[Tom]

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.

Recent tournament results [SPOILERS]

In early May, an author on TeamLiquid performed an analysis of global and Korean tournament results. The thread is here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=218558

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!

Image Credit: http://sanggene.blogspot.com/

Quick Comments

	nirvAnA:
	Apth:
	EveRorschach:
	TCPLemminks:
	EveJeonSa:
	TAScarecrow:
	duanloves:
	Digby:

[ETL.Santi]

No, most people just have self respect and play another race. Also there are no good Protoss in high level play.

Quick Comments

	Tom:	LOL
	QuestionMark:	i remember this quote used back in the days where people were referring it the terran players instead of toss. ^^
	PapaBigBelly:	FF OP! protoss have it so easy, they make the engagement and map theirs with FF. FF has the ability of altering MAPS!
	holyforker:

[crAzerk]

I really liked your writeup Tom, looks like a piece of academic writing that I am familiar with from school - a breath of fresh air in this forum settings

I just want to point out a possible faulty deduction before addressing the issue of whether Blizzard should balance for high levels/casuals.


Faulty Deduction?
Your argument is as such:

Premise 1: Protoss (players) have not been performing well in high level tournaments (Lowest Win Rate)
Premise 2: Protoss are underrepresented in the GM leagues in the world.
----
Conclusion : Protoss is underpowered in high level play.

While your first 2 premises are facts (As you have nicely presented with data) so they cannot be debated, the conclusion is questionable.

Does having a lower win rate equate to a race being underpowered?
I beg to differ.

While you have nicely pointed out 3 variables that determine a match outcome (player, map, race), I would like to suggest that the 3rd variable of race is incompletely portrayed. I mean, how does a person's race affect a match outcome? Does it matter whether he's producing SCVs or producing Drones (that's what race means)
I think a more accurate and complete description of that variable is this: Current Race Metagame. And with this description we'll see a possible answer as to why the results you have pointed out is occurring.

Current Race Metagame means how a particular race is currently handling matchups against other races. This can interact with the variable Map as well, for example, in the past TvZ on Lost Temple was just them abusing cliffs and Zergs losing terribly.
Over time of course, the metagame shifted with Zergs knowing how to handle this with OL/Spine placements, etc.
An example of it being an independent variable is the TvZ bunker rush - Zergs were losing to it when it was first popularized, but the metagame shifted back when they learnt how to handle it.

Thus, it would seem that the reason for Premises 1 and 2 is simply this - Current Zerg/Terran top player's Current Race Metagame is simply better than Protoss' Current Race Metagame. They know how to handle the different strategies Toss can throw at them, and know how to beat them effectively.

Does this mean Protoss is 'underpowered'? Not at all! It simply means Protoss player now has to figure out how to adapt to how Z/T are playing them now, and work out a new approach to beating them.


Issue of balancing
There has been endless debate about this already so I'll just provide my opinion on this issue.

Yes, Blizzard needs to balance the game for the high level players. But can they do this at the expense of the average players? No! There is a huge player pool that they will lose if they let the game fall into imbalance at the average level.

I think the key thing about how Blizzard is balancing things is just to ensure there's no strategy that the average player using a particular race can pull off to consistently beat others (e.g. 4gate) simply because that build is too strong.

And as for higher level play, they have to look at WHAT is causing the Protoss to lose. You cannot just average out the population as you would for a statistical analysis - you have to actually look at each game and find out WHY they are losing.
Is there some strategy/tactic that is just too difficult to hold off as Protoss? Is there some unfair advantage that another race gains over Protoss which the Protoss cannot make up for?
(E.g. Protoss usually gets more Probes than other races in the early stages, but they CAN make up for this with MULEs and fast Drone production later on)

As I don't have a proper conclusion,
-The End-

Quick Comments

ToRRedemption:

NICE POINTS!

[Meatex]

At higher levels most balance problems are minor and its more differences between players
Zerg is flawed in design so they are always on the back foot, at least in early game. Call it QQ but the game was made too fast without zerg being able to adapt to what the opponent is doing equally as fast
However was have seen players like nestea get around this problem well
What crAzerk says is wrong though as the game is horridly imbalanced at lower levels and blizzard isn't intending to do anything about it. If they balance for the lower levels (even diamond) then it would break the game for higher level play

All I can say is look at Inka - how the hell did he get into the code S finals?

[nirvAnA]

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.

this is really scary. imo both protoss and zerg are slightly weaker than terran atm but the results although a small sample seem to indicate protoss is the absolute worse. hmm!

[FaDeBadger]

I agree with crAzerk. It's simply a matter of T and Z having figured out how to beat the way P is playing right now. We saw it not too long ago that people thought ZvP was unwinnable.

P just needs to figure out why they are losing, and a way to combat that.

Quick Comments

PapaBigBelly:

[Tom]

crAzerk, you raise two good points, although permit me some clarification. My conclusion can basically be stated as "the data is consistent with Protoss being underpowered at high level play". As you rightly point out, the data is also consistent with poor adaptation to the current metagame, and this could be the possible explanation. A further explanation it that the poor performance is purely coincidence. That is why I have been careful not to give a strong answer to the question I posed.

This is also why it is important not just to look at snapshots, but to seek to identify trends. I suppose I am saying that the apparent trend I began to observe 1-2 months ago has continued, with the result that the hypothesis that Protoss is underpowered has become more plausible (but by no means proven).

Your second point is also a good one:

Originally Posted by crAzerk

And as for higher level play, they have to look at WHAT is causing the Protoss to lose. You cannot just average out the population as you would for a statistical analysis - you have to actually look at each game and find out WHY they are losing.

I agree, but there are in my view two distinct stages. The first is to use statistics to determine if there is a problem. The second step is, having determined that there is a problem, to examine particular games and strategies, make alterations, and then observe the effect this has on the data (ie repeat step 1).

But there is no point starting at step 2 - pointing out all the things that you observe seem to be wrong with a race, seems to me to be irrelevant if on the whole the race is still performing well. The variables in SC2 seem to me to be so complicated that the only way you can really observe the way all the strengths and weaknesses of a race "come together" is in the proverbial real-time laboratory.

[cruxBsK]

lol wut... Perhaps at high level they are certainly well represented at the lower levels IMO

[dennistoo]

What can i say? Look at the recent tournaments. Protoss just got whip left right up down. If you noticed, the PvZ is probably the weakest if you see zerg playing with banelings, mass roaches, speedlings and couples of infestor. It totally crush the deadball so easy.

The rebuilding of 200 food (save lots of larvas) for zerg is bloody easy as compared to protoss with higher tier units like colo & immortal.

Roaches needs a tweak. 75/25 cost for that unit is ridiculous.

Look at today's Week 8-2 incontrol vs july, July just crushed incontrol purely with mass roaches everything incontrol loses his deadball.

Quick Comments

TAScarecrow:

how the hell is incontrol losing to julyzerg a sign of ZvP imbalance?

[Harmonik]

Originally Posted by Tom

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).

I feel this is probably true (I'm silver). I think that possibly Protoss is broken in the sense that it doesnt scale from low level play to high level play (or vice versa hehe)
The only way I can see a major enough change happening to fix this is with the new HoTS units and rebalance that can occur then.

[crAzerk]

Originally Posted by Meatex

What crAzerk says is wrong though as the game is horridly imbalanced at lower levels and blizzard isn't intending to do anything about it

Care to elaborate?
No wait, don't bother. A lower level player complaining about game balance is like a newbie basketball player who can't throw the ball into the hoop going 'This game is unfair! Make the hoop bigger!' There has already been much said about this elsewhere so I won't say more.


Ok @ Tom,

As you rightly point out, the data is also consistent with poor adaptation to the current metagame, and this could be the possible explanation

Hmm, I wouldn't quite say that the data is consistent with either of those. Making such a statement is a logical fallacy of begging the question, where you assume what you're setting out to prove.
(E.g. You're trying to show that Protoss is underpowered because Protoss are losing. And then you say Protoss are losing and this seems consistent with them being underpowered)

What is more accurate which you also did mention, is that 'Protoss being underpowered' is a plausible explanation for "Protoss losing', just as 'Protoss having a poorer Current Race Metagame' is a plausible explanation for 'Protoss losing'.


Regarding your second portion, I had an interesting thought -
Would it still be possible for a race to be performing well even though there is something wrong with the race?

If you think about it, it IS possible, if the other races haven't found a way to exploit it.
E.g. When Spanishiwa first brought his build out, he was dominating everyone with it, along with everyone else who hopped on to use his build. But there was a clear inherent flaw in it that it lacked map control and had 0 means of pressure in the early game, allowing others to double expand, etc. Did other races figure it out immediately ? No. Thus the Spanishiwa-bandwagon 'performed well' for a period of time, abusing the solid Zerg mechanic of Queen/Spine defence which seemed OP at that moment.

Which led me to think - if a race can perform well both when there is something wrong with it and when there's nothing wrong with it - is it then relevant to look at its current performance to use as an indicator of its balance?
Or should we be focusing on the reasons for its current performance (poor Current Race Metagame) instead?

[crAzerk]

I'm breaking up into 2 posts because it was getting long.

@dennistoo If you could, read my points as well, but if you can't it's alright, I'll try to answer you but it would be better if you have had context

The rebuilding of 200 food (save lots of larvas) for zerg is bloody easy as compared to protoss with higher tier units like colo & immortal.

There's no question here. Zerg has the quickest way of replenishing their lost army. You are right.
But have you taken into consideration this fact as well - A typical 200 Zerg army is generally significantly weaker as compared to a typical 200 Protoss/Terran army?
And thus perhaps this is WHY Zergs NEED that quick way of replenishing?
Think about it.

Roaches needs a tweak. 75/25 cost for that unit is ridiculous.

Yea, they should make it gas free!
Haha ok well I have nothing to say about this, besides maybe pointing out other 'imbalances ' - 1 immortal can kill 3/4 roaches (slightly higher cost on Immortal, but lower food count too), 1 Thor can kill probably 20 queens, etc.

Look at today's Week 8-2 incontrol vs july, July just crushed incontrol purely with mass roaches everything incontrol loses his deadball.

There was a period of time where the Protoss deathball (did you spell it as 'deadball' on purpose? It's pretty funny though if it was on purpose.. like it just dies to anything haha) basically killed everything, and Zergs were the one complaining about imbalance.
But as I've said in previous posts, Zergs have learnt how to deal with this, and adapted their Current Race Metagame. That's why they're beating it.

[PapaBigBelly]

Crazerk Thank you for being on this thread and pointing out the most valueble points


I wanted to give you another rep point but the forum doesnt allow me to just yet :P






According to the graphs on TL, Protoss has a positive win rate ration longer than Zerg. Just to note.

Protoss have Forcefields which can

1.Stop reinforcements coming down the ramp
2. Trun a wide open space into a small choke
3. Use to delay rushes
4. trap units for storm
5. block the widest ramps of the 3rd expansion of xelnaga
6. Prevent anything from getting them surrounded

FFs cost too little energy and they have to be nerfed abit
without FF i do agree the toss will die miserably.

But at any wide open space a zerg engages such as in outside the bases of shaukuras plateau, the toss can just FF the entire whole area with 20 FORCE FIELDS! Most of them stacking up on each other but still enough to create choke just like at the backdoor entrance of xelnaga caverns.

FF are too big and cost too little energy.

Protoss underpowered? NO!


FORCE FIELDS OVER POWERED!

btw i play random on NA and I have not lost as Protoss yet.
Its just so easy to warp in units and attack.
Or just sit up on 3 base(especially taldarim) and mass up a death ball (while harrasing with voids/DT) against Zerg or Terran.

Quick Comments

	deL:	Stupid. Have you even seen PvT lately? Not one sentry required.
	TAScarecrow:	if forcefields are so strong then where is Tom pulling these stats from? diamonds shouldnt be commenting on game balance

[Next_rim]

Agreed with crazek, it is metagame.

There are 3 heavily underused units in the game right now - warp prism, carrier and mothership. If you don't use some of your race tools, how can you claim you are underpowered? High level players are starting to realize that. We even saw a mommaship in GSL.

There are good situational units that are designed to do very specific things, like phoenix. Phoenix is successfully used for it's purpose when the game goes a particular way, which is fine. Voidray is fine, DT is fine. But having NOBODY EVER use 3 units out of 15? 20% of potential right down the drain.

What concerns me is terran though. All they need to win is a marauder-medivac ball with optional ghosts and vikings. Never see BC, ravens. Occasional nuke to harass 6-th expansion 40 minutes into the game is not a good metagame for a game of starcraft magnitude.

[Apth]

crAzerk's points about the metagame are valid.

Baneling drops were obliterating terran infantry balls until they learned how to split.
There's nothing stopping Protoss players from doing this. I feel like this is a pretty good example.

As for using statistics as an indicator to determine whether or not a race is underpowered, that's all it's ever going to be - indicative. Drawing conclusions from this kind of data is a bit of a stretch.

What I would point out - albeit with a lack of examples - is that we haven't seen the same level of meta-game innovation from Protoss players as we have seen from their Terran and Zerg counterparts. Whether this is because individuals drawn to the Protoss playstyle or aesthetic are generally less innovative, or Protoss is more difficult to innovate with as a race, remains to be seen.

Much respect to Tom for such a well presented and evidenced post.

Quick Comments

	PapaBigBelly:	agreed the statistics actually show the evolution of the metagame, NOT whether a race is OP
	nirvAnA:

[deL]

lol..........

Quick Comments

	LennX:	Stop derailing good threads.
	PapaBigBelly:	youre just jealous that you cant give a constructive comment so you badtalk other posts to make you seem pathetically in power

[Tom]

Inductive versus deductive logic

crAzerk your logical fallacy point is in fact a general problem that arises in attributing causation in relation to any observed association between two things (in this case, the association between a player's race choice and performance on the ladder or in tournaments).

While I would prefer not to go into too much detail about the finer points of philosophy and scientific method on a Starcraft 2 forum, what I am in fact doing is a form of inductive reasoning. Unfortunately, as the creator did not hand us a list of the laws of the Universe when he made it (or whatever you happen to believe), the only way we can discover "the rules" is through induction (reasoning from the specific to the general). Strictly, the statement "the sun has come up every morning in observed history; therefore the sun will come up tomorrow" is a form of inductive reasoning. It is also, in one sense fallacious. All that can really be said is "the sun has come up every morning so far; this data is consistent with the hypothesis that the sun comes up every morning (and will do so tomorrow)". But we cannot strictly exclude the possibility that the sun will not come up tomorrow. This is where we run into concepts of "strong induction" and "weak induction", which, for the sake of everyone's sanity, I will not go into.

To say that I have made a faulty deduction in the present case would be quite right, if I had sought to make a deduction (which I haven't!) Unfortunately, deduction is a luxury available only in pure mathematics. All other premises from which we make deductions are ultimately founded on induction. (I touched something very hot once and it burnt my hand. While I cannot logically deduce from this that touching all very hot things will burn my hand, I am going to treat it as a general working hypothesis.)

Purely anecdotal evidence

ArousalPerMinutes, with respect I think your post is a rather unfortunate example of what I mentioned in the OP: first focusing on one particular aspect of a race (in this case forcefields) in isolation from how all the aspects of the race come together as a whole to affect its performance; and second making an anecdotal statement to illustrate the point (eg to the effect "this is what I do, and I haven't lost").

[PiG]

Haha Crazerk you just got LAWYERED!



Looked like he used his lawyer brain pretty well against your second post to prove you made a logical fallacy? Maybe i skimmed too much though lol

Quick Comments

	Tom:	Shut up pig!
	:	No I didn't, read my next response :p
	deL:	Don't post if you didn't read the thread.

[PiG]

Originally Posted by Meatex

At higher levels most balance problems are minor and its more differences between players
Zerg is flawed in design so they are always on the back foot, at least in early game. Call it QQ but the game was made too fast without zerg being able to adapt to what the opponent is doing equally as fast
However was have seen players like nestea get around this problem well
What crAzerk says is wrong though as the game is horridly imbalanced at lower levels and blizzard isn't intending to do anything about it. If they balance for the lower levels (even diamond) then it would break the game for higher level play

All I can say is look at Inka - how the hell did he get into the code S finals?

PvP and cheese lol

Crazerk said: "If you can actually point out a strategy that a race has that is ridiculously easy to execute yet ridiculously difficult to defend as another race, please do tell."

Uh, 2rax, 4gate, roach-ling all-in, etc etc.

All races have these sort of hard to hold, easy to execute rushes where the onus is on the macro player to defend. What this means is that macro players trying to play the game the "right way" and actually improve in the long run need to get better to withstand the cheese on ladder. Simple really, to get better you need to play better... Some players will have success with easy to execute all-in strategies but they will never go beyond a certain level and are usually prone to dieing to all-ins themselves.

In regard to what Meatex said in the first place:
The only way you can say the races are imbalanced at the lower level is because players are emulating different ways of playing from their favourite pro players. In general (and not as common as it was 4+ months ago) T and P lower players tend to emulate easy to execute rushes whilst the zergs try to emulate idra/nestea economic macro style without actually understanding the specifics or improving enough at the game to execute them versus poorly executed all-ins and harass. Basically theres players at the lower levels trying to execute builds which take practice, game knowledge and more practice! They often die to harass or all-ins and then say zerg is weak in the early game. THIS is NOT true. The truth is zergies are trying to do really hard macro oriented builds which they can't handle, and are usually just raging when they lose rather than seeking to actually perfect these difficult to learn styles.

I recomend these type of players should all-in on a regular basis themselves, bane busts, roach-ling all-ins and early-midgame timings are simpler to execute whilst still demanding many of the challenges and excitement of Starcraft. In no way are these forms of cheese or timings weaker then the T or P equivalents. It's just zerg players at the top don't use them quite as often and so their noobier brethren think they suck.

Cheese more zergies! And actually learn how to do it properly. So many zergs decide 1 day to try all-inning and they just suck so bad at it cos they're used to playing defensively. This is understandable. What really cheeses me off (see what I did there? :P) is that these players then say zerg cheese is worthless. It's noT!

Quick Comments

nirvAnA:

[deL]

I just don't think there are enough 'high level' tournament games to even think about using statistics at this point, and all ladder statistics are useless because there are so many factors in ladder success such as number of games played, playstyle, the maps that are played on or thumbed down, etc.

We went through a similar process with each race so far at various stages during release and something is always figured out that can turn balance about on its head. No one has figured out the best way of playing a race yet but if you take one matchup you will find in it certain builds or strategies that can make it look very one-sided towards one race.

[BaKaiNu]

Guys, make this a mature setting for discussion and debate. Any futher derailing or flaming or QQing about this race or that race will result in infraction, and this thread locked (I wonder if I can do that, hmm...).

Quick Comments

	pikk0n:
	nirvAnA:

[crAzerk]

Ah, you are nitpicking on my use of terminology I see. I shall have to be wary of my choice of words to avoid falling to your keen mind

To say that I have made a faulty deduction in the present case would be quite right, if I had sought to make a deduction

Alright then, correct my heading to 'Faulty Logic'. The rest of my points still stand. In fact, read on the next point:

Inductive versus deductive logic

I think a distinction has to be made here.
You seem to be familiar with Philosophical Logic, so you should know that Induction vs Deduction is not the same comparison as Inductive Logic vs Deductive Logic.
In other words, Induction =/= Inductive Logic and Deduction =/= Deductive Logic.
Thus your heading isn't quite accurate either.

Anyway, when you talk about induction or deduction, you are thinking about how the premises or the conclusions are formulated. I am not considering that.
For instance, you say it is likely that Protoss is underpowered. This statement by itself is an induction, no doubt. I'm not questioning this.
I am not questioning whether you used induction or deduction in formulating your premises/conclusions.

You said you did not use deduction at all in the post. But I think it is quite clear that you did present a particular argument, with a few premises, and then the conclusion that Protoss is underpowered at high level.
(It doesn't matter whether this conclusion is just a hypothesis or a strong statement, if we were really to go into that it would be modal logic which will be unnecessary)

What I AM questioning is the deductive strength of your argument. Specifically, I don't think your argument is deductively valid, for reasons I have previously stated.

All other premises from which we make deductions are ultimately founded on induction.

Ah, being so nitpicky here I won't contest this as this is foolproof, but I don't suppose you will discredit something as a deduction just because it is founded on an induction?
It doesn't matter anyway, this is not what I am interested in debating


And you missed out on replying a large portion of what I've said above

@ArousalPerMinutes - unfortunately, Tom is right. I was actually composing a reply against your response but it got too long so I will post it as a new thread next time

[fur]

Just need to let the metagame evolve people.

For a while the protoss deathball was unbeatable and all the zergs did was cry like children who had their lunch money stolen. Now it's beatable and suddenly Protss are UP? Puhleaazzzeeee.

BW evolved for YEARS.

[nGenLight]

You don't know how glad I am for a fellow Protoss like yourself to have such a pedigree of education and writing capability. Although you make bring up some good points on the meta-game, Crazerk, you aren't acknolweding that Tom is merely instigating discussion, as opposed to deducing any conclusion.

I've personally have been struggling internally with the Protoss race recently. Never have I had so many "What do I do against this?" trains of thoughts going. Not one to point towards balance as an excuse, I continued to look for answers amongst Protoss players I believe are stronger than myself. One by one they fell, and even those lucky ones (ST_Ace) that did not fall, only managed to scrap by because of the weakness and mistakes of his opponent.

Examples of some of the questions I currently have:

How do I secure a third against Zerg on XNC?
How do I poke/attack a Zerg's 3rd on XNC without them trading for my natural?
How do I fight a Zerg death ball? (Infestor+Hydra+Broodlord)
How do I fight a Terran death ball with +50 supply on you because he doesn't need SCVs anymore? (MMM+Thor+10 Ghosts)
How can I consistently be able to punish a Terran player that does greedy builds such as depot/rax/orbital/CC on a map like Shakuras whereas if we attempted to 15 Nexus we end up being 4-5 rax marine/scv'd or killed by a ghost rush off 2 orbitals.

I am not concluding Protoss is UP by any means, merely that I have never felt so clueless playing Protoss in a very long time and nobody is able to provide me with any answers. =(

Quick Comments

	Tom:	Amen brother
	EveRorschach:	I echo this!
	psygoh:
	EveJeonSa:
	TCPLemminks:

[Tom]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

I've personally have been struggling internally with the Protoss race recently. Never have I had so many "What do I do against this?" trains of thoughts going. Not one to point towards balance as an excuse, I continued to look for answers amongst Protoss players I believe are stronger than myself. One by one they fell, and even those lucky ones (ST_Ace) that did not fall, only managed to scrap by because of the weakness and mistakes of his opponent.(

This is exactly how I feel Ray. The first port of call should always be "what can I change or do better". And like you, I am looking to the professionals for guidance in this respect, but am getting precious little. The solid Protosses in GSL are getting demolished and those that made it through seemed to just rely on gimmicky timing attacks. The fact that those players were essentially gambling may say something about their psychology at the moment.

[crAzerk]

Originally Posted by PiG

Uh, 2rax, 4gate, roach-ling all-in, etc etc.

I may have worded what I said wrongly.

Nonetheless,
"the game is horridly imbalanced at lower levels"
Is a horridly invalid statement due to the fact that these strategies are not inherently uncounterable and just because lower players struggle with it doesn't reflect any imbalance at all.

