On August 02 2023 10:48 Gescom wrote: Lotta balance whine in here when herO and Maxpax win ESL every week...
What does the community need exactly? Two different Protosses to win back to back GSLs?
Protoss to do okay in real tournaments?
Somebody go total up prize money by race since 2015-11-10
edit: Did it myself w/ liquipedia numbers, easily accessible ones full year 2016-2022 and 2023 to date. The split is:
Zerg: 39.37% Terran: 30.90% Protoss: 29.73%
2023 to date is 26% for P, which is a downturn from under-earning to one of the worst earning splits in 14 years of competition.
GomTvTvTvT was a scandal with calls all over the community for an urgent balance patch, yet Z and P both took home a larger split of the money that year.
How is Protoss supposed to win money when the best foreign Protoss doesn't show up to offline events (which pay the big bucks) and the best Korean Protosses just seem to randomly choke in games that are winnable
What essentially boils down to [Protoss players just didn't try / play well for 8 years, but players of the other races did] isn't a very good argument. We're talking about hundreds of tournaments and tens of thousands of games here. Chokes and errors are used to blame certain players while they're brushed under the rug for others, but the record averages out and speaks for itself
Protoss is underpowered, but I don't think this has been a constant throughout LotV. If you look at earnings, there have been plenty of years where Protoss was well represented at the top-level.
It's the last couple of years where Protoss has sucked, and the patch made it worse.
On August 03 2023 02:36 Melliflue wrote: I have frequently seen people argue that protoss simply has fewer top pros, and they have lost more to military service, but it doesn't seem true to me. Terran lost Innovation and TY but others have stepped up. Cure has made been in the semi-final of both GSLs this year. Bunny made one, as did Byun and Gumiho. Oliviera won Katowice.
On the zerg side, Ragnorak has never been a title contender but this year made the semi-final of the Afreeca Cup of Champions (beating MaxPax to get there) and Katowice. He also made the final of GSL season 3 last year.
There are terrans and zergs who have over-achieved compared to their historic level. No protoss has over-achieved in the same way.
MaxPax has overachieved, Creator improved as well, Zoun to some extent.
Soo has anyone talked about this? Apparently when you upgrade Flux Vanes for Void Rays, if you turn on the focus damage they become way slower than 25%. It becomes slower than unupgraded Void Rays with the focus damage on.
Ok herO is slumping in every matchup imaginable. If that would happen to Serral, there would be other Zergs (Reynor, Dark, Solar, etc.) If that would happen to Maru, there would be other Terrans (Cure, Gumiho, Bunny, etc.) But Toss is so far in the gutter, that there is no one else stepping up, because they are just lagging as far behind the other races as hero is.
Two years ago, if Maru slumped as herO is now, Terran would have had no one at the top level, and Serral, Rogue, Reynor and Dark would be the only "championship winning calibre" players out there.
9 months ago (i.e. shortly pre-patch), Bunny, Byun, Gumiho and Cure have all had a series of performances that suggest they have improved dramatically, including: Bunny getting to the finals of Dreamhack Winter, knocking out Serral and narrowly losing to herO in a 4-3 finals. Cure taking GSL 2021 season 3. Gumiho reverse sweeping multiple players to make it to the RO4 of GSL 2022 season 3. Byun beating Serral in the winners bracket of HSC 2022 and winning PigSty2 - beating herO and Dark to do so.
All the Terrans who are currently performing really well and making Terran look oppressively overpowered have shown consistent signs of improvement over at least the past year - to the extent that the 5 Terrans in the top 8 of GSL season 1 2023 are the exact same 5 Terrans that also made top 8 of GSL season 3 2022 - on the previous patch and map pool.
HerO is in-arguably slumping, or at least performing inconsistently - he's clearly still able to beat top level players, demonstrated by 4-0ing Byun to win Pig's ham cup. But in GSL he's lost non-competitively to Dark and Solar and should have lost to both Nightmare and (at least in game 2) against TY.
