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France12903 Posts
On July 31 2025 06:00 TeamMamba wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then? Zergs were fine. The big 4 were just way better than the field skills wise. Then a couple nerf hit Zergs cause whiners whine too much. So the big 4 ended up just being Serral left. Goat stands tall on the mountain After the nerf then we saw a few patch Terran winning GSL such as TY (career gatekeeper) and cure
Yeah, zergs players became genetically superior in 2019 and then slowly lost their upper hand over the years (and patchs) 
Rogue went from losing to Neeb to no one surprise, to 3x WC winner
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On July 31 2025 06:15 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 06:00 TeamMamba wrote:On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then? Zergs were fine. The big 4 were just way better than the field skills wise. Then a couple nerf hit Zergs cause whiners whine too much. So the big 4 ended up just being Serral left. Goat stands tall on the mountain After the nerf then we saw a few patch Terran winning GSL such as TY (career gatekeeper) and cure Yeah, zergs players became genetically superior in 2019 and then slowly lost their upper hand over the years (and patchs) Rogue went from losing to Neeb to no one surprise, to 3x WC winner
It takes only small fluctuations to make a big difference. Serral is still doing Serral things, you’ve got Dark and Rogue in good form as well, but you’ve also got Reynor coming to his peak, as well as soO getting it together for his last big hurrah.
Even if the game was perfectly balanced, I’d kinda expect Zergs to have the best shot at the big prizes given how all of their big hitters were around and also playing well. Neither Terran or Toss had near that level of absolute top players in good shape.
That isn’t to say that balance was perfect either, but it wasn’t as egregiously bad as some make out. PvZ was pretty rough at the absolute elite, champ contender level for sure from what I recall. It’s been a while so can’t recall that particularly well.
I’d have to do some digging, I think both looking at win rates has its flaws in assess balance. There are gaps in skill obviously. Or you can end up in a situation where say, fewer Terrans are able to qualify or make playoffs in tournaments, but a handful of elite players can still fight against the balance and be good enough to make win rates look OK.
I think eyeballing it can definitely give a better sense of fairness over actual balance necessarily. Some styles or strats may look, or feel a bit bullshit when watching, but I think that’s a subtly different thIng. In WoL there was a time where Toss would basically lose lategame to BL/Infestor, but could keep the win rates pretty solid by just all-ins and their usual bag of tricks. I thought that meta fucking sucked, although the balance wasn’t horrific.
I think probably the best way to assess balance is look at players who are performing atypically well versus their career average in a particular period. Of course some may just be practicing harder, or things click mentally, but I think if you’ve got enough say B-tier Zergs suddenly doing really well and beating A-tier players from the other factions more regular, or getting the occasional S-tier scalp, then you probably have pretty compelling evidence
I haven’t checked this time, in the past when I have for other periods, sometimes with other races often this isn’t something I actually find to be the case.
As per usual I’m not rigorous at all in doing this, but usually it’s just movement amongst S class players, and maybe the odd A tier player having a good tournament.
So idk, say a bunch like Scarlett, DRG, Elazer, Lambo, Solar, SHIN et al. have particularly good years. Which I don’t massively recall being the case in 2019
I think Zerg performance in and around this period is as much down to the following than balance:
1. More top Zergs, or at least more in good shape.
2. Crucially, most top Zergs are not weak in either non-mirror
3. Mirror became quite stable over the years, and the top players are good mirror players.
4. Top players from other factions tend to have a weak matchup, not always within a meta but sometimes across their whole careers.
5. PvT balance can fluctuate wildly.
In combination, it makes things very stable. The S-tier Zergs are quite resistant to being sniped in mirrors by players outside that bracket. There’s a little fluctuation (i.e. Serral’s ZvP being actual god tier), but the Zerg hitters are at least very good at both ZvP and ZvT. There’s probably specific opponents they’d rather avoid, but they’re not really reliant on bracket luck at all in terms of which factions they draw anyway.
Their opponents however, very much are. Especially if we factor in that PvT balance can swing quite a bit. We’ve just seen it recently at EWC where maybe Clem had the toolkit to dethrone the Zerg Gods, but he got rinsed by Classic in quite a rough meta. To take nothing away from Classic, he showed lots of top-class games.
If we’re going way back to 2019 that kind of thing is still the case. Trap is in the middle of his earning the Trap AwardTM for 10 consecutive Code S Ro4s, and he’s an absolute PVT monster in a pretty good overall meta for Toss. He’s not awful at PvZ by any means, but he tends to struggle to beat the S tier players reliably. Cure is a TvP monster on the other hand, very solid at TvT but can’t really hang in TvZ with those cats. TY is a TvT killer, but his TvZ can only really hang with the top dogs when he gets GSL prep time, and his TvP is ropey. Maru is of course, Maru and doesn’t really have a particularly weak matchup, and his TvZ is best in class and absolutely capable of winning versus the best Zergs. Zest would show up with some pocket build that could snipe any Zerg.
Anyway, rambling aside if you want to see those pesky Zergs beaten, you probably want to see Maru survive the early rounds as he has the toolkit. For that to happen, in this particular period he ideally avoids Trap, who took him out a few times in this vague epoch. You don’t wanna play the best PvTer in a good meta for Toss. Maru’s TvT was solid, but if he gets taken down by the TvT monster TY who is way worse vZ, the hopes of a Terran champ drop. I can’t recall many tournaments this happening, but it still works as a hypothetical. You also don’t want Zest to face more than one Zerg, because once he’s shown his pocket builds he’s shown them.
To quote myself and WombaT’s LawTM from this time:
No Protoss can win a Premier weekender tournament if they have to play multiple Zergs in the playoffs in Bo5+ series
This held up for an absurd length of time. Go look it up :p Trap did eventually break it in Covid times, but it’s the only time it’s been done. herO’s Dreamhack Atlanta run was congruent with WombaT’s Law
You’ve other wee factors too. I think Innovation somewhat coasting once he got his WESG payday affected things a lot, precisely because he’s historically been one of the TvZ greats. I don’t think you see quite the same level of Zerg dominating the gold column in this period if you’ve Inno turning it on and playing at Maru’s level.
Again, to stress I’m not saying there’s zero balance issues with this period but the aforementioned are also pretty huge too.
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
Also lmao Serral’s Aligulac rating appears to have gone down after his EWC. The man has set bloody high standards apparently
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On July 31 2025 07:53 WombaT wrote:
Also lmao Serral’s Aligulac rating appears to have gone down after his EWC. The man has set bloody high standards apparently
Does that mean he was expected to win the tournament with fewer than 4 map losses?
TBF that is an expectation he set in 2024.
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On July 31 2025 11:30 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 07:53 WombaT wrote:
Also lmao Serral’s Aligulac rating appears to have gone down after his EWC. The man has set bloody high standards apparently Does that mean he was expected to win the tournament with fewer than 4 map losses? TBF that is an expectation he set in 2024.
I’m not 100% sure on Aligulac’s methodology, I think sets count as well as just winning matches, and I think matchup rating counts in head to heads beyond overall ranking.
Serral’s overall and vP is about 400 above Classic He’s about 400 in both above Reynor too. Which is about the gap from those two to players like Bunny and Trigger.
I’d imagine Serral’s ranking is just so high, and few others are even close (IMO they’d be closer with a full year-long circuit and Reynor locking in) he still loses points with match wins if he’s not sweeping.
As an aside, that is how bonkers Serral’s numbers are. Reynor had a very good tournament, only narrowly losing to Maru, and he almost beat (and should have beat Serral). Classic made the finals.
In terms of Aligulac ratings those guys are about as close to the likes of Bunny, Astrea and Trigger as they are to Serral. That’s how consistently good Serral is. They’re not badly ranked either, they’re 6 and 7th ranked.
Aligulac can’t answer the intangible questions like who can lock in for a big tournament, who’s clutch etc, and I think it gets a bit wonky when you end up with a scenario where some players grind a lot of weeklies, and others barely play, but it’s pretty good at ascertaining average level
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On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then?
I explained it already: There might have been perceived observations of imbalance. Either because casters/the community pushed the narrative, or because over years the idea that several ZvZ finals occurred must mean that Zerg was OP.
The map statistics do not indicate such a thing. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the case, but if we have 1000 maps that show an overall map win rate for Zerg of 51,32% it seems rather unlikely. There are other years (2021) where Zerg had a pretty big map win rate advantage over the others though.
I posted my methodology several times already, if you have an issue with it, a specific patch from 2019 that I should look at or want to add context to the data, let me know. This is turning absolutely childish.
@WombaT: Map statistics have their limits. Three good players playing above the imbalance, despite a race overall being slightly disfavored by balance, are able to tilt the map statistics into a favor still.
Or perhaps Toss was favored versus Terran in 2019 but 1 Toss pushed this favor into more perceived imbalance because of extremely good results. It isn't a perfect way to check for balance (what even is, lol). But if we have over 1k games per year, I think we have pretty reasonable proxy as to where balance was.
Your idea could work too, but I fear that our sample size is too small to check for players being above their average. For example 2021: Serral was doing not so well (in comparison to others still, but not in regards to his own average), Reynor pretty good. Could be worth a try, but the work could also be in vain because of the sample size.
On Serral and Aligulac: Serral lost 26 points versus Zerg, as he "only" won 3:2 against the 2nd best Zerg. The expected score was 3.5 to 1.5, meaning Serral is expected to win 1 out of 2 matches against Reynor at least 3:1 when the other goes 3:2. Utterly nuts.
Serral's vP went down 2 points, as he met the expected result versus Classic in the finals.
Clem now is nearly 200 points below him overall, yet Serral is still another 150 points below his all time high in 2024.
On July 31 2025 11:30 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 07:53 WombaT wrote:
Also lmao Serral’s Aligulac rating appears to have gone down after his EWC. The man has set bloody high standards apparently Does that mean he was expected to win the tournament with fewer than 4 map losses? TBF that is an expectation he set in 2024.
No... there was a cut after the group stage. 5.9 losses against these opponents were expected in the played match formats for the whole tournament.
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On July 31 2025 14:27 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then? I explained it already: There might have been perceived observations of imbalance. Either because casters/the community pushed the narrative, or because over years the idea that several ZvZ finals occurred must mean that Zerg was OP. The map statistics do not indicate such a thing. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the case, but if we have 1000 maps that show an overall map win rate for Zerg of 51,32% it seems rather unlikely. There are other years (2021) where Zerg had a pretty big map win rate advantage over the others though.
Sigh...
Numbers can help demonstrate imbalance, but they're not perfect. For example, here are the win percentages for ZvP from 2012 as per Liquipedia: Season 1 50.6% Season 2 52.7% Season 3 48.3% Season 4 52.8% Season 5 50.3% This looks pretty balanced, but we also know that 2012 encompasses peak Brood Lord/Infestor territory, so we can conclude from experience and context that it wasn't actually balanced despite what the numbers would suggest. Just one example of why numbers alone can't determine balance, and how they likely can't determine greatness, unless contextualised.
Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with.
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This discussion is why I love AoEStats.
For those who don't know it: The site essentially tracks all laddergames (and I think tournament games aswell) for AoE2 and breaks them down by race/civ. The great part is, you can also see WHEN a Civ wins - and how much.
So for example a Civ having a very high winrate at the 10min-mark and then dropping off shows that the Civ clearly has some kind of strong allin that it depends on. And when a Civ never manages to survive the Midgame, it clearly lacks some kind of early-game bonus or midgame-powerspike.
How this relates to SC2?
Take BL/Infestor. It probably wasn't particularly balanced (and it clearly wasn't fun, which might actually be the bigger problem): Zerg still could have a winrate of ~50% with it and be "balanced". Those two are not mutually exclusive. Just means you had to kill the Zerg before it gets to BL/Infestor.
So was Zerg "overpowered"? No, not really. Just very hard to beat in a specific game-situation. Which also isn't great, because it forced everyone to play around it. "Just don't let them get to that point" is just never a good foundation for balance
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France12903 Posts
On August 01 2025 04:44 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 14:27 PremoBeats wrote:On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then? I explained it already: There might have been perceived observations of imbalance. Either because casters/the community pushed the narrative, or because over years the idea that several ZvZ finals occurred must mean that Zerg was OP. The map statistics do not indicate such a thing. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the case, but if we have 1000 maps that show an overall map win rate for Zerg of 51,32% it seems rather unlikely. There are other years (2021) where Zerg had a pretty big map win rate advantage over the others though. Sigh... Show nested quote +Numbers can help demonstrate imbalance, but they're not perfect. For example, here are the win percentages for ZvP from 2012 as per Liquipedia: Season 1 50.6% Season 2 52.7% Season 3 48.3% Season 4 52.8% Season 5 50.3% This looks pretty balanced, but we also know that 2012 encompasses peak Brood Lord/Infestor territory, so we can conclude from experience and context that it wasn't actually balanced despite what the numbers would suggest. Just one example of why numbers alone can't determine balance, and how they likely can't determine greatness, unless contextualised. Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with.
He didn't answer the question, so my guess is that he didn't watch the games. He is just trying numbers for something he doesn't understand at all.
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Serral is the Goat unquestionably, but 2019 Zerg was OP in the hands of top tier pro gamers, curiously this actually favoured the weaker Zergs as they could try and mind-game Serral for wins, and Zerg being OP didn't help Serral that much vs P & T, he's the better player anyways.
I don't think overall winrates are a good metric for determining balance state for the top 20 players in the world.
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On August 01 2025 04:44 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 14:27 PremoBeats wrote:On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then? I explained it already: There might have been perceived observations of imbalance. Either because casters/the community pushed the narrative, or because over years the idea that several ZvZ finals occurred must mean that Zerg was OP. The map statistics do not indicate such a thing. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the case, but if we have 1000 maps that show an overall map win rate for Zerg of 51,32% it seems rather unlikely. There are other years (2021) where Zerg had a pretty big map win rate advantage over the others though. Sigh... Show nested quote +Numbers can help demonstrate imbalance, but they're not perfect. For example, here are the win percentages for ZvP from 2012 as per Liquipedia: Season 1 50.6% Season 2 52.7% Season 3 48.3% Season 4 52.8% Season 5 50.3% This looks pretty balanced, but we also know that 2012 encompasses peak Brood Lord/Infestor territory, so we can conclude from experience and context that it wasn't actually balanced despite what the numbers would suggest. Just one example of why numbers alone can't determine balance, and how they likely can't determine greatness, unless contextualised. Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with.
I’d said earlier that one potential way to assess a if a meta is imbalanced, is looking to see if a notable amount players play atypically above their general level, across a range of skills.
At least in this specific respect, peak BL/Infestor was way worse than 2019, at least to the eye test. Although I’m not necessarily arguing 2019 was a time of peak balance.
Balance or no balance aside, BL/Infestor was also a shit meta to play and watch as well. One of the game’s absolute worst periods stylistically if nothing else
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On August 01 2025 05:27 LostUsername100 wrote:
Serral is the Goat unquestionably, but 2019 Zerg was OP in the hands of top tier pro gamers, curiously this actually favoured the weaker Zergs as they could try and mind-game Serral for wins, and Zerg being OP didn't help Serral that much vs P & T, he's the better player anyways.
I don't think overall winrates are a good metric for determining balance state for the top 20 players in the world.
Yeah, it may seem counter-intuitive but you may be right there.
I’d long pondered why, at least before he went monster 2018, Maru would be competitive, often the last man standing for Terran when Terran was in a bad period, but then didn’t turn that into dominance when Terran was strong.
I must say I’ve never really found an answer to that question haha, my initial angle was more Terrans and him getting TvTed out more, but results didn’t really bear that out.
It can be a stylistic thing as well I guess. I mean if say, mech becomes strong all of a sudden and you’re not really a mech person, you benefit way less
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On August 01 2025 04:44 MJG wrote:
Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with.
As Balnazza already said:
"It probably wasn't particularly balanced (and it clearly wasn't fun, which might actually be the bigger problem): Zerg still could have a winrate of ~50% with it and be "balanced". Those two are not mutually exclusive. Just means you had to kill the Zerg before it gets to BL/Infestor."
So perhaps Toss/Terran had other imbalances in the early and mid game to counter it, which overall in hundreds of games made Zerg equaled out.
So no, I am not dangerously close to anything, except presenting a statistic that you think is wrong because of a perceived and supposed imbalance.
Have you had time to think about potential explanations?
Balance does not mean that MJG or Poopi perceive every part aspect of the game as fair/balanced/enjoyable to watch. StarCraft 2 has always been a game of imbalances that balance each other out (sometimes better, sometimes worse). This is implemented by the design of three utterly mechanically different races.
On August 01 2025 05:09 Poopi wrote:
He didn't answer the question, so my guess is that he didn't watch the games. He is just trying numbers for something he doesn't understand at all.
If I watched SC2 in 2010, 2014, 2019 or now is completely irrelevant to the question at hand. You make it sound like the numbers would be different if I did or did not watch the game back then.
But as I was asked the same question by johnny and did answer him in a thread that you also engage in, I thought you already knew: I watched SC2 upon release but never played it competitively. I even said that I had the same take on Zerg and 2019 too, before finishing the analysis.
As for me not understanding the numbers: I explained my methodology and asked you already, where you think the approach is wrong. You didn't answer.
If you can't that is fine, but as I said in my previous reply to you: Your approach in this is absolutely childish. Either correct my methodology or present a better way to check for balance.
Simply saying "I am right, because it is obvious" doesn't cut it, as the numbers don't lie and contextual explanations are more than sufficient.
On August 01 2025 05:27 LostUsername100 wrote:
I don't think overall winrates are a good metric for determining balance state for the top 20 players in the world.
I agree. That is why I looked at only the map statistics of the top tournaments. This is a cohort of only the best of the world participating. I explained my methodology before:
1. I looked only at maps played at S-tier-tournaments (not perfect, but good enough)
2. I excluded region locked tournaments as there are times when one or two players (even of the same race) would heavily distort these tournaments and the best of the world did for years not participate
3. I excluded tournaments like GPC 2019 Season 1 as one good player versus several weaker players heavily distorts the results
4. I only accepted years with 500 played maps for a minimum sample size
5. I summed up all TvZs, ZvPs and PvTs and built an average for each race
I already explained that one or two good players might be able to push an imbalance even further (let's say Toss is favored versus Terran 56:44 and Trap is even better than average with no Terran to compensate, we could get a final result of 57:43) or counter them, but these are minor draw backs, as the sample size of hundreds of games counters such outliers quite well. Overall, the methodology is fine from my point of view.
And so far, no one actually pointed out any methodological flaws or made constructive feedback that undermines the analysis' value.
Map win rates aren't perfect either, but they're the cleanest objective measure we have - unless someone can suggest a better metric (WombaT's approach sounds fine, but has drawbacks as well).
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United States1891 Posts
On August 01 2025 14:10 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2025 04:44 MJG wrote:
Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with. As Balnazza already said: "It probably wasn't particularly balanced (and it clearly wasn't fun, which might actually be the bigger problem): Zerg still could have a winrate of ~50% with it and be "balanced". Those two are not mutually exclusive. Just means you had to kill the Zerg before it gets to BL/Infestor." So perhaps Toss/Terran had other imbalances in the early and mid game to counter it, which overall in hundreds of games made Zerg equaled out. So no, I am not dangerously close to anything, except presenting a statistic that you think is wrong because of a perceived and supposed imbalance. Have you had time to think about potential explanations? Balance does not mean that MJG or Poopi perceive every part aspect of the game as fair/balanced/enjoyable to watch. StarCraft 2 has always been a game of imbalances that balance each other out (sometimes better, sometimes worse). This is implemented by the design of three utterly mechanically different races. Show nested quote +On August 01 2025 05:09 Poopi wrote:
He didn't answer the question, so my guess is that he didn't watch the games. He is just trying numbers for something he doesn't understand at all. If I watched SC2 in 2010, 2014, 2019 or now is completely irrelevant to the question at hand. You make it sound like the numbers would be different if I did or did not watch the game back then. But as I was asked the same question by johnny and did answer him in a thread that you also engage in, I thought you already knew: I watched SC2 upon release but never played it competitively. I even said that I had the same take on Zerg and 2019 too, before finishing the analysis. As for me not understanding the numbers: I explained my methodology and asked you already, where you think the approach is wrong. You didn't answer. If you can't that is fine, but as I said in my previous reply to you: Your approach in this is absolutely childish. Either correct my methodology or present a better way to check for balance. Simply saying "I am right, because it is obvious" doesn't cut it, as the numbers don't lie and contextual explanations are more than sufficient. Show nested quote +On August 01 2025 05:27 LostUsername100 wrote:
I don't think overall winrates are a good metric for determining balance state for the top 20 players in the world. I agree. That is why I looked at only the map statistics of the top tournaments. This is a cohort of only the best of the world participating. I explained my methodology before: 1. I looked only at maps played at S-tier-tournaments (not perfect, but good enough) 2. I excluded region locked tournaments as there are times when one or two players (even of the same race) would heavily distort these tournaments and the best of the world did for years not participate 3. I excluded tournaments like GPC 2019 Season 1 as one good player versus several weaker players heavily distorts the results 4. I only accepted years with 500 played maps for a minimum sample size 5. I summed up all TvZs, ZvPs and PvTs and built an average for each race I already explained that one or two good players might be able to push an imbalance even further (let's say Toss is favored versus Terran 56:44 and Trap is even better than average with no Terran to compensate, we could get a final result of 57:43) or counter them, but these are minor draw backs, as the sample size of hundreds of games counters such outliers quite well. Overall, the methodology is fine from my point of view. And so far, no one actually pointed out any methodological flaws or made constructive feedback that undermines the analysis' value. Map win rates aren't perfect either, but they're the cleanest objective measure we have - unless someone can suggest a better metric (WombaT's approach sounds fine, but has drawbacks as well).
Another interesting way to measure "balance" (at least in years where there was a team league) is seeing which map has the most mirror matches.
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/exp.png)
soO's favorite map, expedition lost, is his favorite because of how op it was for zergs. As you can see, expedition lost played host to a ton of ZvZ's because teams didn't want to blindly send a player of another race vs a zerg (which was a highly likely outcome).
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Such an analysis could up the resolution for sure. But the overall win rate across all maps still ends up balanced.
One map might work better for one race, but then against those races it is a sure ban in a Bo5 or teams adapt by only sending the strong race onto that map like you pointed out.
Interesting nevertheless.
Funny enough, even a map that is considered OP for Zerg, the race only had a 54,7% win rate versus Terran and a 50,6% win rate versus Toss, if I read that screenshot correctly.
Toss' "imbalance" over Terran at least seems higher than ZvT.
I don't know the data pool, so the rates could be different at pro play versus lower tiers.
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On August 01 2025 04:44 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On July 31 2025 14:27 PremoBeats wrote:On July 31 2025 05:14 Poopi wrote:
Still trying to prove zerg wasn’t OP in 2019?
Did you even watch the game back then? I explained it already: There might have been perceived observations of imbalance. Either because casters/the community pushed the narrative, or because over years the idea that several ZvZ finals occurred must mean that Zerg was OP. The map statistics do not indicate such a thing. That doesn't mean that it wasn't the case, but if we have 1000 maps that show an overall map win rate for Zerg of 51,32% it seems rather unlikely. There are other years (2021) where Zerg had a pretty big map win rate advantage over the others though. Sigh... Show nested quote +Numbers can help demonstrate imbalance, but they're not perfect. For example, here are the win percentages for ZvP from 2012 as per Liquipedia: Season 1 50.6% Season 2 52.7% Season 3 48.3% Season 4 52.8% Season 5 50.3% This looks pretty balanced, but we also know that 2012 encompasses peak Brood Lord/Infestor territory, so we can conclude from experience and context that it wasn't actually balanced despite what the numbers would suggest. Just one example of why numbers alone can't determine balance, and how they likely can't determine greatness, unless contextualised. Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with.
BL / infestor was annoying to watch and play against but it wasn’t a guarantee win. It just gives Zergs a higher percentage to win once they got to that composition. Same as Terran’s mass raven or Protoss hots early blink all in with mothership.
Similar to other death ball. I rather play against BL / infestor than that cancer mass raven era or hots turtle mech or swarm host.
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United States1891 Posts
On August 01 2025 22:45 PremoBeats wrote:
Such an analysis could up the resolution for sure. But the overall win rate across all maps still ends up balanced.
One map might work better for one race, but then against those races it is a sure ban in a Bo5 or teams adapt by only sending the strong race onto that map like you pointed out.
Interesting nevertheless.
Funny enough, even a map that is considered OP for Zerg, the race only had a 54,7% win rate versus Terran and a 50,6% win rate versus Toss, if I read that screenshot correctly.
Toss' "imbalance" over Terran at least seems higher than ZvT.
I don't know the data pool, so the rates could be different at pro play versus lower tiers.
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/prl.png)
These are the results from Proleague. It's very clear that teams were hesitant to throw out protoss and terran players knowing there was a very high chance they'd hit a zerg. The map being Z favored doesn't align with the winrates for pvz and tvz, but when P and T players did appear on expedition lost, they were great in that matchup or had a plan ready for a zerg.
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And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real.
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On August 02 2025 05:23 ejozl wrote:
And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real.
Can you decide on a point? It is either "Maru profits massively from Terran being a race with less World Class players than Zerg" or "Zerg imba buhuu, poor Protoss"
It might surprise you, but Chrono Boost changes do not particularly affect who is the GOAT, the Zerg player Serral or the Terran player Maru...
Also Maru for 2025 seems like a stretch. Yes he won Dallas, but beyond that Clem seems the much more plausible pick for best Terran so far...
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EPT