To bring up a parallel example, Zerg is commonly said to have the most complicated macro mechanics, injecting and spreading creep, and choosing drone/army is complicated too. Therefore, lower level players will naturally struggle as Zerg.
Is it then valid to say that Zergs are 'imbalanced at the lower levels'?

Absolutely absurd and pointless statement.

[nGenLight]

Zerg is definitely imbalanced at the lower levels. However, I could really care less about the lower levels right now. Pardon me.

[crAzerk]

Crazerk, you aren't acknolweding that Tom is merely instigating discussion, as opposed to deducing any conclusion.

Well, let what I've said to be the counterargument to anyone who is considering to establish Tom's hypothesis as a conclusion then

And to answer the question simply (of the thread),


No

[dennistoo]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

You don't know how glad I am for a fellow Protoss like yourself to have such a pedigree of education and writing capability. Although you make bring up some good points on the meta-game, Crazerk, you aren't acknolweding that Tom is merely instigating discussion, as opposed to deducing any conclusion.

I've personally have been struggling internally with the Protoss race recently. Never have I had so many "What do I do against this?" trains of thoughts going. Not one to point towards balance as an excuse, I continued to look for answers amongst Protoss players I believe are stronger than myself. One by one they fell, and even those lucky ones (ST_Ace) that did not fall, only managed to scrap by because of the weakness and mistakes of his opponent.

Examples of some of the questions I currently have:

How do I secure a third against Zerg on XNC?
How do I poke/attack a Zerg's 3rd on XNC without them trading for my natural?
How do I fight a Zerg death ball? (Infestor+Hydra+Broodlord)
How do I fight a Terran death ball with +50 supply on you because he doesn't need SCVs anymore? (MMM+Thor+10 Ghosts)
How can I consistently be able to punish a Terran player that does greedy builds such as depot/rax/orbital/CC on a map like Shakuras whereas if we attempted to 15 Nexus we end up being 4-5 rax marine/scv'd or killed by a ghost rush off 2 orbitals.

I am not concluding Protoss is UP by any means, merely that I have never felt so clueless playing Protoss in a very long time and nobody is able to provide me with any answers. =(

Great post. This is exactly how i felt atm. There's no way for toss to expand to 3rd easily when facing zerg especially they have speedlings/muta for map control. And drops are extremely hard to dealt with when deathball cannot be split to defend for drops.

[Next_rim]

>How do I fight a Zerg death ball? (Infestor+Hydra+Broodlord)

Try carriers, works wonders. Funny enough, stalker+carrier beats hydra + corruptor.

[Apth]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Examples of some of the questions I currently have:

How do I secure a third against Zerg on XNC?
How do I poke/attack a Zerg's 3rd on XNC without them trading for my natural?
How do I fight a Zerg death ball? (Infestor+Hydra+Broodlord)
How do I fight a Terran death ball with +50 supply on you because he doesn't need SCVs anymore? (MMM+Thor+10 Ghosts)
How can I consistently be able to punish a Terran player that does greedy builds such as depot/rax/orbital/CC on a map like Shakuras whereas if we attempted to 15 Nexus we end up being 4-5 rax marine/scv'd or killed by a ghost rush off 2 orbitals.

These sorts of questions are difficult to answer because of their specificity. It's all well and good to say "Zerg death ball? Well, Carriers.", but there will be plenty of situations where Carriers are a terribad solution.

Light, and anyone else who's asking these questions, I'd suggest you try and simplify what you're trying to elucidate. For example;

How do I secure a third against Z on Xel'Naga Caverns?
- Why is it difficult to secure that third base?
- Maybe they have map control with Speedlings.
- Question becomes 'How do I deny Z map control?'

The revised question is a lot simpler to tackle, and doesn't involve finicky situational reasoning which will inevitably turn into a snowball of counterexamples.

/2c

[nGenLight]

Oh I break them down good, and have no answers on how to adequately satisfy all those requirements without giving up something else.

[dennistoo]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

>How do I fight a Zerg death ball? (Infestor+Hydra+Broodlord)

Try carriers, works wonders. Funny enough, stalker+carrier beats hydra + corruptor.

Carriers? That's out of the plan to beat the death ball. How many high level games you see carrier/mothership getting produce? By producing stalkers/carriers in an early game would be instant good game.

[pikk0n]

Just wondering. Instead of carriers, wouldn't archons work better? I know most people view archons as units you'll only get after recycling the templars but that's the only unit I can think of to counter a zerg death ball like that. you can also get blink stalkers to add into that mix.

[dennistoo]

Originally Posted by pikk0n

Just wondering. Instead of carriers, wouldn't archons work better? I know most people view archons as units you'll only get after recycling the templars but that's the only unit I can think of to counter a zerg death ball like that. you can also get blink stalkers to add into that mix.

It's too gas intensive. And you will required lots of resource to get almost 10 archon into the mixed of deathball. And you will need either twilight/templar to get archon out. With only 2 base into the above mentioned built is impossible. The foodcount will definitely way behind the zerg by a massive amount.

Even if we do managed to survive the first push or pushing for a timing push, with saved up larva of mass producing of zerg units, it would be hard to defend 2nd expo or even with the mininum units left.

GG.

[deL]

Originally Posted by Tom

This is exactly how I feel Ray. The first port of call should always be "what can I change or do better". And like you, I am looking to the professionals for guidance in this respect, but am getting precious little. The solid Protosses in GSL are getting demolished and those that made it through seemed to just rely on gimmicky timing attacks. The fact that those players were essentially gambling may say something about their psychology at the moment.

Neither of you guys play that much outside of the SEA server so you can't blame your own lack of ideas on an underpowered race when you aren't really looking where the inspiration will be found. VODs aren't always good enough you have to be amongst the players, practice with them so you know why they do what they do. You SHOULDN'T be able to win in this game by copying others' builds - you should just understand the reasoning behind them and come up with your own (or imitate them whichever you prefer).

[nGenLight]

^ Fair point Del, I have concluded that all the stronger Protoss rely on some sort of 2-base timing attack into propelling them into being able to either win the game there or allow them to expand to the third. Oh but when you do those timing attacks you run the risk of being base traded by the Zerg who has a high econ than you. It makes perfect sense to me why the Protoss I watch in replays and on GSL are doing what they are doing, and it also runs perfectly to me why these guys are failing. I am not inspired by things I already understand.

If you don't 2-base timing attack Zerg and try to get a 3rd. You put Zerg in a great position where he is sitting on 3/4 bases, has a better econ than you, multi-prong harrasing you at ever opportunity while teching to Broodlord/Ultra and infestors, which just laughs at your 200/200 "death" ball. I once tried to defend a Zerg player that dropped my main, attacked my natural and attacked my third at the same time. I sent 3 separate forces to deal with all three of them, and all 3 forces died to the more efficient roach army

[dennistoo]

Well, i guess cheesing is the only way to win now.

1 base DT rush ftw.

[nGenLight]

I'm sure there are much much more I need to learn about the matchup. But as of right now, I am not seeing from anything outside of SEA that is making me go "holy shit I wish knew what he was thinking when he is doing that!". I felt that way when I saw MC reign, Naniwa's emergence at TSL/MLG, but right now I'm getting nothing, and I sure hope someone shows me something soon because I am getting increasingly impatient T_T. Also, those figures/stats shown by http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=218558 (although small but statistically significant) is making me pretty demoralised.

I'm aware I'm sounding very QQ right now, so I'm going to opt out~

[Next_rim]

Carriers? That's out of the plan to beat the death ball. How many high level games you see carrier/mothership getting produce?

Exactly my point from before. Protoss don't use all units in their arsenal. Did you know that carrier has 1,5x one-target dps of colossus? And that 5 carriers do same dps to hydra ball as 4 colossi? Bet you didn't. Except for carriers take down 2x their amount of corruptors, while colossi...well, don't shoot air. And suddenly you can kill broodlords too. The question is - how do you transition from all-favorite 2-base gateway into stargate. I personally prefer to forge FE straight into gateway/stargate, skipping TC and robo. And after I saw a mothership timing in GSL, I went "FINALLY they are experimenting".

[dennistoo]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

I'm sure there are much much more I need to learn about the matchup. But as of right now, I am not seeing from anything outside of SEA that is making me go "holy shit I wish knew what he was thinking when he is doing that!". I felt that way when I saw MC reign, Naniwa's emergence at TSL/MLG, but right now I'm getting nothing, and I sure hope someone shows me something soon because I am getting increasingly impatient T_T. Also, those figures/stats shown by http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=218558 (although small but statistically significant) is making me pretty demoralised.

I'm aware I'm sounding very QQ right now, so I'm going to opt out~

LOL!

I just saw it too. It super demoralised. Move on. It's a honest mistake.

[crAzerk]

To be unnecessarily nitpicky and anal,

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Also, those figures/stats shown by http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=218558 (although small but statistically significant)

How do you know they are statistically significant? What significance level are you using?

Ok do ignore that I'm just being annoying.

Anyway, every race (besides Terran) experiences such frustration at some point of time. Don't be too negative!

(subtle message)

[NvPinder]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

this is really scary. imo both protoss and zerg are slightly weaker than terran atm but the results although a small sample seem to indicate protoss is the absolute worse. hmm!

I think it's pretty important to say protoss players in general are struggling, not that 'protoss is the worst race'. No one can make that call accurately, and especially so no set of statistics can make that claim.

Remembering that 3 months ago protoss players were sky high raping the tits off everyone, MC looked unstoppable and (personally) everyone i played with gave me shit for playing the strongest race, i find it hard to believe that 1 tiny balance patch later, it has changed enough that we are now 100% the worst race and cannot compete with terran and zerg.

Once again, not to get my argument confused, I'm not saying posts like this are bad and I'm not saying these statistics are completely meaningless, they obviously hold value in that terran and zerg players are doing a lot better than protoss players are doing right now in ladder. But it does NOT represent that protoss is the weakest race.

what is probably causing this, and what these statistics probably represent is a significant metagame shift since 3 months ago when i last played, or, that zerg and terran just got more and more efficient whilst protoss players were 'content' with their mechanics/builds and didnt work to tweak them up further, allowing the terran and zergs to catch up that way.

If you're wondering what makes me pretty confident this is the case, dispite not even building a probe/scv/drone in the last 3 months, this IS starcraft 2, so it's pretty important to look at the lessons that sc:bw taught us, a good example is PvZ in broodwar was pretty commonly thought of as broken in zergs favour for a LONG time, until around the 2006ish point of Bisu showing us forge FE into corsair DT in his MSL (think GSL) final against savior which, long story short, caused zergs a lot of trouble for a long time and practically shifted the balance of the matchup into protoss' favour, until around the point where july came up with 3 hat spire into 5 hat hydra and crushed BeSt in an important OSL final, once again shifting the sway of the matchup back into zerg's favour in general, until protoss started coming up with forge FE into earlier and earlier zealot pressures to punish the zerg for droning too hard early, to which zerg started responding by sim citying their ass off, again making it hard for protoss.

Those changes by NO MEANS came overnight, we're talking anywhere between 2months-a year of one particular race having a lower winrate in the matchup until a player came up with a 'solution' to the problem his race was having the matchup to overcome the bad winrate... To which every player of the race immediatly puts the new build into their arsenal, all the way down to the C ranks on iCCup, causing a HUGE shift across the board in winrates in the matchup. From what i remember the TvZ story of this sort of balance in BW is probably an even better example, but since I played protoss in BW I can't remember the dynamic shifts very well (iirc, there was actually an AWESOME teamliquid article about the shifts in winrates in TvZ that backs this point much better than i do, but unfortunately i cant find it, if anyone can post it ).

TL/DR:

+ Show +

One time when i was younger, i played super mario 64 and it took me like 20 hours of play time to finish, now people can do it in 6 minutes, not even kidding man, SIX MINUTES. its insane.

also - I get to reinstall sc2 in like 3 weeks, wooo.

Quick Comments

	nirvAnA:	hahaha at the tldr
	TAavanar:	winning!

[Meatex]

Originally Posted by crAzerk

"the game is horridly imbalanced at lower levels"
Is a horridly invalid statement due to the fact that these strategies are not inherently uncounterable and just because lower players struggle with it doesn't reflect any imbalance at all.

To bring up a parallel example, Zerg is commonly said to have the most complicated macro mechanics, injecting and spreading creep, and choosing drone/army is complicated too. Therefore, lower level players will naturally struggle as Zerg.
Is it then valid to say that Zergs are 'imbalanced at the lower levels'?

Absolutely absurd and pointless statement.

You really have a spine up your butt about me don't you.
You are falling victim to the thought that imbalanced = unbeatable. It does not. If i'm carrying a bag with 3 2l bottles of water in one hand i will be imbalanced, doesn't mean i will fall over just walking the street but its going to be harder to stay upright if someone bumps me the wrong way.
Lets take a real game example or 2.
Shattered Temple - the zerg tries a 15 hatch as he unsure of what the terran is going. (depot and rax on low ground) he decides to take the chance that the terran is going 1 rax fe and is trying to keep the zerg defensive. (the coin toss mechanic) The scouting scv is checking out the main and the natural, nothing particularly suspicious, he is trying to make sure of your pool timing and gas timing etc. Then hang on theres another scv at your ramp. Instantly grab some drones to defend while you wait for your pool to finish. Lets say he doesn't do the annoying 2 bunker wall off trick. He can also use the terrain to position a bunker or 2 and hide his marines in a small gap between the walls and the bunker. Marines are inaccessible on 3 sides. The zerg needs absolutely perfect control to defend this and even then chances are the terran does too much damage. The zerg needs to micro individual weak workers to save as many as possible while microing queens and the zerglings, making sure the queen is hitting without blocking the lings and same for the drones. Also gotta be dropping spines all the while macroing as best you can.
If we look at the terran's perspective. Lets say my CC is ctrl+4 and my rax are ctrl+5 i grad 2 or 3 scv's and send them to the zerg's base. I hit 5 and rally to the same point. with my scv's selected I hit z, z (i use grid) then click on the ground. send my marines to behind the bunker. wait. profit.
Or lets say say you guess a 4 gate is coming from the 2nd unit being a stalker and you were right. you are preparing for the 4 gate trying to scout and macro at the same time. 5 seconds late on your inject means you don't have enough units quite on time so the protoss gets an overlord or 2 kills your units and has back up coming. Where as the protoss didn't even bother to chrono his gateways when attacking.
Lets say in a ZvT the terran loses his army in the first push and you have a decent number of lings left you send them to poke at his natural and notice he left his walling depot down, you run in and kill 3/4 of his workers. You go yay i'm ahead, but because the terran wasn't macroing well at all he drops 4+ mules at once and is able to keep plugging away. If the zerg doesn't make any major mistakes or the terran doesn't capitalize on the zerg's minor mistakes the zerg will win. But the terran despite making such a huge mistake still has a chance to come back if the zerg say forgets to morph more banelings think he won't attack for a while and he drones up. The terran then kills you with 15 marines and 10 workers.

At high levels if the terran isn't using mules in a timely fashion, or if the protoss ins't chronoing well then they fall a little behind. In lower levels bad macro kills the zerg whereas bad macro for T can pull them out of tough spots.

You said yourself that zerg's mechanics are more complicated and thus more difficult. How is that not major imbalance? When both players have excellent mechanics that disappears but i'm sure you have played terrans and protosses in diamond that make you think how they hell are they in diamond anyway? Simple. at lower levels T and P are incredibly easy to play and even have set builds that a player can follow where as the zerg player needs to develop killer game sense, top notch multi tasking, solid mechanics, good decision making all just to beat a timing push that the opponent read on TL or something. That is the definition of imbalanced. If something is unbeatable no matter what you do that isn''t imbalanced its broken

[Apth]

Meatex - quick suggestion, use headings/bulletpoints/more paragraphs if you're going to make a post that large. It was pretty hard to read.

Two points in response:

First,

Originally Posted by Meatex

Lets take a real game example or 2

Making specific examples isn't really going to further the discussion. For every example you have, one of our Brotoss buddies will have a counterexample. Best to stick to theoretical stuff IMO.

Second,

Originally Posted by Meatex

You said yourself that zerg's mechanics are more complicated and thus more difficult. How is that not major imbalance?

I agree that Zerg mechanics are harder to come to terms with. This is not a disadvantage. As far as I'm concerned, and I think many players will agree with me on this, Zerg has a higher skill ceiling than the other two races.
What I mean by this, is that although Zerg is harder to learn, you can go farther (mechanics-wise) with it. I don't think it constitutes an imbalance at all.

Ontopic,
I'm not a Protoss player, so I can't really speak to this, but perhaps differing skill ceilings are part of the issue? Maybe Protoss players are at a disadvantage because Zerg players are able to continue to improve mechanically, whereas their counterparts cannot? This is more of a question than a point, and is not my opinion.

[Roz]

I think it's meaningless to debate whether protoss is underpowered, failing to adapt to the metagame, or just "not having good enough players at the top level". None of these points can be proven at this point. Like pinder said, all we know is that protoss in general is struggling atm. Protoss definately has some flaws but so do other races. It could very well be that protoss is underpowered and we might not be able to flip the metagame back into our favor. I mean I wouldn't know and neither does anyone. All we can hope for is that's not the case and someone comes up with something new or some future patch fixes something for us.

As for the arguments of using warp prisms, carriers, motherships... well carriers are very strong vs zerg, especially if you get ur air attack upgrades early. But i mean simply by saying that we shouldn't be crying because we aren't using all the units at our disposal is really being ignorant. Protoss is struggling in pvt and pvz and yes protoss have been using warp prisms vs t. But do you really think going carriers is a good idea other than for some weird timing attack? Heavy marines will kill off interceptors like they weren't there, moving onto mid game vikings just lol at ur carriers. If you somehow hid ur tech and u suddenly walk out with 6 carriers, yea it would work but u're gambling on the fact that u didn't die beforehand or they didn't spot it early enough. Not really how people would want to play.

Also about zerg mechanics being harder, yes i also think that is true. Is it imbalanced? Well in some ways yes, but the whole point of having different races is to have them have different strengths and weaknesses. Even though the mechanics of a zerg is the hardest to master, at the same time if you do it well, it makes you really good at zerg in general. What i mean is that zerg is more rewarding in having better mechanics than a race like protoss.

In conclusion, i just think it's pointless to discuss whether the race is underpowered or not. There are times where you just can't prove whether people won because they are just a better player or whether it was their race that made them appear to be the better player. So rather than discussing about OP/UP, it's better to just try to use the time to try to think of ways of going around certain things.

Quick Comments

holyforker:

[Paroxysm]

From a zerg's perspective, it seems that protoss has become the weakest race. It looks as though zerg players are slowly understanding how to play the race properly and, just like the protoss were destroying us not months ago, we have the ability to destroy them. Basically, zerg and protoss have switched postions on the balance spectrum as the understanding of the zerg metagame has changed. Terran is still at the top of course

[pikk0n]

There once was a thread about zerg being UP and this is right before last patch which imo, doesn't really affect toss that much. Seriously, has the most recent patch with the spore crawlers and warp gate time increase really affected the matchup? Zergs complain about death balls and FF not 4gate pushes from tosses. In fact, the most recent patch with archons being massive and sentry decreased training time should make toss a little more powerful. What zerg players are doing now is using their infestors more and this is as a result of the patch right before this. Zerg players have finally discovered a method to counter FFs and death balls (banes were never changed) with a method using units that have always been available to them. In fact, I would say that the infestor's fungal growth decreased effect time should make the infestors less OP. Imagine having bane drops on your death ball which is stuck for 8 seconds. I agree completely with what JPMoney said about how ZvPs in BW evolved and I'm very sure that soon protoss players would find a way around that zerg death ball. I have always seen zerg as being capable of countering FFs and that toss deathball back when the zerg QQ thread was first made. These imba threads are always fun to read and I'm pretty sure that new strats come out from these threads. Zerg players are getting smarter. It's always good to see a change at the top level.

As for toss and terran being easier to play in the lower levels... Seriously? I play random and the hardest race to play is terran because macroing is easier than microing. Terran units require so much more microing than zerg units because one misclick and you lose your whole army and that's gg.... For me, zerg = sacrifice your army and remacro up instantly because you have so many saved larva. Low level = just macro and zerg's injecting larva micro isn't that hard. Creep spreading micro isn't that hard too... :S Do note that I am talking about low level plays. Gold and below. I am a gold random player and of all races, terran's micro is the hardest. Try Stim and A+Moving against lings and banes. That's the first thing I hope a terran does when playing against a zerg. Marine tank, I hate so much because I just find tank micro freaking annoying. If the zerg scouts your units moving out, he'll just macro up his lings, sac them to kill your tanks and send some banes to weaken your marines before remacroing up again while you try and establish a foothold in the middle of the map. Your push is interrupted right there. I try to get my third since i know the zerg is getting armies instead of drones and well, with bad micro, my army gets wiped out and my third is basically gone. LOL! I'm just disagreeing with an earlier comment that toss and terran are easy to play in lower levels. If you're up against zergs who one base and masses roaches against your marauder + marine army off 2 tech labs and 1 reactor (3 rax MM army which people complain is OP), then yeah. It's easy to play as terran but I do not see that many 'not so bright' zerg players around anymore. Not going to use protoss examples since I find terran the hardest race to use NOT an UP race. I can see how powerful they can be in the hands of someone good. In the lower levels, your focus is on macroing and no other race is easier to macro than zerg. Counter to 4gate = spines + lings and roaches and counter to 3 rax = more spines + lings and banes. Microing's a different thing all together.

[nGenLight]

Page of Phat Paragraphs

I agree with what Pinder and Roz are saying. I just hope this meta-game transition doesn't take too long. CBF Losing and not knowing what to do!!!

[Tom]

Effect of the recent patch

There seem to be a misconception that the under-performance (to use a neutral term) of Protoss players is a result of the recent patch. The patch probably had some effect, but note that some of the "apparent" trends referred to in my OP began 1 or 2 months before the patch.

Conversely, I personally have thought that the complaints about Protoss being overpowered have been unjustified for quite some time. But it became one of those things "everybody knows its true" and was hard to shake that from people's minds even when the data was screaming out that it was wrong (at least among top players).

Is there any point looking at the data?

There also seems to be a view to the effect that it is "meaningless" or "pointless" to look at data, or that the data doesn't tell us anything. In my view, data should always be treated with caution, but having said that it is always worthwhile looking at data. At the very least, the data tells us what is happening right now, which of course may change. That is why it is important to seek to identify trends over time. I will continue to follow the developments with great interest.

The "shifting metagame" argument is no doubt correct. Of course, an innovative Protoss player may come up with a style or strategy that blows everything else away. But it is at least as likely that there is also some (as yet unknown) awesome Zerg or Terran strategy that is yet to be discovered. Ultimately, I think if the data starts to consistently tell us something (ie a clear trend emerges over time), there comes a time when someone needs to step in. I acknowledge that it may be too early to say that point has been reached here. But Blizzard has been doing a lot of patching based on relatively short time periods of data.

[BordZ]

Originally Posted by crAzerk

I may have worded what I said wrongly.

