviating there. There were no mirror match grand finals. Balanced distribution. Summing up all the ratios we get Ro8: 16P, 22T, 18Z Ro4: 9P, 10T, 9Z Ro2: 4P, 4T, 6Z Ro1: 2T, 5Z The distribution is fairly even until the winners. In Ro8 we had 3 too many Terrans and 2 too few Protoss. Ro4 had perfect distribution, while the semifinals had 1 too many Zergs. Protoss is only lagging in winning tier 1 tournaments, not really in any other placement. 7. Why do we differentiate between tier 1 and tier 2 tournaments? Liquipedia is big and is often referenced by various members of the SC2 community. This is what they say about premier tournaments. Premier Tournaments offer an outstanding prize pool, are frequently played out offline, and feature the best players from all over the world. They are commonly held by well-established franchises and are considered especially prestigious amongst the community. Looking at the price pools of tier 1 and tier 2 tournaments indicate that it's generally higher for tier 1, but not necessarily. E.g. EU seasonal DH Masters give more money than the season's global finals. The other thing is the players. What is the difference between the player pool of tier 1 and tier 2 tournaments? Since only the two tournaments held by GSL are fairly regional I decided to compare them. Code S has 16 players and Super tournament has got 16 players. Looking at ST1 players not in Code S S1 we have ST1 Protoss: Stats and PartinGST1 Terran: ByuN and SpeCialST1 Zerg: - The other way round, Code S players not in ST1 are Code S Protoss: HurricaneCode S Terran: Maru and TYCode S Zerg: Rogue There was a 4 player difference between the tier 1 and tier 2 tournament. 12 players were the same. 3 month passed between the tournaments. What are the differences between Code S S1 and ST2, which only were 1 month apart? ST2 Protoss: - ST2 Terran: ByuN and SpeCial ST2 Zerg: RagnaroKPlayers in Code S season 1 that wasn't in ST2 were Code S Protoss: Hurricane and ZestCode S Terran: - Code S Zerg: DongRaeGuThat is only a 3 player difference. The 3 player difference held strong in Ro8, where it is a bigger disparity. 3/16 is not as much as 3/8. In the Ro4 we had 50% difference Rogue and Dream were semi finalists in Code S but got knocked out in the Ro8 by Zoun and sOs respectively. All 4 of those players played in both tournaments. The player pool difference in the tournaments aren't that big. The money is a difference. Is there anything else? The amount of games in a match can differ, as can the way to qualify and the amount of matches in the tournament bracket. GSL has more games and matches in tier 1 than tier 2. The top players of one tournament are qualified for the other. Tier 1 has got a double qualifying round, where the last is televised. This pattern does not hold true for the DH Masters. EU has got more matches, same amount of games, and is the qualifying tournament for the season finals. The stand alone tier 2 tournaments vary between more/fewer games, more/fewer matches. The only true pattern is that every premier tournament is qualifying players into a tier 1 tournament, the global finals at IEM Katowice. 8. Why is a win in tier 1 worth more, skill wise, than a tier 2 tournament? With basically the same players playing in tier 1 and tier 2 tournaments, the expected outcome is that the same players should win. That is not happening. Protoss is winning tier 2 tournaments while Zerg is winning tier 1 tournaments. Arguments: Some people say that it is a mentality thing that keeps some player from performing in tier 1 tournaments. This works as an argument against using tier 1 tournaments as a basis to judge skill. If people are performing worse, then that is not their peak. argument is countering itself The argument that tier 1 tournaments have more games in a match i.e. longer series, also fails. Both tier 1 and tier 2 tournaments are using long series. TSL7 used only long series, and that was won by a Protoss. argument is null I want to highlight three more arguments. They overlap a bit. Players care more about tier 1 tournaments, players are strategic with making and hiding builds for tier 1 tournaments, and Code S is a preparation tournament. The former two fall under the category that more effort is put into a tier 1 tournament. The latter two are about preparation. Summing it up to tier 1 tournaments are getting a different kind of preparation and players are putting more effort into winning tier 1 tournaments than they put into anything else. strong argument A corollary to that strong triple argument is that a player that can win with a small amount of preparation, with their playbook wide open, is deemed less skilled. Even if they win over and over again, e.g. Trap. 9. Attempted summary to a point. You need to nitpick in order to say that Protoss is doomed. You also need to greatly value tier 1 tournaments over tier 2 tournaments. Looking at premier tournament wins Terran