[ToRDeathsFang]

Recently in the chatbox there have been some....very passionate people having very heated discussions about races and how overpowered one is over the other.

Now to end this i am asking for the opinions of top Masters+ league players for their opinion on race balance, and if a race is inbalanced,what should be nerfed/buffed.

I do not want this to become a troll war *cough* deL *cough* Aean *cough* I want peoples honest opinions.

[inFeZa]

This is already a troll thread.

[UncleTom]

Doesnt very thread have its troll and every dog have its day. The dello oh is that it is much easier to play terran and protoss with there childish mechanics that it is rather laughable "ha ha ha." But it will base it off major tournament resuts. MLG top 4 protoss, protoss, terran, protoss with the best zerg being Idra at 7th. In GSL world championship protoss, terran, terran, protoss. Dreamhack finals Protoss, Protoss.

[HaNdFisH]

Based on recent tournament results it seems to me Protoss is slightly in the lead, closely followed by terran and then zerg trailing behind.

[Xeen]

Originally Posted by HaNdFisH

Based on recent tournament results it seems to me Protoss is slightly in the lead, closely followed by terran and then zerg trailing behind.

This is not answering the OP, though - you've said what race has the most successful players.

Every competitive RTS goes through phases where players of X race do best, usually due to map rotation, new strategies emerging and being adopted en masse, or key players of a race deciding to spontaneously suck heavily (sup FD). And every time, that game's equivalent of bronze league will throw a fit.

ZvZ Assembly wasn't long ago. TvT GSL WC was barely last week. PvP Dreamhack was yesterday - a tournament, I might add, that motherfucking oGsMC was at and all-killed the Zerg players during.

Asking for opinions is going to get you opinionated answers, which are good for trolling if nothing else. Why bother? Look at UncleTom's reply - he even counts Top 4 GSL WC to show that 2 Ps are there behind a TvT finals, but only mentions the PvP finals of Dreamhack, when there were 2P, 1T, 1Z in the semis, the most balanced split you can feasibly get.

[TAEdgE]

If people stopped complaining about imbalance in regarding every little thing in every single matchup, this community would actually be enjoyable to talk to.

Times like this i miss brood war. No matter if it's done in fun, alot of the term imbalance is overused and has basically lost meaning.

You can always be as good as July, MC or MVP, overcome imbalance and improve every aspect of your game.

To answer your question, no race can be pinpointed yet after the infestor change. Come back in a month.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by EdgE

If people stopped complaining about imbalance in regarding every little thing in every single matchup, this community would actually be enjoyable to talk to.

Hear hear.

I've said this in a previous thread, but it seems to me there are a thousand things I could improve in my game before balance enters the picture.

Competency bias

I find it quite interesting how stronger players appear less likely to blame their losses on game balance, especially top level pros (with some exceptions). The majority of balance complaints seem to be generated by lower league players, which strikes me as curious as it seems to me these players have the most room for improvement in their game and would be the least likely to lose due to a genuine balance issue.

For what its worth, a good read (and very relevant to SC2) is the Dunning-Kruger Effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning...3Kruger_effect).

Academic reference: Kruger, Justin; David Dunning (1999). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77 (6): 1121–34

Random variation

One thing Blizzard have always been careful to do is obtain statistically meaningful data in relation to win/loss ratios in match-ups. The fact that a cluster of a certain race ended up in the finals of XYZ tournament, viewed in isolation, could simply be an artefact of the sample size. The added problem of looking at statistics for very top level players is it is difficult to divorce how much of the performance is explainable by race balance, and how much by freak skill (some people are just plain better than everyone else for a time until another dynamo catches up - think Federer and Nadal). Whilst some say it jokingly, it is probably just plain accurate to describe oGsMC as an "imbalanced" human being!

Blizzard's approach (as explained at blizzcon) actually seems very sensible. They collect a large volume of cross-sectional data and attempt to control for a "player skill" factor. Before someone argues "yes but player skill is inherently affected by balance", the fact that players also play mirror match ups adds a "control" to the data. Before someone says "okay but I'm just bad at mirror match-ups", this can come close to the opposite of a competency bias - it cannot logically be the case that, for example, every zerg player is below average at zvz, so a fair assumption is that a mirror match-up is on average an accurate indicator of absolute "skill" (in the sense that it cannot be affected by game balance because each player has exactly the same options/strategies available to them).

