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Please try to keep the discussion civil. And while I can't ask everyone to write a huge essay like tree.hugger, try to write out your opinions in a substantive, well-thought way. |
On September 09 2011 13:04 kofman wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 12:34 -y0shi- wrote:On September 09 2011 12:17 kofman wrote:On September 09 2011 09:13 robopork wrote:On September 09 2011 08:10 kofman wrote: Wow, its sad to see even the TL admins become protoss whiners.
Seriously, just because your in love with MC, doesn't mean that Puma sucks, like you say in the article. The article by Treehugger makes me sick, it looks like something taken out of the bnet forums. Please, go cry somewhere else.
"Protoss have tried everything at their disposal." Really? This just shows how stupid this article is. I don't think anyone will disagree when I say that motherships haven't been explored nearly enough. They have the amazing ability to vortex every unit into a tiny little space, and yet, no one has experimented with it. I'm just amazed at how this piece of complete bullshit was able to make it to the front page of TL. Blizzard said explicitly that the mothership wasn't even intended for competitive play, it's a piece of candy for casual gamers. "There are some units that just aren't going to be used at "high" levels of play and the Mothership is probably one of them. We currently don't have any plans to change this unit." Cited from the community manager in this b.net forum: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1020823601?page=4#71I'm amazed at how resiliant people like you are to cold, hard, numerical facts. http://i.imgur.com/bdP2e.pngIf one of the races remains as under powered and dysfunctional as P is now and as Z was six months ago for very long sc2 will lose it's credibility as an esport. Pull your head out of your ass and be a team player, we need to care more about the game than about our individual races or the pro's who play them. Blizzard doesn't know what its talking about. The mothership can be potentailly the most powerful unit in the game, but since no one wants to take the effort to find out, no one tries it out. Protoss has a 47% winrate, which yes, is not perfect, but its not as bad as you say it is. Seriously 47% is just 3 percentage points away from 50%. I love how you just assume no one has tried the mothersahip yet... But even then, even on paper, what exactly does it have to offer? its slow, cloke is worthless in late pvt, vortex doesnt do too much (and dont get me started on even getting it close enough to actually get a vortex off) and its sooo expensive. Seriously. YOu hardly need Stargates in PvT, so thats 150/150 + 300/200 + 400/400. 850/750 + no worker production + its really hard to even survive that transition. I absolutly agree with this article but Im still listening to people who argue and may have a point. But when you say protoss should use the mothership more often its obvious youre grasping at straws... Vikings > Protoss Air, is anyone going to argue about that? Vikings are not that expensive and can be mass produced easily and then there are stimmed marines. Vikings also kill Colossi and come from the same building as medivacs so they can be produced almost instantly when needed. If Vikings counter you anyways, why not just build colossi? And Carriers are just big flying money dumps, they take forever to build and when there is a bioball smashing in your front door, would you want a last second colossi or a last second carrier? Argue all you want but the mothership?! That seems like a rather desperate attempt... Why not make HT's and not collosi, and then switch over to mothership? vortex + storm seems very powerful to me, but no one tries it. 850/750 is not an insurmountable amount in the lategame. What I'm saying is that motherships should see more use in 200 food situations, where you are maxed and have a bunch of money saved up.
the problem for protoss is, to get to 200/200 situation you would need to survive the 9 minutes 1/1/1 or 2 base roach/ling all in first
and even then infestors and ghosts completely rape mothership, not sure which one is funnier, a neural-ed mothership or emp-ed one
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On September 09 2011 06:01 OlorinTheWise wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 05:25 Olinim wrote: "I tentatively suggest that too much weight is being placed on GSL results when making deductions concerning balance." "It's still wrong to ignore other tournament results." I just don't think thats true and generally it's completely fine to ignore other tournament results, especially when there are no koreans in it:/. Forgive me if you weren't suggesting that IPL2 has relevance regarding balance.
