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On August 19 2024 11:48 Zealot Lord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 10:58 WombaT wrote:On August 19 2024 09:33 Nebuchad wrote:On August 19 2024 06:52 Athenau wrote:
I think there's some truth to the notion that Terran played perfectly is the strongest, but that's just a consequence of the way the two races are designed/have evolved.
Zerg is the best race for exploiting attention asymmetry. They have so many explosive tools that can punish you for not looking or looking in the wrong place, so their win condition a lot of the time is to cause chaos and snowball any momentary lapse on the part of their opponent into an overwhelming victory.
Terran, as a consequence of being composed almost entirely of ranged glass cannons, is more about using attention as a resource for their own units to grind out efficiency, and ultimately win by attrition.
TL;DR version: Zerg's gameplan is to force mistakes, while Terran is rewarded more for not making mistakes. Historically the former has been much more consistent in securing wins at the top level, but when someone pulls off the occasional miracle run like Clem did here, it looks unstoppable, but no player has ever been able to play at that pitch for long. I can't lie I think the exact opposite of this, imo terran is the weakest race when played perfectly. A lot of terran strategy relies on executing better than the defensive player, which you're not going to be able to do if your opponent plays a perfect defense. The best terran, Clem, is always in your face playing aggressively trying to force mistakes, and there has never been a defensive terran player in the same way that there is Serral, Stats/Rain. It’s not a straight case of perfect defence > perfect defence just because Terran simply have a higher ceiling of what they can do micro wise. MMM is also very potent even in quite small numbers and can do a ton of damage quickly if there is a gap in the defence. I like a bit of asymmetric design, but as great as SC2 is I feel it was a mistake to make one race so, so microable compared to the other factions, and hopefully not one future RTS developers repeat. It also brings a bunch of associated problems and frustrations in balancing it out. Serral didn’t even make too many big blunders today, or even a huge amount of small ones he just couldn’t really touch a Clem playing like a maniac, and fair play to Clem. If there’s a unit that best illustrates what I’m talking about, it’s gotta be the disruptor. For us plebs, hell even lower tier but decent pro players these are fearsome globes of doom, zooming in and blowing up big chunks of your army. When Clem is playing and he’s on it, they’re seemingly harmless beach balls wafting lazily in the breeze. He so rarely eats even moderate hits, and there’s not really much a Toss can do at the other side in terms of aiming them better. There’s this historic pattern all throughout SC2 really where Terrans (like everyone else) just get better, and eventually a small handful (and it’s rarely more, and not every game) can make the other race’s tools look impotent. It can be fun, awesome to watch and really inspirational stuff. Like when Maru decided vikings were for scrubs and started killing big toss armies with MMM surrounds and balls of steel. For sure re: disruptors Against a top player like Clem, they just do like literally nothing and there's simply no "better play" for Toss That's why Protoss has always struggled at the pro scene all these years except for a brief period Their units are generally expensive, slow and/or clunky to micro which means the absolute ceiling is naturally inherently lower in comparison. But I don't even know what can be done to be honest at this stage.. I do kind of feel like the Collosus could use a small buff somewhere as a bandaid, since its way too late to redesign anything.
disrupters dont do nothing, they completely temporarily stall a terrans aggression when you trigger the ball, they have to respect it if the armies are not being jumped on. i think (im just a casual fan), but only make 1 or 2 disrupters to act as a sort of a tier 3 sentry with forcefields. storm should still be the main entree, but disrupters can buy you the extra time waiting for energy. I think people need to stop using them as "THE BIG SPLASH DAMAGE HITTER" unit, and use them as a complimentary unit.
someone like clem will 9/10 times avoid any major hit and its usually just a timer until he finds a delay in the cooldown of an enemy with a half dozen disrupters. i say, go a few disrupters as safety measures, and tech into storm and tempests to deal with bio and libs.
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Protoss need all 3 type of splash damage, and keep rotating/combining between them to have great success against Terran bio army. Personally, I have seen Clem struggled a bit more against Storm than Disruptor, but the Templar must be kept apart and placed smartly for it to work.