is lagging. Looking at tier 1 tournaments below the first place, Protoss is like the other races. Zerg has a large pool of winners, while Terran and Protoss have few. It feels as if the strongest argument for imbalance I can make out of my findings is that Zerg is peaking higher. The Aligulac leading/lagging algorithm is the only strong argument for Protoss being weaker. But this thread was started as question about the future. There aren't that many young players that are performing extremely well. Reynor and Clem are the youngsters. Maxpax isn't there yet, nor is Percival. I believe we have to look at longer term in order to find the "hope". Classic is performing well, but he is older. herO is sort of stabilizing at B-tier. We have Showtime, Zoun, Neeb etc. They are to pick up the mantle when Zest leaves Trap alone as the Protoss elite. Maybe PartinG will make his third comeback, but he is 27 and are due for the mandatory service in a couple of years. | ||
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starvingbox1
18 Posts
On November 14 2021 07:12 Woosixion wrote: if you ask me, as the easiest race this is exactly what they deserve.. easier/less stressful wins against the vast majority of starcraft players but hitting a wall at the tippity top Could not have said this better myself. This is the truth. | ||
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Goma
Germany12 Posts
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Charoisaur
Germany14844 Posts
Am I correct in assuming that the tier 1 tournaments are GSL code S, DH season finals and IEM Katowice? I don't think so. Trap won the Last Chance tournament last year which had a higher prize pool and harder player pool than this years DH season finals and apparently that doesn't count as a Protoss tier 1 win, so the season finals aren't one either | ||
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CJherOfan
35 Posts
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Snakestyle11
191 Posts
I know this sounds bad, but when you think about it.... We should have a tournament where each round players have to play each other in each matchups (all races included) to advance to next round. I wouldnt be surprised if terran and zerg would completely dominate protoss. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland10692 Posts
On November 16 2021 04:39 Snakestyle11 wrote: Im going to be really controversial and say... Maybe theres a chance that protoss is much easier to play than zerg or terran; so a player that plays only protoss for years does not become as strong of a player as someone who plays terran and zerg for years. I know this sounds bad, but when you think about it.... We should have a tournament where each round players have to play each other in each matchups (all races included) to advance to next round. I wouldnt be surprised if terran and zerg would completely dominate protoss. It's not controversial at all. A ton of people believe this. They just feel like they shouldn't say it, which makes discussions tedious. I've thought about this tournament as I believe it would be really interesting but it would demand a lot of time from the players, so it would probably have to happen after next year if the circuit is not renewed and not at any other point. I'd be willing to throw some money into it. | ||
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starvingbox1
18 Posts
Not that this alone is the mark of a great player, but watch a Zest v Serral lategame and look at how they control their armies. Zest uses 2 control groups max while Serral and most Zergs use at least 4 if not more lategame army control groups for all the different unit types and multiple spell casters. So many Protoss players can get away with stuff like this whereas it's simply not possible with Zerg (at least for lategame army control). It's no wonder Serral dominates >90% of lategame ZvP. | ||
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InfCereal
Canada1693 Posts
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/4zQHiDG.png) | ||
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Freeborn
Germany421 Posts
Protoss core units are shit, only balanced out by a few AoE Units. If the enemy manages to play around them or force protoss into multiple small engagements then terrans and zergs always win. Because they can scale with skill. Terran scales insanely with micro and late game mule and perma scan gives them a huge bonus. Zerg is a bit harder but appears to scale strongly if you can correctly predict enemy actions to squeeze out eco at the right times and then quickly produce or switch to whatever units you need at the last moment. Also they have very cost efficient core fighting units plus specialized spell casters and cloaked AoE. Protosss basically has AoE and a very strong airforce. None of that gets much more efficient with skill. Blink stalkers and adepts and warp prism micro is really all I can think of. Of those only blink stalkers can be used on a larger scale and they mostly lose vs equal tier, equal cost armies of other races in direct battles. If the enemy shows up at your door you mostly die if you only have blink stalkers, same goes for tempests btw. Super supply inefficient, if you build them and don't win fast you will lose because your army is just too small. Most of the protoss stuff has a low skill ceiling. And because the core units are so bad you can't even really apply skills like strategical and tactical army maneuvers because in small packs protoss units will just lose. | ||