While the GSL has the highest level of play in StarCraft 2, it also has far too few games to make a definitive analysis on the balance of the game. Until such a time as there is a regular Proleague format; the Korean scene as a whole, and thus the balance of the game at the highest level, cannot be easily evaluated. There are simply far too few games being played to make a truly accurate assessment. Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 05:30 Olinim wrote: By your logic, are there any patches that should have gone through? Has there ever been a point where a strat was demonstrated to be unbeatable with supposed perfect play? 5 rax reaper...maybe. Your view simply isn't realistic, and blizzard disagrees with you since apparently they do think bunker rushes are op, considering the nerf. Hopefully they will not take a page from your book of insanity and look further into the absolute nonsense that is the 1/1/1 :/. This simply isn't fair to protoss players, the results, the games, and the opinions of other pros show that. And yes MC shouldn't have to play perfectly to beat Puma's sloppy 1/1/1 on XNC that he didn't even do very well, because NO ONE plays perfectly. The Reaper wasn't nerfed because of the 5-Rax reaper build being imbalanced in 1v1, it was nerfed because of how imbalanced Reaper/Speedling was in 2v2. I am 100% sure blizzard isn't retarded enough to balance around 2v2
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Socke was solid for the millionth tournament in a row.
I laughed. Then I cried. You need a big tournament win sometime Socke. T^T
On September 09 2011 13:42 Soulish wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 06:01 OlorinTheWise wrote:On September 09 2011 05:25 Olinim wrote: "I tentatively suggest that too much weight is being placed on GSL results when making deductions concerning balance." "It's still wrong to ignore other tournament results." I just don't think thats true and generally it's completely fine to ignore other tournament results, especially when there are no koreans in it:/. Forgive me if you weren't suggesting that IPL2 has relevance regarding balance.
While the GSL has the highest level of play in StarCraft 2, it also has far too few games to make a definitive analysis on the balance of the game. Until such a time as there is a regular Proleague format; the Korean scene as a whole, and thus the balance of the game at the highest level, cannot be easily evaluated. There are simply far too few games being played to make a truly accurate assessment. On September 09 2011 05:30 Olinim wrote: By your logic, are there any patches that should have gone through? Has there ever been a point where a strat was demonstrated to be unbeatable with supposed perfect play? 5 rax reaper...maybe. Your view simply isn't realistic, and blizzard disagrees with you since apparently they do think bunker rushes are op, considering the nerf. Hopefully they will not take a page from your book of insanity and look further into the absolute nonsense that is the 1/1/1 :/. This simply isn't fair to protoss players, the results, the games, and the opinions of other pros show that. And yes MC shouldn't have to play perfectly to beat Puma's sloppy 1/1/1 on XNC that he didn't even do very well, because NO ONE plays perfectly. The Reaper wasn't nerfed because of the 5-Rax reaper build being imbalanced in 1v1, it was nerfed because of how imbalanced Reaper/Speedling was in 2v2. I am 100% sure blizzard isn't retarded enough to balance around 2v2
Except they are. I mean... they do.
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On September 09 2011 13:42 Soulish wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 06:01 OlorinTheWise wrote:On September 09 2011 05:25 Olinim wrote: "I tentatively suggest that too much weight is being placed on GSL results when making deductions concerning balance." "It's still wrong to ignore other tournament results." I just don't think thats true and generally it's completely fine to ignore other tournament results, especially when there are no koreans in it:/. Forgive me if you weren't suggesting that IPL2 has relevance regarding balance.
While the GSL has the highest level of play in StarCraft 2, it also has far too few games to make a definitive analysis on the balance of the game. Until such a time as there is a regular Proleague format; the Korean scene as a whole, and thus the balance of the game at the highest level, cannot be easily evaluated. There are simply far too few games being played to make a truly accurate assessment. On September 09 2011 05:30 Olinim wrote: By your logic, are there any patches that should have gone through? Has there ever been a point where a strat was demonstrated to be unbeatable with supposed perfect play? 5 rax reaper...maybe. Your view simply isn't realistic, and blizzard disagrees with you since apparently they do think bunker rushes are op, considering the nerf. Hopefully they will not take a page from your book of insanity and look further into the absolute nonsense that is the 1/1/1 :/. This simply isn't fair to protoss players, the results, the games, and the opinions of other pros show that. And yes MC shouldn't have to play perfectly to beat Puma's sloppy 1/1/1 on XNC that he didn't even do very well, because NO ONE plays perfectly. The Reaper wasn't nerfed because of the 5-Rax reaper build being imbalanced in 1v1, it was nerfed because of how imbalanced Reaper/Speedling was in 2v2. I am 100% sure blizzard isn't retarded enough to balance around 2v2 Oh, you'd think that, wouldn't you?