As much as we would like to pretend otherwise, there is no evidence for a dramatic positive step change in performance from Terrans since the balance patch, nor is there evidence for a dramatic negative step change in performance from Protoss players, apart from herO who has started performing much less consistently against all 3 races. I have no idea what the cause of that specific one is, but it's hardly the first time it's happened to a pro player, and it's definitely not related to balance.
So Maru and Serral just happen to be better than herO. And also Reynor, Dark, Solar and Cure, Gumiho, Bunny, Clem,... Just happen to be better than Classic or MaxPax? Yeah total coinsidence that has nothing to do with balance. If you argue like that, there never has been a balance issue ever in this game
I mean, herO just simply look worse now than he was last year. Does it because of the balance patch? possibly like 10-15% of it, but he also lost in PvP and PvZ as well, where the patch isnt impacting it that much supposedly. So its hard to say its because of the patch that cause the drop off on his game. And MaxPax is on the same level with everyone outside of Serral, but he just doesnt play offline event and thats just how it is. But for the rest of the Protoss players, yes they are not as good as the top Terran and Zerg currently. If I were to rank top 16 players in the world since last year, about half would be Terran, 5-6 would be Zerg and 2-3 would be Protoss.
In PvZ the herO style got mostly figured out so there isn't a reliable way to win for Protoss anymore.
On August 03 2023 06:41 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Soo has anyone talked about this? Apparently when you upgrade Flux Vanes for Void Rays, if you turn on the focus damage they become way slower than 25%. It becomes slower than unupgraded Void Rays with the focus damage on.
Easy possible explanation: they were testing this as a buff and forgot to change it back in the final build. In a way that feels much more plausible than it being a random unintended bug, because as you say it's just so random.
Oh speaking of another bit of gloriously bad Protoss design we have the Void Ray. Arguably the worst designed unit in Starcraft 2 after the Swarm Host. This piece of garbage has been a perfect example of what is wrong with Protoss. This unit serves almost no tactical purpose in an actual game. It has zero micro potential. It was originally designed as a tool for countering capital ships, and then got reworked when its clunky charge up wasn't working out to now it just has an obvious cooldown beam that makes it deal extra damage vs armored. When the Tempest was announced the unit basically lost its one given purpose to a unit that does the same job better.
Its been used as a staple in stupid all ins when it's overtuned and then disappears completely from the meta otherwise.
Oh yea but don't worry we'll be able to fix this unit with numbers tweaks. No we won't. It's a fundamentally broken unit design that will always be a broken unit design until someone completely changes how it works.
On August 03 2023 13:27 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh speaking of another bit of gloriously bad Protoss design we have the Void Ray. Arguably the worst designed unit in Starcraft 2 after the Swarm Host. This piece of garbage has been a perfect example of what is wrong with Protoss. This unit serves almost no tactical purpose in an actual game. It has zero micro potential. It was originally designed as a tool for countering capital ships, and then got reworked when its clunky charge up wasn't working out to now it just has an obvious cooldown beam that makes it deal extra damage vs armored. When the Tempest was announced the unit basically lost its one given purpose to a unit that does the same job better.
Its been used as a staple in stupid all ins when it's overtuned and then disappears completely from the meta otherwise.
Oh yea but don't worry we'll be able to fix this unit with numbers tweaks. No we won't. It's a fundamentally broken unit design that will always be a broken unit design until someone completely changes how it works.
As much as I agree with 99% of this post, I don't know that this is entirely the fault of the void ray's unit design. It is a bit emblematic of Protoss design in general though. The response to this design is that we must "balance" all of the Protoss units. It's fine, though, if Z and T have these strong units because they're so weak, but zealots and stalkers are just too strong. Remember, we removed VR from the game last time because mid grandmaster Zerg couldnt' be asked to keep vision on their own natural.
On August 03 2023 06:41 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Soo has anyone talked about this? Apparently when you upgrade Flux Vanes for Void Rays, if you turn on the focus damage they become way slower than 25%. It becomes slower than unupgraded Void Rays with the focus damage on.