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Northern Ireland23313 Posts
On August 19 2024 11:55 Husyelt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 11:48 Zealot Lord wrote:On August 19 2024 10:58 WombaT wrote:On August 19 2024 09:33 Nebuchad wrote:On August 19 2024 06:52 Athenau wrote:
I think there's some truth to the notion that Terran played perfectly is the strongest, but that's just a consequence of the way the two races are designed/have evolved.
Zerg is the best race for exploiting attention asymmetry. They have so many explosive tools that can punish you for not looking or looking in the wrong place, so their win condition a lot of the time is to cause chaos and snowball any momentary lapse on the part of their opponent into an overwhelming victory.
Terran, as a consequence of being composed almost entirely of ranged glass cannons, is more about using attention as a resource for their own units to grind out efficiency, and ultimately win by attrition.
TL;DR version: Zerg's gameplan is to force mistakes, while Terran is rewarded more for not making mistakes. Historically the former has been much more consistent in securing wins at the top level, but when someone pulls off the occasional miracle run like Clem did here, it looks unstoppable, but no player has ever been able to play at that pitch for long. I can't lie I think the exact opposite of this, imo terran is the weakest race when played perfectly. A lot of terran strategy relies on executing better than the defensive player, which you're not going to be able to do if your opponent plays a perfect defense. The best terran, Clem, is always in your face playing aggressively trying to force mistakes, and there has never been a defensive terran player in the same way that there is Serral, Stats/Rain. It’s not a straight case of perfect defence > perfect defence just because Terran simply have a higher ceiling of what they can do micro wise. MMM is also very potent even in quite small numbers and can do a ton of damage quickly if there is a gap in the defence. I like a bit of asymmetric design, but as great as SC2 is I feel it was a mistake to make one race so, so microable compared to the other factions, and hopefully not one future RTS developers repeat. It also brings a bunch of associated problems and frustrations in balancing it out. Serral didn’t even make too many big blunders today, or even a huge amount of small ones he just couldn’t really touch a Clem playing like a maniac, and fair play to Clem. If there’s a unit that best illustrates what I’m talking about, it’s gotta be the disruptor. For us plebs, hell even lower tier but decent pro players these are fearsome globes of doom, zooming in and blowing up big chunks of your army. When Clem is playing and he’s on it, they’re seemingly harmless beach balls wafting lazily in the breeze. He so rarely eats even moderate hits, and there’s not really much a Toss can do at the other side in terms of aiming them better. There’s this historic pattern all throughout SC2 really where Terrans (like everyone else) just get better, and eventually a small handful (and it’s rarely more, and not every game) can make the other race’s tools look impotent. It can be fun, awesome to watch and really inspirational stuff. Like when Maru decided vikings were for scrubs and started killing big toss armies with MMM surrounds and balls of steel. For sure re: disruptors Against a top player like Clem, they just do like literally nothing and there's simply no "better play" for Toss That's why Protoss has always struggled at the pro scene all these years except for a brief period Their units are generally expensive, slow and/or clunky to micro which means the absolute ceiling is naturally inherently lower in comparison. But I don't even know what can be done to be honest at this stage.. I do kind of feel like the Collosus could use a small buff somewhere as a bandaid, since its way too late to redesign anything. disrupters dont do nothing, they completely temporarily stall a terrans aggression when you trigger the ball, they have to respect it if the armies are not being jumped on. i think (im just a casual fan), but only make 1 or 2 disrupters to act as a sort of a tier 3 sentry with forcefields. storm should still be the main entree, but disrupters can buy you the extra time waiting for energy. I think people need to stop using them as "THE BIG SPLASH DAMAGE HITTER" unit, and use them as a complimentary unit. someone like clem will 9/10 times avoid any major hit and its usually just a timer until he finds a delay in the cooldown of an enemy with a half dozen disrupters. i say, go a few disrupters as safety measures, and tech into storm and tempests to deal with bio and libs.