Nonetheless,
"the game is horridly imbalanced at lower levels"
Is a horridly invalid statement due to the fact that these strategies are not inherently uncounterable and just because lower players struggle with it doesn't reflect any imbalance at all.

To bring up a parallel example, Zerg is commonly said to have the most complicated macro mechanics, injecting and spreading creep, and choosing drone/army is complicated too. Therefore, lower level players will naturally struggle as Zerg.
Is it then valid to say that Zergs are 'imbalanced at the lower levels'?

Absolutely absurd and pointless statement.

No it is not an absurd statement, the people who are stuck in the lower levels paid the same amount for the game as you did, they paid to have a reasonably balanced game and in most cases have paid for the multiplayer becuase of the brood war paradigm. The pro scene would not exist without these people.

I have said this on TL and i will say it here, Blizz has an obligation to balance the game at ALL levels

Quick Comments

NvPinder:

This argument is so bad i think it gave me cancer

[Makra]

Originally Posted by BordZ

I have said this on TL and i will say it here, Blizz has an obligation to balance the game at ALL levels

Ahh, isn't that what they would call 'dumbing down the game'?

[Apth]

Originally Posted by BordZ

I have said this on TL and i will say it here, Blizz has an obligation to balance the game at ALL levels

Only way to do this would be to mechanically adjust the game at different levels. Not going to happen.

Ontopic, do people think Protoss as a race is easier/harder to play at different skill levels? Is it reasonably consistent Bronze through GM, or is there a Zerg-like skill curve?

[iNFraction]

protoss is shit nuff said.

[NvJazBas]

God I wish Terran players were like Protoss players.

Protoss struggles = Protoss players don't whine about balance instead they are being patient and hope for a metagame shift

Terran struggles = WE ARE UNDRERPOWERED (when you are not)

Zerg struggles = As always..


Ok on the serious side, as a Zerg player, I'm loving PvZ atm..lol I really think Protoss need some kind of metagame shift for the match up and I really can't think of anything much. Maybe more stargate play? but it is very weak vs timing attacks with Hydra so yeah..I don't know I do think Protoss' are struggling alot atm.

[SnoWPanda]

PvZ is so hard right now, I have to either cut corners and tech super fast or take extra early risky thirds or do both! and rely on the zerg been greedy and not realising he can just kill you or just defend like a champ.

[SnoWPanda]

if i even feel slightly behind like losing a few sentries, i just proceed to a 2 base all in.

[BordZ]

Originally Posted by Makra

Ahh, isn't that what they would call 'dumbing down the game'?

Originally Posted by Apth

Only way to do this would be to mechanically adjust the game at different levels. Not going to happen.

Ontopic, do people think Protoss as a race is easier/harder to play at different skill levels? Is it reasonably consistent Bronze through GM, or is there a Zerg-like skill curve?

Ok this is a bit off topic but I feel a rebuttal is needed so here i go;

I understand why both of you replied with what you did however i never indicated that this would be "dumbing down the game" or be impossible. It just take reaching that fine line thats the hard point. If it is impossible to balance the game at the top and appoximately equal (a very tiny variation) at low to mid tiers as well as the upper tier Bliz has done a bad job in the games design end of story. And I will state it once again Bliz has an obligation to balance the game for low to mid tiers gamers because they paid money for a product.

Starcraft isn't even the most complex RTS out there, from experiance AOE3 had more unit types, more factions (macro mechanics varied a lot by TAD) a lot more units and more resources yet it is pretty much balanced. Keep in mind it took this game a long time to reach this point, 5 years I think.

On topic,

If I had to guess I would say that the metagame equilibrium is shifting slowly again, Toss got used to 1 way of doing things to win but now that zerg/terran has more knowledge regarding the match up its slowly reaching equilibrium

for the record I think that the skill curves should be roughly the same shape and height for all 3 races.

[Roz]

Originally Posted by BordZ

Ok this is a bit off topic but I feel a rebuttal is needed so here i go;

I understand why both of you replied with what you did however i never indicated that this would be "dumbing down the game" or be impossible. It just take reaching that fine line thats the hard point. If it is impossible to balance the game at the top and appoximately equal (a very tiny variation) at low to mid tiers Bliz has done a bad job in the games design end of story. And I will state it once again Bliz has an obligation to balance the game for low to mid tiers gamers because they paid money for a product.

Starcraft isn't even the most complex RTS out there, from experiance AOE3 had more unit types, more factions (macro mechanics varied a lot by TAD) a lot more units and more resources yet it is pretty much balanced. Keep in mind it took this game a long time to reach this point, 5 years I think.

On topic,

If I had to guess I would say that the metagame equilibrium is shifting slowly again, Toss got used to 1 way of doing things to win but now that zerg/terran has more knowledge regarding the match up its slowly reaching equilibrium

for the record I think that the skill curves should be roughly the same shape and height for all 3 races.

I understand where you are coming from but the whole thing just isn't justified. You can't balance around low-mid level players because it just doesn't work. The units are can be balanced and the low-mid level players just don't know or can't use them to their potential. That is not a problem of balancing but more of a problem of not playing it properly. So to balance the game around low-mid level players, if possible at all (since most of them would have different problems), would mean you would actually have to make the game imbalanced.... However, like i said, i dont even think it's possible to balance the game around low-mid level players.

[Monk]

I don't really think Protoss is underpowered at higher levels. It's just this:

A lot of the community defined pros are actually really good, and take their time in analysing games and replays.
A lot of the self-proclaimed pros that choose protoss have cheesed their way to Master/GM, not knowing much about protoss, and when their cheese fails on repetitive players, they start to lose out.

That's the way I look at it. The race is not underpowered by any means, MC, Naniwa, incontrol, KiwiKaki, Tyler and axslav off the top of my head really have shown great results in tournaments because they understand the race. Saying that protoss is underpowered because master level+ protoss find it difficult to cheese masters+ doesn't mean the race is imbalanced.

I'm not saying that for sure they're balanced or even over powered, but I think a lot of the protoss players don't actually understand their race to actually be effective with it, leaving only a select few pros to actually think of new builds to win games convincingly.

Right now I think Zerg and Terran have a lot of true professionals looking at the race while Protoss have only a few, because of the lack of player skill.

But I say this, Just because Protoss aren't in the top 10 of any GM league, doesn't mean they're UP. I'm sure a lot of Protoss actually practice on customs rather then on Ladder.

Quick Comments

Tom:

Oh dear, completely missing the point AND generally accusing protoss players of cheesing their way to Masters/GM

[inFeZa]

Ok.
First off, its the nature of the game, ever follow broodwar? there were times where strategies were figured out, changing the game completely. some people couldn't even beat certain races for months!.. but there was no blizzard to come and really balance it out next patch like they do now.

One month a crazy stargate build could be super awesome, next month its figured out in standard play how to deal with such a build.

The game will evolve itself.. its starcraft not COD.

Quick Comments

holyforker:

so true!

[TAScarecrow]

Originally Posted by Monk

I don't really think Protoss is underpowered at higher levels. It's just this:

A lot of the community defined pros are actually really good, and take their time in analysing games and replays.
A lot of the self-proclaimed pros that choose protoss have cheesed their way to Master/GM, not knowing much about protoss, and when their cheese fails on repetitive players, they start to lose out.

Seriously, you're saying Protoss is struggling on GM/M ladders because they're a bunch of cheesing noobs? You can cheese your way to high ladder with any race. Really sick of seeing the argument that toss players are less "skilled" (all 3 races have relatively easy mechanics), especially from silver zergs.

Then you say it's fine at pro level because they're doing "great" (how about some actual stats?). Mentioning Tyler and inc just shows how clueless you are, they're both under 50% win rates and haven't won shit.

Enjoying this thread, Tom's somehow made a non-whiney balance related OP o.O

Quick Comments

	PapaBigBelly:	all 3 races with easy mechanics? zerg has to do twice more than you protoss
	leederek:	i am protoss too , and what's wrong with chessing? it's good in a sense they caught ur opportnent offguard.

[Daboo]

I dont think protoss are underpowered, our strategy of placing forcefields and getting a win has been figured out by zerg, it's now time for us protosses (protossi?) to go back and see what new tricks we can pull off. Much like how in terran versus protoss, people now figured out how to beat plain mass rax and the game had to be played differently. The op/up stuff changes all the time, before mc won his championship, protoss were the underpowered race, gateway units were crap. And one month later, they are overpowered.Terran are now being called the weakest race by some, while zergs maintain they are the toughest race to play. This will always go on...it's probably something a bad player hides behind.

this constant change of tactics/metagame is what makes a game like starcraft fun, and one of the reasons why bw has such a long life span, builds are still being invented in broodwar that some people think are op.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Monk

The race is not underpowered by any means, MC, Naniwa, incontrol, KiwiKaki, Tyler and axslav off the top of my head really have shown great results in tournaments because they understand the race. Saying that protoss is underpowered because master level+ protoss find it difficult to cheese masters+ doesn't mean the race is imbalanced.

I'll leave to one side what some people might interpret as a general insult to Protoss players.

I don't think the issue is "people know how to respond to cheese now", as you appear to be suggesting. If you watch the games from the GSL super tournament, the best results in the round of 64 came from players who used relatively gimmicky timing attacks (eg Ace and HongUn). No disrespect intended to these players - you need to do what works in the circumstances. The Protoss players who played what we might consider a "solid macro game" seemed to be the ones who did not advance.

[SnoWPanda]

Well the zerg got a point, there are very few good protoss players. Kind of depressing.

korean protoss generally suck except for MC, Genius and Alicia who are great. the other protosses either get lucky with an all in or fail terribly with an attempt at a "solid" (dies to timing attack everytime) strategy that doesnt make sense to me all.

My protoss inspirations mainly come from WhiteRa, Tyler and Naniwa. Others are just skilled but clueless like HuK or do some random shit that works cause nobody is expecting it eg Kiwikaki. Though they are good players can't really learn much from them.

[Monk]

Originally Posted by Scarecrow

Seriously, you're saying Protoss is struggling on GM/M ladders because they're a bunch of cheesing noobs? You can cheese your way to high ladder with any race. Really sick of seeing the argument that toss players are less "skilled" (all 3 races have relatively easy mechanics), especially from silver zergs.

Then you say it's fine at pro level because they're doing "great" (how about some actual stats?). Mentioning Tyler and inc just shows how clueless you are, they're both under 50% win rates and haven't won shit.

Enjoying this thread, Tom's somehow made a non-whiney balance related OP o.O

Incontrol coming 4th at the last MLG isn't great? Jesus christ high expectations right there. And sure Tyler hasn't been producing results, but his consistent and is one of the best protoss players out there. Tyler and inc <50% win rate? So ******* what. Maybe they have been playing top notch players, like they have in MLG this season. I don't know, nor do I really care. If we're going to look at stats and win rates, then how about this:

NASL - Season 1
TvZ: 50-65 (43.5%)
ZvP: 49-45 (52.1%)
PvT: 57-41 (58.2%)

Ohh my what is this? Protoss taking 58% of games over T and 48% of games off of Z. I really honestly don't call that underpowered.

MLG - Dallas
TvZ: 77-71 (52%)
ZvP: 68-57 (54.4%)
PvT: 63-72 (46.7%)

And yeah Protoss is so underpowered at pro level, winning 46% Against T and losing 46% against Z.

MLG - Columbus Day 2
TvZ: 7-18 (28%)
ZvP: 11-9 (55%)
PvT: 4-3 (57.1%)

With a 57% win rate over T so far, and a 45% win rate against Z they're definitely underpowered!!!!

P.S I hope I read those percentages correctly :x big backfire if I didn't.

And all 3 races have cheesy builds sure, but Protoss has the easiest cheese-skill level available in my opinion AND I don't know about you, but when I ladder on NA 80% of the time I get cheese from Protoss. Cannon rush, Proxy Stargate etc. Terran I've met are generally good with the occasional mass thor/banshee.

What I am saying is, with the above tournament results(In NA atleast) Protoss are doing fairly well.

EDIT::

Originally Posted by Tom

I'll leave to one side what some people might interpret as a general insult to Protoss players.

I don't think the issue is "people know how to respond to cheese now", as you appear to be suggesting. If you watch the games from the GSL super tournament, the best results in the round of 64 came from players who used relatively gimmicky timing attacks (eg Ace and HongUn). No disrespect intended to these players - you need to do what works in the circumstances. The Protoss players who played what we might consider a "solid macro game" seemed to be the ones who did not advance.

I don't really watch GSTL, but what I have watched are mainly TvT's/ZvT's or ZvZ's. So that's saying something huh?

Maybe the Protoss 'idea' now is not actually a straight up macro game then? Maybe a new discovered 'gimmicky' timing push needs to be made?

It's like the 2 rax bunker play against Zerg. Why wasn't it thought of even earlier? A lot of Zergs would of been shot in the foot and unable to proceed in rankings or tournaments just because it's a very very strong build. Protoss needs to find an equivalent. 4 gate won't cut it now because a lot of people know how to hold it off, and know what signs to look for. I guess there is a Protoss equivalent.

Zerg Baneling bombs weren't all that used in pro leagues before, now they're really dominant. I guess Protoss have to find this 'new' style of play to come out of the slumps?

[nGenLight]

^ I think some people are really talking out of their asses when they are talking about "high level protoss play". Zerg figuring out how to defend cheese more? Fair assessment. But I still win most of my PvZ's with timing attacks (such as the Korean professionals), because I realise the moment I drop my 3rd Nexus I give away entire map control to Zerg to do whatever the hell they want. I understand you guys are trying to use fair assessments regarding meta-game shift and Protoss' easier mechanics - but to talk out of your asses about "Protoss high level play" when you have no clue what you're talking about, shame on you.

There has been a myth for a very long time about how Protoss has the strongest lategame. So why am I finding myself trying to avoid these lategame strategy as much as possible? Is it possible that it's too insanely hard to get there? Is it possible that the two other races have equal or perhaps stronger lategame?

[Eldrid]

Originally Posted by crAzerk

If you can actually point out a strategy that a race has that is ridiculously easy to execute yet ridiculously difficult to defend as another race, please do tell.

5 (or 4) gate nexus cancel all in vs. zerg.

lol, it's redonkulous ... You could scout it and still not hold it off. You basically need to have units up (more than a few lings!) pre nexus-cancel, scout it straight away, and pump units .. even then if they get good ramp forcefields, you may not hold!
Edit: I hope this isnt seen as QQ or what-not lol -_-;, legit issue i think the game has with it. I cant think of anything else as overwhelmingly "garrrrrghh" as this.

[Daboo]

^^ Thats true of all races, marine scv all ins, are at times not even scoutable, and roach ling allins...and 6 pools are also easy to do, but not defendable at times.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Monk

NASL - Season 1
TvZ: 50-65 (43.5%)
ZvP: 49-45 (52.1%)
PvT: 57-41 (58.2%)

Ohh my what is this? Protoss taking 58% of games over T and 48% of games off of Z. I really honestly don't call that underpowered.

MLG - Dallas
TvZ: 77-71 (52%)
ZvP: 68-57 (54.4%)
PvT: 63-72 (46.7%)

And yeah Protoss is so underpowered at pro level, winning 46% Against T and losing 46% against Z.

MLG - Columbus Day 2
TvZ: 7-18 (28%)
ZvP: 11-9 (55%)
PvT: 4-3 (57.1%)

With a 57% win rate over T so far, and a 45% win rate against Z they're definitely underpowered!!!!

Thank you for drawing my attention to this data. Lets have a closer look at what it tells us.

MLG Dallas

MLG Dallas is a good, large dataset. However, as MLG Dallas was played at the very beginning of April, it is not actually relevant to the "apparent" trend I am referring to. This tournament is also taken into account in the "international tournament" trend data referred to in my OP, which showed at that time the win rates for each race approaching 50%.

NASL Season 1

In relation to the NASL Season 1 data, you appear to have used total qualifiers data from TLPD, much of which was also played in early April (although games have been ongoing). However, I should point out that the race distribution for those who actually qualified for the main bracket of NASL is - 5 Zerg (MorroW, Moon, July, Ret and Sen), 3 Terran (Strelok, SeleCT and BoxeR), and 2 Protoss (Squirtle and White-Ra).
(Source: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft...eague_Season_1)

MLG Columbus

Your data for MLG Columbus appears to be inaccurate or highly selective (you refer to "Day 2"). Could you please provide a source to confirm. The data I have accessed at TLPD shows the following:

TvZ: 81-76 (51.6%)
ZvP: 56-61 (47.9%)
PvT: 63-80 (44.1%)

(Source: http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/sc2-i...it%3A_Columbus and http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft...rcuit/Columbus)

In terms of micro analysis of MLG Columbus, the racial distribution for the pools that qualified for the finals was as follows: 10 Terran, 9 Zerg, 5 Protoss. To put these figures in context, there were 56 Protoss, 47 Terran and 44 Zerg playing in the qualifiers. In other words, Protoss players made up 38% of those competing in the qualifiers, but only 20% of those who qualified. By contrast, Terran started out with 32% of competitors, but made up 42% of those who qualified, and Zerg started out with 30% of competitors, but made up 38% of those who qualified.

Of those Protoss players who qualified, most were knocked out early in the qualifiers (cf. Cruncher and MC). MC's dominant performance in particular appears to have almost single-handedly dragged up the results. Again, this is the problem with looking at one tournament in isolation as it can be highly biased by the performance of one "outlier" like MC.

Discussion of this data

I am not going to discuss MLG Dallas as it is not relevant to the period I am talking about. However, it seems to me that both NASL Season 1 and MLG Columbus are consistent with the "apparent" trend I have observed in other tournaments/leagues - that is, a disproportionately low representation of Protoss players at the top level (in these cases, in qualifying for the main stage of the tournaments). The MLG Columbus data is really quite dramatic - 38% of players in the qualifiers were Protoss, but this proportion nearly halved for the finals, whereas the proportions of Terran and Zerg players who qualified both increased significantly. In other words, and let me stress this, Protoss players were less than half as likely to qualify as Zerg and Terran players. I don't know about you, but I am truly astounded by this. MC appears to have defied an otherwise general trend in Columbus - really, what can you say about this guy?

[Monk]

At the time of pulling the data off of TLPD, the 2nd day of MLG just finished - so it was still probably day 1 results, but it didn't occur to me.

And in regards to CrunCher not qualifying.. that is just.. bad insight. A lot of people doubt CrunCher as a pro-level player, so I don't think he should be mentioned but I will for the sake of the argument.

If we're fighting Data, then I take you back to one of your links in the OP.
http://www.playxp.com/sc2/jingjing/

Such a small data sample, and it's being more prominent of Zerg again now. Does this mean that korean protoss have found out how to deal with the losing 'slump' now as compared to april? And doesn't this mean that your referred april slumps, that the protoss have found ways of winning?

MLG - Colombus

I seriously don't see Protoss at high level being under powered. You say MC's games should be excluded because his such an amazing player, but his Protoss at the end of the day.
MLG - Colombus results

+ Show +

T Z P Z P Z
1 Terran, 3 Zerg and 2 Protoss

Now I ask this:
How many Pro Protoss are out there? Is it because Protoss is the least played race professionally that they aren't producing results? You show out of 147 qualifiers of MLG 56 were Protoss - I don't see how this is relevant as this is 'high level' Protoss we're talking about.. yes? Isn't that GM+? I don't see much Masters players as 'high level' at all. And anyways, if we are referring to them PLEASE look here:
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft...Bracket/Losers

Look at all the PvP's. I think I counted 32 PvP's

So that's already 16 of those 56 Protoss taken out by a mirror matchup - so that is only 40 Protoss that didn't get taken out by a PvP.
32 PvP's___ 56 protoss 56-16 = 40 Protoss
18 ZvZ's____44 zerg 9-44 = 35 Zerg
14 TvT's____47 terran 7-47 = 40 Terran

That's why not a lot of Protoss qualified. They knocked each other out in the losers bracket.

And there were a ******* ton more PvP's in the winners bracket, to be precise 24 PvP's. So wait what! that's half the amount of protoss that can make it!!!! So 12 Protoss at this time.

24 PvP's____40 Protoss 40-12 = 28 Protoss
12 ZvZ's____ 35 Zerg 35-6 = 29 Zerg
24 TvT's____ 40 Terran 47-12 = 35 Terran

Seeing the reasoning I'm conducting? PvP's knocked nearly every Protoss out. By the winners bracket, Protoss' numbers were HALFED from PvP's alone.

And at the end of the winners bracket, there were no protoss that survived. They were all knocked out by professional gamers, Morrow, Fenix, ViBe, Thorzain, July and Major. And all the other "professional" protoss were knocked out by other "professional" protosses.
(I'm defining Professional as invites/notable signups)

Championship bracket:
CrunCher - Agh
MC - NaNiwa
CrunCher - KiWiKaKi


3 PvP's in Championship brackets, and there were only 8 Protoss in the Championship Bracket- 3 of which went out in PvP's so 5 left and 2 were seeded pretty far in the tournament too(MC and NaNiwa). No protoss remained after #3 in Pool round apart from MC and NaNiwa who were seeded. And then having to take out a protoss in PvP again so far in? Wittiling down the Protoss numbers yet again.

I just don't see the 'a lot of protoss entered' so that's obviously going to mean a lot of PvP's which is basically taking out a quarter of the population of Protoss in the Losers Bracket. And again took out quarter of the protoss in the Winners bracket. This is not including PvZ/T DNS'. You just looked at numbers and posted.

Edit:
Mirrors: 94 TvT | 44 ZvZ | 84 PvP
Taken from TLPD.

NASL
I can't say much about NASL because you're right - not very good there. But basing it off of one tournament is pretty silly. All of the protoss bar Artosis and Grubby were around the top/middle so it's pretty reasonable to assume that they were outplayed.. right?


To close it out, I think basing it off of tournaments alone isn't a solid way of doing it. The same thing I said about NASL can be said about MLG Colombus(basing it off of one tournament).

Quick Comments

holyforker:

nice stats!

[crAzerk]

I don't have much to contribute regarding all these statistics because frankly I am lazy to research about them, but I am certainly enjoying reading the analyses. Keep it up!

It's funny how people are quoting what I said out of context and just supplying all the cheesy strategies that they have lost to in rebuttal.

When I said this

Originally Posted by crazerk

If you can actually point out a strategy that a race has that is ridiculously easy to execute yet ridiculously difficult to defend as another race, please do tell.

I was referring to meatex's comment that the game is 'horridly imbalanced at the lower levels' and trying to bring out why it was an absurd statement. I later acknowledged that I had probably worded what I wanted to express insufficiently.

Thus if you want to know why I think so, you can scroll through the threads and look at the various responses. I am also in the middle of starting a new thread about talking about balance, so you can wait for that.


And another comment about this thread - When we ask the question in the thread title of 'Is Protoss underpowered in high level play?', we are also asking some other inherent questions like:
"Does Protoss need to be balanced so that they can win more easily at high level play?" or
"Is there something wrong with Protoss now that high level players can't seem to beat T and Z?"

Maybe this would help steer the discussion more appropriately

[Next_rim]

Monk,

Very good point. I was thinking about that too. A lot of recent tournaments had titan protoss kicked out in PvP, which is boring, fast and with 0 variety. Even in ladder, I play mostly PvP, with rare zerg and even more scarce terran. In fact, my PvT is soo bad, because I rarely see T in ladder, and have little practice to rely on.