The Extended Thermal Lance upgrade had an unnecessary leftover line from the max damage range addition of the patch before. This max damage range causes delayed damage to not apply when the target teleports away a great distance (e.g. Stalker blinks away and dies where he blinked to because the damage it received was delayed. Delayed damage needs a second range check to avoid these odd scenarios). The first iteration used the distance to the Colossus, but it was buggy when it was picked up directly after firing. The second iteration fixed this by using the point the Colossus attacked for this distance check making any validation range increases unnecessary and more inaccurate with the upgrade. Thus, it had to be removed.
While merging that change, too many lines were removed causing this upgrade bug. As you can see in the link, the XML is cryptic as you cannot always directly see what is edited without digging deeper.
There won't be an engine overhaul as the people that knew the engine well left a few years ago. I hope for one bug fix, though... (units having greater attack range in some scenarios than intended)
On August 03 2023 05:37 Nebuchad wrote: I just don't really believe that people are honest about this. After years of protoss being quite weak, we had patching and suddenly the game was quite okay, herO and Maxpax won some decent tournaments. This lasted for a few months, there was nowhere near protoss domination in those few months, and then we got patched down again for seemingly no reason, and it's supposed to be some sort of mystery why protoss is doing badly again?
We just had a tourney where the protoss race was stronger than it should have been, by accident, and in that tourney protoss still finished worst race by far. Do you really reckon that if that bug happened on a zerg or terran unit that race wouldn't have handily won the tournament?
I don't think increasing siege tank or lurker range by 1 would've had a huge impact on the outcomes of the tournament, no.
Over the span of a lot of tournaments it'd be different, especially as players thought fo ways to place those units in abusive positions, using that extra range. But in a single tournament rather recently after the bug was introduced? Nah.
On August 03 2023 06:41 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Soo has anyone talked about this? Apparently when you upgrade Flux Vanes for Void Rays, if you turn on the focus damage they become way slower than 25%. It becomes slower than unupgraded Void Rays with the focus damage on.
The Extended Thermal Lance upgrade had an unnecessary leftover line from the max damage range addition of the patch before. This max damage range causes delayed damage to not apply when the target teleports away a great distance (e.g. Stalker blinks away and dies where he blinked to because the damage it received was delayed. Delayed damage needs a second range check to avoid these odd scenarios). The first iteration used the distance to the Colossus, but it was buggy when it was picked up directly after firing. The second iteration fixed this by using the point the Colossus attacked for this distance check making any validation range increases unnecessary and more inaccurate with the upgrade. Thus, it had to be removed.
While merging that change, too many lines were removed causing this upgrade bug. As you can see in the link, the XML is cryptic as you cannot always directly see what is edited without digging deeper.
There won't be an engine overhaul as the people that knew the engine well left a few years ago. I hope for one bug fix, though... (units having greater attack range in some scenarios than intended)
On August 03 2023 05:37 Nebuchad wrote: I just don't really believe that people are honest about this. After years of protoss being quite weak, we had patching and suddenly the game was quite okay, herO and Maxpax won some decent tournaments. This lasted for a few months, there was nowhere near protoss domination in those few months, and then we got patched down again for seemingly no reason, and it's supposed to be some sort of mystery why protoss is doing badly again?
We just had a tourney where the protoss race was stronger than it should have been, by accident, and in that tourney protoss still finished worst race by far. Do you really reckon that if that bug happened on a zerg or terran unit that race wouldn't have handily won the tournament?
I don't think increasing siege tank or lurker range by 1 would've had a huge impact on the outcomes of the tournament, no.
Over the span of a lot of tournaments it'd be different, especially as players thought fo ways to place those units in abusive positions, using that extra range. But in a single tournament rather recently after the bug was introduced? Nah.
Increasing lurker range by 1 would actually be rather significant, because it would give them a 1 range advantage over ghost snipe (it's 10 vs 10 after upgrades at the moment), and I believe it would give them equal range to disruptors as well. And I highly doubt it would take long for Zergs to figure that out, I'd wager most of them are aware of the equal range of lurkers and ghosts. Disruptors are less relevant since they're mostly hard countered by vipers anyway.
On August 02 2023 10:48 Gescom wrote: Lotta balance whine in here when herO and Maxpax win ESL every week...