People just don’t seem as good at reliably doing that anymore, absolute top level.
A while ago (and I’m talking quite a long time indeed), the era of monster Trap, when Parting was still active. It felt then you quite often saw Protoss end up consistently getting 2, even 3 bases up and either picking Terrans apart, bit by bit with multi pronged aggression, or obtain super armies.
I’m honestly not sure why that is, I’m sure more knowledgable folk may know or have some interesting theories! I guess with battery changes, it feels that Protoss have a tougher time getting those quick 4ths and holding them, which was what used to supercharge their eco and tech before as they reliably could be that greedy.
I think the eco shifting slightly makes that difference, before you could sit and zone, if you just keep them from jumping you, your monster eco is going to kick in, and you can go a few directions from there. Start warping in thousands of Zealots, or DT hit squads. Start pushing batteries forward and start a Tempest transition, build a monster robot/templar deathball etc.
Now, that Terran pressure is hitting you when you simply have less stuff, nor as much cash to get said stuff. You get kind of pinned back, and the really good Terrans can sometimes even get ahead in bases, where previously this basically didn’t happen. Which then allows them to start transitioning into things like ranged libs just as fast, if not faster than previous metas while simultaneously Protoss transitions are slower.
It’s interesting how the game evolves to this day.
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How about giving infestors back the ability to cast fungal while burrowed, since ghosts can cast all of their spells while cloaked?
And why not just make microbial shrould work for ground attacks too? that would help zerg units scale better with terran units.
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On August 19 2024 13:20 Woosixion wrote:
How about putting giving infestors back the ability to cast fungal while burrowed, since ghosts can cast all of their spells while cloaked?
And why not just make microbial shrould work for ground attacks too? that would help zerg units scale better with terran units.
Then EMP need to have the effect of slowing down Bio and Zerg unit as well or Raven would need to get their Heat Seeker Missile back.
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On August 19 2024 13:04 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 11:55 Husyelt wrote:On August 19 2024 11:48 Zealot Lord wrote:On August 19 2024 10:58 WombaT wrote:On August 19 2024 09:33 Nebuchad wrote:On August 19 2024 06:52 Athenau wrote:
I think there's some truth to the notion that Terran played perfectly is the strongest, but that's just a consequence of the way the two races are designed/have evolved.
Zerg is the best race for exploiting attention asymmetry. They have so many explosive tools that can punish you for not looking or looking in the wrong place, so their win condition a lot of the time is to cause chaos and snowball any momentary lapse on the part of their opponent into an overwhelming victory.
Terran, as a consequence of being composed almost entirely of ranged glass cannons, is more about using attention as a resource for their own units to grind out efficiency, and ultimately win by attrition.
TL;DR version: Zerg's gameplan is to force mistakes, while Terran is rewarded more for not making mistakes. Historically the former has been much more consistent in securing wins at the top level, but when someone pulls off the occasional miracle run like Clem did here, it looks unstoppable, but no player has ever been able to play at that pitch for long. I can't lie I think the exact opposite of this, imo terran is the weakest race when played perfectly. A lot of terran strategy relies on executing better than the defensive player, which you're not going to be able to do if your opponent plays a perfect defense. The best terran, Clem, is always in your face playing aggressively trying to force mistakes, and there has never been a defensive terran player in the same way that there is Serral, Stats/Rain. It’s not a straight case of perfect defence > perfect defence just because Terran simply have a higher ceiling of what they can do micro wise. MMM is also very potent even in quite small numbers and can do a ton of damage quickly if there is a gap in the defence. I like a bit of asymmetric design, but as great as SC2 is I feel it was a mistake to make one race so, so microable compared to the other factions, and hopefully not one future RTS developers repeat. It also brings a bunch of associated problems and frustrations in balancing it out. Serral didn’t even make too many big blunders today, or even a huge amount of small ones he just couldn’t really touch a Clem playing like a maniac, and fair play to Clem. If