[Tom]

PvP issue

Monk I think you're making the issue more complicated than it needs to be in relation to MLG Columbus. (If this gets too esoteric, we're going to leave everyone else behind, so I'll try and make it as simple as possible.)

In the brackets, you appear to have counted total PvPs, rather than PvP's per round. Obviously, some players advance to further rounds. Of the 56 Protoss players, many played multiple PvPs (that is, the same Protoss player may go on to play several PvPs - and this is actually what occurred in many cases). So by comparing the 56 Protoss players with 32 PvPs, you are comparing apples with oranges. You actually need to calculate PvPs as a proportion of all match ups if you're going to look at it this way.

Second, the reason why there ended up being a whole lot of PvPs in the losers bracket is because so many Protoss players got knocked down there.

Third, even accounting for the "more protoss players, hence more opportunity for mirror match ups" issue, it is still the case that Protoss went from being by far the most overrepresented race in qualifiers, to by far the most underrepresented race amongst those who qualified. There is substance to your point, but I tend to think it is not as important as you make out - you would expect slightly more attrition due to a higher number of PvP mirror match ups, but this cannot by itself explain the fact that the proportion of Protoss players halved whilst the proportion of Zergs and Terrans both increased by around 25%.

Other comments

In relation to your other comment that (a) basing this discussion off tournaments isn't a solid way to do it and (b) that MLG Columbus players arent "high level"):

(a) I also have looked at a wide range of GMs League data in my OP
(b) MLG Columbus is mostly NA Grandmasters with some Korean pro gamers.

[Benji]

Question:
Using MLG as the example, because it was the most recent event with a ton of data from high level play, which players do you think should have advanced from the open bracket?

July, Major, Thorzain and Fenix advanced, do you think imbalance allowed for them to advance over players like Axslav, Agh or Cruncher?

Same with the winners bracket, any players or games there that you think were lost due to balance?

I was honestly impressed with Naniwa's play this weekend, espec his series vs Moon.

I personally think Kiwikaki played poorly all weekend, Tyler has been in a little Slump lately and MC losing to Losira was in my opinion due to Losira playing very well.

[Tom]

@ Benji. I suppose the whole point of looking at the data is to avoid making subjective judgments about who I think should have advanced, who I think is the better player etc. I acknowledged in the OP that "player" is the key variable, not "race". But the point of looking at mass data (irrespective of the identity of the player) is to try and get an idea of the extent to which "race" might also be influencing the outcome.

The question of whether imbalance (if there is such a thing) allowed a particular player to advance really seems to me to be beside the point.

[nGenLight]

The way I am seeing it, MC and Naniwa are the only two that are contending for Protoss. I am seriously learning alot watching both of them play. But other than these 2, majority protosses has been just lackluster.

[NvPinder]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

But I still win most of my PvZ's with timing attacks (such as the Korean professionals), because I realise the moment I drop my 3rd Nexus I give away entire map control to Zerg to do whatever the hell they want.

There has been a myth for a very long time about how Protoss has the strongest lategame. So why am I finding myself trying to avoid these lategame strategy as much as possible? Is it possible that it's too insanely hard to get there? Is it possible that the two other races have equal or perhaps stronger lategame?

I don't know if you've changed much, but as far as I ever saw from your play, no offence(and i honestly mean that because that syle is strong, just as MC showcases), you two or one-base timing attacked almost every single game. Of course if you practice one thing more than the other(especially in this case when 'the other' is much more mechanically difficult) it's going to feel incredibly lackluster when you try switching to that style and you're going to go back to what you're comfortable with. I ******* hated 1-base stuff and found it incredibly awkward, avoided practicing it and its one of the reasons my PvP was horseshit, playing that style just feels wrong and backwards to me.

The problem is that there's only so many timing attacks you can do, and at some point zergs were going to figure out how to stop the 2 base timing stuff consistently (or the game would be legitimately very, very broken) if protoss' started relying on it too much. It's the same story as back when everyone was 4-gating every matchup because it is incredibly strong and hard to defend. Eventually terrans and zergs figured out how to hold it optimally, and the protoss players using those builds had to evolve their play.

It's a normal part of meta-game shifting and evolving as a player, the reason why it takes ages for the meta-game to shift is because it's MUCH easier to 'do what you're doing and still getting away with winning' than losing the countless games it takes to actually come up with something new.

edit: and for fucks sake, you're one of if not the best players of your race in this country, grow a ******* pair and come up with your own shit instead of desperately seeking to copy the next top fad from other top players.

[nGenLight]

I agree with your points regarding the normal part of meta-game shift and having more bases = harder mechanically. Although I find it a bit silly that you are insinuating that I don't go beyond 2 bases in my 5000 or so ladder games, I won't defend that if I see an unsafe or bad build from my opponent, I won't just punish it. The case for the PvZ meta-game currently is a bit different though. Most professional/high tier Protoss are resorting to 2 base timing attacks because of the difficulty of securing a third base against Zerg, and even if the deathball was successfully built, Zerg has so much solution against it right now. However, that isn't to say trying to get a third isn't the right way to go, as Naniwa and MC has shown in the MLG weekend with relative success of holding their third. Playing 2 base timing attacks is by far not the way myself or any of these high tier Protoss players want to play - it isn't fun!

I spent like the last 100 games trying out new shit dropping from rank 1 to rank 30 or so don't tell me I don't try to come up with my own shit. Why are you having a go at me? I'm asking questions, your acting like I'm saying **** this I don't wanna play this game because its retarded. This is simply not true.

[BordZ]

Roz, you quoted me, thanks for that I realised I forgot to add 2 words that changed the meaning of my post entirely. I did not mean to advocate balance around mid tiers, I'm my haste I forgot to add top tier into the mix as well. Sorry about that.

[AlphaWhale]

Originally Posted by dennistoo

Well, i guess cheesing is the only way to win now.

1 base DT rush ftw.

Yeah I hear you can win a GSL with that. Oh wait...

Personally I'd like to see the new protoss meta trend towards templar/mass warpgate play. (When you see protoss warp in 21 units at once it makes hatcheries look weak). Terrans are pretty much making blind vikings in PvT and zergs are learning how to use infestors.

But robo gives you a lot of mid game security so how that's going to come around I do not know.

[Benji]

My only issue with your post is that you have such a small sample size with your data. In the TL thread the Korean graph even has a note saying that it is a small data size. For reference, the PvZ graph on the Korean graph has a sample of 269 games over 6 months. That means theres around 45 games a month, meaning that the 30%/70% difference, which makes P seem amazingly weak is really misleading. If Protoss won 10 more games that month, it would be 50%/50%.

The other graph showing global trends has 10x the data, and the win% is within 1% which is acceptable in my opinion for game balance.

What about protoss do you think needs to be changed?

[Tom]

Both your points about the data are valid Benji, but I think you have not allowed for some of the other data I have presented.

Korean GSL data

The fact that the Korean April/May GSL sample size for was small and limited to the results of one tounrament is the reason why I wanted to wait and see what happened in the next GSL. If the April/May GSL results were an aberation, I would have expected to see some reversion to the mean (that is, I would have expected Protoss to "bounce back" to some degree in the GSL Super Tournament). However, it is already clear the opposite has occurred - Protoss has performed even worse. That is why I am concerned the results may be part of an overall trend rather than a "once off".

International tournament data and other international data

I have also been careful to look at a range of data sources, not just the results of GSL in Korea. These include various Grandmaster Leagues and International Tournaments.

As you say, the analysis of TLPD data on Team Liquid for international tournaments showed results approaching 50%. However, this analysis is almost 2 months old, and it is necessary to look at more recent results. It has been my suspicion that Korean results are generally a "leading indicator" in this area.

Sure enough, if you examine the results of NASL and MLG Columbus (see my earlier post/analysis in this thread), the results are now consistent with the possible trend we are seeing in GSL and in various Grandmaster Leagues. While there are a lot of Protoss players starting out, a disproportionately low number are qualifiying for higher rounds. The proportion qualifying for MLG nearly halved (in comparison, the proportion of Terran and Zerg qualifiers both increased by around 25%).

Looking at a variety of data sources

I agree that we cannot safely reach a conclusion the basis of one data set for one point in time. However, I think we can conclude that:

1. A variety of data sources now show the same apparent trend in poor Protoss results; and

2. The most recent data shows the trend is apparently accelerating.

My point is, if a whole lot of different data sources are starting to say the same thing, it is time to ask the question.

What do I think needs to be changed about Protoss?

I am flattered anyone would actually ask for my opinion on this question. Unfortunately, I feel I am unworthy to speak with much (if any) authority on the subject. I also feel that if I were to start talking about changes I think should be made, it would detract from the objectivity with which I am attempting to approach the data.

There are really two steps in balance:

1. See if there is a problem (look at the data)
2. If a problem is identified, try to find ways to correct it.

I am only really dealing with step 1. Step 2 is really hard, given the potential for an apparently small tweak to have a large and/or unexpected effect on balance.

[nGenLight]

I don't really think any units need changing as opposed to us Protoss just figuring out how to play. However, if there was something I could change, I would rework Ventral Sacs - Maybe actually showing if there is units in there. Floating an overlord just a little away from each Protoss mineral line just completely cripples our economy.

[crAzerk]

If the Ventral Sacs change was done, then wouldn't Medivacs have to be tweaked as well for fairness?

I understand how it's a complete mindf--- for Protoss to have something like that being a burden on your mind, but to express what I feel about this would warrant another thread.

[nGenLight]

There are some pretty significant differences between Medivacs and Ventral Sac'd overlords that makes me feel okay with the former but not the latter.

But as you said, let's not get into it because it was not my intention to discuss the balance of ventral Sac, nor get into a debate with yourself.

[Benji]

Light, Put a cannon down, it'll deter fake overlords as they will lose them, meaning they really don't gain much out of you losing 5 seconds of mining time (<100 minerals I would say), and also puts a timer on the baneling filled ones, as they generally can't keep following your probe line for long before they are killed.

Tom, Blizzard said in an interview during the HOTS reveal that they feel race balance is fairly balanced, and future changes will be regarding specific builds they feel are too strong (Can't remember which video it was). Which is why I ask where the issue is, if theres something Protoss have a glaring weakness for with regards to builds, it would be what needs to be addressed. I feel blizzard won't make any blacket changes for any of the races anymore, and looking at win %'s doesn't take any of this into account.

[Tom]

Benji could you please provide a source as I would be interested to read exactly what Blizzard said.

To say "race balance is fairly balanced" sort of begs a whole lot of further questions - do they mean across all skill levels etc (of course I am saying this in the absence of details of precisely what Blizzard said). Also, just because Blizzard say something doesn't necessarily make it true - I would assume they would relying on some sort of data of their own, which I hope they will make available.

[nGenLight]

It's not just mineral line baneling bombs. Ventral sac is so good against Protoss in so many ways, I really can't be bothered to list them all.

[Monk]

@My last post giving MLG Colombus Mirrors, I have to correct myself. I only counted half of the mirrors instead of the full amount of mirrors and made an error in one of the countings. I can't get the numbers to match so let's ditch that last working.

@Benji I honestly can only think of 1 build that should be nerfed. And it's the MC 4-gate. It's hard to scout, and if you do scout it, it's generally way too late.

All-ins and any other form of dominant builds(2 rax, 4 gate, 7 roach rush) are easily scouted, and easily defended if you know what you're doing.

@Tom
Korean Protoss in GSTL(http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft...r_Tournament):
P__T__Z

Ro64
16_29_19
Ro32
7__17_8
Ro16
1__7__6

GSL - May
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft..._II_League_May

Look at this Tom. You can't deny that protoss aren't doing well. Using the above pattern.
Code A - Ro32
13_13_7
Code A - Ro16
3__9__4
Code A - Ro8
0__6__2

Terran dominating GSL Code A Zerg ain't even doing well. Let's see Code S. Using the same pattern (PTZ)

Code S - Ro32
10_14_8
Code S - Ro16
5__7__4
Code S - Ro8
3__3__2
Code S - Semi
1__2__1
Code S - Finals
1__0__1

How can protoss be underpowered if they are the highest retainers of Code S? 10 protoss at ro64, 50% retained to ro16 then 60% retained at ro8. Korean Protoss look at this thread and laugh, with that being said Code A still needs some work.

I just don't see why you're saying Korean Protoss don't know how to win with Protoss, where clearly they do.

[Benji]

Tom, I can't remember which interview it was, I will spend some time trying to find it, but they implied at the top level of play. They won't release numbers, they don't need to prove anything to us.

Light, Apart from baneling drops, what else do you need to see? Roach drops or Hydra drops and such you can scout, or react to. You need to be more specific on what you think is broken with regards to drops.

[nGenLight]

Because units that have no food cost, very low cost creates a threat that requires about half your army to deal with. While the Zerg player subsequently throws cheap Roaches at your third and natural at the same time whilst they have baited your army to your main, goodluck getting that deathball up. With super high levels of insight, unit management and control, it is possible to defend well enough to get your deathball up before Zerg has a deathball busting unit composition, but this is ridiculously hard, especially on a map like XNC.

Medivacs can be dealt by mineral dumping on some zealots or making 4 stalkers to prevent a drop. Zealots against Zerg units? 4 Stalkers to target fire 20 overlords heading your way (with no idea if theres any units in there)?

I'm not saying Ventral Sac is OP or anything, but it is probably the one single feature of Zerg that drives me insane because it is ridiculously hard to really gameplan for it. I'm sure some Zerg players may have the same opinion about Blink or FF.

[Monk]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Because units that have no food cost, very low cost creates a threat that requires about half your army to deal with. When the Zerg player subsequently throws cheap Roaches at your third and natural at same time whilst baited your army to your main. Goodluck getting that deathball up. With super high levels of insight, unit management and control, it is possible to defend well enough to get your deathball up before Zerg has a deathball busting unit composition.

Medivacs can be dealt by mineral dumping on some zealots or making 4 stalkers to prevent a drop. Zealots against Zerg units? 4 Stalkers to target fire 20 overlords heading your way (with no idea if theres any units in there)?

I would be looking at your macro if you're working towards a deathball and only have 4 stalkers when your opponent has 160 supply worth of overlords, unless you mean what you meant with the medivac.

[nGenLight]

^ Dude WTF? I was comparing about dealing with medivacs to dealing with overlords. That was my exact point, you have 20 overlords flying to your base, you need like 40 stalkers to defend that, and what if it was just a diversion? I just placed 40 Stalkers completely out of position to watch my expos get destroyed.

Maybe you could teach me some silver zerg macro.

[Tom]

@Monk: Um, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with your example. In one of your examples there were 1 Protoss, 7 Terran and 6 Zerg by the Ro16 and in another example there were 0 Protoss, 6 Terran and 2 Zerg in the Ro8. The third example shows the races "breaking even", with each race halving in number each round, until the Protoss/Zerg final.

In any event, arguing about the data at this level of specificity is a waste of time. The data you have referred to is included in the Korean Tournament Results data for May (which is accounted for in the Team Liquid graph). What you appear to have have done is revisited the data used for this graph, selected a segment that apparently suits your argument (or at least doesn't look as bad as the rest of the data), and then used this to assert there is no trend.

With the greatest of respect to you Monk, I am not going to debate the figures with you anymore. It is really not worth my time pointing out gross errors of arithmetic (eg overcounting mirror match ups) or trying to explain basic statistical principles such as "don't pick a small part of a data set that suits your argument and then ignore the rest of it". I also suggest it may be wise not to lecture nGenLight (possibly the best Protoss player in Australia) on his macro ;p

[Monk]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

^ Dude WTF? I was comparing about dealing with medivacs to dealing with overlords. That was my exact point, you have 20 overlords flying to your base, you need like 40 stalkers to defend that, and what if it was just a diversion? I just placed 40 Stalkers completely out of position to watch my expos get destroyed.

Maybe you could teach me some silver zerg macro.

Everyone has to start from somewhere. And you should have game sense and scouting. There is a reason why Blizzard gave you observers and gave some maps xel'naga watchtowers. You see many units under mass overlords? Base defense, set your observer to follow which base has the most overlords heading. You see a ton of units and overlords heading to you? Could be a diversion or a small drop. I pull overlords to take the first few hits from stalkers giving my roaches and hydras time to get into position.

With the same thing being said about overlords and medivacs, a diversion medivac or a real drop, how do you know? You don't. That's where your scouting comes in. I'm pretty sure there is this thing called static defense. As Benji said, cannons work well. I find it's near impossible to micro a just dropped baneling from splashing on a cannon if it's placed in the mineral line. A simple probe pull and let the cannon take the hits.

You just sound like a complete whiner. Benji gave you a tip on how to stop it. You then come around saying ventral sacs is good overall? You have to spend 200/200 to get ventral sacs, and it takes forever for that to upgrade, and you have to upgrade overlord speed too. If it's against your 'death'ball then you have your 40 stalkers to target fire them down. Blink is pretty much a get upgrade in PvZ anyways, so just box blink if your micro isn't good. You're just giving excuses and looking for the easy way out.

Let's nerf Warp prisms so they can't warp in your base. Let's nerf Medivacs so they tell you what is in it and make it so it can't heal at all. Let's show what is inside an overlord too, and make it so they have no speed upgrade. Ohh wait, if we're doing supply giving units/structures let's do this. Pylons can only power things touching them. Supply depots cannot be lowered and have lower HP, Overlords cannot drop units and move slow. Man I should be in charge of SC2 balancing. I'd make you so happy.

I may just be some silver zerg(btw I'm not really silver any more, but let's roll with it) But I watch Tournaments, Replay and streams of high-level players to know some type of high-level game and ways to stop certain things, and ways to do certain things.

In the end, you've just gotta have eyes on your opponent. You should see a drop coming. Stop it. You see multiple drops coming? You should have cannons.

Instead of mineral dumping zealots why don't you mineral dump with cannons, giving you more supply and you don't essentially waste warpgate cooldowns.

TL;DR:
Get better.

Originally Posted by Tom

@Monk: Um, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with your example. In one of your examples there were 1 Protoss, 7 Terran and 6 Zerg by the Ro16 and in another example there were 0 Protoss, 6 Terran and 2 Zerg in the Ro8. The third example shows the races "breaking even", with each race halving in number each round, until the Protoss/Zerg final.

In any event, arguing about the data at this level of specificity is a waste of time. The data you have referred to is included in the Korean Tournament Results data for May (which is accounted for in the Team Liquid graph). What you appear to have have done is revisited the data used for this graph, selected a segment that apparently suits your argument (or at least doesn't look as bad as the rest of the data), and then used this to assert there is no trend.

With the greatest of respect to you Monk, I am not going to debate the figures with you anymore. It is really not worth my time pointing out gross errors of arithmetic (eg overcounting mirror match ups) or trying to explain basic statistical principles such as "don't pick a small part of a data set that suits your argument and then ignore the rest of it". I also suggest it may be wise not to lecture nGenLight (possibly the best Protoss player in Australia) on his macro ;p

I don't care who's who. If they're whining about a thing they are obviously asking for help in dealing with it.

And in regards to the data, you said that everything I did before was around april, and you were meaning now so I pulled the most recent GSL results out. And I was meant to say you can't deny protoss aren't doing well* in regards to Code A. But in Code S the protoss were doing pretty well. I was having fun throwing data at you and receiving data back (:

So on topic: Is Protoss considered Underpowered in high-level play still?

Quick Comments

FaDeBadger:

You are lecturing Light on how to play the game when unless you are one of the best zergs on the server, you shouldn't be. Not to mention you are wrong on almost every point

[Monk]

double post on accident D:

[nGenLight]

I was offering my opinion because it was asked of me to give one. I was just telling my own personal experience of Ventral Sacs giving me fits, in no where was I calling anything OP. But all I get from you is insults and you talking out of your ass about a level of play you wouldn't have a clue about.

1. You have no clue what a multi-prong attack is do you? I can stop 20 overlords if it was the only thing coming at me.

2. Do you honestly think 20 medivacs flying towards your base is the same as 20 overlords flying towards your base? Maybe you want to start thinking about resources like food/building time/availability/opportunity cost.

3. Having the ability to scout = map control. Once you take that third base you give away that map control. Regardless, I am still able to scout through hallucinated phoenix, well placed units and usually can see things coming at me before they do.

4. You need to read, I didn't say nerf Ventral Sacs, I was asked a question, my answer was that If I HAD to nerf something that would be it because Ventral Sacs is what gives me the most trouble.

5. Yes I need to get better, it's just a little weird being told so by somewhat who is so ridiculously ignorant.

[nirvAnA]

an interesting observation of the reputation in this "protoss underpowered" topic



well except for apth

[Tom]

The fact that a non-Protoss player approves of this thread leads me to doubt that there is trend in Protoss players approving of this thread!

[Monk]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

I was offering my opinion because it was asked of me to give one. I was just telling my own personal experience of Ventral Sacs giving me fits, in no where was I calling anything OP. But all I get from you is insults and you talking out of your ass about a level of play you wouldn't have a clue about.

1. You have no clue what a multi-prong attack is do you? I can stop 20 overlords if it was the only thing coming at me.

2. Do you honestly think 20 medivacs flying towards your base is the same as 20 overlords flying towards your base? Maybe you want to start thinking about resources like food/building time/availability/opportunity cost.

3. Having the ability to scout = map control. Once you take that third base you give away that map control. Regardless, I am still able to scout through hallucinated phoenix, well placed units and usually can see things coming at me before they do.

4. You need to read, I didn't say nerf Ventral Sacs, I was asked a question, my answer was that If I HAD to nerf something that would be it because Ventral Sacs is what gives me the most trouble.

5. Yes I need to get better, it's just a little weird being told so by somewhat who is so ridiculously ignorant.

When I quoted you you didn't have the "I don't find this OP" part in there, as per my quote. But now you make me look like really arrogant.

Because units that have no food cost, very low cost creates a threat that requires about half your army to deal with. When the Zerg player subsequently throws cheap Roaches at your third and natural at same time whilst baited your army to your main. Goodluck getting that deathball up. With super high levels of insight, unit management and control, it is possible to defend well enough to get your deathball up before Zerg has a deathball busting unit composition.

Medivacs can be dealt by mineral dumping on some zealots or making 4 stalkers to prevent a drop. Zealots against Zerg units? 4 Stalkers to target fire 20 overlords heading your way (with no idea if theres any units in there)?

This is what you had posted when I replied. It makes you look ignorant to me.

1. Obviously. This is where I said that scouting is important.

2. No. There is a world of difference, not to mention the fact Medivacs can heal, Medivacs can also carry 8 slots. 8 Marines dropped then stimmed and right clicked on a tech structure can take it out in seconds. same as a probe line. I don't get what this difference is? Anyways. You would only need 10(20 supply) worth of Medivacs to be the same. They cost a little more, but can carry twice as much as an overlord, can heal and are very cost effective. And then now you see, a reactored starport or two can easily get these up.

3. I don't get why you have trouble with overlords drops then if you can see things coming at you?

4. I did read it, and I re-read it and still stick by my words. Did you read my post? As to your first point I clearly covered it.