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Freeborn
Germany421 Posts
On November 16 2021 05:55 starvingbox1 wrote: One example - many people in this thread are calling Zest the best Protoss recently. Not that this alone is the mark of a great player, but watch a Zest v Serral lategame and look at how they control their armies. Zest uses 2 control groups max while Serral and most Zergs use at least 4 if not more lategame army control groups for all the different unit types and multiple spell casters. So many Protoss players can get away with stuff like this whereas it's simply not possible with Zerg (at least for lategame army control). It's no wonder Serral dominates >90% of lategame ZvP. Smart guy: did you ever stop to think that because of protoss over reliance on AoE and it's overwhelmingly slower units it just doesn't make sense to split your army? It's also funny how people keep saying protoss is easier, what exactly is easier? Every good thing they have is paid for by heavy drawbacks. Any intelligent person watchin the highest level of zvp or tvp is going to get frustrated. At a certain level protoss can only win by relying on their opponents mistakes. To be fair: I believe it requires a lot of effort for a terran to defeat protoss at higher levels, but it seems to me that if the terran reaches that level of peak performance he wins. Protoss in contrast, wins when the terrans slack off. With zerg it's even worse, without crazy damage or surprises into mass air protoss will almost always just lose. You are basically on a timer. With the improval of protoss air, the quick mass air switch seems to be the safest option as any other strat combined with failure to do massive damage will always result in being overwhelmed by faster cheaper units with a better economy behind them. | ||
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TheWildShooter
74 Posts
On November 16 2021 05:55 starvingbox1 wrote: One example - many people in this thread are calling Zest the best Protoss recently. Not that this alone is the mark of a great player, but watch a Zest v Serral lategame and look at how they control their armies. Zest uses 2 control groups max while Serral and most Zergs use at least 4 if not more lategame army control groups for all the different unit types and multiple spell casters. So many Protoss players can get away with stuff like this whereas it's simply not possible with Zerg (at least for lategame army control). It's no wonder Serral dominates >90% of lategame ZvP. Apparently there is no kind of trickery the apologists of the "protoss players are just worse" theory won't resort to. First of all, Trap being the best protoss player out there is community consensus. It's also proven by his recent year achievements. Watching Trap replays u can see, he uses up to 4 army control groups. Most top protoss players use control groups for different unit types. Neeb uses like 5 army hotkeys, Showtime said he uses up to 7 for late game. But you've cherry-picked Zest just to make that dumb argument, because he in fact uses only 2, but he does it super efficiently. By the way, Maru and Clem also use 2 control groups, does this make them bad and, say, inferior to Serral? | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12108 Posts
On November 15 2021 01:47 Teoita wrote: I would be interested to see what the Protoss win rate is as a function of series duration.I wouldn't be surprised if it went from being pretty good in Bo3s (we can always open the Great Book in a pinch), to average in Bo5s, to pretty crap in Bo7s. In general, I feel like if you take a given map Protoss is kind of always fine (regardless of player skill), but when you add the extra layer of players figuring out each other's style, Protoss becomes more exploitable than either Terran or Zerg. If that were true, that would easily explain why Protoss does so well in ladder (it's all an isolated Bo1), can actually get to the end of tournaments more or less, but then just consistently falls apart in finals. When I was still interested and kept numbers Protoss was the most represented race in the finals but won the least amount of the finals of premier tournaments(yeah, NA counted  ). To me it always seemed that Protoss were the kongs. Because even if you check the GSL - you have BO7 in the semis, right? But