there’s a unit that best illustrates what I’m talking about, it’s gotta be the disruptor. For us plebs, hell even lower tier but decent pro players these are fearsome globes of doom, zooming in and blowing up big chunks of your army. When Clem is playing and he’s on it, they’re seemingly harmless beach balls wafting lazily in the breeze. He so rarely eats even moderate hits, and there’s not really much a Toss can do at the other side in terms of aiming them better. There’s this historic pattern all throughout SC2 really where Terrans (like everyone else) just get better, and eventually a small handful (and it’s rarely more, and not every game) can make the other race’s tools look impotent. It can be fun, awesome to watch and really inspirational stuff. Like when Maru decided vikings were for scrubs and started killing big toss armies with MMM surrounds and balls of steel. For sure re: disruptors Against a top player like Clem, they just do like literally nothing and there's simply no "better play" for Toss That's why Protoss has always struggled at the pro scene all these years except for a brief period Their units are generally expensive, slow and/or clunky to micro which means the absolute ceiling is naturally inherently lower in comparison. But I don't even know what can be done to be honest at this stage.. I do kind of feel like the Collosus could use a small buff somewhere as a bandaid, since its way too late to redesign anything. disrupters dont do nothing, they completely temporarily stall a terrans aggression when you trigger the ball, they have to respect it if the armies are not being jumped on. i think (im just a casual fan), but only make 1 or 2 disrupters to act as a sort of a tier 3 sentry with forcefields. storm should still be the main entree, but disrupters can buy you the extra time waiting for energy. I think people need to stop using them as "THE BIG SPLASH DAMAGE HITTER" unit, and use them as a complimentary unit. someone like clem will 9/10 times avoid any major hit and its usually just a timer until he finds a delay in the cooldown of an enemy with a half dozen disrupters. i say, go a few disrupters as safety measures, and tech into storm and tempests to deal with bio and libs. People just don’t seem as good at reliably doing that anymore, absolute top level. A while ago (and I’m talking quite a long time indeed), the era of monster Trap, when Parting was still active. It felt then you quite often saw Protoss end up consistently getting 2, even 3 bases up and either picking Terrans apart, bit by bit with multi pronged aggression, or obtain super armies. I’m honestly not sure why that is, I’m sure more knowledgable folk may know or have some interesting theories! I guess with battery changes, it feels that Protoss have a tougher time getting those quick 4ths and holding them, which was what used to supercharge their eco and tech before as they reliably could be that greedy. I think the eco shifting slightly makes that difference, before you could sit and zone, if you just keep them from jumping you, your monster eco is going to kick in, and you can go a few directions from there. Start warping in thousands of Zealots, or DT hit squads. Start pushing batteries forward and start a Tempest transition, build a monster robot/templar deathball etc. Now, that Terran pressure is hitting you when you simply have less stuff, nor as much cash to get said stuff. You get kind of pinned back, and the really good Terrans can sometimes even get ahead in bases, where previously this basically didn’t happen. Which then allows them to start transitioning into things like ranged libs just as fast, if not faster than previous metas while simultaneously Protoss transitions are slower. It’s interesting how the game evolves to this day.
You've never really been able to 'sit back' in PvT. Aside from Carriers the Terran army is pretty much always going to win and be stronger as you hit max (Which is why the P&Z vs T game plan basically devolves into hard forcing trades at that point). The needle slides even further when you are able to optimize that max, and then even more because of mules & worker supply not mattering.
Outside of early game aggression it always just hinges down to two things for the matchup tipping point. Those being: The marine count and the deathball.(And we're not talking about Toss here).
For the first, (also an issue Zerg faces) at a certain point the bio ball meatgrinder cannot be contested without AoE. This gap widens even more when you factor in micro.
As for the 'deathball' once enough ghost and liberators are out there just isn't a way to trade efficiently, let alone win an engagement. And also again, an issue for both races.
Worth noting that the current map pool is objectively the worst we've had in forever so it exacerbates a lot of the issues, but they're still present on a fundamental level.
I think it just boils down to players like Clem and Maru being able to control their armies to the point that it truly highlights how much stronger the Terran units can be.
It's tough to draw an arbitrary line on execution difficulty and its strength with what is considered 'okay' or balanced. That on top of any changes cooked up would only be made for less than 5 humans on this planet is wild.
If I was going to tackle one singular thing for game balance it would be the medivac.
The overall HP, heal rate, unload rate, and move speed all seem extremely excessive.
Even back in WoL before they even got the ability to speed boost they were already an S tier unit.
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I don't know man I think the game is pretty well balanced right now. I would need the recent stats of Maxpax vs Clem to look quite a bit different to start demanding any kind of change.
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On August 19 2024 02:26 Blitzball04 wrote:
Hope they finally nerf ghosts just like how they nerfed the infestor after the tournament
Ghosts really is an embarrassing unit that counter everything Zerg and Protoss throws at them
User was warned for this post
imagine if they did as you wish and nerf ghosts by giving +1 range to snipe and slightly more blurry outline while cloaked.
BTW, just catch the games, incredible stuff
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Maybe this is a bit much, but my -personal opinion- is that you have to be completely out of your mind to not realize that Zerg is completely OP. Their ability to produce workers en masse, the vision granted by creep, the defense enabled by queens, the strength of ling/bane, the fact that so many of the units are melee and can thus be a-moved before quickly moving on to the next task, the ability of the nydus to move anywhere on the map instantly, the ability of vipers to just grab units for free, the ability of infestors to make it impossible to micro, the guaranteed ability to fully scout the opponent with overseers/speed overlods, the strength of lurker splash, the ease with which ravagers kill buildings and tanks and zone armies, etc., etc.
Terran and Protoss simply have to outplay a zerg opponent for an entire game. If one bad baneling connection is allowed, for example, terran just loses the game immediately. The amount of active management of an army necessary for the other races is just obviously so much more.
Thankfully, to play Zerg well, one must take care of macro chore after macro chore. The design is so boring. Hit your injects. Build workers and zerglings. Spread creep tumors. Amove wherever your opponent is. The only reason that anyone has ever won a pro game against zerg is that zerg is extremely mechanically challenging from a macro perspective.
The pro scene had one zerg that was good at macro and knew how to control spellcasters on the off chance that it went to late game and he dominated for years. Suddenly people are surprised when someone who is far more capable at actually playing an RTS in any regard other than making the right units (with perfect information) and consistently doing macro chores, wins.
Am I coping? Am I trash? Yes to both. But, it's hard to think otherwise when I see someone outplaying their opponent (that makes many many mistakes, however small) for 15-20 minutes, only to lose to a single equally small mistake.
Clem played out of his mind, and deserved the victory. His TvZ skill level in the finals was possibly unmatched in SC2 history. If you think that the result had anything to do with balance, you are probably gold league (if you even play the game at all).
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Sorry for the wall of text. Adderall is a hell of a drug. I had a lot of fun watching this tournament, and hope for more soon!
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Northern Ireland23313 Posts
@Agh can’t disagree with much of that! I guess since the now quite old battery change, Protoss struggle to get that big buffer going so they can afford to trade inefficiently.
I’m not sure that the meta I call the ‘Trap meta’ when he was monstering Terrans and making GSL finals was much better either.
It seems to swing rather a lot based on how strong or otherwise the various band-aids that hold Toss together are tuned. Batteries are too strong? Well Toss can expand incredibly greedily with very few units and it snowballs. If they’re weaker, Toss have a hard time keeping up, or just outright die to various pushes.
As per the medivac, it’s very potent indeed, I think anyone who’s played Toss or Zerg has had many nightmares recalling those times where a single or double medivac drop of little supply gets in and wedged into a gap and just will not die :p
I guess the speed boost just fits into the general trend of making everything faster. It does make for thrilling games at the highest level. But perhaps there are limits over how far you can stretch it in a game of incomplete information with such a big multitasking component to boot.