5. I may be ignorant because your post came off ignorant.

[nGenLight]

4. It was a reply to Benji that had nothing to do with you, you come in completely out of context and call me a whiner because I am explaining to Benji the mindset that he was looking for, I was not looking for answers or having a cry. You tried to make me look like I was doing so, stay out of it.

1. What I'm saying is scouting is irrelevant. Just because you see ovelords coming does not completely stop the damage it does, because it requires a large amount of units to actually deal with them, that is a large amount of units that is unable to deal with the multipronged attack hitting your natural and 3rd at the same time with no garantee that there are actually units in the overlords, but we have to prepare for them regardless.

2. You just don't get it. Consider how much difficult it is to get medivacs as opposed to overlords, and consider the opportunity cost/time/resource/effectiveness of making 20 medivacs as opposed to 20 overlords and whether you want to "fake" a drop with them.

3. Same as point one, seeing them come does not prevent the damage they may do. I never said they were OP or anything, merely that they are extremely hard to deal with and it would be something that I PERSONALLY would REWORK. Does multi-pronged attacks happen in Silver?

5. My post was not intended for you. You are in no position to call the views of someone who has spent much more time on this game ignorant when the post was not even intended for you in the first place.

I am done arguing with you because I have to make myself think like a Silver player in order to put things into perspective to explain things to you, which you will probably ignore and continue to try to lecture me anyway, I'm done.

Quick Comments

SnoWPanda:

you show integrity in all your posts. but i suggest you give up bro its pointlses

[NvPinder]

There are poker forums where you get insta banned for arguing about low-stakes poker hands if you are a micro stakes player, or high stakes poker hands if you are a mid-stakes player etc... After reading the majority of the monk vs light posts you can kinda see their point -.-;;

That being said, light I'm not trying to come off like an asshole, from your posts it just seemed like you were more whining and waiting for someone else to solve the problem for you and complain until that happens rather than seek it out for yourself, so sorry for judging it wrong. Also I obviously never meant to insinuate that you have never gone past 2 bases in your life don't be a moron -.-, I did however say that from what I ever saw (which is mostly tournament games streamed and games you played against me, both pvp and pvz) you did a lot more 1-2 base heavy agression stuff, and in tournaments players generally tend to do what they're most comfortable with... And this was going back 3 months, long before this new notion of protosses are struggling to take 3rds against zerg came about.

Fwiw I'm not saying the only thing you should be doing is laddering hardcore and trial & erroring non-stop until you find something, but posting on a community forum where you're easily the best (active :P) protoss player seeking protoss advice is a kinda retarded outlet... ask other teammates around your level to suggest shit, because on here (and every forum, this isn't a go at sc2sea either) you're just going to get the opinion of the kids who honest to god believe "Yo I actually have sick good game knowledge, like, i know EVERYTHING about the game and strategy because i can tell you how much hp every unit has and like, I know that i should be building workers all the time and stuff, it's just I dont have very good mechanics, but seriously, I know everything else, so heres what you need to do: ***Insert random theorycraft bullshit***"

Also just my 2c on the overall "What needs to be done" thing, I don't think any sort of patching should be done at all until it is very, VERY clear a race is struggling, and I mean more than just protoss hasn't had a good tournament placing in 2 months.

Quick Comments

FaDeBadger:

Spot on

[Benji]

A new chart was just released, I took a few minutes to add some notes on when some specific balance batches came out, so you can try and understand any changes brought about by the patch. Because the chart is not very well labeled, patch dates are approx.

+ Show +

[SnoWPanda]

What I conclude from the graph:
Terran is the real OP race, protoss has the illusion of been OP while zerg is not as weak as people say it is.

[aLtNinja]

The gsl results are skewed because as the rounds go on great zergs like Losira, Nestea end up playing a bunch of bad protoss in comparison like Inca and Anypro which they way outclass.
The result comes from the few zerg making it far so a very high percentage of zerg games are from these top zerg playing against bad protoss.

[SnoWPanda]

lolol ninja think! what ur saying isn't logical at all, thats like saying "if you take out MC's wins, protoss is actually doing alot worse, therefore the graph is inaccurate!"

EDIT: if you look at that way, GSL 3 where all the toss bombed out early, MC accounted for >50% of total protoss wins lol... and protoss still did the worst in GSL 3 overall. i haven't got the data to prove it but its about a good estimation if u actually watched all of GSL 3.

[Monk]

Originally Posted by Benji

A new chart was just released, I took a few minutes to add some notes on when some specific balance batches came out, so you can try and understand any changes brought about by the patch. Because the chart is not very well labeled, patch dates are approx.

+ Show +

I was just about to post that :P

Protoss only being down a few percent doesn't make the race under powered by any means. I think they're relatively balanced as compared to Zerg. Terran are doing pretty well for this month too. In the end, I think all 3 races from this chart are pretty balanced.

[Tom]

EDIT [SPOILER]:

Slayers_Alicia is the only Protoss through to the Round of 16 in the GSL Super Tournament, with a gimmicky 7 gate timing attack and a 1base void ray all-in. DT expand failed miserably.

Today, Korean negative balance sentiments towards Protoss (see link in my OP) are at the highest level since the beginning of December last year.

***

@ Benji - The TLPD International Tournament data does appear to be the best case that the races are approaching balance (as the earlier TLPD data also showed, and as referred to in my OP). On one view, it still shows Protoss is the slightly weakest race at that level of play.

What I find interesting, though, is the low number of Protoss players qualifying for the finals in these tournaments. The slightly lower win % appears to translate into a dramatically lower proportion of Protoss players qualifying for higher rounds. I am not sure why this is so.

What I think we can say about the TLPD International Tournament data is that it apparently shows a slight trend towards underperformance by Protoss, but the apparent trend is less pronounced than that from the Korean Tournament data, the "qualification" data (NASL, MLG etc), and the Korean, NA, EU and SEA GM League data. The fact that the trend in the TLPD data is less pronounced than in other data sources (but nonetheless present) would not lead me to reject the hypothesis that Protoss is underpowered in high level play.

[dennistoo]

Originally Posted by stormninja

The gsl results are skewed because as the rounds go on great zergs like Losira, Nestea end up playing a bunch of bad protoss in comparison like Inca and Anypro which they way outclass.
The result comes from the few zerg making it far so a very high percentage of zerg games are from these top zerg playing against bad protoss.

Sorry, are you saying Korean Code S are bunch of bad protoss? Look at MLG top 3, obviously Protoss is the weakest race atm.

Even the best protoss in the world can managed a 3rd in MLG. Your above comments makes no sense.

[Benji]

Sorry, are you saying Korean Code S are bunch of bad protoss? Look at MLG top 3, obviously Protoss is the weakest race atm.

I fail to understand how having top 3 of a tournament be the 3 different races is a sign of inbalance. If anything, it shows the game isnt that bad (infact quite good balance wise). If MC placed first, and Losira 3rd, would you say that Zerg was weak? No you wouldn't, you only look at the data from the point of view that makes your race look weak (and thus is an excuse as to why you aren't ranked higher than you are).

@Tom, The data does show that Protoss is a little behind, but I want to remind you about earlier this year, around Jan/Feb when Zerg had a 40% win (the lowest representation of all the races in sc2 to date) and Zerg players were crying, saying we were UP. Protoss and Terran responded with 'learn to adapt' and we clawed back to 48%ish before the Infestor went live. There have been plenty of GSL's as well when Zerg were signifncatly underrepresented (1 Zerg in the Ro8 of March, Lowest representation of race all through GSL May), its the nature of tournaments.

Give it time, players will figure it out. One thing you can try is getting a trial or second account and play some Zerg or Terran (whatever you have trouble with) and find out what annoys you from the other side of the coin, to give you some perspective. It will improve your play.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Benji

@Tom, The data does show that Protoss is a little behind, but I want to remind you about earlier this year, around Jan/Feb when Zerg had a 40% win (the lowest representation of all the races in sc2 to date) and Zerg players were crying, saying we were UP. Protoss and Terran responded with 'learn to adapt' and we clawed back to 48%ish before the Infestor went live. There have been plenty of GSL's as well when Zerg were signifncatly underrepresented (1 Zerg in the Ro8 of March, Lowest representation of race all through GSL May), its the nature of tournaments.

One data set shows Protoss "a little" behind. The rest of data shows them a lot behind.

The "underrepresentation" issue for Zerg is slightly different. With Protoss, it has generally been the most played race, whereas Zerg has generally had a low % of players. You would therefore expect, all else being equal, that you would see a higher proportion of Protoss than Zerg in tournaments. Think about it this way, if only 20% of players used Zerg (which is close to the actual propotion, although it is increasing) then you would expect only 1 in 5 GSL players to be Zerg. It wouldn't indicate balance, only that there is a lower player pool to begin with. Contrast this to 35% of players using Protoss but only 1 in 16 making it through in the GSL. This does indicate that there may be a disadvantage in playing Protoss.

Originally Posted by Benji

One thing you can try is getting a trial or second account and play some Zerg or Terran (whatever you have trouble with) and find out what annoys you from the other side of the coin, to give you some perspective. It will improve your play.

I have not mentioned my own play or any trouble I'm having. Thanks for the tip though ;p I barely have time to log on more than 1 or 2 days a week as it is, let alone starting multiple accounts!

[Benji]

Are you referring to the most recent graph that I linked to? Because after that was released all other data is outdated, and that graph doesn't show that big of a difference.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Benji

Are you referring to the most recent graph that I linked to? Because after that was released all other data is outdated, and that graph doesn't show that big of a difference.

Sorry could you please explain why "all other data is outdated"? As far as I can see, that graph is one of several data sets.

[Benji]

Its the most recent data which should be used, as the discussion is wether Protoss is UP Now, and not 2 months ago.

The graph of Korean games, that shows 70% ZvP has such a small sample size that it should be taken with a grain of salt. The data linked above not only has a largeer sample size, but is also the most recent. If you want to pick and choose which data to use to suit your arguement however, then its simply a bias discussion.

I have not mentioned my own play or any trouble I'm having. Thanks for the tip though ;p I barely have time to log on more than 1 or 2 days a week as it is, let alone starting multiple accounts!

Ah kk, np. Its still good advice for other Protoss that are struggling. I had issues with my ZvP and ZvT, so I got a second account and played some from the opposite side of the matchup, and it really helps.

[Monk]

Originally Posted by Benji

Its the most recent data which should be used, as the discussion is wether Protoss is UP Now, and not 2 months ago.

The graph of Korean games, that shows 70% ZvP has such a small sample size that it should be taken with a grain of salt. The data linked above not only has a largeer sample size, but is also the most recent. If you want to pick and choose which data to use to suit your arguement however, then its simply a bias discussion.

This. I mentioned in my MLG post that that PlayXP link only had 300 or so people voting on it. Hardly a sample size worth mentioning. The chart however shows that all races are around the same number. I could see you saying Protoss was underpowered IF they were <42% winrate. But 47% is pretty good in my opinion.

@Tom you're sampling Zerg being a low populated race(20%), and protoss(35%) being a higher one. This is a double-bladed sword in your argument as you can say that protoss have a lot more mirrors then zerg do, so it's only natural that the numbers get smaller as the tournaments go on.

[TAhackdZ]

I don't want to overstep any lines here, since I'm relativly new to the SC scene, but;

I'm pretty damn sure there would have been threads just like this one when BroodWar was in it's infancy.

It's all just a matter of time. Sc2 has only been out for a little while, and players (Pro and noob alike) are still trying to work out all the subtle little things that took BW players 12 years to figure out.

Sure, currently the meta-game suggests that Protoss arn't performing very well, but that will change. Someone will figure out how to steamroll the Zergy forces that are causing so much trouble right now, and the paradigm will shift back the other way.

It's the nature of a strategy game.

Personally, (and Protoss players please don't take any offense to this) if people spent more time actually playing the game and trying to figure out some way around the perceived imbalance, rather than writing about it on forums, then the meta-game would shift even faster.

Quick Comments

:

well said

[crAzerk]

I like that main point Ridiculisk. Also one of the underlying themes I had in mind when writing my article on balance.

However, I'm seeing one comment abit too often, will paraphrase it but it has been repeated many times in different words:

"Protoss players should stop complaining about balance and spend the time to actually play and think of ways to improve their metagame"

Or to put it more succinctly but crudely: "Shut up and stop wasting your time, use it to play more'.

I think this isn't a fair comment to make. I am all for balance discussion, it's good for mental exercise and critical thinking, just that it needs to be done with the correct mindset and framework.
People who make these balance claims obviously love the game, so they love talking about the game as well. Instead of shooting down their balance claims without even assessing them, we should try to understand their perspective (and supply counterarguments if we disagree)
And remember that they are starting these discussions because they love the game like us! (And probably can't play whereever they are, at the moment )

Comments like the one I've quoted seem to just want to shut down the discussion without actually thinking through it. I urge everyone to not keep saying that, but if you disagree, explain why! Not just 'oh nothing's wrong you're just whining'.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by Benji

Its the most recent data which should be used, as the discussion is wether Protoss is UP Now, and not 2 months ago.

The graph of Korean games, that shows 70% ZvP has such a small sample size that it should be taken with a grain of salt. The data linked above not only has a largeer sample size, but is also the most recent. If you want to pick and choose which data to use to suit your arguement however, then its simply a bias discussion.

What I'm trying to say is:

- NA GM League Data is current as at 3 June 2011
- EU GM League Data is current as at 3 June 2011
- Korean GM League Data is current as at 3 June 2011
- Previous Korean GSL Data is current as at May
- Korean GSL Super Tournament Data is current as at today
- MLG racial qualification % is current as at today
- NASL racial qualification % is current as at today
- TLPD international tournament win% data is current as at the last few days (not sure exactly when the "cut off" was for the graph).

You seem to be suggesting the TLPD data, which shows "only" a slight underperformance by Protoss, should "trump" all the other data sets. One reason seems to be that it is "current". I would suggest it is no more "current" than the other data sets I have looked at. It is clearly an important data source, but I don't think it is valid to look at it and ignore all the other (current) data sources.

@Ridiculisk: I enjoy talking about these sort of facts and figures in the same way as others like to kick around data/studies proving or disproving things like climate change. Its always hard to work out whether there is a real trend or if we're just imagining things (I often have to debate these sorts of issues in my professional life). I'm personally quite comfortable playing Protoss at the moment, but I find these possible trends interesting. At the same time, it has irked me for a while that Zerg (and even sometimes Terran) have been complaining of being underpowered lately when this really doesn't seem to be justified by the data.

[AvPoker]

After winning my 1000th win as zerg a couple of days ago, I decided to switch to protoss. I will update whether protoss is really underpowered in first person. Your welcome.

Quick Comments

Tom:

If you're seriously, that is really awesome man ;p

[crAzerk]

Entirely off-topic, but I'm curious as to what you do Tom
Maybe post here:
http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=1532

lol@ pokerface. Damn i want the kerrigan icon

[nGenLight]

JPMoney: Fair Enough It is hard, and frustrating T_T

Ridiculisk: As mentioned before by posters such as Crazerk, JPMoney and Roz. What you guys are saying is spot on. However this does not stop a little discussion based on hard data.

Tom/Benji: Seems like you guys are inclined to disagree on how to interpret/use the different hard data sets that is available. I am sort of inclined to the notion at how little Protoss are doing well compared to the high numbers of actual Protoss participants in these recent tournaments. I also believe that outlier players such as MC and Naniwa(Only protoss who aren't relying on timing attacks) are really carrying the weight for the Protoss just as FD and Nestea has been back in the darker time for Zerg.

I know I may sound whiney and such, but I have never went into a game feeling like my race was the underdog race, ever. Merely that I don't have the answers better players would have. Watching Naniwa and MC at MLG, I believe the low-time for Protoss won't last too long.

[pikk0n]

On balance, a few months ago, zerg players brought this issue up and back then, the graphs showed a significant imbalance for the zerg players in terms of tournament results. Today, we've got protoss players saying that protoss is UP. Give it a few more months before jumping to the conclusion that protoss is UP because that was what ALL zerg players thought back then about their own race. They have improved their mechanics to the stage that zerg is seen as being OP in ZvPs but this came about after months of frustration when playing against protoss players with the old strategies (no/lack of infestors).

As for the infestor 'buff'. Personally, I really do not see how infestors were 'buffed' against protoss. Fungals are usually used to stop sentries from running away (or stalkers from blinking away) from banes not to kill them so technically, infestors with their 8 second effect time were in fact stronger... That 'buff' just encouraged zerg players to use their infestors more. Perhaps there is a similar unit like this that protoss has which is underused. I thought it was the phoenix but that just made PvT a little more balanced. LOL!

Should protoss be given the Khaydarin amulet back? The mothership vortex 'nerf' (or rather a fix of the bug) is really what brought the playing field back even for the PvZ matchups.

[nGenLight]

Infestor buff gave Zerg a legitimate midgame option to deal with the "Deathball". It also completely shuts down the previously undefeatable Voidray/Collosi mix Protoss used to use. The newer infestors has definitely taken away many timings/options/unit mixes that Protoss used to exploit. (Which was incredibly hard for Zerg to deal with)

I believe it was moreso when Zerg players realised how to abuse their mobile/cheap units against the immobile Protoss army which cannot be split up, that PvZ balance started going the other way. Previously Zerg just rushed to 200/200, sat infront of their bases then waited for a Protoss "deathball" to come crush them.

[Tom]

To those pointing to the fact that Zerg was previously underpowered but has improved its results over time (and Protoss likewise needs to learn to adapt), I would point out that there have been several patches over that time that have been kind to Zerg (and not so kind to Protoss). I'm not saying that there hasn't also been some "learning" by Zerg - undoubtedly there has. But I think patching has also played some role.

If data becomes available that strongly suggests Protoss are underperforming, I don't see why Blizzard should not consider balance changes. They have made so many balance changes already based on trends that developed over small periods of time (arguably smaller than what we are currently seeing with Protoss).

[pikk0n]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Infestor buff gave Zerg a legitimate midgame option to deal with the "Deathball". It also completely shuts down the previously undefeatable Voidray/Collosi mix Protoss used to use. The newer infestors has definitely taken away many timings/options/unit mixes that Protoss used to exploit. (Which was incredibly hard for Zerg to deal with).

So the newer infestors deal more dmg to the voids. Is that why the fungals are better now as compared to the previous fungal where a unit was held down for 8 seconds but barely damaged by the spell? Just wondering since it'll help me a lot in my ZvP matchups.

[nGenLight]

Fungal Growth
Stun duration decreased from 8 to 4 seconds.
Damage increased by +30% vs. armored units.

This means that Fungal Growth DPS has increased from 100% to 200% per second as opposed to before against non armoured units (Sentries die to 2 casts of fungal, which takes about 8 seconds, as opposed to 16 seconds prepatch). Against armoured units like Void Ray/Stalkers/Collosi, the DPS has increased to 260% dps (because of the +30% against armoured bonus) as opposed to the patch before this. Combined with a few baneling drops, a Protoss player that doesn't have good unit control will just instant lose his entire deathball.

[NvJazBas]

@Monk

When I saw your opinions vs Light's I kind of was on Light's side. NOT because I'm in same clan with him, but from a neutral 3rd person's view your knowledge of game compared to his looks very weak just by looking at your replys to Light (For example, you saying 20 medivacs cost "a little more" than 20 overloads. Overloads is a "supply" unit where we HAVE to make them to get our supplies up unlike medivac which is just a form of unit that is not a MUST to get your supplies up therefore getting 20 medivacs will take you MUCH longer than 20 overloads and 100gas per unit is ALOT of difference). I can't see in any where where Light "whines". Light was asked a question by Benji and he answered it in a sentence that I can't really remember word for word but something like "I don't think Zerg is OP with anything but just the metagame at the moment favours zerg and if HE HAVE TO nerf something maybe ventral sacs". This should be very different to what he said exactly but something like this. I don't want to sound rude to you but I think I have to be rude to be honest with you. Please don't talk about balance when you don't know much about. Some people, (moletrap..) think they know alot about balance although they are not a very good player. This can be true, but hardly not many people are. And in most of the cases, the "better" player knows more about the game than the player who just watches mostly or is just a worse player.

Personally, I don't think Protoss is UP as becasue I can't find any certain unit or strategy that is just too "unfair" (hard to stop even with scouting, not much sacrifice required by the one who is doing it. Or skill) by zerg. I think the only strategy that is broken is the 11/11rax scv marine cheese but this is off topic. Protoss just needs a metagame shift I think. Yes they are not having a great time these days but they are certainly not UP. If I have to say it, I'd say, Protoss is UP "now" but not forever possibly even without any balance patch.

[aLtNinja]

When i see threads like these i feel like they should have a reason other than results that may or may not be skewed by individual player skill, sample numbers or selection. Like the recent starwars tournament that enjoyed a top 4 protoss finish. What is it that is so overpowered about the other races that protoss can't deal with? I feel like in zvp especially protoss have not had enough time to learn to deal with all the new zerg styles that have been used recently.

[Benji]

Whilst there have been mentions of the Super Tournament, I want to note that even though its still halfway through the Ro16, we already know that we will have a TvX Finals, and 4/8 of the players still alive in the other side of the bracket are Terrans...

[dennistoo]

Originally Posted by pikk0n

As for the infestor 'buff'. Personally, I really do not see how infestors were 'buffed' against protoss. Fungals are usually used to stop sentries from running away (or stalkers from blinking away)

DUDE, you sure infestor BUFF doesn't impact the currently PvZ? Good casted fungal doesnt just STOP sentries or stalkers, it doest stop colo from micro-ing away with massive banelings drops to crash it.

The reproducing of higher tier units like colo take mins as per compared to zerg reproduction if you have lots of larvas saved up.

[pikk0n]

Originally Posted by dennistoo

DUDE, you sure infestor BUFF doesn't impact the currently PvZ? Good casted fungal doesnt just STOP sentries or stalkers, it doest stop colo from micro-ing away with massive banelings drops to crash it.

The reproducing of higher tier units like colo take mins as per compared to zerg reproduction if you have lots of larvas saved up.

Dude... Read on... It's obvious that you stopped reading after seeing that 2 sentences. What did I say AFTER that. FG USED to be 8 seconds. 4 secs compared to 8 secs. Now WHICH one is harder to micro away from? Which FG will make your army more susceptible to bane drops?

[SnoWPanda]

pikkon have you actually tried infestor bling vs protoss??? man.... im out of this thread, its pointless.

Last comment:

Protoss is not OP. If you lose, YOU LOSE.

[psygoh]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Fungal Growth
Stun duration decreased from 8 to 4 seconds.
Damage increased by +30% vs. armored units.

Just to add on, stun duration decrease also means that Zerg players can now cast FG one after another much quicker. It is possible to kill off a Protoss ball just by casting multiple FG with infestors alone

[pikk0n]

Originally Posted by SnoWPanda

pikkon have you actually tried infestor bling vs protoss??? man.... im out of this thread, its pointless.

Last comment:

Protoss is not OP. If you lose, YOU LOSE.

SnoWPanda, did you actually read what I wrote? Are you going to be just as ignorant as dennistoo was? My point is I KNOW how effective infestors are and that it's a pity it took the zerg players (myself included) till after the so-called 'buff' to utilize them properly. My MAIN point was infestors were better before that patch with the extended fungal growth since you wouldn't need as many infestors in your army. You can have a larger number of BANES to kill off the death ball which is stuck for 8 seconds.