many Protosses were able to punch through to be humiliated in the finals, right? So it's not about BO7 if they can win convincingly semis and then lose horribly in the finals. It's just that Zest and Trap were not the championship material like Classic, sOs or herO were. So while the latter three have the mentality ,they no longer posses the skill(at least for now) while Zest and Trap may have the skills, but not the mentality. Heck, just look at soO. Playing the best games of his life until the finals....On November 15 2021 20:38 Nebuchad wrote: You would not take a bet where you give 50$ if terran doesn't win Katowice and you win 500$ if they do? That's extremely conservative. You're getting 11 to 1, you need to win that bet 8% of the time in order to be profitable. Terran will win Katowice much more often than 8% of the time, something like 40% of the time I would imagine. Maybe less if Maru isn't there so let's say 30%. It is an immensely profitable bet. You do realize that the last 3 IEMs were won by a Zerg? That's one of the reason why we didn't have a WC who's not a Zerg for some time now  | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland10692 Posts
On November 16 2021 07:31 deacon.frost wrote: You do realize that the last 3 IEMs were won by a Zerg? That's one of the reason why we didn't have a WC who's not a Zerg for some time now Okay if you guys ever have something important to do in your life that involves odds or statistics PLEASE PLEASE DM me before you make a decision I'll be happy to help. | ||
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RKC
2561 Posts
You can theorise with statistics all you want here all day. But unless someone takes up Nebuchad's offer, the unspoken and uneasy truth remians that Toss are underwhelming underdogs at top tier competitions. Whether it's due to Toss being an ez race, suffer from an difficult matchup (PvZ), or played by Kongs - that's subject to debate. The more probable reason is that the current game design is loaded against Toss. SC2 and BW are assymmetrical games. There's nothing wrong in accepting that some races are slightly less playable than others, at lower or higher levels. There's a presumption that the game is not equal. The burden lies on proving the ideal that the game is balanced, rather than the game is imbalanced. | ||
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Drahkn
97 Posts
On November 14 2021 07:12 Woosixion wrote: if you ask me, as the easiest race this is exactly what they deserve.. easier/less stressful wins against the vast majority of starcraft players but hitting a wall at the tippity top Do you realize the stupidity of what you just said? Protoss is the most difficult unforgiving fickle race of all 3 races in the "tippity top" one tiny mistake as Protoss and enemy snowballs ahead so quickly closing down games safely is extremely easy. Both Zerg and Terran can be a lot more careless with their units and they get more chances for comebacks. Perfect example is TVP where Terran just keeps throwing widowmine drops at the Protoss,Protoss deflects 4 drops perfectly, 5th one he spots a millisecond to late and the game is basically over and anyone who knows Protoss knows if Terran goes for any sort of all inn you need to know exactly which one because its requires very specific responses. Meanwhile in Terran and Zerg world a standard macro build with good scouting you can make the same units every game without a single thought just don't be 2 greedy and you are fine. As for losing workers in any part of the game both Terran and Zerg can take worker loss way better. Specifically in mid-late game Zerg can a lot of the time instantly replace a worker line in 1 production cycle, Terran can spam a few more mules at cost of less scans to get over the hump without it affecting the economy to badly. Meanwhile protoss must wait for individual production cycle of the probes, then the probes must mine for a while before you are back to normal, but end result is still the same, on the graph you will see protoss gets hurt way more from worker loss. In these scenario Terran and Zerg has a nearly instant fix for the problem just from better race design, its just flat stronger. What Protoss gets in exchange for this I would love to know, I am waiting. The funniest thing I read people cry about protoss is their recall. How many times does medivac pickup save a terrans ass pr game on avarage you think? Zerg out of position? do you know how fast Zerg units run from your third into your main on creep if you were not paying attention? I could go on forever I am just getting to the point where the delusion in sc2 community makes me not want to watch competitive starcraft anymore, it's just painful watching Protoss players struggle for 10 years now with consistency just because of how poor the race design is. Protoss hardest race at the top level. | ||
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