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Good article. Great interview on Mana
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Reading through this thread. I wish they had an ability to mark whether or not you see the problems and then that would consequently mark your profile, so we would know who would never ever be worth the time.
Really entertained by the comment that this could have been posted months ago. I feel like this current debacle was predictable almost a year ago.
edit: judge them by their play not their results. It's difficult to judge results... when you can't quite tell the better player. The multitasking lack is complete pablum. Clearly fail to understand how drop defense and drops work when you have a toss army.
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On September 09 2011 04:32 Paladia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 04:06 Havefa1th wrote: To blame one player's downfall on the "faults" of an entire race is a racey and unwarranted claim. To say that no Protoss is good at ZvP is as an absurd statement as saying that 1-1-1 will forever be unholdable. The 1-1-1 will be, in the end, just another cheese (like the 4 gate and the roach-ling all-ins before it) that is scoutable and held cost-efficiently with slight build order changes and superior micro.
The fact of the matter remains is that Protoss is not underpowered, there just is no overarching Protoss "president," so to speak. Jinro himself says that MC has stagnated due to lack of provocative and innovative play. To be honest, there isn't any Protoss player that's innovating the race... meanwhile there are Zerg players (mainly foreign ones) commanding the helm of the Infestor battleship and Korean Zergs at the front of faster, safer roach based play that has shown success against a variety of unit compositions. And there are the Terrans like Boxer and the rest of SlayerS, who made one small unit (and therefore the mech composition) more popular of late due to aggressive, cost-efficient play.
Where's the Protoss? You can argue for MC's storm drop play, but that's a technique that is shadowed in the end by standard, stagnated build orders and strategies. You can argue for White-Ra, who shoves the square Warp Prism into every round hole the PvX matchup has, but in the end, it's one unit that forces no special macro-related reaction from the other player.
The lack of success is not the fault of an "imbalanced" race or the 1-1-1, it's MC's (and the rest of the Protoss PLAYERS) fault. You can't blame the losses of one player on the race. You just can't.
However...
Easily the best written article I've read on this website (about Starcraft 2, that is). Keep this shit up. There is no reason why people who pick Terran would be better players. Yet there are 17 Terrans in Code S and 5 Protoss. The top10 of the Korean ladder has 9 Terrans. Even the half decent Terran players are doing very well.
Terran has highest potential for offensive/aggressive play. Terran matchups practically require you to be harassing/doing offensive plays consistently. This also gives Terran the highest non-single engagement damage potential, barring mass mutas catching toss or terran with no turrets/cannons/storms and killing every probe, nexus, and pylon ever T___T. Protoss as a race never really had to play like zerg and terran with the multi-harass. High-level koreans have insane multitasking, and terran offers the greatest potential for their multitasking~when you want to be the best, you look for the race that gives you the best advantage.
Also, you say 'half decent terrans doing well'. Code A ro16: Ganzi(2-0)vsFD, sc(0-2)vsTaeja(2-0),Yoda(2-1)vsTassadar(1-2), Maka(0-2)vsLeenock(2-0), JJakji(2-0)vsLucky(0-2), MKP(2-1)vsYugioh...
