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Balance threads suck.. But, just like you need to have a beer and bitch about work on a Friday afternoon, sometimes you gotta have a place to post your unreasonable balance takes on TL. |
Competitive gaming is built on the foundation of fairness, in most sports/games (e.g. chess) that means both sides have the same units/pieces. SC2 is different in this regard, and therefore race balance, as unreasonably prohibited as the topic is, is critical to the success of individual players. When someone goes through an entire premier tournament like Katowice with a single map loss (by no coincident, only to another top Zerg), coupled with the fact that Zergs have been dominating major tournaments for a long time, it's a clear indication that balance is off, to the extent that competitive gaming is no longer meaningful at the top level.
Will we ever see a Terran player stronger than Maru and Clem? Personally I doubt it. And if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral, a reasonable person can be expected to question the validity of the balance. Indeed the Terran/Protoss communities have complained about this for years, but their voices are often dismissed as 'whine', reflecting the neglect of Blizzard, failure of the 'community' balance team, and head-in-the-sand attitudes of major forums/casters. If we know which race/player will win a tournament before it starts, it takes away the thrill of the audience and it's unfair to the participants.
Some examples of where I believe the game is most broken:
When SC2 was introduced, Terran's strength was in defense. It was the necessity of containing the Zerg economy before it generates endless swarms, and the talent of players like Maru, that drove Terran's transformation into an offensive race. But such play styles (with mobility) carry a high cost of multi-tasking. People have long acknowledged that Zerg has an advantage by being able to a-move. The point that's not often made, however, is that advantage is amplified into game-winning ones AT THE TIME OF ENGAGEMENT. By coordinating ling/bane run-bys, burrowed lurkers while fighting the Terran army head-on, Zerg abuse its strengths when it makes the most difference. Maru/Clem's ability to multi-task is frankly superhuman, but despite the appearance they literally cannot be at more than one place at a time. In addition, Terran's arsenal is quite limited, and Zerg has effective counters to both bio/mech styles that can be SWITCHED QUICKLY.
Infestors
How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? Let's not be tempted to conclude that such mistakes are what's causing the losses, because as we all know, humans make mistakes over a lightening fast game regardless of race. The point is that if someone can control infestors as well as Serral, he is BOUND to hit Terran at critical moments that decide the outcome of the game. It's a matter of WHEN, not IF. After all, Infestors are cloaked and incredibly powerful. Imagine if ghosts can immobilize/nearly-instantly deal game-winning AOE damage！
Lurkers
If tanks can cloak, siege/un-siege quickly, attack nearby units/with speed - they would be called lurkers. Lurkers are incredibly powerful as both offensive/defensive units, and can take out detection (missle turrets). Terran has to devote a disproportionate amount of attention to neutralize their threats.
One common argument is if Zerg is OP as a race, why aren't Reynor and Dark as dominant as Serral - but the fact is they already HAVE BEEN winning premier events, and Serral, being the best Zerg, is taking advantage of spellcasters to even greater extent. There's a human limit to what Terran players can do and it's simply impossible to deal with a master Zerg who can fully abuse OP units. Clearly not everyone can play Zerg like Serral, but the point is it's POSSIBLE, and Serral is using thIs advantage to dominate the game to an extent that is IMPOSSIBLE for other races to deal with.
Frankly if I were a pro Terran/Protoss player, I would boycott tournaments until balance is restored. Until then, expect Serral, Reynor, and Dark to win a lot more tournaments. While some Zergs may rejoice at this predictable future, bear in mind the game cannot survive on one-race alone, and we, the fans collectively as a whole from all three races, decide whether it has a future.
Finally, to those that will shout 'you aren't even a GM why should your opinion matter', I say, you don't have to be a chef to know your food stinks.
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France12894 Posts
On February 13 2024 01:33 Netto. wrote:
Serral > Maru
Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ
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On February 13 2024 01:38 Poopi wrote:Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ
Why haven't the Koreans gone to Finland to train? Are they stupid?
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On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
Will we ever see a Terran player stronger than Maru and Clem? Personally I doubt it. And if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral, a reasonable person can be expected to question the validity of the balance.
What does this even mean considering Clem beat Serral 3-1 at their previous meeting and Maru 2-0'd Serral in the Masters Colloseum group stage?
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France12894 Posts
On February 13 2024 01:43 StasisField wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 01:38 Poopi wrote:On February 13 2024 01:33 Netto. wrote:
Serral > Maru Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ Why haven't the Koreans gone to Finland to train? Are they stupid?
It's too cold there
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Ooooh, a good old balance whine! In before the ban!
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Legendary copium, I'm honesty impressed. At the very least, should draft a better writer to attempt this. You guys honestly do a disservice to Maru, whose legendary play stands on its own and doesn't need this kind of puerile whining. For TvZ of all match-ups.
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Maru copers overdosing.
Serral once again proved he's the GOAT.
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Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10.
Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years.
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okaaaaaaay I'm not even a Serral fan and this is silly
Zerg has arguably had periods of being OP over the past 3-4 years, but this is not one of them. TvZ is very balanced atm. Serral is just actually very good, and in any case he beat Maru in large part through effective planning and cheeses anyway. given different circumstances and minset Maru is capable of doing better or even beating Serral, at least in shorter series (Serral seems to have his number for longer series).
Clem and Maru will continue to do well, and there will continue to be lots of TvZ series at the highest level that go both ways.
obviously Protoss is another story
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The assumption that the skill level at the top has to be insanly narrow simply is false.
The best example for that is in the "perfectly balance" game from your example, chess:
Magnus Carlson dominates it for like 10 years now to a point where he still wins in competition, even if he Shows up late and misses half his time on the clock
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Author of this post is most likely a troll (at least I hope so), but small patch that requires Ghosts to be uncloaked to use snipe/EMP is a great idea I haven't thought about before.
It will probably fix the insane surviveabililty and volleys of stealth pewpewpews that forces Infestor usage (imagine, you HAVE to use unit that is directly countered by Ghosts to have a chance against them).
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I don't mind.
It freed up my Sunday because all the Protoss had been eliminated.
Incidentally, The Iron Claw is a really good movie.
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Classic terran balance whine post after Serral wins a tournaments
Only if you use the same energy when Clem won DH or when Maru won the GSL. But when the Zerg saviour Serral’s wins, but but OP!
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Man Serral played really well this tournament, let him have his victory. I would have rather have that Maru won but he did'nt no need to make up a bullshit post about how OP zerg always has been, there will always be a best current race. But this is the beauty of SC2 the difference is small between the races even for protoss who are probably the weakest race currently. Let us not be bitter and enjoy the fantastic games we had this tournament for the time we have left in SC2.
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I don't really get why it takes this much time to remove such a clearly poorly worded bait post. I will say that I appreciate Team Liquid over the years for hosting interesting conversations regarding the SC2 scene. Here's to at least quite a few more years of our game tournaments.
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A player that still refused to wall his third or put a planetary on forth after getting ling run by for 10 times doesn't deserve to win. Serral outplayed Maru plain and simple.
if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral
Clem and Maru both have weaknesses. Clem has best mechanical skills (macro/micro/multitasking) but his strategies and decision making are not on the level of Maru. Maru is the most experienced and smartest Terran but his micro and multitasking has fallen off from his best years. He's also known to have mental weakness on international stage.
On the other hand, try to name one weakness of Serral. Macro, micro, multitasking, strategies(build orders), tactics (army maneuver), mentality, as of now, he's top of the chart on everything. And he performs super consistently. To beat perfection, you have to be perfection yourself.
Clem always try to overwhelm his opponent by relentless attacking, which works most of the time because he's just that good, but against someone just that's just as mechanically skillful but much smarter like Serral, he hit a wall. But to Clem's credit, he's still the Terran that has the best record against Serral in recent years. He did beat Serral just a while ago in Atlanta.
Maru could match Serral in his deep bag of strategies and late game turtles, but when both player play standard long macro games, you can see his reaction and micro is just not on par any more. Clem could sometime overwhelm Serral with his relentless attacks, Maru used to be able to do the same before 2022, but now he just don't have that mechanical skill anymore. He has to rely on his turtling to have a chance in late game, but in G2 after getting caught by infestor too many times in mid-game and forgot to mine gas for a crucial minute late game, he lost by a razer thin edge.
The last two game Maru tried his greedy openings, but Serral recognized it and busted it open with timing attack in G3. You can see Maru's mentality was at the brink of collapse on that last game, and it showed as he was too eager to finish Serral off with his Mech push and refuse to wall his expansions, eventually died to endless run by.
At the end of the day, the better player won.
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Northern Ireland25648 Posts
You know that meme where there’s the guy on the gallows going ‘first time?’
As a Protoss player (well, now fan) this is how it feels having Terrans complain about balance.
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Northern Ireland25648 Posts
On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years.
I mean I really feel Aligulac needs a filter of some kind so you get a parallel ranking that just includes major/premier competition.
It’s still a great tool for lots of things but going to its ranking list only to see MaxPax as the second best player in the world, just feels intuitively off to me.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/MKfbplB.png)