What does the community need exactly? Two different Protosses to win back to back GSLs?
First: Are you actually comparing the results from weeklys with the results in major tournaments??? Secondly: Look at the results in season 4 in the ESL cups (18 weeklies): KR: 4 wins for herO, 1 for maxpax: EU: 0 wins for herO and 4 for maxpax. AM: 3 wins for maxpax and 0 for herO. Sooooo... not really wins for them every week? Pretty far from it. But even if they would have won even more, it STILL is not logical to compare weeklies with the bigger tournaments. Of course the top players does not prepare and put as much effort into the smaller cups as in a big tournament with much bigger prizepool and this leaves room for a more varying results. And you can also look at who is participating. Its not like Reynor and Serral tune in to play the cups often. Those are just examples, but it also adds to the varying results.
Thirdly: For toss fans at least it would be nice with two different tosses to win back to back for sure But in no world will that happen. It is SEVERAL years now that toss makes some token win in a major tourney, once in a blue moon. So any kind of increase in win rate would be appreciated. But i think that ship has sailed. For older players to give everything they have only to make less than miminum wage is not likely, nor is an influx of new toss players. You have to be at the very top often at the bigger tourneys to make a reasonable income.
But as i said the ship has sailed now. Maybe there will be some freak win for a toss in the future, but I doubt it. But hey. We have the weeklies!
On August 03 2023 05:37 Nebuchad wrote: I just don't really believe that people are honest about this. After years of protoss being quite weak, we had patching and suddenly the game was quite okay, herO and Maxpax won some decent tournaments. This lasted for a few months, there was nowhere near protoss domination in those few months, and then we got patched down again for seemingly no reason, and it's supposed to be some sort of mystery why protoss is doing badly again?
We just had a tourney where the protoss race was stronger than it should have been, by accident, and in that tourney protoss still finished worst race by far. Do you really reckon that if that bug happened on a zerg or terran unit that race wouldn't have handily won the tournament?
I don't think increasing siege tank or lurker range by 1 would've had a huge impact on the outcomes of the tournament, no.
Over the span of a lot of tournaments it'd be different, especially as players thought fo ways to place those units in abusive positions, using that extra range. But in a single tournament rather recently after the bug was introduced? Nah.
I dunno I think range changes, especially for core units are some of the absolute biggest that can be made, specially if it’s a bug that’s gone under the radar
The sheer muscle memory of playing thousands of games engaging at/staying out of range especially of the trio of siege tank/lurker/disruptor where that dynamic is most at play
Collosus is a little less pronounced as it’s not really a siege unit and is engaging with the ball anyway. Even the top players aren’t pulling them back to optimal safe range individually, although I could see the previous 11 range helping in defensive holds against T/Z pushes
If siege tanks to take one example got an extra range in a patch I’d wager TvZ you’d see a few more fiendish tank spots but the range wouldn’t be crazy
PvT and especially TvT at least in the short term I’d wager you’d see a lot of botches against contains on account of people’s gauges being way out of whack.
Even if balance was ultimately eventually better there’d be a big, big adjustment period so as long as a hypothetical patch came out with a sufficient gap to a big tournament so pros can relearn the muscle memory and visual gauges it would be fine.
But I mean to take an extreme example if bio had any alterations to its attack rate/damage point or anything that affected its micro rhythm it would be a HUGE change and I’d wager you’d see atypical micro errors for quite some time after a patch
On August 06 2023 22:56 Charoisaur wrote: Are people forgetting that the Lurker +1 range buff turned them from almost useless to one of the best units in the game?
On August 03 2023 13:27 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh speaking of another bit of gloriously bad Protoss design we have the Void Ray. Arguably the worst designed unit in Starcraft 2 after the Swarm Host. This piece of garbage has been a perfect example of what is wrong with Protoss. This unit serves almost no tactical purpose in an actual game. It has zero micro potential. It was originally designed as a tool for countering capital ships, and then got reworked when its clunky charge up wasn't working out to now it just has an obvious cooldown beam that makes it deal extra damage vs armored. When the Tempest was announced the unit basically lost its one given purpose to a unit that does the same job better.