The only not-superhighlevel Terrans that i would say are in that list are maka and yoda, who both get knocked out by leenock (yoda in the ro8). Jjakji, Ganzi, Taeja, MKP all go on to make code S.
code S ro16: MMA(1-2)vsPolt(2-1), Bomber(1-2)vsKeen(2-1), Zenio(1-2)vsTOP(2-1), Virus(1-2)vsGenius(2-1), Nestea(0-2)vsMVP(2-0), Huk(2-1)vsNada(1-2), Puzzle(0-2)vsRyung(2-0), Hongun(0-2)vsJuly(2-0)
who's mediocre there? Bomber? Virus? MVP and TOP are facing off for the final, MMA and Polt have already proven themselves to be excellent players, Nada is most definitely not mediocre, Ryung has had consistent, fairly strong showings....
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Interesting article and a good read although I think it went somewhat OTT as it went on. I certainly don't think that Protoss is "absolute trash" at the highest levels of play. However, I do think it is limited when compared to Zerg and Terran. That said, I think Blizzard need to be careful with the nerfs and the the buffs. There has probably already been too much tinkering with the game, often for strange reasons, when time would have sorted out some of the problems tweaks were meant to address without bringing into effect the Law of Unintended Consequences.
We Protoss may have to suffer as a result for a while, but so be it. Most of us below GM level are not going to be affected, while Pro players can choose to race switch if they so choose.
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On September 09 2011 12:27 Brian333 wrote: I wrote this a day before this article:
An explanation for the state of Protoss
I see a lot of reasons for why Protoss is in its current state but I rarely see a much more important reason mentioned because I think too many people who have invested a lot of time into SC2 are simply afraid to mention it.
The game design is fundamentally flawed so game balance was inherently impossible from day 1.
I think that all along, the focus of discussions was misplaced. With design and balance, the most important thing is a balance of options across all three races, yet, despite that idea, all we've seen is the gradual deterioration of Protoss options.
For example, in a design sense, Protoss tier 1 is inherently inferior to Terran tier 1 and Zerg tier 1. Without micro and in open areas, there is simply no way a Protoss tier 1 army will win against an equal supply, equal cost Terran or Zerg tier 1 army.
What this led to was Protoss leading the other 2 races in the necessity to evolve their meta-game and stepping up to that demand.
Sentry play became incredibly valuable because micro allowed the Protoss to circumvent the weakness of the units in a straight up battle by changing the conditions of the battle to favor themselves. FF usage became an art. Build-orders were adjusted to get earlier sentries so that they would have more time to build energy.
Zealots (especially chargelots) increased in their value because of this and sentry / zealot early-game compositions became a staple of certain strategies.
Double forge or single forge upgrade timings were developed to help offset the weakness of tier 1 armies with an upgrade advantage.
Blink play was developed, refined, and would go on to transform Stalkers from one of our weakest units into one of our strongest.
Different timings off 1-base and 2-base were developed to win through shear numbers rather than the strength of individual units (4-8 gate and all their variations). Tricks with clever pylon placement and high-ground warp-ins were discovered to further the strength of these pushes.
We found ways to rush higher tech in order to completely leap-frog our tier 1 weaknesses.
With all these examples on the table, I'd like to point out the critical point that Protoss led the meta-game progression because of the inherent disadvantages we were given at the start, that because of an imbalance in options, we were forced to adapt before Terrans and Zergs.
So, as a response to our progression, Zergs and Terrans were forced to adapt and either through Blizzard's help or their own ingenuity, they did. Terrans started to actually make and use Ghosts more often to negate the value of sentries. Medivac play was used to either lift around FFs or force the Protoss army to split up, thus negating their synergy. Various all-ins were developed and refined in order to deny Protoss the ability to tech or expand without investing heavily in a lower tech. Safe expansion builds of their own allowed them to match or exceed Protoss econ. Zergs learned to be smarter about engagement locations, expand with better timing, scout with more direction, and defend more efficiently. They learned to get roaches with burrow to negate any Protoss timing push without detection, and burrow movement to negate heavily FF dependent pushes. They learned to use their mobility better with ling-backstabs. They realized that there was a roach-ling timing off 2-base that would deny Protoss their natural even if they opened with their safety, 3-gate sentry expand. Of course, there are more examples, but I think that is enough to prove my point.
So, we're left with the current state of SC2. It's a point in Protoss progression where we're essentially being forced to adapt again with our already limited options to strategies that have been tailor made to beat everything we had previously known. And, at this point, our options have been exhausted because they were already explored in great depth.
And, this all stems from the fact that the playing field was not level to begin with.
To Terrans and Zergs who tell us that we need to adapt, imagine what would happen if your counterparts magically knew how to stop everything you could do. Imagine if all the builds you had learned to do were all irrelevant. Imagine if your safe builds were no longer safe and your risky builds were just suicide.
Great post.
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tree hugger i respect you so much more now. I feel EXACTLY the same way. Toss has always had week showings in the GSL since back when fruitdealer won. It took a player like MC who was so godly that he was able to beat players from other races even with a disadvantage. I qq imba because even though i have an okayish win rate here on the ladder, my race has no representation in the most competitive starcraft tournament in the world.
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On September 09 2011 13:56 Sabu113 wrote: Reading through this thread. I wish they had an ability to mark whether or not you see the problems and then that would consequently mark your profile, so we would know who would never ever be worth the time.
Really entertained by the comment that this could have been posted months ago. I feel like this current debacle was predictable almost a year ago.
edit: judge them by their play not their results. It's difficult to judge results... when you can't quite tell the better player. The multitasking lack is complete pablum. Clearly fail to understand how drop defense and drops work when you have a toss army.
Haha it was sort of predicted a year ago. You should read the protoss battle.net forum during the time of pre-GSL3, before MC's first win. The lack of qualified protoss didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence then. And all the crying was defused when MC won and won soundly. And gave all protoss players some hope that they aren't wasting their time. All the reasons people list now for the slump were already mentioned back then. Except some issues are exacerbated now over time because of balance changes later down the road.
Even though for us newbies, the matchmaking system will still grant us our 50% win rate. It feels good to know we're playing on even ground.
Also, too many knee-jerk changes that were never retracted. Remember when VR range was reduced because terrans had problems against a build for a whopping 1 week, but the change was pushed through anyway? Still, I think they should wait at least a bit longer and not push through changes as a reaction to recent "poor performance" by top protoss and community reaction to it.
Some part of me feels if VR still had the speed upgrade (maybe not as good as it was before, but complete removal was outright silly) we could've had some semblance of a harassment based game. Even though the pros had yet to really explore that route, I and some people have, so it was shame it was yanked before we saw it in pro play. Instead we're apparently getting a raider unit in the expansion that we already had patches ago...
Edit: I mean, read the VR tool tip. "Surgical strike unit". It IS (or WAS) our harass unit. Now it mostly serves one timing pressure attack with some phoenix and that's it.
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I could sense a lot of protoss tears and MC fanboyism in tree.hugger's article but it was nevertheless and interesting read!
My take on the matter is that protoss is a gimmick race and the players who picked them are more likely to be similarly gimmicky and all-innish. Since terrans and zergs have now figured out all their cheese and all-ins, the protoss are now struggling.
I would like to extend some sympathy but that would be insincere :p
Part of the reason of the problem is the broken warpgate mechanic. In fact there is a thread discussing this at the very moment. Back in february, I even wrote suggesting a nerf to WGs but compensated by a "nexus nearby defensive structure": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=189432
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I need to say this: I enjoyed the article immensely, though as previously noted I was a little surprised at the surety and vindictiveness of the tone. That was expected with the history of good writing teamliquid featured posts have always boasted. What I'm even more surprised at however is how much I'm enjoying the thread that follows it. Maybe I've been hanging around too many LR threads, but I never thought discourse of this level of civility could happen around balance issues.
Kudos to tree.hugger for setting the tone with his article and to the community for the enjoyable discussions.
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On September 09 2011 16:10 Azzur wrote:I could sense a lot of protoss tears and MC fanboyism in tree.hugger's article but it was nevertheless and interesting read! My take on the matter is that protoss is a gimmick race and the players who picked them are more likely to be similarly gimmicky and all-innish. Since terrans and zergs have now figured out all their cheese and all-ins, the protoss are now struggling. I would like to extend some sympathy but that would be insincere :p Part of the reason of the problem is the broken warpgate mechanic. In fact there is a thread discussing this at the very moment. Back in february, I even wrote suggesting a nerf to WGs but compensated by a "nexus nearby defensive structure": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=189432
You almost make it sound like it's the players fault that Protoss is the "gimmick" race. Please tell me that isn't the case, because that would be illogical beyond belief.
