Is Protoss underpowered in high level play? [SPOILERS]
UPDATED WITH LATEST DATA FOR JULY/AUGUST - SEE PAGE 9
Introduction
The worm has turned. It began almost impercetibly. Protoss players such as myself started questioning whether the balance complaints of other races were really justified in light of the results we were seeing at high level play.
I have previously said it would be unwise to jump to conclusions based on the results of a couple of high profile games or one tournament. I am still of that view. What I would like to discuss is the emergence of an apparent trend in poor protoss results in high level play. I say "apparent" trend because I think it is still too early to conclude that what we are seeing is actually a "trend".
Conscious of not jumping to a premature conclusion, it seems to me that the emerging data raises a legitimate question: is protoss currently underpowered in high level play?
Disclaimer
As a protoss player I have an interest in this debate. I will try to keep this to a minimum, but I am conscious that the very fact that I am raising it as a topic of discussion demonstrates an inherent bias on my part. I hope you will forgive me!
Some definitions
First, my discussion is limited to high level play. By "high level play", I mean top tournaments such as GSL, and Grandmasters league, with particular emphasis on the leagues in Korea, NA and Europe, which I suggest are the most competitive.
Second, I have carefully and deliberately used the word underpowered. By underpowered, I do not mean "unplayable" or "uncompetitive". Strong players will continue to perform well because their inherent skill allows them to overcome possible shortcomings with their race. Underpowered also involves questions of degree - it may be very slight, such that the effect on lower level players is low or almost negligible, but enough to have a significant effect at higher levels.
Third, the expression underpowered in high level play is important. It may also be legitimate to ask "is protoss overpowered in low level play?", having regard to the race's arguably simpler mechanics (I'll leave this for others to decide).
Why it is important to look at data
In any non-mirror match up, it seems to me there are three key variables that affect the outcome of the game. The first, and probably most significant, is the player (or more correctly, players). The second variable is race. The third is map. In examining the relative "power" of a race, we are trying to eliminate the "noise" that is created as a result of differences in player skill and different maps.
For this reason, I suggest (although you may disagree) it is virtually useless to examine anecdotal experience - ie a player's personal experience of the race and their recent games. This is because the key variable here is the player, not the map or race. But, when we look at the results of hundreds (or thousands) of games, the significance of the "player" diminishes drastically, whereas the importance of "race" (and "map") dramatically increases.
I acknowledge that the following data does not attempt to isolate "map" as a factor, and that this is a significant limitation. I apologise in that the data is simply not available.
In summary, what those results showed was that in global tournaments, the win rate for all match ups had begun to approach 50% (although I would be interested to see the current results more than one month (and 1 patch) later). However, the results showed Protoss was been getting absolutely murdered in recent Korean tournaments, with win rates of 33% of ZvT and 30% of ZvP. I said at the time I would be interested to see whether this was the start of an emerging trend (Korea tends to lead the field in all things Starcraft).
The results of the current GSL "Super Tournament" have been, if anything even more dramatic. 16 protoss players qualified for the round of 64. This represents 25% of the field, despite the fact that Protoss players make up approximately 35% of active 1v1 players in Korean. Of these, 6 advanced to the round of 32 (two of whom advanced in mirror match ups). Three Protoss players have so far played in the round of 32 (Genius, HongUn and Trickster) and all have been knocked out. I pray that at least one of the remaining three advances to the top 16, so that there is at least someone I can watch to pick up some tips on how to play the race at the moment. But I think there is a real risk at the moment that we will have a quarter final (or even round of 16) with not a single protoss player.
I note in passing that the number of Korean protoss players complaining about balance has (as of yesterday), overtaken zerg players for the first time in many months (see http://www.playxp.com/sc2/jingjing/ - red = zerg, green = terran, blue = protoss, purple = nothing). Of course, all this demonstrates is "sentiment" (what people think about balance) rather than an actual indicator of balance.
Grandmasters League statistics
The number of Protoss players in the Korean Grandmasters League has remained the same as when I last examined the data. 32% of Korean Grandmasters play protoss, compared to around 35% of all players. They remain slightly underrepresented amongst Grandmasters. (It should also be remembered that random is dramatically underrepresented in GMs League, and as a result (statistically at least) Zerg and Terran are both significantly overrepresented. Zerg is the most overrepresented. There is a similar trend in SEA: see my earlier thread at http://www.sc2sea.com/archive/index.php/t-1242.html).