Protoss was never OP but there were certain features of protoss that made them seem OP which has been fixed. This is NOT FF but rather the archon toilet and to a lesser extent, khaydarin amulets.

:S I hate retyping what I typed earlier but sometimes, people just read 1 or 2 sentences and post immediately. *sigh*

[nGenLight]

^ I understand what you are trying to say regarding fungal growth being "stronger" before the patch. But I have a feeling 99% of Terran/Protoss and even Zerg would disagree with that sentiment, you are heavily underestimating the DPS(2.6x DPS) of the new fungal growth and how that changes the game. This also means more fungal growth can be used more rapidly with your idle Infestors instead of watching them die to Collosi/Tank fire otherwise.

[SnoWPanda]

Originally Posted by pikk0n

SnoWPanda, did you actually read what I wrote? Are you going to be just as ignorant as dennistoo was? My point is I KNOW how effective infestors are and that it's a pity it took the zerg players (myself included) till after the so-called 'buff' to utilize them properly. My MAIN point was infestors were better before that patch with the extended fungal growth since you wouldn't need as many infestors in your army. You can have a larger number of BANES to kill off the death ball which is stuck for 8 seconds.

Protoss was never OP but there were certain features of protoss that made them seem OP which has been fixed. This is NOT FF but rather the archon toilet and to a lesser extent, khaydarin amulets.

:S I hate retyping what I typed earlier but sometimes, people just read 1 or 2 sentences and post immediately. *sigh*

Yes i do read everything. I just don't want to argue. This is not personal but a general comment.
There are people who theorycraft with a preconcieved bias towards another race. Im sick of this perception of protoss players been cheesy, uncreative people who just rely on "OP" units and never macro or explore the potential of their race. There is no point to arguing with those theory crafters, they will never accept anything other than that which reinforces they biases and just lower the level of the discussion to balance whines.

[pikk0n]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

^ I understand what you are trying to say regarding fungal growth being "stronger" before the patch. But I have a feeling 99% of Terran/Protoss and even Zerg would disagree with that sentiment, you are heavily underestimating the DPS(2.6x DPS) of the new fungal growth and how that changes the game. This also means more fungal growth can be used more rapidly with your idle Infestors instead of watching them die to Collosi/Tank fire otherwise.

Yes. I know what you mean. As terran against THAT new fungal, my army dies so quickly. But it seems that the point being made by dennistoo was mainly about fungal stopping him from microing. Your earlier point about 2 fungals to kill a sentry definitely enlightened me as well as voids dying earlier. But the 2 posters that I am debating with didn't make any mention about fungal being able to kill armoured units quicker now. Seemed more like a QQ about bling/infestors and trying to pick a fight with someone who never said that toss or zerg is UP/OP. :S It's not like they are adding anything to my point like what you had done earlier. I'm pretty much on the fence on this because I play all 3 races.

[pikk0n]

Originally Posted by SnoWPanda

Yes i do read everything. I just don't want to argue. This is not personal but a general comment.
There are people who theorycraft with a preconcieved bias towards another race. Im sick of this perception of protoss players been cheesy, uncreative people who just rely on "OP" units and never macro or explore the potential of their race. There is no point to arguing with those theory crafters, they will never accept anything other than that which reinforces they biases and just lower the level of the discussion to balance whines.

Fair enough but your initial sentence really irked me. I have been part of threads when zerg players were QQing about toss being OP and now this. Never once have I said that protoss is OP. I have always defended both races because I felt back then that FF being OP was just :S and now, it's just again a gut feeling that infestors are not that OP. It pretty much took spanishiwa to force the zerg players to use infestors more and hopefully there will be something for protoss players in the not too distant future. I'm just saying that isn't it too early to make that judgement about zerg being OP and toss UP? I have noticed however nGenLight's slide down the GM ranking which was rather surprising seeing that he was the top player for a really long time. On top of that, zerg players are suddenly moving up the ranks.

As for cheesiness, if you follow the BW scene, the korean players are always cheesy but they have follow-ups. I disagree with cheese haters. Cheese will always be part of the game. MC's game where he cannon 'cheesed' idrA on Tal Darim was really interesting but all that really did was delay the mining. When roaches pop out, the cannons would have been taken care of. It just allowed the toss to get his own expo safely and be not that far behind the zerg economically. However, from those games, it seems that the current way to stop a ling/bling/infestor composition is by forcing the zerg into a different tech path with your phoenixes and voids since zerg has always been a reactionary race.

[SnoWPanda]

i dont QQ about protoss, I "QQ" about the percption of protoss because I am a protoss player. I dont get into pointless debates. People just play the fuken game.

EDIT:
I don’t like balance discussions; they are always subjective to the players understanding of the game and his particular experiences. This makes it almost impossible to have a constructive dialogue, the result will always be a reflection of that players beliefs and will simply reinforces the views of others who have similar experiences.

But when a balance argument ends up as masked attacks on the ability of protoss players. I take that personally. As a protoss player I will defend the honour of protoss players when I see nGenLight the top protoss on this server dismissed so easily in posts that accuse protoss players of uncreativity and “lack of macro”.

I will jump out and comment on balance if only to defend the respect of protoss players.

Quick Comments

nGenLight:

[nGenLight]

^I have to agree with you, the amount of crap Protoss players take for their race having easier mechanics does get rather annoying. Sure it is easy to just 4 gate and take easy wins from inexperienced players, but the learning curve for Protoss at the higher level is incredibly steep. Decision making, preemptive unit placement (to counter Protoss imobility), game knowledge, unit control, chronoboost usage, creative, unpredictable and flexible gameplay etc are not EASY to learn. Also, easier and limited mechanics also means limited potential and things to do - The amount of fun I have offracing as Terran and medivac dropping, actually using my APM for a purpose rather than spamming is so much more satisfying.

Off topic personal view: I would exchange CB for mules in a second at how easily used that mechanic is, Larva inject on the other hand... NO TY =D.

It is nice to get recognition but I do not see myself as "the" top Protoss. My fellow brotoss such as Roz, Indy, Azz, Spidereight, Kowi, (although I have not seen him play), and previously Aaron, Nirvana, Refallen, Cobo, Sheepy, Pinder (Inactives) could all contend for that title easily.

As brotoss, we shall stand together and cheer for the only Protoss left in the GSL to take the trophy just as FD and Nestea did it at low-times for Zerg.

[dennistoo]

SLAYERS ALICIA. Hopefully he can produce new stras against the might zergs.

[SnoWPanda]

Alicia is very good... might need some luck though hahaha lets hope he pull a FD.

[exoduse22]

You guys say that protoss players aren't showing the same level meta game which is why they aren't doing so well, but did you consider possibilities that it isn't easy to meta game compared to zerg and terran?

[exoduse22]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

I have to agree with you, the amount of crap Protoss players take for their race having easier mechanics does get rather annoying. Sure it is easy to just 4 gate and take easy wins from inexperienced players, but the learning curve for Protoss at the higher level is incredibly steep. Decision making, preemptive unit placement (to counter Protoss imobility), game knowledge, unit control, chronoboost usage, creative, unpredictable and flexible gameplay etc are not EASY to learn. Also, easier and limited mechanics also means limited potential and things to do.

Yeah I do feel this way

[TAScarecrow]

Getting sick of hearing how the GSL protosses are simply inferior to their terran counterparts. It's not a matter of better players or lack of protoss innovation. I believe it's simply the more the matchups get mapped out the more it's showing up how one dimensional protoss is. We're falling behind in the metagame not for lack of trying, but for lack of tools. Terran has SO much flexibility, the number of effective unit combinations and builds they have at hand is just staggering and suggests many more yet to be discovered. Zerg is also evolving with the increased use of infestors, banelings and drop play. Protoss just doesn't have the same utility.

Anyone who says toss is struggling atm because of lack of innovation doesn't play them. Warp prisms are shit compared to the drop capabilities of the other races. It's been looked at and it's not terribly effective. Protoss is seriously just as 'explored' as the other races, they simply have less options:

- Protoss is better off staying in a ball because of individually weak units that scale far better when used in conjunction
- Drops are not as good because of this and gateway units kill workers so slowly compared to other races t1
- Prism is slow and often uses crucial robo time
- Our two capital ship units are expensive paper weights.

We're not underpowered as such and we can still win a decent % of games. It's just that our strategies are become predictable and the other races have adapted well. Now it's time for Toss to adapt and we're drawing blanks.

The other thing inhibiting protoss is that collossi are so important in all 3 matchups. Having to either tech to t3 for such a gas intensive unit, 2 base timing all-in or both is very limiting. Nerf collossi by all means or replace it with the reaver; buff prisms and carriers; merge templar and dt tech; make the mothership smaller and call it an arbiter, then you will see much more exploration and innovation from the sons of Aiur. If Blizzard would just allow us more, not necessarily stronger, tools I feel protoss would be just as robust as the other races and the decline Tom's statistics show would be reversed.

[SnoWPanda]

just watched MC vs Idra game 6 at MLG. that game just examplifies how difficult it is for protoss to play a standard game with zerg. MC played a perfect game, just to stay in the game he had to constant harass without losing units, perfect macro/timing to defend zerg push, pressuring while taking care of his army with great forcefields and positioning, and then he just barely managed to win the game because of idra's small mistake of not having detection.

[dennistoo]

we should look at how fast zerg expand. it gets out of control. it's the DT that won MC the game. obviously early mass sentries will good forcefield doesnt work. it only helps MC to defend the first push but subsequently he has to depends on mass stalkers and good micro to defend idra's push.

IMO, infestor came too late for indra and lack of speedlings cost him the game. If he could use baneling drops tactics, MC could have lost the game. Remember how losira tear MC aparts by constant dropping of banelings on MC mineral line?

[Monk]

Originally Posted by SnoWPanda

just watched MC vs Idra game 6 at MLG. that game just examplifies how difficult it is for protoss to play a standard game with zerg. MC played a perfect game, just to stay in the game he had to constant harass without losing units, perfect macro/timing to defend zerg push, pressuring while taking care of his army with great forcefields and positioning, and then he just barely managed to win the game because of idra's small mistake of not having detection.

??? You're comparing two top notch professionals doing what they should do. Of course MC micros perfectly, and of course his macro is insane. That's why he is a pro. And it wasn't a small mistake by IdrA, I think it was capitalization by MC. I saw that game as IdrA winning UNTIL the DT's came out solely because MC's Stargate pressure did jack all. So of course IdrA is going to have a lead especially if he expands like nuts knowing that he can defend the stargate units. I just don't think this was a really good example because MC did the same thing to IdrA on meta. So of course IdrA was going to be prepared for it(The stargate stuff)

[V_enDetta]

If not for TvT, I would have switched from Toss to Terran quite a while ago. Damn.

[nirvAnA]

whoa protoss finished #1 in 5 of the 6 dreamhack groups atm! with the current form or protoss i definitely was not expecting that!

[ShinyA]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

whoa protoss finished #1 in 5 of the 6 dreamhack groups atm! with the current form or protoss i definitely was not expecting that!

I didn't expect so many P to make it to the top 16 but to be honest there were a lot of sub-par players in the group stage. I think everyone expected MC, HuK, White-Ra, and Naniwa to get out of their groups as they are just better than the rest. The only real upset so far would be ThorZain not making it out of his group IMO. The field of P players was a lot better overall than Z and T, I mean you have SaSe and Socke as probably the "weakest" P players as opposed to like the Machine's and PredY's of Z and T.

I'm really happy that there are no mirror matches in the RO16, but I predict now that the lower level players are out of the tournament we'll see the P's drop quick. I'm rooting for HuK though, would be epic to see HuK v IdrA finals haha

[dennistoo]

It seems like the most P player are skipping colo. Most go heavy gateway and uses templar instead.

Mass stalkers seems to be very good.

[pikk0n]

No, Mensa! I want to see IdrA vs MC. Rematch!

The "Are you angry" question. LOL!!!!!!!!! I loved that so much.

Though I suppose Huk and IdrA have had their times too with the hallu and the next game where IdrA told Huk to eff off. That was funny. Also, this other game on Xel Naga where IdrA's BM about toss units not costing anything (sorry what? From a guy with broodlords spawning free masses of broodlings?).

Ooooooo the dilemma.

[Tom]

I don't know whether others have thoughts on this, but it seemed to me Protoss performed very well in Dreamhack.

[DREAMHACK SPOILERS]

HuK was obviously the stand out. I've been going through his PvZ games in particular, and what I love is the "back to basics" approach. Most of the winning games are low tech 3gate expand variations. Eg, game 1 v July 3gate into 5gate pressure into robo stalker/sentry/immortal/obs; game 1 v Moon - fake 3gate into 2gas 4gate etc. The exception is that cross fire game vs Moon, where I think HuK was doing quite well with a standard 3gate expand, but his typical aggressive poking didn't pay off when he was caught badly out of position by mass roach/ling. There's not much you can say about that except that its the risk you take with HuK's style of play.

Where HuK got into trouble is where he did expansion/heavy macro builds on maps like Shakuras. Macro Protoss just doesn't seem terribly viable at the moment, but perhaps this is more than compensated for by strong early game timing attacks.

Game 5 vs Moon was inspired play by HuK. He also got very lucky - scouting the 6pool first meant he could stop probes, which allowed him to get his wall up with barely seconds to spare (does anyone else think Moon actually slightly misjudged the timing on that pylon? It seems like he had just enough time to kill it and get through without losing many lings to the cannon... I guess we'll never know). I still think 6/9pool on 4 player maps is a bit of a lottery - the chances of winning outright or failing epically seem to depend mostly on chance in relation to where you spawn/scout.

[NvPinder]

Originally Posted by Tom

I don't know whether others have thoughts on this, but it seemed to me Protoss performed very well in Dreamhack.

[DREAMHACK SPOILERS]
Where HuK got into trouble is where he did expansion/heavy macro builds on maps like Shakuras. Macro Protoss just doesn't seem terribly viable at the moment, but perhaps this is more than compensated for by strong early game timing attacks.

I'd disagree with that analysis of shakurus, with better positioning at the start of the fight and better FF huk definitely could've held with minimal sentry loss and been on 6 gas with 2 robo, 5 gates, blink and still a fantastic sentry count against an even worker even base count zerg on lair tech. He lost that game via an army miss-step, not via his build being not superior. Also the fact that moon instantly saw thru his build and saw the early third as opposed to (what huk was wanting) moon assuming a 5-7 gate pressure was coming.

In terms of the build itself, more or less everything that could go wrong went wrong for him, and yet it was still a salvageable game for huk.

[divinesage]

So what happens now? It seems protoss is lacking new options to squeeze out advantages in this new metagame.

[Dispatcher]

I feel that the High cost of Units vs the Difficulty of control of protoss is what is holding a lot of players back in higher league play. I may be way off when I say this but I have recently became very interested in a lot of the GSL play, where Terran seem to be dominating. It is important to know that I am a sub-average starcraft player and strictly play protoss. I am not complaining about anything that I post and I apologize if I repeat anything someone has said, as I did not read the entire forum (but most of it). I will break down the thoughts that lead me to the above conclusion from the events of protoss games I have watched in the past 2 months of GSL (code A and code S) and MLG tournaments.

I have noticed how immobile protoss units are vs zerg and terran. I may be completly wrong here but let me explain this in detail by pointing out the strong points of terren and zerg towards mid to late game, non heavy cheese matches (as these are the types of matches that "most" high end games tend to be played).
First off Terran. Almost every Terran win I have seen has come from strong map control and multipronged attacks. Drops and Banshee harass in multiple locations make it very difficult for protoss and even zerg at times to defend not only the drop but also entries to their natural. One big point here is to note that it is not difficult to scout a drop ship and react at this level of play but the problem comes from the frequency of drops and the ease of evacuating if the drop was dealt with properly. If protoss does not send enough units to the drop they tend to make uneven trades, and if they do send the proper amount of re-enforcements terran can easily escape rarely unscathed. Keep in mind that even scouting out a drop ship does not guarantee that you will select the right amount of units to send to the drop as you may not always know the exact # of drops or even the complete composition of them. Drops "usually" put players in a defensive mode where they usually lose map control and or opportunities to intercept expansions.
Now to Zerg. As zerg are not very mobile early game they develop a huge advantage to mobility in the mid game when battles are fought in their territory i.e. creep. A good zerg player will have creep extend past the halfway mark of the map towards the end of the game, time permitting obviously. Also speed upgrades and good muta micro influence this mobility in similar ways to terran drops as previously stated. This usually results in protoss trying to contain zerg to 2 bases which becomes increasingly difficult towards late game play.
I have seen 1 game in the last 2 months where a protoss player has shown great mobility and this occurred just recently in the GSL code A tournament between oGsHero and Noblesse (set 2) where oGsHero showed off his ever so impressive control of the phoenix. I do know that it takes a lot of very precise phoenix play and what appeared to be some extreme micro of units, which I believe Hero is the only person at this level with these types of units. Also forward pylons increase mobility in a way but this is only in the sense of army replenishment not actual unit movement. Also anther form of protoss mobility is not mobility at all but more immobilizing other units with force-fields, which tends to disappear late games as gas becomes more important to spend on higher tech and most observers have been diluted through small battles through mid game.

In conclusion it appears that the ease of micro and the utility of the zerg and terran units increase their mobility against the slower protoss units. Also noted that it should be very understood that protoss should be a slower unit as 1 protoss unit is generally more powerful than any unit of the other races. I guess the point here is more on the ease of harassment for the other races.

I am breaking my other observations into multiple posts as this seems to be very long.

[Dispatcher]

I may be extremely biased on this one as I only play protoss and well compared to the level of play that is being discussed I play like a 2 year was slapping the keyboard because it was fun. I will make this post brief and up for the utmost criticism as I may be way off in my judgments on this one.

Terran. As most terran victories against protoss com towards mid game heavy pressure and counters I do not see to much micro from winning battles. To me it seems to be stim, stay in range of seige if you fallowed that tech pattern, and single target down huge threats aka colossi, sentries and occasionally immortals. Yes kiting is involved in some scenarios but this is just second nature at this level. For the most part terran micro what would appear to require a mid to low level amount of APM (strictly talking army vs army, game breaker scenarios). I also think the most difficult macro scenarios from terran come from harassment i.e. banshee and helion.

Zerg. I feel that zerg micro may be slightly more difficult than terran's as they do have to manage several groups of units in game breaking battles. But all and all the A.I. design for zerg seems to do a lot of the work for surrounds and con-caves. Might be a little more art to a zergling surround than what A.I. can provide. They also have movements similar to what high templar's and ghosts have with their infestors.

Protoss. One thing I notice with any large battle with protoss is as the ball moves around the units become jumbled together and where most protoss players get in trouble is their slower meat shield units, zealots, tend to get stuck behind their concave. To actually separate these units properly while moving around the map seems to be difficult for players when they approach the 200 supply limit. Without the zealots in front it becomes very easy for colossi to be picked off by terran and for surrounding units of zerg to encapsulate the protoss ball. Not to mention the extreme micro that it would take to keep up with any blink stalkers with low shields that is almost required to win battles in mid to late game.

This is where most of the cost vs control portion of protoss comes in. Higher tech units become very hard to replenish late game similar to terran tech. I do feel that the top of the tech tree colossus are easily killed by the the ranged and air units of the other races if not macro'ed correctly and by single targeting these units down the protoss can fall behind very quickly in army cost trades. I guess what I am trying to stress when I discuss these issues is that generally the high cost of even tier 1.5 protoss units become very precious in the game and if there is the slightest mistake in any micro of protoss it becomes very difficult to recover from. This has a lot to do with the mechanics of the more powerful but lower number of units that match to the same supply #'s of terran and zerg. All in all micro becomes more important to protoss when trying to keep units alive as long as possible, due to the fact that their cost and replenishment are not as cheap and accessible as the others.

I know a lot of this info my be false so feel free to hammer me as much as you want on this one.

[Dispatcher]

The bread and butter units for protoss are its sentries. Unfortunately they become less of a priority over higher tier units towards late game play. This is due to the gas that it would take away from the production of these units. Keeping early game sentries alive is almost the key to any later game protoss victory. The bad part is it's inevitable that there will be several casualties to these units in early game play that is required at higher levels. I think this is why most protoss players are pushed to cheese or even commit themselves to early game all ins. By the time they reach the late game level usually around the 2 or 3 expo they have fallen victim to higher tech and the issues discussed in the other threads. Higher tech meaning that they no longer produce sentries in order to produce higher tier units to keep up with higher tier units of other races.

Quick Comments

SnoWPanda:

that is one long post. thanks for contributing your thoughts

[Dispatcher]

Combining the last 3 post I will now add my thoughts to the state of protoss and possible but very subtle solutions the protoss balance.

I have noticed that most protoss victories come off of 3 types of play. One being the ever hated cheese. Two being the more popular early game all in. Three being the clever mid game 2 base well played timing attacks. Protoss late game suffers due to the lack of sentries, low mobility, costly (meaning resources) mistakes of imprecise micro and lack of scouting abilities.

Of these issues I feel that scouting any sort of air movement on the outer edges of the maps punishes protoss mineral lines and expansions. I also feel that the difficult micro of protoss punishes them late game.

Overall I feel that the game is very balanced but I think some slight changes towards protoss in the late game would balance things out for them. Some ideas that may possible rectify this would are listed below.

Observers are great scouting tools but they also take away from production of immortals and colossi. If they were included in a build option for gateways, with a change in cost and a requirement of a robotics facility I think this could help with evening the scouting playing field. Lets face it the scans and versatility of zerg and terran units and structure are far superior to that of protoss. Protoss just doesn't have a way of monitoring air movement like the others can.

Another idea I have had is to somehow allow movement through sentry forces fields for protoss units. The only fair solution I can think of is to have some sort of cancel all current force field option to sentries.

I also think a slight change to zealot A.I. would ease the micro required by protoss. I might be way out in left field on my micro topic and not saying that they need to totally change how protoss works but zealots constantly getting stuck in the back of the protoss ball just doesn't cut it some times.

My final thought and the worst thought of them all would be to have some sort of tech option perhaps in the robo bay to possibly exchange gas for mineral cost or even reduce the gas cost of sentries.

With that said feel free to correct anything that have improperly stated.

[Ryper]

Yes, I do think so, at early game i can say that protoss are equally balanced with the others race, but during mid game most protoss suffer especially against T, because most combination of protoss can be countered with the right unit from zerg and T, but not all combination from T and Z can be countered, it is ridiculously hard, especially with the 9-10 minute all in T push with svcs, ravens, banshees, mass rine and siege tanks, it's almost impossible to win something like that, if you notice, I've never seen a protoss hold off that kind of push even in top tier play like ogsmc or Huk. Something needs to be done with protoss.

[Monk]

Woah shit. You Protoss out there might need to take a page out of NsHoSeo.Sage's book. This random guy

+ [GSTL Spoilers] +

All-killed fOu's line up of a Zerg, a Terran, a Terran and a Zerg

. It was very impressive play even though is army control wasn't the best.. close to the worst too.

[porkchop]

Originally Posted by BadgerWatch

I agree with crAzerk. It's simply a matter of T and Z having figured out how to beat the way P is playing right now. We saw it not too long ago that people thought ZvP was unwinnable.