Its been used as a staple in stupid all ins when it's overtuned and then disappears completely from the meta otherwise.
Oh yea but don't worry we'll be able to fix this unit with numbers tweaks. No we won't. It's a fundamentally broken unit design that will always be a broken unit design until someone completely changes how it works.
Voidray is a great unit to mass for new players as it flies and can shoot at everything.
On August 03 2023 13:27 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh speaking of another bit of gloriously bad Protoss design we have the Void Ray. Arguably the worst designed unit in Starcraft 2 after the Swarm Host. This piece of garbage has been a perfect example of what is wrong with Protoss. This unit serves almost no tactical purpose in an actual game. It has zero micro potential. It was originally designed as a tool for countering capital ships, and then got reworked when its clunky charge up wasn't working out to now it just has an obvious cooldown beam that makes it deal extra damage vs armored. When the Tempest was announced the unit basically lost its one given purpose to a unit that does the same job better.
Its been used as a staple in stupid all ins when it's overtuned and then disappears completely from the meta otherwise.
Oh yea but don't worry we'll be able to fix this unit with numbers tweaks. No we won't. It's a fundamentally broken unit design that will always be a broken unit design until someone completely changes how it works.
Voidray is a great unit to mass for new players as it flies and can shoot at everything.
Not everything is about e-sport.
"Respect the Void Ray"!
1. How many new players are getting into SCII? 2. Do units for new players need to be worthless at higher level play?
On August 03 2023 13:27 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh speaking of another bit of gloriously bad Protoss design we have the Void Ray. Arguably the worst designed unit in Starcraft 2 after the Swarm Host. This piece of garbage has been a perfect example of what is wrong with Protoss. This unit serves almost no tactical purpose in an actual game. It has zero micro potential. It was originally designed as a tool for countering capital ships, and then got reworked when its clunky charge up wasn't working out to now it just has an obvious cooldown beam that makes it deal extra damage vs armored. When the Tempest was announced the unit basically lost its one given purpose to a unit that does the same job better.
Its been used as a staple in stupid all ins when it's overtuned and then disappears completely from the meta otherwise.
Oh yea but don't worry we'll be able to fix this unit with numbers tweaks. No we won't. It's a fundamentally broken unit design that will always be a broken unit design until someone completely changes how it works.
Voidray is a great unit to mass for new players as it flies and can shoot at everything.
Not everything is about e-sport.
"Respect the Void Ray"!
If I play with my friends (they have played like 10 hours of SC2 in their life) I always tell them, take Terran, build Marines -> Win.
On August 03 2023 13:27 Vindicare605 wrote: Oh speaking of another bit of gloriously bad Protoss design we have the Void Ray. Arguably the worst designed unit in Starcraft 2 after the Swarm Host. This piece of garbage has been a perfect example of what is wrong with Protoss. This unit serves almost no tactical purpose in an actual game. It has zero micro potential. It was originally designed as a tool for countering capital ships, and then got reworked when its clunky charge up wasn't working out to now it just has an obvious cooldown beam that makes it deal extra damage vs armored. When the Tempest was announced the unit basically lost its one given purpose to a unit that does the same job better.
Its been used as a staple in stupid all ins when it's overtuned and then disappears completely from the meta otherwise.
Oh yea but don't worry we'll be able to fix this unit with numbers tweaks. No we won't. It's a fundamentally broken unit design that will always be a broken unit design until someone completely changes how it works.
Voidray is a great unit to mass for new players as it flies and can shoot at everything.
Not everything is about e-sport.
"Respect the Void Ray"!
If I play with my friends (they have played like 10 hours of SC2 in their life) I always tell them, take Terran, build Marines -> Win.
Meh. Marines without stutterstep get wrecked badly by banelings.
EPT
But in no world will that happen. It is SEVERAL years now that toss makes some token win in a major tourney, once in a blue moon. So any kind of increase in win rate would be appreciated. But i think that ship has sailed. For older players to give everything they have only to make less than miminum wage is not likely, nor is an influx of new toss players. You have to be at the very top often at the bigger tourneys to make a reasonable income. 