There continues to be very few Protoss players in the top 10 of any of the regions. Based on my search this morning, of the top 10 players in each of the major regions, NA has 1 Protoss, EU has 0 Protoss, Korea has 2 Protoss and SEA has 1 Protoss. By contrast:
- 5 of the NA top 10 are Terran and 4 are Zerg;
- 6 of the EU top 10 are Terran and 4 are Zerg;
- 7 of the Korean top 10 are Terran and 1 is Zerg; and
- 3 of the SEA top 10 are Terran and 6 are Zerg.
Discussion
These results hardly provide a definitive answer to the question I have asked. But, I think, the data legitimately entitles me to ask the question: is Protoss currently underpowered in high level play?
I am very curious to see what Blizzard's overall data shows, and really wish they would release this (as they have done in the past). The most problematic scenario, I think, is one in which the data shows Protoss is overperforming in lower level play (whether that be overperformance in bronze, silver, gold, platinum, or overperformance all the way up to high Masters). At the moment I don't have any data and could only speculate on the position below Grandmasters. If this were the case, would raise the question, as many have already suggested, of who it is that Blizzard should be balancing the game for - professionals or the average player? Personally, I tend to think it should be balanced for high level play and everyone else should try and catch up by looking at what the professionals do. However, at the moment we do not have data to suggest any underperformance by Protoss below the parameters I have identified.
On a sad note, it will be difficult for me to pick up much to "imitate" from the GSL super tournament. Unfortunately, most of the Protoss games have been terribly one-sided and not really worth watching (for my part, it is starting to look brutal and somewhat bleak out there for the pros). However, I remain optimistic that one of the remaining Protoss players will show us something new and spectactular to stop the rot. My hopes are now pinned on SlayerS_Alicia (who, for those of you who don't know, more or less gave us the aggressive 3gate expand which revolutionised PvT a few months ago).
Tom please add at least one picture to your articles so it has a thumbnail!
@Next_rim: It would be great if you would do that exercise and let us know the results. Its not much use saying what you "think" the results might show if you haven't actually looked at it. I think you would need to do this for all races, not just Protoss, so we have something to compare.
I could do it for maybe 3-4 tournaments in RO16 and further. That's ~200 games, maybe more, and the amount of games is reasonably small to attempt to do it manually through a conventional parser. For any better output, need to automate the parsing.
Here is a link on a project that attempted to build a C++ parser:
They figured out the codes for all actions in game, so if I only could break the MPQ part of the replay, then convert it to .txt, I could use VBA engine in excel to parse it and get BO's. The code string is standard 75-character string, with 4-5 bits of code meaning group (selected/deselected), time in half-seconds (lolwut?), action taken, and some other stuff. No need to dig coordinates, just parse for unit production, building production and time of action up to, say, min 8.
I only see a real problem with mass unpacking (have never dealt with MPQ) and mass coversion of code to .txt. I've had lots of experience from here, as I have to dig through client's stupid 150+ page transaction details that they send in a locked .pdf. I convert the data to .txt, import into excel, then use VBA to break it down into structured parts that can be sorted, searched and used for analysis.
___________________________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by souljah
Upgrade : Give roaches invulnerability to nukes, as their namesake on Earth have.
Stop tempting me Next_rim. All of a sudden I want to see if I could build a decent parser. :S
Time in half-seconds seems reasonable. If a Street Fighter player can reliably hit a link with a 5 frame window (5/60ths of a second!!!) then half-seconds in an RTS are going to be important.
That example you refer to on TL.net (a link to the source would be great!) doesn't seem that surprising to me (ie the results *apparently* show four main Protoss openings in PvZ). I only really face 4 main Zerg openings in PvZ as well, with minor stylistic variations - 14/14 gas pool into expand, 16 pool gasless expand, expand before pool, and early pool.
And, btw, it didn't show 4x openings, it showed 4x ways to play forge-FE, not even covering the developments after cybercore, or things like 4wg or 3-gate. The guy looked at builds only up to cybercore. I'll get a link later tonight when I get home, since TL is blocked for me at work(
I'm guesstimating 100-150 possible combinations for protoss up to min 8, given you break down the timeline by logical "zones". 10 gate is not 12 gate, but 20 gas and 21 gas are probably same build, just normal fluctuations of it. I can't say for T or Z, since I'm no good with those, but I'd imagine T will have a lot more combinations, especially after I watched day9's guide to drop play recently (4x different ways to get dropships by moving around stim, CC, supply and addon timings, which have huge impact on gameplay).
Bugalugs McScruffin,
You probably could. Took my clanmate 2 days to build a simple php parcer:
Here, when you upload a replay, it adds it to the database with full info on player, race, result and map played. They are still debating whether they need apm.
___________________________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by souljah
Upgrade : Give roaches invulnerability to nukes, as their namesake on Earth have.
Why aren't we making Motherships? Let's first ignore how freaking hard it is to actually tech up to it without dying or significantly giving up army/economic value, then lets think about how a single Neural Parasite turns the "oh so powerful" mothership against ourselves (WHATS HAPPENING WHY ARE THE ZERG UNITS SUDDENLY INVIS), and a single EMP renders the mothership completely useless.
Carriers? Let us again ignore how much map control we have to give up and how much initial army we have to suffer, and how easily we can just die to heavy 2/3 (T/Z) base aggression from our opponents, and consider how easily carriers are actually countered T2 vikings/marines, and by mass infestors - Which by the way gave Destiny the ability to destroy 7 x 200/200 food worth of ZENEXPuzzle's army to win with Puzzle literally pulling out every single tech and every single formation imaginable. Is Puzzle really losing on innovation? Or is there seemingly no answer to the mighty mass infestor.
Warp prism? This is the one unit I agreed needs to be used more, and I have seen it used in really cool fashion by some of the more creative Pro players (JYP, Kowi). However lets compare the harrassment/dropping potential between Protoss and the other two races. Firstly, warp prism cannot be mass produced because of how extremely important the Robotics facility is to us to continue creating Observers/Collosi, therefore the ability to get multiple medivacs and overlords to harrass/drop is much easier than the ability to get multiple warp prisms. Secondly, can you compare a warp prism with 4 zealots to a medivac with 8 marines, 4 blue flame hellions to 4 dts (Which by the way is a much later tech than hellions)? 20 overlords with 2 banelings? & Finally, how ridiculously easy it is to stop 1 warp prism (1 viking or 1 muta/corrupter will do), compared to stopping multiple Terran drop ships which can unloading anti-air marines in an instant, or free warp prisms that comes by the dozens in overlords (which are very vague in general because you never know if there are units in there, or whether they are just there to scout, you have to pull probes regardless). For zero food cost, Zerg has the ability to completely relocate a significant portion of my army.
Now I'm not saying warp prism shouldn't be used as I have seen it used many times effectively. But comparing the harrassment ability for Protoss compared to the other races is just silly, the strength of Protoss is in its army, and thats why we continue to play to our strengths (building a strong army) as to our weakness (ability to harrass / splitting army) whereas our Terran and Zerg opponents lately not only outdo us in the harrassment category but suddenly have come up with unit mixtures that stomps the "mighty" Protoss deathball, so how exactly should Protoss play if not resort to timing attacks?
So before you say "Mothership, carrier, warp prism" next time and how much they are underused, think about why they are underused and the actual meta-game before you start calling Protoss players blind or non-innovative for never making those units. For most of you, you don't think about it from a in-game perspective because you don't play Protoss at a high level, and as a result, everytime you say Mothership, carrier, or warp prism, I want to punch my computer screen and shove an infestor down your throat.
Noone is to say Protoss is not behind in the meta-game. But who is to say this is because right now we are being left behind due the limiting parameters of our race as opposed to idiocy of our players, it has been over 4 months. Any signs of emerging meta-game trend that favours the Protoss has been crushed, I believe it is time for a change.
Bring on 4 second stun to our storm!
(joke)
Last edited by nGenLight; Fri, 19th-Aug-2011 at 7:19 PM.
You assume a straight tech rush, which is wrong. Nothing stops you from getting carriers instead of colossi after a 2-base 6-gate. Refer to my PvZ thread for cost and timing calculation, it takes less time and just a little bit more money (like 100 mins/100 gas) to get a carrier out on the field compared to colossus with range.
And have you ever considered using mothership in a way other than carrying it for invis? And mothership actually costs only slightly more gas than a colossus with lance upgrade (all building costs cept for nexus factored in), and takes exactly same time to tech to (all building warp-in time included). I personally leave it at my 3rd base so lings can't just run in and kill probes, and use mass recall to save my fleet from infestor fungal when I attack. Zerg fungals and shits marines - I recall entire army to safety of base, regen shields, go in more. Infestors don't get to regen energy fast enough. It just blows my mind WHY nobody uses it that way. You engaged at bad angle? You got fungaled in the corner? You have split your army and the harassing party is far away when opp hit expo? Well, 1 click solves all these problems.
As for prism, you've said it. Only disadvantage is the dps. However, prism can drop stuff, run away, get field, warp in, load, drop more, while medivac has to go all the way back to base for new troops. And I'm actually yet to see a single pro game (cept for couple WhiteRa and TLO ones), where toss gets speed upgrade for prism or obs. And then you complain about ineffective harass. Speeded prism is as fast as mutas, and has more HP than medivac, and costs 0 gas.
___________________________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by souljah
Upgrade : Give roaches invulnerability to nukes, as their namesake on Earth have.
Last edited by Next_rim; Fri, 19th-Aug-2011 at 7:26 PM.
When did I assume a straight tech rush? Did I say that or did you ASSUME that? I want to see how you possibly can maintain map control while attempting to getting a third base with Carriers as opposed to twilight or Collosi.
The way you just described using a mothership is how Kiwikaki used to use mothership about 5 months ago (same time everyone was using it), do you even know why he has abandoned the use of it? Sure the way you described the use of it is great, but you don't factor in map control, aggression, utility cost, opportunity cost that comes with getting these capital ships. All these things that make capital ships a very high risk and low reward investment that end up getting hard countered so easily. I find it very insulting that you are attempting to tell me that I don't know the the uses of mothership as you described above. I can probably pull out 50 or moreso replays of where I used mothership like you described, and I can tell you one thing, the investment is completely inferior to an earlier timing on whatever strategy you are using with that mothership, and it DOES NOT solve the issues that is haunting Protoss players.
I've used warp prism all the freaking time, until better players realise the moment they know a warp prism is on the field, they just patroled 1 viking/corruptor at the edge of their base and complete nullified my warp prism.
I'm really holding back on using the non-high-level-protoss play to suggest your lack of experience - I bet I've made 200x more carriers/motherships/warp prisms then you ever had. So please, go ahead and actually do the things you described at a high level play, release a replay pack of you being successful, and I will personally bow down to you as the savior of Protoss. But before that, your credibility is severely lacking.
Last edited by nGenLight; Fri, 19th-Aug-2011 at 7:45 PM.
I wasn't trolling??? Why do you keep assuming things? I meant exactly what I said. If you cannot produce evidence of consistent successful results with what you felt like you knew better than me about, it is really hard for me to respect what you have to say.
Regarding the replays, I don't have the time to help you out, sorry.
Quoting the words from Tom "When you watch a professional tournament game, you are seeing the one strategy that was selected, not the 1000 strategies that were discarded because they suck. But please don't assume a dedicated professional player hasn't also experimented with these other strats."
Your post is highly nonconstructive. You insult me purely based on my ladder ranking. You appear a bit butthurt, and I really dont see why.
What possessed me? The fact that I've made observations of my own. If i'm wrong please explain where, and let the debate flow organically so that we can come to a more acute conclusion as to the current state of the game and why protoss is 'apparently' under powered.
Has it occured to you that I may only be a diamond terran because I dont have the time to put in perfecting my mechanics? I may not have the time to theorycraft, to get the game experience necessary to execute builds perfectly?
All your post says is "i disagree because you are a diamond terran and therefore are incapable of thinking at competant lvl of starcraft".
If you felt you had nothing to contribute then why waste a post. You clearly did not care to understand what I had posted (because im a nooby diamond terran) or just didnt understand it at all. If you disagree provide an argument that relies on fact, evidence and logic, rather than ladder ranking credentials. Artosis is extremely knowledgable when it comes to sc2, but he doesn't perform well. More so with tasteless. Want more examples? Liquid'Tyler, amazing knowledge, poor results. I am not comparing myself to these people, just hoping to enlighten you to see the silliness of ladder rankings being an ABSOLUTE reflection of a persons knowledge and analysis of the starcraft 2 scene.
I hope my post was constructive in that it discourages other armchair off-race theorycrafters from telling Protoss what they are doing wrong.
Getting ranked up on the ladder isn't just about mechanics, it's understanding the game at a higher level. My mechanics are sub-par and I mainly end up relying on experience/understanding or game sense.
You give me examples of high level BW->SC2 gamers who aren't as mechanically inclined as some of their counterparts. These guys are vastly experienced and understand RTS concepts and SC in depth. A diamond Terran might have some basic understanding of their own race and be able to regurgitate stuff heard off day[9] or SotG but the chance of their off-race theorycrafting being plausible, original and useful at a high level is beyond laughable. You simply don't know enough to be aware of how shallow your understanding of the game is, the higher up you get the more you will realise how little you know. Flash says he's still learning and discovering new things ffs.
Besides I didn't discard your post because of your rank or race. Both of which I was unaware of as I read it. Of course I read the whole post, it was just an expression. I discarded it because the first three lines just spewed SC jargon and the rest simply added to my impression. 'Timings' is thrown around way too much these days.
As for the rest of your post:
Sage's play was awesome but difficult to replicate and very map dependent
Scouting options - hallucinate, obs, probes, hidden 2nd probes, stalker/zealot pokes, phoenixes, dt's are all forms of scouting currently being used by protoss
Then you provide personal anecdotes of what you see diamond protosses doing when you play them on SEA...
The argument against mass obs is build time but more importantly gas. If you played protoss you'd know how critical gas is.
Turtle defend macro is a mentality because the pro's have worked out optimal playstyles. Like Light said I'm sure they'd love to get all Bisuesque but alot of the time the risk-reward isn't there with prism play. It seems like a blind mentality only because the vast majority of protoss follow the professional trendsetters who work out how to best play the game. I'd love to see more innovative harrass but there's a reason it's not popular at pro-level. Terran and Zerg only surpass protoss in options, they have cheap low-tech, high dmg units (marines/banes) to harass worker lines and superior/easily available transports.
The last part makes sense but is pretty vague. Basically saying in the future X will allow Y. Alot of this stuff has already been worked out and the other races already harass alot. Professional P's aren't clueless, I assume they've just worked out that alot of the time having a bigger ball is better for applying pressure, defending or gaining map control at critical points in the game due to P unit synergy and exponential strength in numbers.
Just like you don't have the time to ladder, I don't have the time to respond fully every time someone makes a bad post in a topic I care about. This thread is meant to be a discussion between high level tosses. If you're not one, read and learn. Instead it's become a debate thread between players like Light and lowbie theorycrafters.
Blizzard have confirmed the latest data for Masters League NA and Korean shows 60% win rate for Terran in TvP (well outside their "comfort zone"). Blizzard is concerned about this and keeping an eye on it. The results appears to be due to the dramatic shift in the metagame arising from the renewed use of the Terran 1-1-1 timing push. There is more than one hint that a balance patch may be coming soon.
There is little change in the trend from July (ie Protoss is under performing overall and in both PvZ and PvT). Coupled with Blizzard's ladder data (as released a few weeks ago) showing significant under performance in PvT, it seems to me safe to conclude Protoss is the weakest race in tournament play and in high level ladder play (so much is acknowledged by the imminent release of patch 1.4).
The question "should we give Protoss a buff?" has now been replaced by the question "how much of a buff should we give Protoss?" I suspect Blizzard will be conservative (as they should be). However, it seems to me there is a real issue whether the balance changes go far enough in PvT (which on Blizzard's ladder figures is the most imbalanced match up in SC2 at Masters level).
I welcome the barracks build time increase the immortal range increase. I just wonder whether they go far enough, having watched Code S Protoss players getting taken apart by a variety of 1 base all ins (not just the 1/1/1) based around getting out a lot of early marines. It seems to me the immortal buff would do very little against many of the variations on the timing push.
EDIT - GSL SPOILER
MC knocked into Code A after a string of PvZs (and Alicia was knocked down a couple of days ago). A very sad day for me. I doubt I will be buying a GSL ticket next season, given my lack of interest in TvT and ZvT.
But really, reading some of stuff here, I find it really annoying to see low"er" level players speak as if they know more about the game and say "I just don't have time to put in to practice the mechanics needed by high level players". Everytime I see this kind of statement annoys me. If you don't play at the "high" level, you don't face the pressure, different mindgames, tweaks of builds, fakes that are NOT mechanical. Surely micro and macro side too but yeah. Like for example, we can see how bad Moletrap is (I'm a Moletrap hater) when he casts. One of the game he sees a pylon cancle from a protoss player while Nexus first on Dual Sight and it is pretty obvious from my point of view he was checking if zerglings can or cannot run by if he places the pylon in that certain location and they say its a mistake from the protoss player, his chocking etc. And also hiding 2nd probe in mineral like he thinks is a mistake and misrally or something.
Really, please don't say stuff like you didn't have the time to practice the mechanical side of it to get good. Because in SCII, unlike broodwar, mechanical side is not as important (It is important of course) and yes this is directed to someone.
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