P just needs to figure out why they are losing, and a way to combat that.

i agree ... i thought for a while , from beta to early stages of s1 , toss was unbeatable , with the void rushes and the warping , plus the blink stalkers. it was imba until they figured out how to win against toss, i dont think any match up is imba,, i think the key is to create an early game push for toss, similar to terrans marine all in and roach all in..


we recently had the arcon range added, and it is considered a massive unit.

if we could like have the mother used as the weapon it should it be ,

[YJY]

you guys shuold also consider the fact that because protoss is immensely easy to play compared to the other races, the higher level skilled players dont actually have real skill compared to terran and zerg (as it requires a higher level to play these races). I know as a fact that a lot of terran / zerg players are much better than protoss players though the results dont say it, because they require much more macro/micro.

i think this is the most plausible reason why protoss are shit at high levels.

[YJY]

you guys shuold also consider the fact that because protoss is immensely easy to play compared to the other races, the higher level skilled players dont actually have real skill compared to terran and zerg (as it requires a higher level to play these races). I know as a fact that a lot of terran / zerg players are much better than protoss players though the results dont say it, because they require much more macro/micro.

i think this is the most plausible reason why protoss are shit at high levels.

[Tom]

Originally Posted by YJY

you guys shuold also consider the fact that because protoss is immensely easy to play compared to the other races, the higher level skilled players dont actually have real skill compared to terran and zerg (as it requires a higher level to play these races). I know as a fact that a lot of terran / zerg players are much better than protoss players though the results dont say it, because they require much more macro/micro.

i think this is the most plausible reason why protoss are shit at high levels.

Maybe this is trolling.

Lets test the thesis

Lets test this thesis. Assume arguendo:

1. protoss is the easiest race to play.

2. there is an equal distribution of "skill" accross players of all races.

If both premises 1 and 2 are correct, you would expect that protoss would be substantially out-performing all other races across the board. That is, if two players of equivalent skill play each other, but one is playing an "easier" race, you would expect the player using the "easy" race to win in the majority of cases.

On the other hand, if two players of equal skill play each other using different races, and have a win/loss ratio of 50/50 (over a significant number of games), in what sense can one race be seen to be "easier" than the other?


Are our premises correct?

The data I have seen suggests protoss are certainly not overperforming in high level ladder and tournament play.

Now, this tells us (at least) that premise 1 or premise 2 are incorrect. Which should we reject?

Premise 1

If premise 2 is correct, it follows that we should reject premise 1. This is because, were both 1 and 2 correct, we would expect to see significant outperformance by protoss players in high level play. This is not the case. Lets look at premise 2 then.

Premise 2

But is premise 2 correct? There is no data on the relative "skill" of the players who pick the different races, and I suggest that in the absence of data, the most reasonable assumption to make is that the skill distribution across all races is generally equivalent.

The absence of data on the "skill" of players picking the various races is of course why it is necessary to look at results to gauge the performance of a race. By balancing the game in this way, Blizzard effectively make the "most reasonable assumption in the absence of data" that I have set out above, and they are in my view right in doing so.

It seems to me highly improbablethat all the "bad" players decide to play Protoss, whereas the "good" players decide to pick say Terran or Zerg. The other problem with this is, of course, that even if the masses of Protoss players are generally terrible, it only takes a small proportion of "super gosus" to pick Protoss and you would expect to see equivalent results in top level play.

Summing up (or TL;DR!)

There is what I would call a "logical disconnect" between the premise "Protoss is the easiest to play" and the conclusion "therefore, high level Protoss players have no real skill".

I would have thought that if Protoss was truly the easiest race, professional players (who play the game with a view to winning big prize money) would all be switching to Protoss. This is because in a contest between a super-skilled player using a "hard" race, and a super-skilled player using an "easy" race, the super-skilled player using the easy race will generally triumph. And we would therefore be seeing the results of this in high level play, with Protoss taking the majority of big-money tournaments.

We are not seeing this, and this suggests to me that YJY's thesis is quite wrong. Just to stir things up a little bit, I think it could more plausibly be suggested that terran is the easiest race to play, given the saturation of terran players in high level, big money Korean tournaments (where players wish to obtain every (legal) advantage, no matter how small, in order to win).

Quick Comments

	psygoh:	Good systematic way of analysing
	TidaL:

[xceL]

I have to agree with the first page about Protoss forcefields needing a slight nerf, nothing drastic.
Perhaps something like 75 energy to cast FF so sentries have a max of 2.5 forcefields on full mana instead of 4 or something like that.

I feel that that at levels below GM that the 200/200 deathball of protoss is near unstoppable. While the top tier players can deal with it, I think the simplicity of executing an A-Move with storms or forcefields is what makes it so challenging for zergs and terrans to deal with it.

I would have agreed that protoss was underpowered early game before the time when they figured out 3 gate pressure with expand was really solid, but now I think it's even across the races early on.

Quick Comments

deL:

Gotta be GM level before you can comment on GM balance.

[Tom]

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2878771457:

Overall balance has also proven to be an issue on Metalopolis -- even factoring in close position spawn issues. It’s among the least balanced maps currently in the ladder pool, and along with Scrap Station (also being removed) and Tal’darim Altar, has a heavy (60%+) bias toward zerg at the highest levels of play.

I find this post very interesting for a number of reasons.

First, I didn't realise Metalopolis was so biased towards zerg. I've personally found it to be a pretty good map. Obviously, as a Protoss player I have vetoed Scrap Station since early on in season 1, but its surprising Blizzard took this long to do something about it. I'm also quite surprised that Tal'Darim Altar is also a Zerg-favoured map at "the highest levels of play". I wonder why Blizzard didn't remove it as well?

Secondly, it suggests Blizzard are focused on trying to balance the game through map choice rather than making further changes to the races. This was the "third variable" identified in my post, which I said I didn't have any statistics on (which I thought was a significant limit to the conclusions). I suppose we need to wait and see what happens.

Finally, and most interestingly for me, this post confirms Blizzard are looking at data for different "levels" of play in balancing the game.

[Digby]

Originally Posted by YJY

you guys shuold also consider the fact that because protoss is immensely easy to play compared to the other races, the higher level skilled players dont actually have real skill compared to terran and zerg (as it requires a higher level to play these races). I know as a fact that a lot of terran / zerg players are much better than protoss players though the results dont say it, because they require much more macro/micro.

i think this is the most plausible reason why protoss are shit at high levels.

So then, you're saying if a Protoss player and a Terran player for example, switched race, neither having previous 1v1 experience with either, the Terran player playing as Protoss would win?

I beg to differ my misguided friend, (this is just something that I did, whether or not it provides any conclusive evidence is up for scrutiny) I played a 1v1 with my friend who is a very capable masters Terran player after a lovely balance dicussion, myself being a diamond Protoss player challened him to play Protoss and I would play Terran. The outcome, it was a long macro game on Xel Naga Caverns and in the end, I ended up winning with MMM Vikings and Ghosts. Going up against his "Unstoppable" deathball which i may add, included Carriers and a Mothership along with Colossi.

Vikings > Colossi AND Carriers
Ghosts and EMP > Protoss

[teKalarax]

I think protoss is okay in high level play, looking at current tournament results - HuK took out dreamhack and even drew TL in pylons in the middle of the field.

The TL Open for the past few weeks has consecutively been at least 40% protoss and Hwang Sin has won it most of the time, also a fellow brotoss.

MC continues to mind boggle me every time he plays with his fantastic use of the protoss race and I feel while some pushes from zerg and terran feel op against toss, there is definitely the need to use more race mechanics.

I barely see hallucination ever used in any kind of high level play, I assure you that it saved my ass so many times. HuK began to use the warp prism for multipronged attacks on several bases at once and often sometimes I question the logic behind pro's decisions. Why would you go DT's against terran?

Day9 covered it in his daily a week ago during protoss week, ghosts being one of the most prevalent issues for players. Sure, I speak with no high level experience and while it may feel like protoss is under represented (which it very may well be) I think there is a lot people haven't figured out about protoss yet.

So no, I wouldn't say it is up at all.

[Next_rim]

Why would you go DT's against terran?

Makes it hard for terran to push, buys time to catch up in macro, gives map control, opens HT tech path, drains OC energy. Overall, very cost efficient, if used correctly.

I barely see hallucination ever used in any kind of high level play

It's used a lot for scouting and proxy warp, when you put a pylon below cliff, and use hallucination for vision. And in battle, you need every precious bit of sentry energy for emergency forcefields, which obviously have much more impact on the battlefield than hallucinations. Besides, i play desert strike a lot, and a lot of people like doing sentries with illusions to tank damage. In short, it doesn't work that well.

Ghosts and EMP > Protoss

Agreed, I lost countless number of games to money EMPs. I think SC2 is macro-oriented, and should not be so unforgiving for mismicro in battle.

Brotoss needs better micro in addition no 100% usage of game mechanics. That is mommaship, carriers and warp prisms.

[Interdiction]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

Agreed with crazek, it is metagame.

There are 3 heavily underused units in the game right now - warp prism, carrier and mothership. If you don't use some of your race tools, how can you claim you are underpowered? High level players are starting to realize that. We even saw a mommaship in GSL.

There are good situational units that are designed to do very specific things, like phoenix. Phoenix is successfully used for it's purpose when the game goes a particular way, which is fine. Voidray is fine, DT is fine. But having NOBODY EVER use 3 units out of 15? 20% of potential right down the drain.

What concerns me is terran though. All they need to win is a marauder-medivac ball with optional ghosts and vikings. Never see BC, ravens. Occasional nuke to harass 6-th expansion 40 minutes into the game is not a good metagame for a game of starcraft magnitude.

You are absoulutly right! How can protoss attempt to win if they only use 75% of their arsenal? (( Im a protoss player =) ))

Also tom, I think you should take some mroe time ( your analysis is good ) and delve into facts a little more. With the gate tech being pushed back, protoss are finding that AGRESSIVE openings are no longer possible against CERTAIN builds from other races!

I think a lot of protoss players ( including myself and I think I saw it mentioned before) Need to figure out some new builds and tactics instead of holding onto " the old ways ". Mothership/carrier/warp prism all need to be used a lot more in conjunction with other stratagys. And I agree maps most certainly count in this factor, but maybe its up to the protoss player to realise he needs to be DEFENSIVE early game? A.K.A build a few sentries and relax =)

In anycase im not saying anyones right or wrong but i think there are a few more things to consider before people start crying UNBALANCED =)

[Interdiction]

Originally Posted by Next_rim

Agreed with crazek, it is metagame.

There are 3 heavily underused units in the game right now - warp prism, carrier and mothership. If you don't use some of your race tools, how can you claim you are underpowered? High level players are starting to realize that. We even saw a mommaship in GSL.

There are good situational units that are designed to do very specific things, like phoenix. Phoenix is successfully used for it's purpose when the game goes a particular way, which is fine. Voidray is fine, DT is fine. But having NOBODY EVER use 3 units out of 15? 20% of potential right down the drain.

What concerns me is terran though. All they need to win is a marauder-medivac ball with optional ghosts and vikings. Never see BC, ravens. Occasional nuke to harass 6-th expansion 40 minutes into the game is not a good metagame for a game of starcraft magnitude.

You are absoulutly right! How can protoss attempt to win if they only use 75% of their arsenal? (( Im a protoss player =) ))

Also tom, I think you should take some mroe time ( your analysis is good ) and delve into facts a little more. With the gate tech being pushed back, protoss are finding that AGRESSIVE openings are no longer possible against CERTAIN builds from other races!

I think a lot of protoss players ( including myself and I think I saw it mentioned before) Need to figure out some new builds and tactics instead of holding onto " the old ways ". Mothership/carrier/warp prism all need to be used a lot more in conjunction with other stratagys. And I agree maps most certainly count in this factor, but maybe its up to the protoss player to realise he needs to be DEFENSIVE early game? A.K.A build a few sentries and relax =)

In anycase im not saying anyones right or wrong but i think there are a few more things to consider before people start crying UNBALANCED =)

Quick Comments

TAScarecrow:

painfully ignorant

[Tom]

^ Hmm, yeah I never realised I need to be DEFENSIVE early game. You are right, I definately need to stop crying UNBALANCED and change my stratagys to include a few sentries! How to build?

In the future I will take some mroe time to delve into facts a little more before I post. I am grateful for your well-researched post, which I will use as a guide for my future posts.

(Apologies to others for lowering the tone of the debate, but this one was just too hilarious to resist.)

[TAScarecrow]

This needs to be closed, it was a great thread to begin with but the last few pages have gone to shit with trolls and clueless Protoss whiners.

[Tom]

^ agreed - please close!

[Interdiction]

Originally Posted by Interdiction

In anycase im not saying anyones right or wrong but i think there are a few more things to consider before people start crying UNBALANCED =)

Tom,

Never said you were wrong, and if you re-read my post it didnt even really conflict with your origanal post, and just gave my two cents. Please notice the amount of maybes and suggestions throughout my last post before you think I am trying to discredit your origanal post, which you obviously took a long time to construct.

Being a gold/platinum player at best I do not feel I have the right to tell ANYONE whether they are right or wrong, so please respect my last post as an addition to the discussion, not an attempt to piss on your work.

Regards,

Quick Comments

nGenLight:

hahahahahahahahaha

[nGenLight]

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=252090

New data. According to the data - The illusion that Protoss was surging back up against Zerg that a few of us were so hopeful of seems to have turned the other direction. & Terran players in general has been surging lately (Past month).

Discuss.

[Tom]

Updated data

Many thanks to Ray for drawing my attention to the latest data.

Here are the direct links to the charts

- International data: http://i.imgur.com/CPVub.png
- Korean data: http://i.imgur.com/bdP2e.png

International tournament data as at July

A few months back when I first noticed the distinct trend, people were quick to point out that one data set, International tournament results, appeared to show the races were generally balanced. This is no longer case.

The International data shows:

- Protoss have consistently performed at less than 50% in International tournaments since March 2011
- Protoss is currently the worst performing races across all International tournaments (as at July)
- PvT slightly favours Terran in International tournaments
- PvZ heavily favours Zerg in International tournaments

Korean tournament data

The trend that emerged in April 2011 has contined, indeed what we now see is a volatile (but consistent) downward trend in Protoss results in Korean since December 2010.

Obviously, as the author of these data sets point out, Korea is a smaller data set and should always be treated with caution. Nonetheless, it is not that small, and we can be more confident in our conclusions if we start to see the same thing over and over for several months.

The Korean tournament data shows:

- Protoss is by far the worst performer in Korean tournaments, batting around 41%, compared to Zerg at approximately 52% and Terran at approximately 56%.
- PvT heavily favours Terran (indeed, in July, Protoss won only one third of PvTs)
- PvZ heavily favours Zerg (Protoss won approximately 43% of PvZs)

[GSL August Spoilers follow]

The above data goes to July. The trend has, if anything, accelerated in August.

Nearly every Protoss player was annihilated in the opening round of the GSL in both Code S and Code A (like the games weren't even close, it just wasn't funny). I think one P player in code A got through (Smart) in a mirror match up, and one player got through in a non-mirror (Tassadar).

When we look at the race breakdown a little more closely (courtesy of TLPD), we see:
- Code A Protoss had a win rate of about 22% in PvZ (admittedly a very small sampe size)
- Code A Protoss had a win rate of about 38% in PvT (again, a small sample)
- Code S Protoss, round of 16 is not even worth mentioning as there were only two Protoss to start with and both failed to win a game.

Blizzard ladder data and recent map balances

Blizzard have been very hedgy since the start of this year about actually releasing any data. However, I have heard them say (eg the infamous David Kim interview) that the match ups are "generally balanced" but (and I paraphrase), there are a couple of match ups they are keeping an eye on.

However, in introducing Season 3, Blizzard noted they were removing Scrap Station and Metalopolis on the basis that these were heavily Zerg favoured maps (60%+). They also stated that Tal'Darim Altar is a heavily favoured Zerg map (60%+), but did not remove the maps.

What I want to know is, if the match ups are "generally balanced", how is it that we have such a significant number of maps with a very heavy Zerg bias. One explanation is that all the other maps favour Protoss and Terran, although we can infer the bias must not be very high, as Blizzard did not cite balance as the reason for removing those other maps.

What do the Koreans think?

Lets have another look at that Korean QQ chart: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=144269

Obviously, this chart measures what people "think" about balance (sentiment) rather than balance, but its an interesting measure of the "spirit of the times". As at today, it shows around 70% think Protoss is underpowered, 8% think Terran is underpowered, and 20% think Zerg is underpowered.

Summing up

More than two months on, the evidence that Protoss is underpowered in high level play has become compelling. There were two reasonable arguments against this being the case, the first being a "shifting metagame" argument (ie we just need to allow Protoss time to adapt, and results will improve) and the International tournament data (which appeared at an earlier time to be around 50%). In my view, neither of these arguments is persuasive any longer. Five months have gone by, and there is no evidence of any shift in the meta game back towards Protoss. Most recent GSL data shows another season of terrible Protoss performance. International data has gone the way of the Korean data, with Protoss now significantly underperforming across all International tournaments.

Blizzard appear not to recognise there is a problem, apparently viewing the match ups as generally balanced. However, Blizzard have not released the data to support this claim, and it appears to be at odds with what any person looking at the Season 2 GM League standings can observe - a clustering of Zerg and Terran at the top of the ladders on each server. (In relation to the current season, I would be careful not to read anything into the standings at this point as we are only a couple of days in.) At the same time as making this claim, Blizzard openly stated three maps were heavily Zerg favoured (no such claim is made in relation to any maps favouring the other races), which at seem at odds with any claim that the match ups are "generally balanced".

I for one would like to see Blizzard's current ladder data, broken down not just by race but also by cohort (eg MMR bands, from High GM, low GM, High Master etc all the way down). Quite frankly, I do not find Blizzard's claims that the match ups are "generally balanced" to be credible. To describe something as "generally balanced" also hides a multitude of sins. To me, it begs the questions - are the match ups are generally balanced because Protoss is overperforming at low level play but underperforming at high level play? Are the match ups generally balanced in the sense that the match ups other than PvZ and/or PvT are balanced? I don't know, and I want to see the data!

Quick Comments

nGenLight:

Really amazing how quickly you write these near-flawless reports.

[SnoWPanda]

I just want to watch more GSL protoss matches honestly. I felt so cheated when I bought the last GSL ticket and ended up not having anything to watch.

[Cordance]

Ive been doing some thinking about Protos and the main problem. Ive been seeing in games is protos appears like a glass cannon race.

Firstly Id like to talk about FF probably the most complained about ability for protos. It can block ramps reshape battle fields. How ever I would like to complain about it from protos angle for once. FF must be used at the perfect moment for them to actually be useful and you must place them perfectly. This does two things. Limits your ability to micro and macro. How many battles have you seen lost because a FF wasnt perfect on a ramp or a second too late. Both in offense and defense require a very high maintenance on the army position to gain a balanced battle field. This is why a lot of people feel there is less micro going on with protos and why only the best protos seem to stand up against other people. The problem with the glass cannon is that when it works it smashes when it fails to crumbles. Which is why you end up with polarized games. For examples go watch most of MCs games when he is winning he looks like he is in total control when he is loosing he is getting shamed.

I feel Blizzard has failed to balance gateway vs warpgate. The cost is too cheep and the upgrade to important 33% quicker to all units seems wrong. I feel protos would be much more interesting and easyer to balance if defensive aka sentries got a benefit from coming from a gateway vs a warpgate. Here are 2 ideas. Sentries build time reduced to 20% quicker than warpgate at a gateway. Units with energy are warped in at 3/4 current energy, units built at gateway come in with 1and1/4s current energy. A variation on the second option would be bring back Amulets but only for gateway built units.

[TidaL]

is this meant to make me not wanna play protoss?

[Next_rim]

I feel protos would be much more interesting and easyer to balance if defensive aka sentries got a benefit from coming from a gateway vs a warpgate.

Looks like you've never done a 4-gate 6+ sentry push. Sentry is awesome in offense.

I feel Blizzard has failed to balance gateway vs warpgate.

Blizz have already explained (and I agree), that tweaking gateway and warpgate is very hard. If you reduce gateway build time, proxy gates become too strong. If you overpush warpgate, early game defense becomes weak.

What I've seen from high level players like MC is reliance on huge-risk tactics (phoenix, fragile archon or charge timings etc...) to win games. Same for Nony, Naniwa (especially Naniwa, his blood is always boiling for reckless head-on brute force attacks), and lately even HasuObs (aka "coward", as he was known for very turtly style in wc3). HuK has delivered well because he brought very steady and safe play most of his opponents weren't ready for.

Like in PvZ, most protoss try to cut corners, get that early blob of untis off forge-FE, and go put pressure, while expanding to 3rd behind it. Most don't do enough damage, and then get overwhelmed. They choose to do so because they have hard time defending a 3rd vs 3-base zerg. Well, mommaship + cannons make fast 3rd almost invlunerable, but really weakens your natural. But if zerg is droning hard at natural, why should you invest in natural defenses? And why do you make army, when zerg is droning? And why do you attack, when zerg has ability to pump stupid amount of units at will after droning all that time? Just seems irrational to me. I have 64% PvZ winrate.

In PvT, most protoss rely on tech. Colossi>>>terran, if they have no vikings. HT>terran, if they have no ghosts. But if opp does 1-rax expo, and you do 1-gate expo, and you are both equal on money, you have to chose one tech path, or you die to 2-base timing. Either HT(archons, w/e), or Colossi. What do "OP" terrans do? They mass some bio, then scan or scout with drop at a well-known timing, then build a counter and grab 3rd behind a superior army comp. And if you wait with tech, Terran T1>>>protoss T1 with equal food (unfortunately). Well, why would you play counter games with terran, who clearly has advantage at this? Do 1-base timings that punish greedy T's. I've been having some success with warp prisms and DT's recently, followed by double expo, but yet to figure how to make my build flexible enough to withstand very popular terran 1-base timings. My PvT winratio is 48% (bansees! arrrght).

I think protoss need safer, greedier builds with account for risks, and using all available tools, like motherships and warp prisms, to build walls of steel, or keep opp at base. Of course, I'm biased towards my favorite units, and it makes me sad panda to never see it in pro games.

[cruxSpoon]

My two cents! I skimmed most of the forum so sorry if I'm repeating some of it.

These are the things we are seeing from terran and zergs lately. Multitasking, scouting options, timings. These are the things protoss aren't doing. NSHoSeo Sage showed that protoss can play a bisu style game with constant scouting and proper reactions. That takes a hell of a lot of skill. Unfortunately most protoss are still playing under the concept of turtle up and deathball, whether it is Collosus play or HT play. As a terran player the only timing attacks protoss generally do are pressure from huk 1gate, and 6-7 gate against an 1raxFE. There are the 1 base 2 collusus pokes into expo, but if properly scouted also dismantled. Without going into more specifics (we could argue for ages) Protoss could be using other units more readily. I mean, the constnat argument for not having mass obs on the map is that you need robo build time. Here's a novel concept! Build a second robo, use it to get obs, warp prisms etc. Protoss drop play hasn't been fully explored yet and whilst more people are doing it, its not seen enough at high level play. It may be that it is used only on specific maps etc, but the mentality of turtle defend macro is why protoss aren't 'fantastic' at high lvls. Terran and Zerg have figured out how to move away from this mentality but protoss hasn't. (There are expceptions of certain players or games of course, but this is in general). The game is evolving and will do so for a long time. When people can figure out that x amount of units allows them to hold pressure for x amount of time they will be able to be greedy in other ways, cut 2 zealots from their builds and get a warp prism, to adjust play from i will get these things in this order and pressure at these points to ok i've done this damage i can set up a timing here, or i should alter my build to contain and take the map, or what have you. I hope this contributes to the conversation.