Perhaps this happens anyway even without the game’s pace ramping up, but basically every top player these days is a mechanical monster, and I think those extra demands are part of why.
Makes for some damn fun games, but you do also lose those wily operators who could compensate for not being mechanics machines with some smarts, both in pre-game planning and decisions made within tactically. Guys like sOs and cats like that. I dunno what the modern equivalent would be, maybe a Maru or a Clem get crippled by injuries (and I know Maru struggles already). You just can’t conceive of them taking a Serral or Reynor to the wire like Mvp did to Life in that memorable GSL run.
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On August 19 2024 15:55 Telephone wrote:
Maybe this is a bit much, but my -personal opinion- is that you have to be completely out of your mind to not realize that Zerg is completely OP. Their ability to produce workers en masse, the vision granted by creep, the defense enabled by queens, the strength of ling/bane, the fact that so many of the units are melee and can thus be a-moved before quickly moving on to the next task, the ability of the nydus to move anywhere on the map instantly, the ability of vipers to just grab units for free, the ability of infestors to make it impossible to micro, the guaranteed ability to fully scout the opponent with overseers/speed overlods, the strength of lurker splash, the ease with which ravagers kill buildings and tanks and zone armies, etc., etc.
Terran and Protoss simply have to outplay a zerg opponent for an entire game. If one bad baneling connection is allowed, for example, terran just loses the game immediately. The amount of active management of an army necessary for the other races is just obviously so much more.
Thankfully, to play Zerg well, one must take care of macro chore after macro chore. The design is so boring. Hit your injects. Build workers and zerglings. Spread creep tumors. Amove wherever your opponent is. The only reason that anyone has ever won a pro game against zerg is that zerg is extremely mechanically challenging from a macro perspective.
The pro scene had one zerg that was good at macro and knew how to control spellcasters on the off chance that it went to late game and he dominated for years. Suddenly people are surprised when someone who is far more capable at actually playing an RTS in any regard other than making the right units (with perfect information) and consistently doing macro chores, wins.
Am I coping? Am I trash? Yes to both. But, it's hard to think otherwise when I see someone outplaying their opponent (that makes many many mistakes, however small) for 15-20 minutes, only to lose to a single equally small mistake.
Clem played out of his mind, and deserved the victory. His TvZ skill level in the finals was possibly unmatched in SC2 history. If you think that the result had anything to do with balance, you are probably gold league (if you even play the game at all).
it sounds like you are gold league more than anything. Just refrain from even thinking about balance, and enjoy the games.
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On August 19 2024 17:29 Comedy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 15:55 Telephone wrote:
Maybe this is a bit much, but my -personal opinion- is that you have to be completely out of your mind to not realize that Zerg is completely OP. Their ability to produce workers en masse, the vision granted by creep, the defense enabled by queens, the strength of ling/bane, the fact that so many of the units are melee and can thus be a-moved before quickly moving on to the next task, the ability of the nydus to move anywhere on the map instantly, the ability of vipers to just grab units for free, the ability of infestors to make it impossible to micro, the guaranteed ability to fully scout the opponent with overseers/speed overlods, the strength of lurker splash, the ease with which ravagers kill buildings and tanks and zone armies, etc., etc.
Terran and Protoss simply have to outplay a zerg opponent for an entire game. If one bad baneling connection is allowed, for example, terran just loses the game immediately. The amount of active management of an army necessary for the other races is just obviously so much more.
Thankfully, to play Zerg well, one must take care of macro chore after macro chore. The design is so boring. Hit your injects. Build workers and zerglings. Spread creep tumors. Amove wherever your opponent is. The only reason that anyone has ever won a pro game against zerg is that zerg is extremely mechanically challenging from a macro perspective.
The pro scene had one zerg that was good at macro and knew how to control spellcasters on the off chance that it went to late game and he dominated for years. Suddenly people are surprised when someone who is far more capable at actually playing an RTS in any regard other than making the right units (with perfect information) and consistently doing macro chores, wins.
Am I coping? Am I trash? Yes to both. But, it's hard to think otherwise when I see someone outplaying their opponent (that makes many many mistakes, however small) for 15-20 minutes, only to lose to a single equally small mistake.
Clem played out of his mind, and deserved the victory. His TvZ skill level in the finals was possibly unmatched in SC2 history. If you think that the result had anything to do with balance, you are probably gold league (if you even play the game at all). it sounds like you are gold league more than anything. Just refrain from even thinking about balance, and enjoy the games.
The "community" balance council are all grandmaster leaguers, and they don't seem to be particularly good at balancing the game, so maybe we should give some gold leaguers a chance. What's the worst that could happen? Protoss winning something?
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Northern Ireland23313 Posts
On August 19 2024 17:41 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 17:29 Comedy wrote:On August 19 2024 15:55 Telephone wrote:
Maybe this is a bit much, but my -personal opinion- is that you have to be completely out of your mind to not realize that Zerg is completely OP. Their ability to produce workers en masse, the vision granted by creep, the defense enabled by queens, the strength of ling/bane, the fact that so many of the units are melee and can thus be a-moved before quickly moving on to the next task, the ability of the nydus to move anywhere on the map instantly, the ability of vipers to just grab units for free, the ability of infestors to make it impossible to micro, the guaranteed ability to fully scout the opponent with overseers/speed overlods, the strength of lurker splash, the ease with which ravagers kill buildings and tanks and zone armies, etc., etc.
Terran and Protoss simply have to outplay a zerg opponent for an entire game. If one bad baneling connection is allowed, for example, terran just loses the game immediately. The amount of active management of an army necessary for the other races is just obviously so much more.
Thankfully, to play Zerg well, one must take care of macro chore after macro chore. The design is so boring. Hit your injects. Build workers and zerglings. Spread creep tumors. Amove wherever your opponent is. The only reason that anyone has ever won a pro game against zerg is that zerg is extremely mechanically challenging from a macro perspective.
The pro scene had one zerg that was good at macro and knew how to control spellcasters on the off chance that it went to late game and he dominated for years. Suddenly people are surprised when someone who is far more capable at actually playing an RTS in any regard other than making the right units (with perfect information) and consistently doing macro chores, wins.
Am I coping? Am I trash? Yes to both. But, it's hard to think otherwise when I see someone outplaying their opponent (that makes many many mistakes, however small) for 15-20 minutes, only to lose to a single equally small mistake.
Clem played out of his mind, and deserved the victory. His TvZ skill level in the finals was possibly unmatched in SC2 history. If you think that the result had anything to do with balance, you are probably gold league (if you even play the game at all). it sounds like you are gold league more than anything. Just refrain from even thinking about balance, and enjoy the games. The "community" balance council are all GM and they don't seem to be particularly good at balancing the game. Maybe we should give some Gold leaguers a chance. What's the worst that can happen? Protoss wins something?
Ah they’ve done alright, they don’t have the ability to tackle the more fundamental core design issues either. There’s only so much you can do tweaking numbers and abilities.
It’s also beyond the council’s scope that Protoss have probably been hit hardest by retirements and military service than any other race. Or that the one really exciting Protoss talent doesn’t play offline.
I wouldn’t say we’re at peak balance but there sure have been worse periods. PvZ is less daunting for sure. PvT isn’t too bad, TvZ is pretty good.
Also the map pool really isn’t too hot either, which I don’t think they have much input on, although I may be mistaken there.
1T, 2Z and 1P in the Ro4 is as good as you can get in terms of deep runs across the races.
I think until someone comes along to shoulder at least part of the burden that herO shoulders, Protoss is kinda just gonna struggle by the law of averages. Maybe Classic and Stats can continue their incremental improvement, maybe Trap can build on some promising performances. Maybe MaxPax can show up and reveal that the reason he didn’t play offline was because is so, so devilishly handsome that he feels awkward making everyone else look bad.