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On September 09 2011 16:10 Azzur wrote:I could sense a lot of protoss tears and MC fanboyism in tree.hugger's article but it was nevertheless and interesting read! My take on the matter is that protoss is a gimmick race and the players who picked them are more likely to be similarly gimmicky and all-innish. Since terrans and zergs have now figured out all their cheese and all-ins, the protoss are now struggling. I would like to extend some sympathy but that would be insincere :p Part of the reason of the problem is the broken warpgate mechanic. In fact there is a thread discussing this at the very moment. Back in february, I even wrote suggesting a nerf to WGs but compensated by a "nexus nearby defensive structure": http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=189432
Most of the pro's picked Races before all the races were mostly figured out. Now as timings become ever more refined and responses more standardized, our options drain like sands in an hourglass. What good is FFE vs zerg if the economic edge we are looking for neither appears, nor can we punish them for claiming it as their own. One of our most powerful allins, the infamous 4wg, doens't faze people any more. We need to catch people completely off guard for it to work.
I had a post somewhere earlier that I can't find. Essentially as we lost our timing attacks and as our transitions were figured out, we had nothing scary left. All we are left with is standard play, which is predictable and the moment we do that, we stop controlling the game. Our opponents dictate what we must make to try and gain a non-existant edge. We do not have the ability to pick up our whole army and doom drop a main to force an advantageous situation. Neither do we have the ability to destroy a prepared opponent with multiple smaller forces hitting everywhere at once. The sole remaining glimmer of hope in unexplored units lies with the warp prism. Carriers and motherships aren't the answer. Even if NP doesn't work on motherships, while we will have a potential alternative to massing voidrays against zerg late game, it doesn't solve PvT. It remains a unit that can easily be nullified through EMP's, and without skills, a mothership becomes a 700(350) HP meatshield.
So if we have few options left, what will happen when those get figured out?
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A big problem for non T centered viewers is that there are only some left in the GSL ( 5P 7Z 20T). Even when everything is eventually balanced out, it is going to take a lot of time for the percentages to return to about 1/3 1/3 1/3...
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On September 09 2011 14:56 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 12:27 Brian333 wrote: I wrote this a day before this article:
An explanation for the state of Protoss
I see a lot of reasons for why Protoss is in its current state but I rarely see a much more important reason mentioned because I think too many people who have invested a lot of time into SC2 are simply afraid to mention it.
The game design is fundamentally flawed so game balance was inherently impossible from day 1.
I think that all along, the focus of discussions was misplaced. With design and balance, the most important thing is a balance of options across all three races, yet, despite that idea, all we've seen is the gradual deterioration of Protoss options.
For example, in a design sense, Protoss tier 1 is inherently inferior to Terran tier 1 and Zerg tier 1. Without micro and in open areas, there is simply no way a Protoss tier 1 army will win against an equal supply, equal cost Terran or Zerg tier 1 army.
What this led to was Protoss leading the other 2 races in the necessity to evolve their meta-game and stepping up to that demand.
Sentry play became incredibly valuable because micro allowed the Protoss to circumvent the weakness of the units in a straight up battle by changing the conditions of the battle to favor themselves. FF usage became an art. Build-orders were adjusted to get earlier sentries so that they would have more time to build energy.
Zealots (especially chargelots) increased in their value because of this and sentry / zealot early-game compositions became a staple of certain strategies.
Double forge or single forge upgrade timings were developed to help offset the weakness of tier 1 armies with an upgrade advantage.
Blink play was developed, refined, and would go on to transform Stalkers from one of our weakest units into one of our strongest.
Different timings off 1-base and 2-base were developed to win through shear numbers rather than the strength of individual units (4-8 gate and all their variations). Tricks with clever pylon placement and high-ground warp-ins were discovered to further the strength of these pushes.
We found ways to rush higher tech in order to completely leap-frog our tier 1 weaknesses.
With all these examples on the table, I'd like to point out the critical point that Protoss led the meta-game progression because of the inherent disadvantages we were given at the start, that because of an imbalance in options, we were forced to adapt before Terrans and Zergs.
So, as a response to our progression, Zergs and Terrans were forced to adapt and either through Blizzard's help or their own ingenuity, they did. Terrans started to actually make and use Ghosts more often to negate the value of sentries. Medivac play was used to either lift around FFs or force the Protoss army to split up, thus negating their synergy. Various all-ins were developed and refined in order to deny Protoss the ability to tech or expand without investing heavily in a lower tech. Safe expansion builds of their own allowed them to match or exceed Protoss econ. Zergs learned to be smarter about engagement locations, expand with better timing, scout with more direction, and defend more efficiently. They learned to get roaches with burrow to negate any Protoss timing push without detection, and burrow movement to negate heavily FF dependent pushes. They learned to use their mobility better with ling-backstabs. They realized that there was a roach-ling timing off 2-base that would deny Protoss their natural even if they opened with their safety, 3-gate sentry expand. Of course, there are more examples, but I think that is enough to prove my point.
So, we're left with the current state of SC2. It's a point in Protoss progression where we're essentially being forced to adapt again with our already limited options to strategies that have been tailor made to beat everything we had previously known. And, at this point, our options have been exhausted because they were already explored in great depth.
And, this all stems from the fact that the playing field was not level to begin with.
To Terrans and Zergs who tell us that we need to adapt, imagine what would happen if your counterparts magically knew how to stop everything you could do. Imagine if all the builds you had learned to do were all irrelevant. Imagine if your safe builds were no longer safe and your risky builds were just suicide. Great post.
Good post.. this is exactly what I was thinking when MC was playing Losira.. he was trying one of the few things that sometimes works, even though its so easy to stop.
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On September 09 2011 11:44 red4ce wrote: Well written article, but isn't it already out of date? Patch 1.4 is coming so I don't see any point in complaining about balance until at least a couple months after the patch is released to see if any imbalances have been solved.
Oh yes. Motherships moving faster, 1 more range for Immortals and an extra 60 shields for Warp Prisms will solve the balance issues... -_-
I fail to see how any of those are relevant to 1-1-1 play or PvZ woes against Infestors.
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On September 09 2011 08:21 Tacoss23 wrote: Not to hate on MC or anything, but I don't agree with much what it was said on the article. This guy was the ultimate "bitbybitprime" of BW. I mean they made fun of him everywhere in SC-BW for his "suicide" style of playing.
I always said, MC is just a temporal phenomenon. SC2 is a new game, people are figuring out stuff and abusive strats pop up every single week, that's the environment of a dream for all-in/not so talented players like "fish-protoss" aka as MC.
In my opinion that's the only reason MC did well in the first year of competitive SC2. Sure, he got better in the process, but honestly he is still at the very basics, the same all-inish abusive style of player he was in BW, which in the long run (and with the help of balance) will fade out.And thats exactly what started to happen few months ago already.
Props to him for taking advantage of the opportunity thou.
If MC is a bad Protoss player and also the only one in GSL to have a 50%+ winrate, doesn't that just underscore OP's point?
Also, I question if you watch this game. MC has consistently lost to Terran players using abusive timing attacks (1-1-1, for ex.) or when he tries to 1 Gate FE against someone like Polt that goes for the all-in. What tournaments in recent memory has he lost going primarily for timing attacks that are held off?
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This goes to prove the Power lacking in the Protoss race. I Never liked MC an I do Love PuMa but as stated PuMa was out micro'd and out Multitasked meaning he should've Lost. Protoss dosnt Really stand much of a ChAnCe at winning many tournies at the current rate. All terren all the way due to their clear advantage in every area of the game. Protoss is my favorite of the three races but there's a reason I play zerg.
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