Racial Balance in GSL (2010-2013 WoL) - Page 8

On March 10 2013 10:17 Locke- wrote:
This thread hurts to read.

On March 10 2013 03:10 Coffee Zombie wrote:


Eh, wut. If you didn't defend, sure.

As far as WoL ZvT balance goes, though, apart from Infestors, the whole thing boils down to larvae. In the past, you needed larvae to defend early pushes and to shoo off the contain from Reactor Hellion Expand quickly. Zerg players didn't like it. I vividly remember the endless inanity of "making Roaches is unacceptable because it means we can't drone/tech optimally". I am serious. The damage IdrA and Artosis have done to Zerg players' mindset cannot be underestimated.

The issue is that, as we all have (to our boredom) noticed over the last half a year, the Zerg economy, if unhindered, is broken. The ability to use all your production slots on nothing but economy is way too good to exist, except for the fact that in the past you could force Zerg to use larvae for defense. This meant both sides made army, econ and teched a bit. It was fair (though understandably felt bad for Z because they were literally being damaged).

Also, the only really boring part about Reactor Hellion was that T went for it almost always. The opener itself played out entertainingly enough: both sides had high stakes (immediate, long-lasting loss of map control for Terran, severe economic damage or outright game loss for Zerg) and there was lots of action happening. Terrans were busy trying to snipe tumors, Z was busy trying to sneak them past the Hellions, players had to watch their Queens/Hellions constantly to prevent a Hellion/Speedling snipe, respectively, and so forth. The most important thing of all, though, was that it led to an actual midgame.

And from here we get to the cascade effect the Queendralisk buff had. The early game implications are clear for all to see. But the ripple effects? Dear god. First, creep spread easily goes out of control, where spreading it was an effort before. The better economy allows for a very early swell of Infestors, which helps make Zerg safe and essentially kills the midgame, from which we get into quick, fast, Infestor/T3 comp with the accompanying tech switches. The sheer scale of the change is perhaps best realized when one stops to consider that in the past a 17 minute Hive was risky and greedy. Such a far cry from our current, absurdly safe 12 minute Hive timings, isn't it? That's all because Z had to invest into a midgame to fight off the Terran midgame (which they could get to due to less creep and slower Zerg development). And damn, was that midgame ever good.

The slower Hive timings also made the late game more bearable - Terran had more time to get their infrastructure up to contend with Zerg's endgame composition. The fundamental character of it was then, and still is expensive, inflexible Terran infrastructure making very narrow anti-1-unit counters that have no other use vs. a flexible Zerg infrastructure making little but threats.

The greatest casualty of the Queendralisk patch hasn't been balance, though - a certain amount of imbalance you can work around and it is even entertaining for some. The greatest casualties have been fun (the game has become dull), the idea that the game makes any kind of sense (the kind of imbalance and it's degree make the games feel just plain stupid). I also can't tell good and bad Zergs apart anymore. In the past, great creep spread was an achievement. There were brilliant holds, good game sense, great flanks. Mutas hadn't been eclipsed so badly and so were an actual (not just stubbornly stylistic) option. Now it's the same dull monotony where it feels like the sheer, absurd, dominant power of some key units does more work than the player.

On March 10 2013 12:15 Sokrates wrote:
The problem with toss is that the race is designed a lot around "builds", you do a "build", you dont react to your opponent (at least as a zerg i felt that very often when playing against toss). You just execute a premade build, when you hear toss players discuss about strategy it is not about reacting it is all about builds, "i put down my gas at x supply, i make a robo at x supply, i push out at xx:xxmins wiht x amount of units." So this gives you a big advantage at lets say highmasters/low gm level because it is really easy to execute premade builds no matter what your opponent does like the immortal sentry push or the kreatorbuild but it is a lot harder when you have really good opponents and against a race that has a much higher skill ceiling.

Toss doesnt have much options to harras or to bring in multitasking, also top tier players cant really seperate from decent players by macro since their macro is really easy compared to zerg. Also their micro in big battles is a lot easier compared to terran, a lot of units are good at a moving.

So toss is the easiest race to play but it is also really hard to get an edge when you are the better player. Of course a parting immo sentry allin is a lot better than a rnd gm toss immo sentry allin. The problem is that the defending player as a much bigger range in improving to defend against it than the immo sentry allin player can improve his allin.

On March 10 2013 16:33 mrtomjones wrote:
Fuck... I hope Protoss dominates the entire fricking HOTS... we are owed some good win rates in GSL damnit...

On March 10 2013 12:41 Marti wrote:

Good post overall, i agree
By the way isn't that copy pasted from somewhere ? I feel i've seen those exact words before ...

On March 10 2013 10:42 monkybone wrote:
People saying there are not good foreign Terrans needs to get their heads out of their butts... There are many professional foreigner Terrans playing and practicing as much as anyone else. They just don't get the results, and there's obviously a reason for that. It's not a coincidence, that the bad players happened to be Terran, that's ridiculous. Terran is just a lot harder, making Terran underpowered at professional levels below code S.

On March 10 2013 17:21 Coffee Zombie wrote:


Ssh, I just happened to write what I wrote in an earlier thread almost to a word. Move on, nothing to see here...
Or I'm just a lazy SOB who thinks he made his points well enough in that thread buried somewhere in the past (as evidenced by people who actually bothered to read the post saying it is good) and copypastes himself because why not.

Your pick :D

On March 10 2013 16:27 AstroPegnuin wrote:
It's always funny to read how biased Terran players are and ignorant to the actual realities of the games balance,

The whole foreigner Terran struggle argument is completely invalid to me because there are no where near as much hard working foreign Terran as there is Protoss and Zerg,

On March 10 2013 18:04 keglu wrote:


So terran players are biased and you are not based on second sentence?

On March 10 2013 00:10 Assirra wrote:

Are we seriously back to the "Terran has better players" nonsense again?

On March 09 2013 22:11 MateShade wrote:


Yes, zerg had their worst season ever. 7 in the ro32, aside from that you are correct.

The season previously was won by zerg (DRG) and leenock came runner up the season before that.

The current imbalance is a result of knee-jerk patches. Protoss were becoming notably underpowered over the course of 6 months prior to this period. Protoss received several buffs (rightly so). this resulted in a saturation of protoss players in the top end of gsl, and zerg suffered for it (except the fact that leenock came 2nd and DRG won the gsl.. 'suffered' is a very harsh word for what really happened...).

In the 6 months before the queen patch, the game was looking more balanced than it had ever been, and then a short drop for zerg happened at the end. There was no evidence to suggest that zerg actually needed any buffs, they went through a relatively short period (2-3 months) where zerg win rates dropped below the other races. And then came the queen buff.. way too quickly and way too unsubstantiated.. and then afterwards another long period of imbalance - similar to protoss - where terran is now the weakest race.

Even though zerg is/was getting nerfed over the past 2 months (rightly so), zerg win rates continue to rise.

This suggests to me that if the queen patch never happened, zerg would have recovered just fine. If the queen patch never happened we would be much closer to balance than what has happened now, which is basically the most imbalance sc2 has seen yet.

On March 10 2013 19:14 Qikz wrote:


It's not why it should be higher, it's why it is higher.

MVP for example no matter what the balance was went out and won 5 GSL titles. It's not because he's terran, it's because he's by far the best SC2 player. Looking at win rates, especially across all tournaments is fine to do, but you have to realise it's not just the race, it's the player and their individual skill that makes the difference.

Flash in BW for example, did he dominate purely on the back of the terran race? No, by god he's a damn good Terran player, but it wasn't because Terran was OP (especially when TvP is so much harder than PvT) he won so much because of his skill/mind set.