Solar: After patch, Protoss became the strongest.

On October 21 2023 09:46 THERIDDLER wrote:
I mean anyone in their right minds would see the current protoss player pool is much worse than the other 2 races (except for protoss players ofc). This is quite likely in a game with a small player pool thats shrinking over the years.

On October 21 2023 09:46 THERIDDLER wrote:
I mean anyone in their right minds would see the current protoss player pool is much worse than the other 2 races (except for protoss players ofc). This is quite likely in a game with a small player pool thats shrinking over the years.

On October 21 2023 15:36 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
So sOs just fell off a lot, Stats is rusty from the military, Classic is still rusty from the military, herO wasn't a super solid player, and Trap was just bad at PvZ?

Stats Classic herO are a little below Maru Ty Innovation in terms of legacy, but they're about the level of Ty Innovation in terms of LotV. They're not quite as good as Rogue Dark Solar but they're definitely the level of Dark Solar.

I don't think the reason Protoss struggled vs top zergs in Bo7 is because the top Protosses were just all bad at PvZ compared to their PvT and PvP.

The problem with the argument of "current players clearly aren't as good" is that imbalance could be the reason why they aren't doing as good.

On October 22 2023 00:10 Herringbone wrote:


So the reason that the recent qualifiers for Winter are 19 Protoss, 7 Terran, and 6 zerg is just random?

On October 22 2023 03:09 Poopi wrote:

Can’t this argument also be used to justify the low number of « premier tournament wins » from P since there are far more top Z/T than P after the departures of the top KR Protoss?

On October 22 2023 01:06 tigera6 wrote:
If you make a team match with each race having their top 5 players, I am pretty sure Zerg and Terran will smash the Protoss race. Now if you remove 2 top players from each of Zerg and Terran race, then it will suddenly looked like a balance game imo.

On October 22 2023 20:01 Elantris wrote:


Remove top 2 from zerg and terran but not protoss? Are you serious?

On October 22 2023 00:10 Herringbone wrote:


So the reason that the recent qualifiers for Winter are 19 Protoss, 7 Terran, and 6 zerg is just random?

On October 22 2023 03:09 Poopi wrote:

Can’t this argument also be used to justify the low number of « premier tournament wins » from P since there are far more top Z/T than P after the departures of the top KR Protoss?

On October 23 2023 02:05 Poopi wrote:
In LotV they won more money than Terran almost every year except 2023 (and maybe 2022? Not sure) afaik. Since Zerg was slightly OP in 17-18 and broken in 2019, their players won far more money than the other two races, but otherwise, Protoss was doing pretty fine in LotV imo.

On October 22 2023 21:00 tigera6 wrote:

Yeah, Terran lineup would be Clem-Byun-Gumiho-Bunny-Oliveira
Zerg lineup would be Solar-Dark/Reynor-Ragrarok-DRG-Elazer/Scarlett/Lambo
Protoss would be MaxPax-herO-Classic-Creator-Showtime/Astrea
I think it would be a competitive match in that case, after removing Maru-Cure and Serral-Reynor/Dark.

On October 23 2023 02:33 Elantris wrote:


How stupid you need to be to think that this is okay? Maybe we should remove top10 zergs from bl/inf era and pretend that game was balanced back then?

the current protoss player pool is much worse than the other 2 races

The next year will be dope as the first three tosses are due to finish their military service.

On October 23 2023 03:06 tigera6 wrote:

Its just an illustration of how Protoss is lacking talent at the very top level, chill out. So when Dark leave for military, Rogue not coming back and Serral potentially retire, are you going to buff Zerg because they only have Reynor left? And then when Cure, then Maru leave for military does Terran need a buff? Its pretty dumb to balance around the very top level tournament result because of how players have to leave for military.

Protoss would be in a fine place had Trap/Zest/Parting/Zoun still playing today, it has little to do with balance. Trap won multiple Dreamhack title, making a couple GSL Final, Zest made 2 IEM Final and won a Super Tournament, Parting and Zoun making deep run in GSL/Super Tournament. Were they playing in a different era than the current one? Current Protoss has herO who play a wild and unstable style, Classic who play solid but not exceptional in most way, and MaxPax who refuse to play offline tournament. There is a gap in talent depth at the moment, and the balance cant really fix that.

On October 23 2023 02:33 Elantris wrote:


How stupid you need to be to think that this is okay? Maybe we should remove top10 zergs from bl/inf era and pretend that game was balanced back then?

On October 23 2023 03:06 tigera6 wrote:

Its just an illustration of how Protoss is lacking talent at the very top level, chill out. So when Dark leave for military, Rogue not coming back and Serral potentially retire, are you going to buff Zerg because they only have Reynor left? And then when Cure, then Maru leave for military does Terran need a buff? Its pretty dumb to balance around the very top level tournament result because of how players have to leave for military.

Protoss would be in a fine place had Trap/Zest/Parting/Zoun still playing today, it has little to do with balance. Trap won multiple Dreamhack title, making a couple GSL Final, Zest made 2 IEM Final and won a Super Tournament, Parting and Zoun making deep run in GSL/Super Tournament. Were they playing in a different era than the current one? Current Protoss has herO who play a wild and unstable style, Classic who play solid but not exceptional in most way, and MaxPax who refuse to play offline tournament. There is a gap in talent depth at the moment, and the balance cant really fix that.

On October 21 2023 16:44 JustTTimberlake wrote:
Solar 2-1 Classic , Solar 2-1 herO @ KSL this morning, definetely protoss op after patch

On October 23 2023 06:14 sidasf wrote:


Yeah meanwhile Protoss 41% on GM ladder and Zerg 23%.

It's called getting outplayed.

On October 23 2023 05:50 Drahkn wrote:




Protoss is not lacking talent...... we have many super strong Protoss new and old and some have dominated in the past but cannot compete consistently anymore players like Maxpax/Creator herO and Classic to name a few are ELITE RTS players. Players like showtime astrea also are very strong but can't even hold a candle to the top players

On October 23 2023 22:42 geokilla wrote:

Creator and Classic are not elite in my opinion. Only Maxpax and maybe herO. We have many more Terran and Zerg players who I would classify as elite.

On October 23 2023 22:58 Beelzebub1 wrote:


Yea, I agree with this. Odd how it seems to parallel BW in a way where you have a couple of elite level Zerg and Terran players but Protoss had what, Bisu? Stork to a lesser extent? Just strange to me that Protoss underperforms at the highest level in BW and SC2, maybe the philosophy behind, "Fewer units but very strong" is just inherently harder to balance.

On October 24 2023 11:17 Kyadytim wrote:
It's really hard to call the design philosophy behind Protoss "fewer units but strong," when the shared theme of Protoss's struggles across the two games is that Zealot and Dragoons and Zealots and Stalkers (with Sentry support) get absolutely wrecked in a straight up fight by basically anything Terran and Zerg care to field against it, especially before the relevant Zealot speed upgrade comes online. I'd say that the flawed design philosophy behind Protoss is a core of inferior mass producible units supported by comparatively slow, fragile, and generally vulnerable tech units that are responsible for most of the army's damage output.

There's also a common thread of poor synergy between Zealots and Dragoons, Stalkers, or Shield Batteries for defending against early aggression. I'll leave the details of why putting low dps ranged units or shield batteries behind Zealots doesn't do much of anything against ranged units with higher move speed as an exercise for the reader.

It's definitely harder to balance. I'm not super up to date on what SC2's current meta looks like, but I'm aware that PvT Protoss has some significant weaknesses to early game attacks. A thread on analysis of Brood War games found that Protoss has significant vulnerability to timing attacks against both Zerg and Terran in that game. If SC2 PvZ also has a similar timing attack window where Protoss dies a lot, that's 4 out of 4 for Protoss having the same general vulnerability in non-mirror matchups.

On October 23 2023 03:06 tigera6 wrote:

So when Dark leave for military, Rogue not coming back and Serral potentially retire, are you going to buff Zerg because they only have Reynor left?

On October 25 2023 22:19 Nebuchad wrote:
Why would Reynor not deserve to play at top level because some other zergs have retired, what an incredibly silly thing to believe

On October 22 2023 00:19 covetousrat wrote:
Whatever race you play will always be the weakest. "Ted"

On October 25 2023 22:35 ZeroByte13 wrote:
How being the only top zerg left means that Reynor cannot play at top level anymore? o_O

In this hypothetical situation lack of top-zergs and big zerg wins would mean literally that - lack of top-players and not their race being weak gameplay-wise?

If all current terran pro-players will leave the scene tomorrow, would you say we need to buff terrans to a point when they (now comprised of just GM guys) win 33% of tournaments?

On October 25 2023 22:45 Nebuchad wrote:
Wow you also post in this fashion in other threads that's amazing

On October 25 2023 22:45 Nebuchad wrote:
"If all current terran pro-players will leave the scene tomorrow, would you say we need to buff terrans to a point when they (now comprised of just GM guys) win 33% of tournaments?"

=> Yes.

On October 25 2023 22:51 ZeroByte13 wrote:
I'm sorry, I see an unreasonable argument, I comment on it.
Not my fault really that such arguments are often yours, 'cause you also post in the same manner in all topics - but it's kinda expected from you by now, really. It's more sad than amazing but oh well.

I mean, just look at this...

On October 25 2023 23:08 ZeroByte13 wrote:
In that tigera6 post they didn't say Reynor is underperforming.
Only that he'd remain the only strong zerg if all other strong zerg would leave.

And you commented on this quote - "Why would Reynor not deserve to play at top level because some other zergs have retired"

How Reynor remaining the only strong zerg (tigera6's scenario you commented on) means that he "doesn't deserve to play at top level"? He'd actually start winning even more 'cause he often loses to other strong zergs.

On October 25 2023 22:39 The_Red_Viper wrote:

To the contrary, it's silly to believe anyone "deserves" to be at the very top just because they are the best that is left for a particular faction in a game. In an imaginary world where every protoss player better than yourself stops playing, does sc2 need to be balanced around your current skill level so there is a protoss player winning tournaments too?
I honestly do not understand the underlying logic behind this view, where does the idea come from that every race needs to have the same outcomes no matter what? Each race should give equally skilled players fair chances to beat each other, that is balance, not the outcome we observe in any situation.

On October 26 2023 00:57 The_Red_Viper wrote:


It's a hypotehtical to test your foundational logic, which seems to be: each race needs to produce the same outcomes in tournaments in general, any other context doesn't matter. If that isn't your foundation, then i'd like to hear an addition to it, but it seems to be. And that foundation is easily 'attackable' by proposing something like i did, imagining a world where your current skill as protoss would suddenly become the best protoss gameplay in the world. It will never happen, but the point isn't that it will or won't, it's to test your stance. Telling me it's not realistic is just a copout, because you probably do not want to bite the bullet that the game should be balanced around yourself, if you are truly the best protoss has to offer (as in, your master or whatever skill level).
My foundational pov is different, it's that balance is achieved not by strictly looking at an outcome in a scenario, but by creating a dynamic in which equally skilled players can beat each other about 50% of the time. There is a necessity for "equally skilled players" in this pov, which seems to be missing in yours completely.
As i said, i'd like to hear what the logic behind this pov of yours even is, it seems to think that each faction has some right to be equally represented in tournaments, but why? That's just as arbitrary as thinking a player of each country needs to be represented in tournaments. The only opportunity which needs to exist is that if one is skilled enough, one should be able to win with any race, coming from wherever, but playing a ratio game for the sake of itself is the "silly" thing here.

Also in regards to your analogy (kinda weird one, doesn't seem to track other than you saying both scenarios are silly because unlikely), yes if democracy would consistently produce outcomes one thinks are morally wrong, then it could be argued to be a bad system under a certain lens, but i guess this is neither here nor there.

On October 26 2023 07:38 The_Red_Viper wrote:


It is a ridiculous output because the foundational concept of yours is highly flawed, that is the point of the hypothetical, to showcase that. And it does.

Well no, i personally am not able to do that, i am saying one can try to analyse the outcomes we get on more levels than just the winrates of a race at the very highest level. That's more complex, but also the only way to actually balance a game around the only reasonable concept there is: Players of equal skill should win about 50% of the time against each other.
You project things onto this which simply aren't part of the argument, it obviously isn't as simple as looking at serral and deciding he has to win vs anyone just because of his status, a serral can play worse than an opponent too. It's tricky to analyse what 'playing worse' means, how to quantify and qualify it, but that has to be the core question, not if protoss, zerg and terran are winning about the same amount of tournaments for the sake of it. Especially not in an environment which is far from ideal, with a playerbase which gets smaller and smaller, no young talent coming to replace the old guard, giving it new life through their own hunger for glory. In a healthy competitive environment your pov is close enough to mine that it's fine, but it's not same and it doesn't work when there is no natural way to distribute skills equally among the top players any longer (not that this is ever perfectly working, but close enough).
You are right though, we went over this already and you don't really seem to resonate with this, oh well our discussion here won't change anything about the reality of our situation anyway.

On October 26 2023 05:09 Charoisaur wrote:

For something that has "no counters" we see it succeed surprisingly rare at the top level

On October 25 2023 22:12 besanmilk wrote:
I don't think the reason Protoss struggled vs top zergs in Bo7 is because the top Protosses were just all bad at PvZ compared to their PvT and PvP.

On October 26 2023 19:38 Charoisaur wrote:

Stats won 0 premier tournaments in HotS, 5 in LotV.
Trap won 1 premier tournament in HotS, 6 in LotV.

On October 26 2023 20:59 Poopi wrote:

Zest was even better in LotV than HotS imo, he had great results.
sOs is the only protoss who performed significantly worse in LotV than HotS, and that is explained easily by the fact that LotV is more reliant on good mechanics, whereas sOs skillset was mostly mindgames and strategy, with relatively weak mechanics. He is kind of GuMiho but as protoss, or Rogue who is a trickster but Rogue still had good mechanics.

GuMiho managed to win a GSL in LotV, but iirc he knew his mechanics were bad, so he specifically trained them by relearning stuff (similarly to how a basketball player could try a more improved way to shoot, which would make him perform worse for some time, until he gets better again), and managed to get decent results through that process.
It's very probable sOs had won enough World Championships not to bother doing that, he might have found more success if he tried, but we'll never know
Source for GuMiho: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIba0FInuOs starts around 2mn30, he talks about lowering his mouse speed, trying to stop pressing "junk" hotkeys etc. Basically admit that he was not as gifted mechanically as players like INno or ByuN, and had to adapt

On October 27 2023 00:38 Athenau wrote:
Oh, are we back to the "top zergs are better" again?

On October 27 2023 00:27 Balnazza wrote:
What you fail to take into account is time/age. Players like Serral or Reynor didn't pop up because Zerg suddenly got so much better, but because these players only started playing full-time in LotV. Just a reminder: Two years before Serral crushed the world at Blizzcon, we all celebrated Elazer as THE foreign hope as the first foreigner to reach the Semifinals at the WCS Grand Finals. But he never quite reached that level again, which makes it more of an outliner.

Currently, for LotV, these are the standings for Races in Premier tournaments:
Race: 1st place - 2th place - Number of Finals reached - Number of Players

Zerg: 62 - 53 - 115 - 16
Terran: 35 - 31 - 66 - 16
Protoss: 31 - 44 - 75 - 17

Of course not all Premier events are equally important, but this is just as a basis.
First of all, it does seem like Protoss struggle to close out finals, since it is the only race that lost more finals than it won. Protoss also has the fewest wins, even though they have more final-appearances than terran. So maybe Protoss do struggle in Bo7.

But this also shows that Protoss isn't fundamentally unbalanced compared to the other two - because in that case, Protoss wouldn't have reached so many finals.
Also interestingly to note: Zerg has much more wins, but more than half of these are just Serral, Reynor and Rogue. Three out of the four players who even won 10 or more Premier events in LotV (the fourth one being Maru ofc). So it is not like Zerg is dominant across the board, these three are just far ahead of the curve. Dark trails a bit behind and do you know who the fifth most succesful Zerg in LotV is after that? Scarlett/Solar. Not exactly world-class material. The fifth best (performing) Terran would be Cure btw, the fifth best Protoss herO.

I would argue from that what I've been saying all along: Zerg doesn't have much depth in its lineup, but is extremly blessed on the very top. Protoss and Terran have deeper lineups, but struggle to inch out at the top. Which by a stastistic based on only 128 tournaments feels very realistic to base more on skill than on balance

On October 27 2023 10:04 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:I do also believe that Zest/sOs struggling in LotV indicates Protoss has weakened in some ways.

On October 27 2023 11:06 Gescom wrote:


That, or they turned 30+! ;}

On October 28 2023 07:09 Balnazza wrote:


In these two events Protoss is doing particularly bad, yes. Overall the statistic I presented is a bit overblown because for years the WCS NA was counting as a Premier event, so Neeb inflated the number of wins. Though again, is Neeb really THAT much better than Scarlett (for example) to counter-balance a race that supposedly is severly underpowered?
But I guess it would be fun to expand the concept, like adding all the regionals to the statistic. I kinda feel like Zerg would feel a bit underwhelming, considering the regional dominance of players like Special or Has.

On October 28 2023 11:50 CicadaSC wrote:

Neeb was like a savant. Shy, kind of awkward but damn good at what he does. When Protoss was in a good spot, he was winning 3/4 regionals and winning in Korea. His lack of results thereafter is simply a result of Protoss being too weak. He used to be notorious for not commenting on balance but I remember him breaking at one point and admitting Zerg was OP during an interview.

On October 28 2023 16:55 ejozl wrote:
The mechanical aspect of the game is always overstated.

The last time Protoss was the leading race on aligulac, was when Rain played in HotS and PartinG was on it right before that. This is because at this time Protoss was the macro race, they won the majority of late games.

At the absolute top level it is less about mechanics and more about knowing your opponent, because at this stage you run into the same dudes all the time. The more you play, the more the players figure each other out. And so it is logical that the late game race is heavily rewarded by this, because you can only throw so many spanners in the work.
At this stage of LotV there are also less patches and map pool changes, so it only gets easier.