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On August 18 2024 11:01 Blitzball04 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 05:00 WombaT wrote:On August 18 2024 04:31 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:
I like this format way more. Unlike in group stages, every match is meaningful. But you have an entire stage of the tournament where unless you’re good enough to advance the matches are essentially (albeit not 100%) meaningless. 1 set away from taking out Maru after beating Byun twice and Gumiho? Well hey you’re in the same spot as the guy who went 0-6 They managed to make a whole slew of (admittedly great) matches less meaningful than a round robin match I see no advantages at all with this format versus an upper bracket slog, single elimination for a Ro4 spot, further you get the higher you enter a lower bracket slugfest, which could be double elimination. Or a round robin that seeds a knockout bracket To make the counter argument, coffee faced harder opponents than Oliveria compare to gumiho and Byun. Oliveria was eliminated by Classic, who I can argue also had harder opponents as well (Clem and cure). Based purely on skill level on this tournament, Oliveria placed exactly where he should have been 12-16th. All we saw was his tvt, once he played tvp against classic we all saw how god awful that was
Oliveira beat Byun, Gumiho, Byun again, and almost Maru. He ran the TvT gauntlet and these Terrans are all top GSL terrans who are championship contenders for GSL. This is about how I'd expect Cure to perform vs those players (barely beating Byun, barely losing to Maru).
Meanwhile, Classic beat Oli once 1-2 in a Bo3, and got close to beating Cure (lost 2-3). And that's all his wins.
And you think Oli deserves to be placed not the same but lower than Classic?
Let's look at losses.
Oli lost to Maru twice, and then Classic.
Classic lost to Clem (a little higher than Maru), Cure (around Oli level), Reynor (a bit of wild card, arguably Reynor did very well with his 2-3 vs Clem).
Losses I'd agree Classic had slightly harder opponents. But this is also because he had a worse seed going into EWC Cup, something that Oliveira earned by proving himself to be the better player over the 2023-2024 season. So this is not really an excuse you can use to defend Classic. There's no unfair luck factor here.
Oli earned his seed over the 2023-2024 season, proved himself by winning 3 matches vs top GSL players, losing only twice to Maru. And then he loses 1 bo3 vs Classic and he's out at last place. How can you think that Classic deserves higher placement than Oli? Because Classic lost all his group matches and his only win is 1 slight upset in a bo3?
Oli deserved to be placed 8th-11th, not 12th-18th. Maybe not 5th-6th, but 8th-11th in terms of performance.
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United States1772 Posts
On August 19 2024 09:33 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2024 06:52 Athenau wrote:
I think there's some truth to the notion that Terran played perfectly is the strongest, but that's just a consequence of the way the two races are designed/have evolved.
Zerg is the best race for exploiting attention asymmetry. They have so many explosive tools that can punish you for not looking or looking in the wrong place, so their win condition a lot of the time is to cause chaos and snowball any momentary lapse on the part of their opponent into an overwhelming victory.
Terran, as a consequence of being composed almost entirely of ranged glass cannons, is more about using attention as a resource for their own units to grind out efficiency, and ultimately win by attrition.
TL;DR version: Zerg's gameplan is to force mistakes, while Terran is rewarded more for not making mistakes. Historically the former has been much more consistent in securing wins at the top level, but when someone pulls off the occasional miracle run like Clem did here, it looks unstoppable, but no player has ever been able to play at that pitch for long. I can't lie I think the exact opposite of this, imo terran is the weakest race when played perfectly. A lot of terran strategy relies on executing better than the defensive player, which you're not going to be able to do if your opponent plays a perfect defense. The best terran, Clem, is always in your face playing aggressively trying to force mistakes, and there has never been a defensive terran player in the same way that there is Serral, Stats/Rain.
You forgot taeja, the best defensive terran of all time.
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Clem lucky, no TvT against Koreans
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Balance aside, Clem displayed the most impressive gameplay ever seen against P/Z
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EPT