As EdgE alludes to ("come back in a month") the added problem is that a shifting metagame can render last week or month's apparent trend meaningless.

[AvPoker]

Forcefields.

[ToRDeathsFang]

Thanks to the people that gave good responses. The reason i started this thread was just to convince a few people about X race being overpowered or easier to use.

The way Blizzard copes with race unbalance is looking at win/loss ratios for each match-up from different leagues, they said this at BlizzCon 2010 and the results were actually pretty interesting, BSG league matchup ratios were very different from pro league ratios.

As new stuff are introduced and taken out of the game ratio's will vary. What Blizzard is always aiming for is 50-55% w/l ratio in every league in every matchup. If it gets to 60% then they will immediately nerf/buff a race.

Just because one match-up seems a lot harder to play now, doesn't mean it is overpowered because people are yet to learn how to deal with it.

[ProAnnn]

ZvP is very hard to play for the zerg but still it depends on the caliber of the zerg player. Because of the protoss deathball and 'imba' forcefields, we have been seeing more innovative play from zergs like burrow/baneling drops/mutas instead of going roach hydra and amoving. It may be hard for zerg to play ZvP but it definitely aint imbalanced. Things like these are the ones that make the game grow.

[pXAero]

As we saw by TLO's 6 and 7 Rax games vs Zerg this morning it's pretty easy to see that strategies are still evolving, This pretty much says that the races are balanced, or very close to it, otherwise there would be no need for this kind of innovation for one race to get an advantage over another.

...Although TLO's build kind of shows a lack of scoutability against terran. But then again why should every race have to play exactly the same?

[inFeZa]

Watch the latest state of the game.
They address this topic so well, and compare it to SC1.

[Benji]

Originally Posted by PoisoN

Watch the latest state of the game.
They address this topic so well, and compare it to SC1.

Yet had zero zergs on the podcast, clear and unbias opinion right there.

Every single pro zerg will admit or comment on zerg being the weakest race at the moment. Some are very vocal, others arent, but none are saying the race is fine. Its ONLY Protoss and Terrans saying so.

[PapaBigBelly]

No race is imba or OP.

Its just Forcefields which are both IMBA and OVERPOWERED!!!!!!!!!!

[ToRDeathsFang]

Originally Posted by Benji

Yet had zero zergs on the podcast, clear and unbias opinion right there.

Every single pro zerg will admit or comment on zerg being the weakest race at the moment. Some are very vocal, others arent, but none are saying the race is fine. Its ONLY Protoss and Terrans saying so.

If zerg is so hard to play and underpowered, then switch! All your problems solved.

[TAcawkballs]

i think Asians are imbalanced.

[Benji]

Originally Posted by DeathsFang

If zerg is so hard to play and underpowered, then switch! All your problems solved.

I have a terran account that I play when I can, I can't switch race overnight and be as good as I am with a race I spent 8 or so months playing, especially with all the community work I do taking up most of my time.

[Meatex]

I haven't confirmed but I did hear that Fruit Dealer has switched to Terran.
But saying just switch is a bit dumb. All zergs put a lot of time into practicing their race and those who stick with zerg usually find the mechanics more to their preferences. I for one find zerg the most fun while being the most frustrating but I don't want to switch just to win games easily. Where is the fun in massing death ball on 2 base then a-moving to win? :P

[ToRDjvillian]

Why did the collosus fall over? Because it was imbalanced XD

I honestly don't think any race is overpowered and it is all about how you react to you opponent. To many forcefields? Go massive units crush it.

I find Zerg to be the easiest race to play once use to it.

[Xeen]

Originally Posted by Meatex

I haven't confirmed but I did hear that Fruit Dealer has switched to Terran.
But saying just switch is a bit dumb. All zergs put a lot of time into practicing their race and those who stick with zerg usually find the mechanics more to their preferences. I for one find zerg the most fun while being the most frustrating but I don't want to switch just to win games easily. Where is the fun in massing death ball on 2 base then a-moving to win? :P

Implying Zerg is anything but massing units and 1aing at opponents' timing pushes. Oh look, gold league generalizations.

Fruitdealer will be weak no matter what race he plays, I expect. Cool was hyped up in BW, then faded off because he doesn't practice hard - the same thing he's admitted about his mentality with SC2.