[cruxSpoon]

P.S - protoss have always been behind in the metagame since they have relied on 4gate for sooooo long whilst other races were evolving (j/k)

[TAScarecrow]

Originally Posted by Blind86

These are the things we are seeing from terran and zergs lately. Multitasking, scouting options, timings. These are the things protoss aren't doing.

I stopped reading here. I'm reluctant to throw my 2 cents in this thread as a GM protoss because i'm not confident I can add anything constructive that hasn't been said by better players. I don't know what possessed you to think you had anything to offer as a diamond terran. Clearly protosses aren't doing 'timings' or multitask and that's why they're struggling -.-

[cruxSpoon]

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?

The standard macro protoss play is turtle up and deathball. This has been shown in GSL/IEM/Blizzcon Qualifiers/etc. This is not to be confused with all ins, or map specific builds, designed to win the game outright (either by taking advantage of opponent build order, generally planned all in, cheese, etc).

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.

Maybe you should read the entire posts before you reply...

P.S:- load up todays "state of the game" podcast. They touch on alot of what I talked about AFTER i made these posts

Quick Comments

	nirvAnA:	I thought both of you argued your points well and civilly, nice job :)
	TAScarecrow:	My post was one of frustration at how many times this thread is being bumped with off-race theorycrafting and generalisations. I don't have the time to argue every bad point you just like you dont have the time to get good at this game.

[nGenLight]

Why does Scarecrow seem offended? How would you like if a bronze Zerg came in here to tell you, that you are losing because you don't know how to multitask, don't know your timings and don't know how to scout.

You, like others before you, seem to think that you have all the answers (or direction of our answers) in 2 paragraphs. This makes you people seem very naive, and just downright obnoxious.

So are Protoss players really idiots that don't think about the game, or are we perhaps limited by the capabilities (or there lackof) and arsenal of units/mechanics at our disposal?

You have legit arguments/theorycraft Blind86. But without being able to play Protoss at "high level play"(which is where the debate is at), you clearly are not seeing the flaws of many of your theories/arguments. I don't have the time or the energy to debate or discuss your theories, so please don't ask that of me. Giving you something to think about, have you figured out why non of the top-tier Protosses have followed through with Sage's playstyle?

I am a firm believer that Protoss is indeed behind in the meta-game, and within the possibilities of the combinations of units/time/mechanics, Protoss can truly be dominant within this version of the game. The problem is Protoss have been behind in the meta-game for about the last 4 months, every time we figure something out, our Terran and Zerg opponents quickly finds a fix. The protoss evolution of meta-gaming seems to be moving much slower than the other two races, and most of these new meta-gaming has revolved around timings attack and deathballing, that you have said have come to define Protoss. Do you think this is more to do with protoss players just not being very innovative, or just that the cosmetics of the game right now only allows Protoss to be played a certain way (to be successful). Hence, right now I am also a believer that Protoss, like the infestor buff before us, needs a push in the direction in order to "catch up" to the Meta-game. I would love, if Blizzard gave me the opportunity to multitask a warp-prism as effectively as medivacs or have free warp-prisms that come in supply units for a particular race, without really being able to know if they have any units in it.

I understand that your intention is of good will, and I respect that. But the fact that you speak from a perspective that has never went through the difficulties and troubles Protoss players are reaching out from, and the fact that you are slightly insinuating that we Protoss players are just not multi-tasking, not being innovative, and moreorless just being inferior, makes it very difficult for the the Protoss players in this thread to welcome your "discussion".

Quick Comments

nirvAnA:

I thought both of you argued your points well and civilly, nice job :)

[cruxSpoon]

I apologize if my comments seem to say 'protoss aren't doing these basic things (multitask, scout, timings)'. Naturally I respect the skill level and insight that comes with being a top protoss, and without being so myself I agree I wont understand the finer details.

Your comments on being behind the meta game is basically what I was getting at. I feel that this has resulted from very turtle heavy style play lately. I'm not trying to take anything away from protoss's in what I say. I believe that builds like the 1gate Huk expand is moving protoss in the right direction. Its a build thats greedy and generally very safe (albeit some maps). This is just an example.

In regards to scarecrow, I just felt his post didnt add anything to the converstation besides "you are terran nub therefore your points invalid".

Ill concede that my thoughts on the matter bear less weight than someone who has been playing protoss at a high lvl and as such will end any further comment in the forum here. I have much respect for you mr. NgenLight

P.S:- Sorry for any miscommunication that may have insinuated insulting the protoss race/players
PPS:- With regards to Sage's playstyle. I think its very fragile and therefore not as safe, but I do feel like once people figure out how to be safe with the build we will see it more often. Just like the many expands protoss have learn to do (Forge FE against Zerg for example). Again this is just an argument for the metagame.

[Tom]

The two stages in analysing balance

As I think I have said previously, there are really two stages in a balance discussion. Stage 1 involves identifying whether a balance issue exists. Stage 2 involves attempting to explain the facts that contribute to the balance issue.

To be clear, I am only looking at Stage 1 in this article. I will come out and say it, I believe Stage 2 should be left to the experts. By experts, I mean top tournament players or people whose results place them at the very top of GM League.

Some more explanation of Stage 1

As I said in my OP, I believe it is critical to look at data for Stage 1. What we are trying to do is eliminate the "noise" created by lots of players of varying skill level, and determine the effect that "race" is having on the outcome. To use an example, imagine you flipped a coin 1 million times, resulting in 600,000 heads tosses and 400,000 tails tosses. Would you say the coin was weighted towards heads? (In actual fact, in the language of statistics you would be extremely confident there was an issue with the coin, and although you could never ignore the "null hypothesis", the probabiliy of the results being explainable due to chance would be less than 1 in 10,000.)

Now the problem we have when doing something more complicated than coin flipping, such as Starcraft, is how does one account for variation in the skill of the players? Is it the case that one race performs better not because it is a stronger race, but because more skilled players tend to use that race? I would suggest that assumption is unreasonable in the absence of any compelling evidence that it is the case.

Comments that players of X race are more skilled/more innovative/more dedicated etc

Reviewing the posts in this thread, there appears to be a strong tendency for some people to attempt to explain the data by saying things such as:

- players of X race are more skilled, that is why the results are better
- players of X race are more innovative, that is why the results are better
- players of X race refuse to innovate, that is why the results are worse
- players of X race just cheese, that is why the results are worse
- players of X race practice more or are more dedicated to improvement, that is why the results are better

Some more coin flipping

Lets go back to the coin flipping example (sorry this will be an Australian currency example). Suppose you had three coins, a 50 cent piece, a $1 coin and a $2 coin. You then select three thousand people from the general population, and give 1/3 the 50c, 1/3 the $1 and 1/3 the $2 (leaving aside the expense). You then ask each person to flip the coin 1000 times and record the result. (This equals one million flips of each coin). The results come back, and it turns out that, overall, the 50 cent group flipped heads 500,000 times and tails 500,000 times. The $1 coin group flipped heads 600,000 times and tails 400,000 times. The $2 coin group flipped heads 400,000 times and tails 600,000 times.

How do you explain this? True it could be due to chance, but the likelihood of this is less than 1 in 10,000. I know we all like to believe we might win the lottery one day, but if we're realistic, we accept this is probably not going to happen. By the same reasoning, we should probably accept that the coin flipping results are not due to chance. So we look for other explanations.

Aha! (we say), the reason must be that people who flip $1 coins are generally more skilled at flipping heads. People who flip $2 coins tend to be worse at flipping heads, probably because they don't take the time to practice how to flip heads, and don't innovate with new methods for flipping heads. Does this seem likely to you?

Making the most reasonable assumption regarding skill/innovation/dedication distribution in the absence of data

It seems to me claims like this would be difficult to prove. I would invite anyone advancing such claims to offer evidence (capable of testing the claim) that they are in fact the case. If no such evidence is proferred, I would ask that people not raise them as explanations for the data. It seems to me that in the absence of data, the most reasonable explanation is that there is a roughly equal distribution of skill, innovation and dedication across all races.

[KaiserK]

I agree that it is sad that there are so few protosses in GSL and high level tourneys in general. Protoss are shiny and fun to watch! They also have an insane range of aggressive and defensive options against both races, and I'm hating PvP less these days .

However, a few points as to why balance discussions like this are inherently flawed:
1. The fact that there are so few top level protoss may just be reflective of personal bias among top level players. Maybe top level players don't like playing protoss? There is no way to verify this, but I think it has something to do with it, because playing protoss has the lowest APM requirement and thus feels "boring" to play for high level players, particularly on the macro side of things. (This is not to say Protoss is easy to play, they have high demands when placing forcefields perfectly, and also they have a high positioning requirement, e.g. zealots in front when they constantly lag behind, keeping the sentries safe, utilising guardian shield properly by moving sentries forward with zealots, etc...)
2. If Huk, Slayers_Alicia, MC, etc. are kicking arse on a pretty regular basis, how can you say that protoss is underpowered? Are you saying that these guys are better than their terran/zerg opponents, and the reason they are not winning every tourney cuz they are held back by their race? I think not... rather these players are examples of how good protoss can be.

Personally I believe that as with every race, being a top level player just requires dedication (to practice long and hard), speed (for maintaining macro, scouting and pressure at the same time), creativity for developing new strategies, and a keen situational awareness (when is the right time to attack/defend/expand etc).

EDIT: I don't post on these forums much, but as I do, people will come to know that I hate balance complaints...

Quick Comments

nGenLight:

If you dislike balance "discussions" you shouldn't be in this thread. Regarding your second point - Keyword is "IF".

[Next_rim]

Tom,

I think it's incorrect to reduce a game with many input from the player to a coinflip.

How about sprint runners? Let's pick 1 000 000 sprint runners from different leagues and levels (olympic, inernational, national, local). Make them all run 1000 dashes each. Now look at results. Say, UK runners do 10 sec, US runners pull off 9 sec, and South Africa's runners do it in 7 sec. Do you then say that UK runners just have bad body design and aren't made for 7 sec runs? And God should, perhaps, tweak 'em legs. That's what Light's and your's points look like to me at least.

[Tom]

Next_rim I suspect you may have missed the point. Perhaps go back and re-read what I have posted. (I sometimes place similar comments in my students' papers at uni ;p)

I am not saying player skill does not count. Quite the opposite, I think it is the most important variable. That should be obviously from my OP (please re-read). What I am saying is that it is unreasonable to assume an unequal distribution of skill across all races (eg by saying a particular race performs better because more skilled players tend to use that race).

I will attempt to explain, using your example. Assume there are three groups of runners, UK runners (generally slower), US runners (somewhere in the middle), and the RSA (generally the fastest). Now, assume you wanted to have three "teams", but members of each team would be randomly selected from amongst UK, US and RSA runners (say by drawing lots). You also decided that runners on each "team" would be given the same shoes, which would be different to the shoes given to members of other teams. Before the race, all Team A runners received shoes filled with led, Team B received no shoes, and Team C received state of the art sprinting shoes.

Remember that each team contains a random selection of US, UK and RSA runners. It turns out after the "dashes" that Team A generally performed the poorest, Team B's average results were somewhere in the middle, and Team C's average results were the highest. Some Team A beat some Team C etc, but on average, Team C's results were the best. Now, the question is, which of the below statements seems more likely to you:

(a) Despite the fact that teams were randomly selected, most of the RSA runners ended up in Team C, hence it performed best
(b) Each team received a roughly equal proportion of UK, US and RSA runners, but runners on Team C performed on average better than Teams A and B because they were given better running shoes

[Next_rim]

Tom, you completely messed up my example.

Team UK = protoss, Team US = terran, Team RSA = zerg (for example). And skill and talent = leagues. Olympic = pro, international = gm, etc. They all train in different countries, thus techniques and routines of training are different. To draw a parallel, you claim that terrans train just like protoss. But I say you can't compare RSA to UK training, because countries are different. As much as protoss is unlike terran. In your example, you basically claim that top protoss shows up at a tournament and choses zerg (aka RSA runner runs for UK). Alternatively, you give Steeve Vai a John Petrucci's MusicMan instead of Gem. He probably won't sound as fantastic. Because his practice is revolved around a different guitar with completely different technical characteristics. Or Steeve V and John P swap it (like they did at last G3). Do they play worse? They are still great musicians. But don't sound as good. Equipment in sports is almost the same. A double drop is a double drop, no matter what it comes on - speedlord, prism or medivac.

But somehow protoss don't do double drops, while terrans do. I personally don't see much difference in dropping 2x medivacs of MM vs dropping 2x prisms with DT and chargelots (with upgrade, faster than medivacs!). I can somewhat buy the argument that overlords are fragile and can be easily sniped, while medivac has more HP, but thats a thin ground for prisms. I do use prisms in my PvT, they come out earlier than even 7:45 medivacs, and they are pure awesomeness.

As for the topic itself. Ok then, so you are a sports spectator.You watch the games and see team UK lose. You don't then go - ooh, team UK must have had lead in their shoes. You never know. Maybe, they did have lead, but can't say for sure. A more likely outcome would be - they didn't train that hard. Or did train in a worse way. Or had to endure a 14 hour flight to Zimbabwe, and are still buzzy after long flight.

Do you see me now?

[Tom]

I messed up your example in an attempt to explain why it misses the point (unsuccessfully as it turns out).

I understand exactly what you're saying, but its not the point I am making. Its correct that you don't draw an inference about why a team lost after 1 game. You try as hard as you can to isolate the variable (or variables) to determine what effect they have on the outcome. Think about something as complicated as the health impacts of smoking. Some people smoke their whole life and nothing happens, whilst others appear to develop all sorts of problems. We cannot tell exactly what effect smoking will have on any particular person, because a range of genetic and lifestyle factors also significantly affect the result. But, after looking at millions of smokers, we can confidently state that, generally speaking, smoking is bad for you.

This is why, in looking at Starcraft, you should look at the results of thousands or millions of games, played on a range of maps, at a range of skill levels. If players using one race consistently underperform across these variables, it is fair to draw an inference that race is having some effect on the outcome (even though it would be difficult to use race to predict the outcome in any single case).

I am not going to waste any more time trying to explain it.

*************************

For the same reason that the GMs in this thread refuse to debate balance/gameplay with silver league players, I am no longer going to debate statistics/scientific method with anyone who does not hold (at least) an undergraduate degree in mathematics, engineering or science. Sorry to sound like a douche, but its just not worth the aggravation.

Whilst I am happy to debate genuine methodological flaws, I am getting tired of justifying basic principles of science/statistics over and over. Please read the OP!

[KaiserK]

Re: nGenLight's Rep comment (I don't know how to reply directly to this). I apologise, I admit that my "hate of balance complaints" comment may have been a bit aggressive... but I do intensely dislike statements such as "Unit X is imbalanced" or "Matchup XvY is imbalanced", because such statements are not productive particularly when the game is a year young and the statement to me reflects an unwillingness to figure out a way to beat X unit or X race. Still, I'm a bit hurt that I get a negative rep comment just for stating what I think... just because I dislike balance complaints (note I did not say I dislike the discussion) I can't participate?

Originally Posted by Tom

For the same reason that the GMs in this thread refuse to debate balance/gameplay with silver league players, I am no longer going to debate statistics/scientific method with anyone who does not hold (at least) an undergraduate degree in mathematics, engineering or science. Sorry to sound like a douche, but its just not worth the aggravation.

Whilst I am happy to debate genuine methodological flaws, I am getting tired of justifying basic principles of science/statistics over and over. Please read the OP!

Tom, I read your OP properly this time. I've missed most of the thread cuz I'm late to the party, and it's difficult to understand what alot of people are saying due to misunderstandings about logic and statistics. I see that some of what I said had already been brought up. Now I will state that I have an honours in physics and although my knowledge of statistical methods is limited I understand your basic premise.

Now if I understand correclty, the primary reason you are asking this question is the number of Protoss players at the top level. I again posit that this could be firstly due to a selection bias (i.e. the best players choose not to play Protoss) simply on the basis that Protoss is less interesting to them. A knowledge of the number of players applying for the tourney, the number of players in Code B etc, would allow better analysis of this theory. For now I will drop this proposition, since we can't really assess it.

I also note your comment that in all matchups the global tourney winrates are approaching 50%. Assuming there enough tournaments occuring to provide statistically useful results, such that player skill/dedication/innovativeness is not a significant factor, then this would imply no race is overpowered/underpowered. Of course we cannot make such a drastic assumption about skill etc not being a factor, but I think it is still the most telling piece of information. Even though less players are playing protoss at the top level, they are playing it to an equal level with their opponents, whether this is because of race or skill. I am going to focus on this statistic.

When I think about balance, I think about the "skill ceiling". It is impossible to reach the skill ceiling, because players cannot ever hope to control individual units to conduct perfect execution of strategies. However, I do believe in an approximate physical maximum APM for humans, as well as a maximum to the best decision making and the best APM allocation (spending APM to gain the best advantage). To me, these sorts of things represent a players true skill. They are impossible to evaluate, because APM measures in game do not tell you anything about APM allocation.

Suppose then we explain a players win probability as a combination of skill (or proximity to the skill ceiling) and race. Pretend we could actually make a formula: win probability = skill factor * race factor, where skill factor would account for both player's skill in a game, and race factor would account for each players race.

Now we know win probabilty ~ 50%. Suppose then we answer your question "Is protoss underpowered in high level play?" as "yes". This implies the "race factor" for protoss is lower than that for terran or zerg. That would mean that the "skill factor" for those protoss players is higher, in order for them to achieve the 50% win ratio. The protoss players who are performing so well in tourneys to give a 50% win ratio, are "better" than their terran and zerg counterparts. In part this might be true. I can't say for sure.

What are your thoughts on this analysis? I'm not sure where I'm going with this now...

PS: Like many others in this forum, I believe metagaming comes into it alot. Notice how all players at top level go through trends of playing a certain style. For example in TvZ, 2 rax was all the rage, and now its reactor hellions. Noone is actually sure which is better, but there is a tendency for all players to be a bit sheepish, follow the mainstream strategy because that is working for them now. Then other races adapt to that, and suddenly the strategy is less effective. I believe this affects all levels of play, but the important thing is, it may mean that right now, Protoss have some adapting to do, and when they do the challenge will flip back to T and Z?

[Tom]

KaiserK, I agree with your analysis (in particular, I agree that probability of win = skill factor * race factor, although I would also add "* map factor" to this formula). Of these factors, I think the skill factor value is likely to be the largest by far (in other words, player skill is far more important than race and map).

As you said, the international data was showing 50%. You then posited that to answer the question "is Protoss underpowered" as "yes" would imply Protoss players have a higher skill factor. Again this is axiomatically correct. However, the alternative (and in my view more reasonable) conclusion from that dataset in isolation, would be to reject the conclusion that Protoss is underpowered in high level play.

So far so good, but here's the rub. As I say in my OP bac in June, international tournament data was only one dataset, and it generally did not support the conclusion that Protoss was underpowered in high level play. However, the other datasets were showing underperformance (quite strongly in many cases). I therefore said we should wait and see whether a trend develops.

At page 9 of this thread, I re-examined the data for July/August. It shows the trend has continued (and in some cases strengthened). It also shows Protoss are now also performing quite poorly in the International tournament data. Accordingly, assuming skill factor has remained constant (and I don't know what other assumption we can make in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary), it now seems reasonable to conclude the Protoss is underpowered in high level play.

Now as to the argument that Protoss needs to "adapt", that is undoubtedly correct. Who is to say they are not? What I am saying in my more recent posts is that, in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary, we should not presume Protoss players are any less innovative than players of other races. Players are only free to innovate within the parameters of the race. So, if poor results continue for many months, as they have, it follows in my view that we should start to question whether Protoss players are failing due to an inherent disadvantage with the race rather than a lack of trying!

[Next_rim]

we should not presume Protoss players are any less innovative than players of other races.

You can measure it, but it's going to take some time and effort. Someone on TL did an analysis of various types of PvZ forge-FE in MLG. He analyzed over 70 PvZ games and wrote down every single BO, then showed a breakdown by style. Turned out there were 4 major types with very minor stylistic variations.

If you open a replay with notepad, you will see a wall of text with a record for every action in game in the form of coordinates. With dedication and time, you can technically make a php replay parcer (someone in my clan made one for our website, it pulls apm, win/loss, race, player name, etc.). More complex parcers, like sc2gears, pull bo's.

Then use tournament replays of your choice for, say, last 4 month. You can develop your own cirteria, or use that TL approach. Then you can track different BO's, upload them into, say, excel, and run an analysis. I'm pretty confident you won't find much evolution in P, but a ton of change in T and Z.

I don't follow every single tournamets, but very few protoss players actually brought something new to the game since TSL3. Maybe 1-gate PvT expansion, and MC's phoenix (which Cruncher have been using forever). Still 0 drops, 0 motherships, 0 carriers. Nobody builds more than one voidray. Only one more non-protoss thing comes to mind that is underused in the game atm - it's the nuke. But even nuke got used in recent GSTL.

[Tom]

@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.

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.

You have also raised that old favourite, motherships and warp prisms. I am not going to comment on strategy/balance as I am not qualified. The only thing I would say is, if top tournament level players aren't using strats based around these units, don't you think there might be a good reason for this? (I'll give you a hint, its not because they're stupid.)

My guess is that top tournament players don't "experiment" in tournament games. They probably experiment and practice all sorts of wacky strats with practice partners and on ladder, use that time to work out what works and what doesn't, and then pull out the big gun strategies when it matters. 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.

[Next_rim]

@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:

http://code.google.com/p/starcraft2replay/w/list

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.

[Bugalugs McScruffin]

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.

[Next_rim]

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:

http://www.bruteam.ru/index.php?opti...100&Itemid=129

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.

[nGenLight]

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)

[Next_rim]

Light,

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.

[nGenLight]

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.

Quick Comments

	TAEdarus:	Have my babies?
	Digby:

[Next_rim]

Light,

Can you post your replays with mommaship please? Very curious how other players get to it, especially in PvT.

So please, go ahead and actually do the things you described at a high level play, release a replay pack of you being successful

With all due respect, typical troll argument. Wasn't expecting to hear one from you.

[nGenLight]

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."

[TAScarecrow]

Originally Posted by Blind86

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.

Quick Comments

TAEdarus:

Here here!

[SLCN.StoicWilly]

don worry blizzard will soon balance the game

[Tom]

See my post at http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=2113

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.

[Imperial]

umad protoss?

owned

Quick Comments

nGenLight:

LOL

[Tom]

Link to chart of TLPD data for August 2011: http://i.imgur.com/Jvlvy.png

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.

[NvJazBas]

Protoss coming back in the metagame!!

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.

Quick Comments

psygoh: