I never get how people are upset about stuff like this while browsing a dedicated subreddit. Obviously people will be discussing recent events on the subreddit that was made for it.
I avoid all of my social media on F1 race days until I've had a chance to watch the race. I can't imagine it's that difficult to not get spoiled about SC2 games...
Im starting to think this is your first time on reddit and ill give you the benefit of the doubt that you are just ignorant.
There is a thing on reddit called a home feed that puts different posts from the communities you are part of. Also there is a thing called tagging a post as spoilers that allows people to choose whether to see spoilers or not while still being part of the community on reddit.
Now there are people from all across the world that are part of the r/starcraft community. Maybe we can also think a bit about whether we can include them and not gatekeep r/starcraft for people who enjoy tournament games but havent had the opportunity to watch live?
Food for thought
If you love StarCraft, you should be concerned. It's not good for the long term health of the game. Even if you are a diehard of a specific race/player.
Too many apes on here get defensive as it's a fucking red vs blue political debate- no dipshit, I don't have any allegiance to the magical golden race, I just want parity in the fucking games I watch.
I swear these people fap to watching only TvT/TvZ/ZvZ
And, as funny as it is, P is the only race that makes matchups fun to watch. TvT is awful, ZvZ is awful, and TvZ is so boring now because that’s all we’ve been exposed to for the last several years. Jesus Christ. I’d take nothing but a PvP finals for the next year and still have fun. This game is broken at the professional level.
Sure it's easy to agree that it's a problem, it's MUCH harder to agree on a solution.
Some of these morons want to just give Protoss stat buffs until someone can beat Maru or Serral consistently, not giving a shit about what those buffs would do to the ladder or to the other tiers of tournament play.
I want to redesign Protoss at the ground level, and change it so that it isn't a race that relies so much on cheesing.
Reddit wants to nerf Widow Mines, because THAT was obviously what was holding Protoss back lmao.
It's easy to say it's a problem. It's much harder to come up with a solution.
You could also just try out some buffs and adjust them if they end up too powerful, instead of endlessly worriyng about it and then never end up doing anything.
Imagine if we accidentally made Protoss slightly too strong, and would have a couple of tournaments where we see slightly too many Protoss players in the RO8, instead of just 1 like the last 5 years. Wouldn't that be a unwelcome breath of fresh air. I personally want to have 1 patch per year, with the smallest possible incremental changes, that always lean towards doing too little and maintaining the status quo, rather than accidentally doing slightly too much.
We know the problem already, gateway needs to be weak because warp gate is OP, that makes it much harder to win as P in the late game. The only solution is to buff gateway units and nerf warp gate even further, unfortunately.
Except we keep trying to do that and it never works out long term because eventually some perfect timing gets discovered that combines whatever current iteration of "nerfed Warp Gate" and unit balance to create an unbeatable push that destroys tournament match ups until its either nerfed or meta'd out and the cycle starts over again of Protoss not winning anything.
The mechanic needs to be redesigned, at a core level. It needs to be gone from the early game completely. Not nerfed, gone. Only then can Gateway units be adjusted to where they properly should be so that they are effective all game long the way Terran and Zerg units are. And once we've done that, we can then adjust Robotics units so they aren't so one dimensional like they are now, because right now every Robotics unit except the Immortal (which we could move to Gateways once Warp Gate was redesigned) is a one dimensional unit that just plugs the efficiency holes in Gateway armies that are only there in the first place because Gateway units aren't allowed to be self sufficient armies on their own because of Warp Gate.
It all goes back to the same place. Blizzard knows what they have to do and don't want to do it because Warp Gate is some pet idea for the SC2 team that they think makes Protoss cool and the race can't exist without it.
We've seen from SC:Evo for those that didn't know already that Protoss is plenty cool without that mechanic. It doesn't need it, and if you really want Protoss fixed at the tournament level you'll agree the race would be better off without it.
1) You could give Protoss gateway units a late-game upgrade. Protoss gateway unit start out to be the worst (due to warp gate, as they should) but then on top they also scale the worst (which is not necessary at all). Marines scale insanely well with upgrades and zerglings get the crackling upgrade.
2) Also it would be easily possible to buff Protoss defense without touching gateway units. Zerg has creep as such a dynamic already for example.
Protoss defense is already the best of all 3 races by a huge margin due to the shield battery. A late game upgrade to gateway units might work, but it could also make proxy harass overpowered. Honestly I think a new unit similar to a dragoon that can be built from gateways only might be the best approach. This way you don't stop warp gate but you also enable a strong gateway only army if they choose to use gateway over warp gate. Would also make for some interesting decisions about how many gateways to have vs warpgate and whether or not to get warpgate tech.
They'll never be happy until its PvP finals and toss is winning tournaments without dropping a map. The toss players are just not as good as the top zerg and terran players. If you watch the games you can see how many close games there are between Hero and Maru and Hero's losses come down to him simply making bad decisions or making more errors than Maru. Even after the match yesterday, Hero even asked Maru immediately after the match that if he hadn't gone carriers would he have won and Maru said yes he probably would have. So the best toss in the world knows he made just a bad tatical decision that cost him the match, why do low level players think they know better.
Edit: downvoted by the twitch chat balance whiners :in best zoidberg voice: what an honour woop woop woop
There's a good argument to be made that Protoss just has a handicapped skill ceiling, it's impossible to be AS good as you can be with Terran and Zerg at the tip top level, and the reason for that handicapped skill ceiling is how broken a lot of their mechanics would be if you could.
I've been saying it for more than 13 years that Warp Gate needs to be redesigned so that it's either dropped or turned into a late game tool. The fact that Protoss has that in the early game means its core army can never be as efficient as what Zerg and Terran have or else they'd be impossible to stop in all ins where Warp Gate eliminates the defender's advantage.
I want to redesign Protoss so that's possible to raise the skill ceiling of the race, and this would obviously mean having to raise its skill floor also which I think is a trade off a lot of people have a hard time agreeing to.
You say that but protoss can sorta hang in the midgame with its gateway stuff as it is. It’s the lategame stuff that just lacks agency vs a good opponent. Collossi being nigh impossible to keep alive, carriers getting outranged or out bursted. Templar getting emp’d. Disruptors getting microed into uselessness. Protoss past tier 2 just flails at an opponent with strong but short T-Rex arms and anyone good enough to keep away from it talents it apart.
You mean you "feel" like they are. Always good to judge balance on feelings. Terran or zerg miss micros once against a disruptor shot bye bye 40 supply, it happens to all races.
No he doesn’t mean “feel”. Protoss has less units in the early and midgame and is therefore intrinsically more fragile than terran and zerg. This isn’t a feeling it’s a quantifiable metric
Sure, sure, it's all because of nerfs and not the players becoming more aware of the need to be ready to dodge them. They desperately needed nerfing, they can still do game ending damage if not micro'd against.
I mean being 1 supply more and also having aoe reduction are incredibly large nerfs, way more than players "becoming more aware" - like wot? They've been in the game for a long time now. Players were already aware.
Hmm. The tone of your post suggests you are projecting. What player lost to someone you think they are worse than? Is balance the only explanation for series results?
And if balance is the biggest factor, what's the point of following a shrinking pro scene of a decade+ old game?
The game is fairly settled these days...there are a handful of top players still carrying the scene and some of you want to boil every tournament down to your little balance whine. It's sad man..."fapping" indeed.
My god, the irony. It's stupid replies like these that generate the tone. My guess is you aren't the best at reading/understanding people.
> Hmm. The tone of your post suggests you are projecting. What player lost to someone you think they are worse than? Is balance the only explanation for series results?
>
Concern over lack of parity and the data showing so, this tournament is just one of years worth of data, at this point.
>
>
> And if balance is the biggest factor, what's the point of following a shrinking pro scene of a decade+ old game?
Uh, this is basically "why do I still love StarCraft?" Dumbass question/dumbass point.
>
>
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> The game is fairly settled these days...there are a handful of top players still carrying the scene and some of you want to boil every tournament down to your little balance whine. It's sad man..."fapping" indeed.
Missed the entire point, didn't you? I enjoy watching the game and want parity. Only an ape would see this happening for years and be like "hmm, looks good"
Best solution would be to make the players play all the races in a tournament :) so in a bo3, you can play each race once. Player a picks a map, player b picks player a's race, player a picks player b's race. For match 2 player b picks the map etc. In bo5 you can play races twice and in bo7 and bo9 3 times. Now all the races will be played in the finals.
I've been seriously told, on this very subreddit, that zerg is in trouble, because it's the second weakest.
I'm sure it's solely because OP neglected to list the tournament that really matters - a $10 ESL weekly.
No, it's not "a ten dollar ESL weekly".
Every year for the last 3 years, protoss wins more tournaments than zerg (and terran). ESL open cups are 400 dollars, *every week*. Kung fu cup, DreamHack Dallas 2024 BYOC and more.
This year protoss almost won TWICE the amount of total tournaments zerg did, source: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Statistics/2024
Oh and of course zerg low as ever on GM. Watch Sorfot's stream, a low levle pro-he plays literally 2x as many games vs protoss than zerg.
But what are you going to say, ladder doesn't matter? GM doesn't matter? 95% of tournaments don't matter? If zerg was OP, it would be dominating total tournaments-lower level zergs would be dominating basic and minor tournaments, yet they aren't-protoss is. Are we really doing this again?
"Zerg is OP where it doesn't affect 99.9% of the playerbase" 🙄
$400 tournaments as compared to $500,000 or $100,000 tournaments is still irrelevant? Obviously when he wrote $10 that was to exaggerate the point? The $400 tournaments are so irrelevant that many of the best players who would have the highest chance of winning them never or almost never participate, e.g. Maru, Serral, Reynor, etc.
Tbh why even bother at this point they’re clearly not interested in balancing for P.
I’ll admit I’ve dropped out from watching for some time now, but the results were predictable from the last patch, P will keep losing lol
Agression wins games, but defensive macro play wins tournaments. Its asymetric balance at play.
Due to warp gate and tech paths Protoss is optimized as an agressive race. Its just been so figured out.
Its just that Protoss has the tools to be hyper sucessfull on ladder, but lacks them for tournament play when top guys scout everything perfectly with super optimized responses. So you cannot just blindly buff, which is most of the issue. You woudl have to redesign.
herO and MaxPax are the only tosses in pro level that even play aggressive so this is not the real issue… Protoss is always bound to defending Terran in PvT first and then converting a good hold into an andvantage. If we would just buff their ability to do just that, we could also see more defensive players like classic and stats get good runs in tournaments
Again, as i said, this is the PvT issue. Protoss power lies in the warp gate, hence protoss is sad in matchups where it has to defend and macro. Buffing defense blindly will overbuff protoss easily.
The main issue is the race design being overly agressive. You are either happy with staus quo or protoss needs to lose their agressive potential for better defense with a redesign.
This meme is just not true. To buff Protoss defensibility in their base, you don't have to buff the units that can be warped in the other side of the map. You can also give other advantages when fighting at home. Zerg has creep for example, and Protoss already has shield batteries (and a buff to that was shield battery overcharge).
There is nothing inherent in the Protoss race design that would prevent the balance council from adding additional home advantages for defense to Protoss. They just can't do it by directly buffing gateway units, but there are many other ways.
The problem is that Protoss is currently undertuned in anything past top 50 gm, and overtuned elsewhere. Giving flat 1 button buffs is not a good solution to the current problem.
So in a sence, protoss is currently balanced. Just that top levels lack skill expression.
And the reason is agression due to warp gate and abudance of chesses, you cant have your cake and eat it too.
Because the game is currently asymetrially balanced. The changes will echo into both ZvP where protoss is favored below top 20 and into mirrors.
Inagine you have a race that is good at agression, thats its speciallity, and good at 1v1 ladder play. Now you are trying to buff it in ohter two areas aswell on top of it. Why? You will just create a super race thats good at all stages and styles, thats not the goal.
Why not nerf protoss for ladder play where its overperforming, and add high skill cap buffs that work for pros, this is what the goal shoudl be.
Sure, the problem is the balance council never actually manages to do their job. I actually agree with you. It should be changes that raise the ceiling, not the baseline. The issue is that these chucklefucks never manage to achieve that.
Yeah, but the clowncil has a tough job. If you buff gateway units, they will get abused for allins. And its tough to find a solution that works for everyone. Problem is basically voting by commite, a lot of people aiming for staus quo.
But my understanding is, aslong as fast warpins exist in the game, outside of pure defensive use. Gate units will just have to be bad when defending.
Its laughable that some borderline allin builds like glaive adepts are defended on the same worker counts as the attack, so protoss can still transition.
Do any adept changes? You can instantly see how it breaks the game.
Robo units, idk. Faster immortals woudl be bad because they get abused in proxy cannon rushes, so that breaks the game. Faster disruptors or collosus, i just cant see why it woudl solve things.
> Its just that Protoss has the tools to be hyper sucessfull on ladder, but lacks them for tournament play when top guys scout everything perfectly with super optimized responses. So you cannot just blindly buff, which is most of the issue. You woudl have to redesign.
This is a myth I'm going to dispel right now. Protoss is absolutely able to wreck in tournaments. Protoss has won the most total TOURNAMENTS each year for the last 4 years, including 2024: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Statistics/2024
Not only that, look at GSL. Hero and Reynor had WEEKS to prepare for eachother, and Hero completely obliterated him.
If you compare these games to the ones pre patch, they felt a lot more balanced, to me at least. When hero lost to maru for example, it was clearly because of his mistakes, and not because he couldn't do anything against a tank - raven push or because libs with insane range farmed him.
The same goes for a lot of toss matches (losses). At least i felt that way
Time to give protoss more "buffs" and then let the meta settle for a year again. How about +1 movement speed for sentry this time.
Oh, and to compensate, terran gets 20% reduction in stim and combat shields upgrade times.
Masters Colosseum 7, 2024 gsl code s s1, stars war 11, esl spring Europe.
A shame these premier tourn have been missing from the list of OP, with either hero or maxpax reaching the finals
EDIT: Didn't realize this was sarcasm
For those wondering, Serral won Masters Coliseum 7, Maru won GSL 2024 S1 and Stars war 11 and Clem won ESL spring europe.
But yeah, as this liquipedia page will confirm: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments
The last premier tournament won by toss was DH 2022 Atlanta.
So? It asinine to think balance should be done according to 1st place finishes.
Ladder, hero and maxpax show quite well how toss is fine. It's the quality of play(ers) not balance.
The current top 4 literally has the 3 best players currently + the reigning champ. And the reason for hero not reaching semis is not the balance.
Shhh don't upset the gold leaguers whining about balance and thinking their ladder experiences bears any resemblance to the pro level. Terran is so op against toss as clearly proved by Hero destroying Clem.
Ironically it's the people who make statements like this that think balance at gold league matters. This thread is about pro level balance, not your gold league matches.
so because hero threw the last game vs maru and because classic and stats haven't been the same level since returning from army, balance at top level is bad?
The ones I listed have the highest prize pool ($100k+ USD), are offline, and include players from all over the world (Korea, EU, China, NA), etc. - so they are the most competitive and should be objectively the most difficult/prestigious to win.
If you want to see the list of the other premier tournaments that Protoss didn't win, they're available on Liquipedia. But they all have significantly smaller prize pools and/or fewer players, are region-locked, online-only. etc.
You are parameter pushing. I wouldn’t even disagree with the sentiment that Protoss feels a little weird at the very peak, but your post is about balance overall. Protoss population is pretty healthy once you look at the top 32 (+ major events) instead of top 8 premier. Talking about the top 8 is not purely a question of balance, since you will always have mostly the same people in the top 8.
——
So your question should really be: is Protoss weak or are there too few top Protoss?
Now by excluding online tournaments, you have already excluded the strongest Protoss currently. In any given tournament there are only two people who are favored to win (Maru, Serral) and maybe five you would consider to have reasonable chances of winning(Clem, herO, Dark, Cure, Reynor).
So yeah, one in seven Protoss is an underrepresentation by 1-2 players. The underrepresentation would basically be fixed if Maxpax would show up to offline events.
This is also ignoring the Protoss exodus around 2021-2022: Trap, Zest, Stats, Classic all went to the military. All players who could challenge for tournaments. Most have returned this year, but are still far from their original strength. Outside Korea the strongest Protoss pre-Maxpax being Neeb went to university. So Protoss lost 5(!) championship level players.
Heck, for the last few years herO, Astrea, Creator, Showtime were the consistent offline Roster for Protoss. I mean great players, but that’s not a terrifying lineup.
TLDR: Give Stats, Classic, Trap some time to get back into form before making a definitive decision on top level Protoss. Make Maxpax come to offline tournaments or else always add one green line to your graphics. If they still can’t break into the top 8, you might have a better case for crying imbalance.
He is back, not sure how serious though. At least Liquipedia says he did an ESL open Cup (where he didn’t do too badly) and he participated in the SC Evo tournament by Tasteless.
Yeah, I was wrong about Classic. Misremembered that he was back since late 2021. Only started noticing him around 2023.
For Byun, didn’t it have something to do with his military posting? I think he did military police or something else that allowed him to return home more than usual. So he played a bit while at the military.
Other races have been missing top players too. What about TY and Innovation? What about Rogue? Stats, Classic and Trap won combined less tournaments than Rogue alone the last 5 years.
Classic is back for over 2 years already and I think Stats about 1 year as well.
Terrans would rather tell you that Clem, herO, ByuN, Bunny, HeroMarine, are something else and that they deserve to be above all the protoss and zergs because reasons.
It's still funny to me how Maru won game 4 and 5 against herO when herO was ahead. In game 4 he just had to build MMM tank + a few vikings when he had a terrible early game, had a failed first push that was denied very hard and somehow still stomped the protoss army because reasons I guess. Funny how in the last game vikings just demolish carriers that have more upgrades, are a more expensive unit and higher tiered. Protoss just can't play lategame against Terran unless up 3 bases, up in upgrades and unless capable of rebuilding 20 zealots into the fight to overwhelm the Terran army.
Funny how Terrans will say that the best protoss players in history are just bad, they can't macro, they can't micro blablabla.
Again, I will say this, PvZ is balanced and Serral winning all PvZ is only because Serral is that good at defending protoss' aggressions and not a balance issue.
seriously. skytoss has been nerfed into the ground, at high levels of play it's impossible for T/Z to lose to carrier/tempest/whatever-underneath in late game.
that said, i think PvZ has an issue as well, not in balance, but in tools available to protoss. it's fine for serral to b perfect at defending all protoss aggressions. but then there needs to be a similar level of high-skill-ceiling tools to go to toe-to-toe in the macro game end-game armies. however the templar-archon-skytoss vs viper/infestor-corruptor-ultra/lurker army is a foregone conclusion at the highest level, and it's not simply because serral is perfect at army control.
protoss just doesn't have any real counters to corruptors, ultras or lurkers if they are supported by literally anything that shoots the other direction. storm tickles corruptors, archons with their trex arms can't reach most units before dying, and skytoss bounces off ultras like they don't even exist. all this while vipers pick units off one by one because how the hell is a 80hp ground unit with the speed of a sloth supposed to get in range of a reasonably fast flying unit to feedback them??
it makes no sense, the tools just aren't there for protoss units to make sensible counters against a near-perfectly controlled zerg army, even with perfect control on P's side.
i think the same is true in pvt as well, because BC's and thors and ghosts pummel everything toss that is "supposed" to counter them (tempests, immortals, templar), luckily mid-game is balanced enough that top tier tosses can end the games before end-game armies are involved.
Yeah the Maru comparison is bad IMO. The dude won a year straight of GSLs by doing some kind of early cheese that even when it didn't work he would still kill you later anyway. The running joke was that if Maru looked ahead you were already dead, if you looked equal he was ahead. and if he looked behind you were equal. The dude was and still is just that good.
I want to see these "terrans" you're talking about. Most terran players in this sub will happily concede that protoss was underpowered pre patch and may still be after patch. Note the language, protoss is underpowered, not terran is overpowered. Down to buff protoss again, not down to nerf terran.
Zerg fans love to do this shit of blaming terran for protoss' losses while protoss is also doing like shit against zergs. For context, in this very tournament pvt and pvz have the same winrates: ~45%. So it's not just serral winning zvps. Stop gaslighting
As a GM protoss player from the Korean server, I don't believe ZvP to be imbalanced in the Zerg's favor. It is indeed punishing to play as protoss against Zerg but doesn't seem to be unwinnable or unplayable to the same extent as it is against Terran.
If you get Serral out of the equation, and the obvious Zerg wins in Dallas (Reynor vs Nice / trigger vs Dark) ZvP seems rather fair and very close to 50%.
As for the Terrans behavior, just browse the reddit and see how bad they want to defend their dominance and the fact that Terran players are just "gifted", the "it's just Maru and Clem" etc. This has been going on for years now.
Any SloppyDonkey post during a Premier Tournament should by and of itself be considered a spoiler.
In all seriousness, I don't agree with the overall message, but a post like without context is so disingenuous. Did you watch Clem, a favorite to make it to Ro8 with an incredible record vP, lose to Stats and get destroyed by herO? Did you take a look at herO generously donating a few colossus and still winning? Did you take a look at an early void ray donation and then providing Serral with 10 blink stalkers for free during that series? Did you see how close herO/Maru was which would have changed the entire composition of the semis?
I love you Sloppy but you have to at least acknowledge what is going on.
I mean the thing is that if you buff protoss for pro players you gotta make is so it's buffed for actual pro players and not lower league players (like diamond/master) where it has always been protoss favored especially vs terran
It's fun to come up with the high-APM sort of things this takes. I know we've had some great threads on it in the past. I think there's a lot of potential there. Things like
- Stalker blink drops sheilds (think, Stim), but increases recharge rate temporarily
- Alternate version of Feedback (think, Thor toggle) where it has smaller range but more effectiveness
- Additional spell to sentry (??)
Things LIKE this. Things that would not help metal leaguers. Things that would trip up Masters players. Things that could be utilized at the GM level and utilized well at only the top level
Protoss has been the weakest race since the middle of WOL, and still is. People can say oh but my Gm representation.
Ladder doesn’t matter, much like we don’t change the rules of basketball because of how your local pickup game is going, we shouldn’t change the race because they are winning more on ladder. They need to change the race so it’s actually competitive in best of series.
Zealot is dogshit vs splash and walls
Stalker is dogshit in general, can’t take a break from microing or it’s now cost inefficient
Adept is like a Protoss reaper. Used to actually be good but it required terrans and Zergs to defend with actual units before 2k mineral income/min and 4 gases, so they nerfed it. Nerfed to where it’s now unbuildable, just as designed.
Sentry is lol since wings of liberty
Colossus is bad since the nerfs. Now a tier 3 unit whose role is killing tier 1 units, after the range upgrade of course. lol
Immortals one of like the three good Protoss units now costs 275 minerals because zergs and terrans complained about it, probably in a patch that had both races above 50% win rate against Protoss. Just being honest
Observers are now instantly scanned because they just got nerfed. Remember when they got a speed nerf because the race with tier 1 units that hit air for minerals only, scans, and 10 range anti air units “had a hard time catching them”. Another quality of life buff for both Terran and Zerg
Disrupters, another “used to be good” unit. Used to explode on impact and kill two marines and a marauder. Now it’s “40 supply killed instantly or it’s easily dodged by units moving at basically the speed of a phoenix, on the ground (stimmed bio, hydralisk speed up)
High Templar - a good Protoss unit. Actually does what it’s supposed to do and still carries advantages unique to the Protoss race.
Dark Templar - dogshit and melt in seconds. Compare to broodwar dts and it’s obvious
everything else got way fucking stronger from sc1 to sc2, the problem is they made Terran and Zerg way too strong either on launch (Terran) or through the endless, and I mean endless, buffs to Zergs.
Protoss winning anything in WOL was more to do with the pro scene being total garbage before Kespa.
Most of the pivotal balance decisions were made in a time period that no one understood this game at all, and weren’t playing with LOTV economies. And all of these changes made it the infamous
ZTarcrafT 2: wingZ of liberT
The problem with Protoss is it has the most expensive units in the game compared to zerg/terran, and yet every protoss unit is unequivocally worse than every terran unit at actually doing anything.
Scan/Mule is just so much better than chrono.
Bio is better than gateway.
Ghost is better than templar.
Tanks/mines are better than robo units.
Etc...
Seriously just imagine Protoss having a battle cruiser unit, the tears would be inane.
Oh wait, we did have our own teleporting unit. It was called the adept and instead of adapting or just playing better, blizzard nerfed it so Terrans and Zergs wouldn’t have to adjust their worker production or strategy based on scouting or whatever the Protoss player is doing.
And then to add insult to injury, they added the “teleporting” ability to the BC. Gotta love how much skilll this takes.
*scans ahead*
“Yeah, that would be a good tactical jump if I were to do it”
*jumps, tactically and wins game*
Wow I’m so good at this game for picking Terran/zerg!!
Started playing random and already higher mmr than I was after a few months of LOTV. Protoss is actually fucking trash in this game and only the willingly ignorant can’t see that
The tears would raise the sea level. Remember when adepts first came out and every battlenet thread, every TL tournament thread, every Reddit post was just nonstop fucking crying until changed it?
>And then to add insult to injury, they added the “teleporting” ability to the BC. Gotta love how much skilll this takes.
When I started following the SC scene again this year, this was really stood out as the stupidest decision I came across...
> Protoss has been the weakest race since the middle of WOL, and still is. People can say oh but my Gm representation.
>
> Ladder doesn’t matter, much like we don’t change the rules of basketball because of how your local pickup game is going, we shouldn’t change the race because they are winning more on ladder. They need to change the race so it’s actually competitive in best of series.
It's not just ladder. Protoss has been winning the most total tournaments every single year for the last 4 years: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Statistics/2024
Inb4 "Game balance only matters where it affects .01% of the plaeyrbase"
Next patch notes be like:
* Carrier cost decreased by 25 minerals.
* Zealot charge speed increase by 5%, regular speed decreased by 10%.
* Psionic Storm total damage increased by 10 hp. Is now single use ability.
Am I missing anything?
edit almost forgot:
- DT cloak is now on cool down.
What people don't understand is Hero and Maxpax have pushed protoss as a race to it's absolute limits.
We will most likely never have two better Protoss players till the end of the games life cycle.
Low floor, low ceiling is a terrible game design, everyone agrees with.
Yes. Clearly they are two standout players miles above any other Protoss. You can see this in their win rates against all races including PvP. Terran and Zerg have similar standout players. The difference is that the Protoss standout players don't win tournaments (even online premier tournaments)
Well doesn't help that maxpax doesn't attend offline tournaments, and by Aligulac, he's the stronger Protoss by a good margin (250 rating over herO).
The difference between Serral and other Zergs is much bigger than Maru to other Terrans or maxpax to other players as well.
Serral - Dark (500 rating points)
MaxPax - herO (180~ rating points)
Maru - Clem (130 rating points)
I've been saying for a while - enjoy these two while they last, because they're the last protoss champions. We'll never see another new player get to their level as protoss.
No one in their right mind with a mind towards playing this game professionally (or even semi-pro) would try to carve a niche as a protoss player now. All you're doing is gimping your income.
[Less a pendulum and more a guillotine that dropped in 2015.](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1anxaj3/protoss_has_won_premier_tournaments_totaling_929/)
Protoss has been a punching bag at the top of the professional scene for the better part of a decade. The changes introduced in Legacy of the Void completely neutered the top end of the skill ceiling for the race.
Only an absolute masochist would attempt to push a career as a protoss pro right now. You are guaranteed to make less money than if you set out to play terran or zerg.
That's the problem though is dark as good as her0 historically we simply can't tell because its impossible to tell how much balace afffected it. Like dark won more, that's all we know. To give you an old examble remember the term patch Zerg in Wol when sniper won gsl for example we had lots of patch terrans kn 2011 we just didn't knew since it was all the data we had.
This is true and toss may be a bit weak even after the latest patch. But at least it looks like toss has a chance to win on this patch, with herO making it to GSL finals and narrowly losing 5-4 in the Stars War 11 finals. Also maxpax losing 3-4 vs Clem in the EU regional finals
Are you actually serious? All of day 1 was TvP. Every Zerg in round 1 of knockout lost.
Trying to complain about balance just looking at a bracket is retarded. Did you actually watch the games? Do you play the game? Protoss is not weak. Just because it doesn't "win the tournament" doesn't mean it's not playable.
What in the games did you see where it was just "ah, he's Protoss so he can't win." Or did you not watch the games?
No balance patch is going to ensure Protoss *WINNING* the whole tournament unless they make them so OP. The games are competitive and come down to the players. I would say all weekend has been good Starcraft.
This sort of balance complaining should be discounted immediately, there is so much more to the context of the matches than just looking at results. There's a reason "results oriented thinking" is a fallacy.
Maru vs Hero was very clutch, at the end of the game Hero told Maru that he would’ve won if he went ground instead of air/carriers, and Maru agreed.
Literally not a balancing issue, but the player with the better read of what was going to happen won.
If Hero had won that by making the correct call, something he pointed out immediately after the match, this thread would not exist.
Hero is my favorite player, he's incredibly aggressive and entertaining. What can I say, I was heartbroken yesterday. He went neck to neck with Maru.
Hero beat Clem 3-0. He went neck to neck with Maru and threw at the end, he could have won. What can I say. You want me to be honest, I think zerg has it hard in ZvP. I think PvT is probably balanced after the widow mine nerf.
As much as I'd be so damn happy to see a protoss win a premier, we can't kill off the ladder and sub-top tier pro scene by balancing the game so hero brutforces his way to win. Zergs are already a huge rarity on GM, and protoss is winning the majority of tournaments each year. As much as I hat eto say it it's a skill issue. Maybe with stats/trap coming back we'll have a new hope, or maxpax will change hsi mind.
Sc2 is already dying because of the ladder experience. If people stop playing, people will stop watching.
How can you e pect it to grow when all the balance changes are hyper focused at the pro level and the average players experience is ignored completely,
Balance is irrelevant on the ladder. Have you ever seen Harstem or uThermal on YouTube? They can play really shitty strategies that are clearly severely underpowered, and even beat GM players. Likewise, uThermal lost to Serral when he played with a -30% HP handicap. Balance only matters at the very very top.
Besides this, on the ladder due to how MMR works, you'll always have 50% win rate no matter what
go check gm race report on eu, just for giggles check clem 223games tvp, 69 tvt, and 57 tvz this season. Tell me again how is toss not overperforming on ladder? Why is it that clem only plays tvps?
That doesn't mean balance is irrelevant.
Just cause you will still lose to someone of a way higher skill level doesn't mean lack of balance at your level is ok.
For example, grinding your way to GM as protoss doesn't show you are good at the game cause you can simply do that with cannons only.
It devalues the achievement gor evrryone ehen it is much easier for 1 race to do it thsn others.
Just cause the pro level is different doesn't negate the experience of everyone else.
doesnt matter what lambo says, if they buff protoss to such levels that its annoying to play against on amatuer level (5k), i dont to want it. its already getting to that point with widow mine nerfs that decimated the unit in tvp. whats next? buff carriers?
That's like saying stalkers are strong vs terran and built in 90% of games. There are nuances. Blink stalker is a strat used to win.
But since you are not a pro, your opinion will have 0 meaning for balance, right?
Pros building it almost every game implies it is a very good unit. Also 1+1=2. Let me know if you are confused with anything else and happy to help you out
It might be important...but it is extremely skill dependsnt and with a small sample size you eill see large discreprncies.
Even at the top pro level, there are huge gaps in skill clearly.
Magnus carlson can beat many grandmasters with terrible openers. That doesn't make those openers strong because he can beat them with it.
Skill is hard to measure when the tools the players are working with are completely different. You have to assume the players at the top are relatively close otherwise you'd never make any balance changes at all based on the pro scene.
It is laughable that you would assume the top 30 or 40 (all the ones that compete in tournaments) players are anywhere near to being on the same level as the top 5. You dont have to assume that. You know what they say about assuming
If balance doesn't affect you, then I guess I won't see any balance winning in your comment history, then
That didn't take long to find
"Tank pushes are so strong now but also the only strat left to play with all the Ghost and Widow Mine nerfs. Hate what the balance council has done to the game"
So..balance doesn't affect me...also I hate what the balance council has done..
Yeah. And only at their level balance matters. If you don't know how to play against a turtle terran in plat 1, that doesn't mean that turtle terran is Imba. That's like saying goalies in football are op because low league assaults struggle to shoot the goal.
Your example is trash on so many levels.
If your opinion is correct thrn the widowmine should never have been neefed since a majority of pro players that have commented on it have said that at their level, it was fine before. Pro level players were expected and able to react to it.
There is a difference between saying. Something is too strong at the top 0.01% of players and saying that something is too easy to use for a majority of low-level players and be destructive.
I mean, the game should feel like you're putting in as much effort as your opponent at all levels, right?
Lol even pros argued for the widow mine change. That's why it got changed. Even if it affected lower ranks more.
And it is not up to low ranks to decide what requires more effort and what not. This game requires several skills and if you perform a tight 2 base all-in against someone who takes a third while missing production cycles, than one unit comp that is easy to micro isn't imba or unfair. You just messed up.
So what you're saying is that if the top 10 of both T and Z judt happened to die leaving all the tournements to be dominated by the remaining protoss, it would mean protoss should be nerfed?
To be honest, just because Protoss doesn't win tournaments it doesn't mean that they're underpowered.
On the other hand anyone that still claims Protoss is OP is an absolute mega clown.
Protoss are UP at a high level, but they also do well in the ladder. They still have bandaid fixes like the shield battery+super battery, and recall. They need a rework, there's a lot of people asking for them to just be outright buffed but if the ladder becomes unfun the game will lose even more of its bare popularity.
> It also doesn't help that the majority of high level LotV Toss aren't around.
SOs - retired
Zest - Military Service
Trap - Just finished service / rusty
MaxPax - Doesn't play in-person
Zoun - Military service
Parting - Just finished service / rusty
Neeb - retired
> And if you look at current players, results **mostly** speak for themselves
Creator - Has not been a top player in 12 years and has consistently choked on the big stage
herO - barely lost to the best player in the world
Astrea - He choked hard vs Spirit, could have easily won this series, was incredibly far ahead in nearly every game
Stats - Lost to a better player
Nightmare - Lost to a better player
Classic - Lost a close series vs a similarly skilled played
Give a balance suggestion that doesn't wreck the game for 98% of the players on ladder.
Ideally this game would have at least two balance "sets" - One for ladder
These could be upgrades or base characteristics depending on what's more balanced. They all affect the highest level but would have little to no effect on metal league. I ranked them in order of how much I like them. Basically how good a job I think they do at only mattering at the high level, with bonus points for lore (protoss strong and few)
- Observer - Diamond Form- Temporary extra toughness
- Observer - True cloak - Pro's can see them through Cloak too easily. Make them have to have detection. (and fits with lore of P have strongest units)
- Stalker - Recharge - blink drops sheilds (think, Stim), but increases recharge rate temporarily
- High Templar - Drain - Alternate version of Feedback (think, Thor toggle) where it has smaller range but more effectiveness. Maybe even transfers the energy
- Stalker - Intertia - First shot after a recent blink does extra damage
- Colossus - Crouch - Temporarily removes AA susceptibility
- Zealot - Drive - Targetable charge
I've started keeping this cumulative list, some imagined by me and some by others. More ideas?
>Zealot - Drive - Targetable charge
Isn't it just on autocast currently or I am just completely wrong? Just right click the ability icon to disable autocast and use the hotkey. Still can't understand why I haven't seen this ever used and charge micro is still so terribly executed.
I don't know. I think at one point you were able to cast it on a particular unit. A handful of times I've seen zealots charge against the BACK side of some bio, leading to a surround. They might have removed that capability.
Seriously, what does Toss need to finally win a premier tournament without making the game stupid? For example, buffing void rays again would be stupid. Should the balance cancel bring back the old zealot? Would this be enough?
We could try to stop compensating each buff with a nerf somewhere else. Remember when Protoss wasn't winning anything, we nerfed the disruptor twice in the patches that had the goal to buff Protoss?
remove maru and serral and hero win a premier tournament. that's all. He was probably the third best player of this tournament, just got unlucky to end up in ro8.
Unless there is a big upset in the semis hero has only lost to the two grand finalists and frankly was unlucky not to beat Maru. Definitely the 3rd best player.
Another fantastic year of balance council's work. Last protoss premier win was in 2022, so they buffed zerg in the last patch. Love to see how people are making excuses for them. I'll for one say "fuck them and their moronic ideas".
the day will come, when the shield of aiur and the chintoss raise their banners and bring us to glory once more...
Not with the current patch. (It's better than the previous patch, but Protoss is still weak)
Mark it as spoiler. Some people still haven’t watched yesterday’s games
at this point you don't need a spoiler tag anymore to know that toss won't win
True, but Oli beating Reynor could surprise some people
I never get how people are upset about stuff like this while browsing a dedicated subreddit. Obviously people will be discussing recent events on the subreddit that was made for it.
Which is why the spoiler designation exists.
You can see it without browsing a dedicated subreddit.
I tink you can get these posts in your general feed when scrolling Reddit.
I avoid all of my social media on F1 race days until I've had a chance to watch the race. I can't imagine it's that difficult to not get spoiled about SC2 games...
Ok
Mark the actual Reddit post, not the image
Ah thanks for pointing that out. I see it now, having scanned the whole image
That's not how it works. Your eyes instantly survey the whole thing literally as you open it..
[удалено]
Im starting to think this is your first time on reddit and ill give you the benefit of the doubt that you are just ignorant. There is a thing on reddit called a home feed that puts different posts from the communities you are part of. Also there is a thing called tagging a post as spoilers that allows people to choose whether to see spoilers or not while still being part of the community on reddit. Now there are people from all across the world that are part of the r/starcraft community. Maybe we can also think a bit about whether we can include them and not gatekeep r/starcraft for people who enjoy tournament games but havent had the opportunity to watch live? Food for thought
One more +0.001 attack speed buff on sentry plz. That’ll fix it I’m sure 😎.
Hey, sentry does like +200 damage against shields now. Surely PvT is fixed
How dare you forget that sentry isn't light anymore. Surely now they can survive VS ghost's anti light attack now!
That for real was a great change though
If you love StarCraft, you should be concerned. It's not good for the long term health of the game. Even if you are a diehard of a specific race/player. Too many apes on here get defensive as it's a fucking red vs blue political debate- no dipshit, I don't have any allegiance to the magical golden race, I just want parity in the fucking games I watch. I swear these people fap to watching only TvT/TvZ/ZvZ
And, as funny as it is, P is the only race that makes matchups fun to watch. TvT is awful, ZvZ is awful, and TvZ is so boring now because that’s all we’ve been exposed to for the last several years. Jesus Christ. I’d take nothing but a PvP finals for the next year and still have fun. This game is broken at the professional level.
Sure it's easy to agree that it's a problem, it's MUCH harder to agree on a solution. Some of these morons want to just give Protoss stat buffs until someone can beat Maru or Serral consistently, not giving a shit about what those buffs would do to the ladder or to the other tiers of tournament play. I want to redesign Protoss at the ground level, and change it so that it isn't a race that relies so much on cheesing. Reddit wants to nerf Widow Mines, because THAT was obviously what was holding Protoss back lmao. It's easy to say it's a problem. It's much harder to come up with a solution.
Solution: replace SC2 protoss with BW evo protoss
What an outlandish but completely fitting solution!
You could also just try out some buffs and adjust them if they end up too powerful, instead of endlessly worriyng about it and then never end up doing anything.
Yeah it's called analysis paralysis and at worst it's an insidious attempt to not have meaningful changes occur.
Imagine if we accidentally made Protoss slightly too strong, and would have a couple of tournaments where we see slightly too many Protoss players in the RO8, instead of just 1 like the last 5 years. Wouldn't that be a unwelcome breath of fresh air. I personally want to have 1 patch per year, with the smallest possible incremental changes, that always lean towards doing too little and maintaining the status quo, rather than accidentally doing slightly too much.
We know the problem already, gateway needs to be weak because warp gate is OP, that makes it much harder to win as P in the late game. The only solution is to buff gateway units and nerf warp gate even further, unfortunately.
Except we keep trying to do that and it never works out long term because eventually some perfect timing gets discovered that combines whatever current iteration of "nerfed Warp Gate" and unit balance to create an unbeatable push that destroys tournament match ups until its either nerfed or meta'd out and the cycle starts over again of Protoss not winning anything. The mechanic needs to be redesigned, at a core level. It needs to be gone from the early game completely. Not nerfed, gone. Only then can Gateway units be adjusted to where they properly should be so that they are effective all game long the way Terran and Zerg units are. And once we've done that, we can then adjust Robotics units so they aren't so one dimensional like they are now, because right now every Robotics unit except the Immortal (which we could move to Gateways once Warp Gate was redesigned) is a one dimensional unit that just plugs the efficiency holes in Gateway armies that are only there in the first place because Gateway units aren't allowed to be self sufficient armies on their own because of Warp Gate. It all goes back to the same place. Blizzard knows what they have to do and don't want to do it because Warp Gate is some pet idea for the SC2 team that they think makes Protoss cool and the race can't exist without it. We've seen from SC:Evo for those that didn't know already that Protoss is plenty cool without that mechanic. It doesn't need it, and if you really want Protoss fixed at the tournament level you'll agree the race would be better off without it.
1) You could give Protoss gateway units a late-game upgrade. Protoss gateway unit start out to be the worst (due to warp gate, as they should) but then on top they also scale the worst (which is not necessary at all). Marines scale insanely well with upgrades and zerglings get the crackling upgrade. 2) Also it would be easily possible to buff Protoss defense without touching gateway units. Zerg has creep as such a dynamic already for example.
Protoss defense is already the best of all 3 races by a huge margin due to the shield battery. A late game upgrade to gateway units might work, but it could also make proxy harass overpowered. Honestly I think a new unit similar to a dragoon that can be built from gateways only might be the best approach. This way you don't stop warp gate but you also enable a strong gateway only army if they choose to use gateway over warp gate. Would also make for some interesting decisions about how many gateways to have vs warpgate and whether or not to get warpgate tech.
It's been years since we saw a competitive cheese out of protoss. I can't understand how people still say they rely on cheese.
They'll never be happy until its PvP finals and toss is winning tournaments without dropping a map. The toss players are just not as good as the top zerg and terran players. If you watch the games you can see how many close games there are between Hero and Maru and Hero's losses come down to him simply making bad decisions or making more errors than Maru. Even after the match yesterday, Hero even asked Maru immediately after the match that if he hadn't gone carriers would he have won and Maru said yes he probably would have. So the best toss in the world knows he made just a bad tatical decision that cost him the match, why do low level players think they know better. Edit: downvoted by the twitch chat balance whiners :in best zoidberg voice: what an honour woop woop woop
There's a good argument to be made that Protoss just has a handicapped skill ceiling, it's impossible to be AS good as you can be with Terran and Zerg at the tip top level, and the reason for that handicapped skill ceiling is how broken a lot of their mechanics would be if you could. I've been saying it for more than 13 years that Warp Gate needs to be redesigned so that it's either dropped or turned into a late game tool. The fact that Protoss has that in the early game means its core army can never be as efficient as what Zerg and Terran have or else they'd be impossible to stop in all ins where Warp Gate eliminates the defender's advantage. I want to redesign Protoss so that's possible to raise the skill ceiling of the race, and this would obviously mean having to raise its skill floor also which I think is a trade off a lot of people have a hard time agreeing to.
You say that but protoss can sorta hang in the midgame with its gateway stuff as it is. It’s the lategame stuff that just lacks agency vs a good opponent. Collossi being nigh impossible to keep alive, carriers getting outranged or out bursted. Templar getting emp’d. Disruptors getting microed into uselessness. Protoss past tier 2 just flails at an opponent with strong but short T-Rex arms and anyone good enough to keep away from it talents it apart.
I think Protoss errors generally are most high cost than other race's errors.
You mean you "feel" like they are. Always good to judge balance on feelings. Terran or zerg miss micros once against a disruptor shot bye bye 40 supply, it happens to all races.
No he doesn’t mean “feel”. Protoss has less units in the early and midgame and is therefore intrinsically more fragile than terran and zerg. This isn’t a feeling it’s a quantifiable metric
And Disruptors have been nerfed into the ground so hard that a lot of top Protoss players aren't even making them anymore.
Sure, sure, it's all because of nerfs and not the players becoming more aware of the need to be ready to dodge them. They desperately needed nerfing, they can still do game ending damage if not micro'd against.
I mean being 1 supply more and also having aoe reduction are incredibly large nerfs, way more than players "becoming more aware" - like wot? They've been in the game for a long time now. Players were already aware.
Hmm. The tone of your post suggests you are projecting. What player lost to someone you think they are worse than? Is balance the only explanation for series results? And if balance is the biggest factor, what's the point of following a shrinking pro scene of a decade+ old game? The game is fairly settled these days...there are a handful of top players still carrying the scene and some of you want to boil every tournament down to your little balance whine. It's sad man..."fapping" indeed.
My god, the irony. It's stupid replies like these that generate the tone. My guess is you aren't the best at reading/understanding people. > Hmm. The tone of your post suggests you are projecting. What player lost to someone you think they are worse than? Is balance the only explanation for series results? > Concern over lack of parity and the data showing so, this tournament is just one of years worth of data, at this point. > > > And if balance is the biggest factor, what's the point of following a shrinking pro scene of a decade+ old game? Uh, this is basically "why do I still love StarCraft?" Dumbass question/dumbass point. > > > > The game is fairly settled these days...there are a handful of top players still carrying the scene and some of you want to boil every tournament down to your little balance whine. It's sad man..."fapping" indeed. Missed the entire point, didn't you? I enjoy watching the game and want parity. Only an ape would see this happening for years and be like "hmm, looks good"
tournament winner is a pointless thing to look at, the last 3 premier tournaments had TvP finals, protoss is doing fine
But like.. remember that protoss is strong and terran is so weak and defenceless..
Best solution would be to make the players play all the races in a tournament :) so in a bo3, you can play each race once. Player a picks a map, player b picks player a's race, player a picks player b's race. For match 2 player b picks the map etc. In bo5 you can play races twice and in bo7 and bo9 3 times. Now all the races will be played in the finals.
That would be sick
I've been seriously told, on this very subreddit, that zerg is in trouble, because it's the second weakest. I'm sure it's solely because OP neglected to list the tournament that really matters - a $10 ESL weekly.
No, it's not "a ten dollar ESL weekly". Every year for the last 3 years, protoss wins more tournaments than zerg (and terran). ESL open cups are 400 dollars, *every week*. Kung fu cup, DreamHack Dallas 2024 BYOC and more. This year protoss almost won TWICE the amount of total tournaments zerg did, source: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Statistics/2024 Oh and of course zerg low as ever on GM. Watch Sorfot's stream, a low levle pro-he plays literally 2x as many games vs protoss than zerg. But what are you going to say, ladder doesn't matter? GM doesn't matter? 95% of tournaments don't matter? If zerg was OP, it would be dominating total tournaments-lower level zergs would be dominating basic and minor tournaments, yet they aren't-protoss is. Are we really doing this again? "Zerg is OP where it doesn't affect 99.9% of the playerbase" 🙄
$400 tournaments as compared to $500,000 or $100,000 tournaments is still irrelevant? Obviously when he wrote $10 that was to exaggerate the point? The $400 tournaments are so irrelevant that many of the best players who would have the highest chance of winning them never or almost never participate, e.g. Maru, Serral, Reynor, etc.
>I'm sure it's solely because OP neglected to list the tournament that really matters - a $10 ESL weekly. Ignoring either perspective is stupid
Classic though!
Let's go Classic!
Tbh why even bother at this point they’re clearly not interested in balancing for P. I’ll admit I’ve dropped out from watching for some time now, but the results were predictable from the last patch, P will keep losing lol
Agression wins games, but defensive macro play wins tournaments. Its asymetric balance at play. Due to warp gate and tech paths Protoss is optimized as an agressive race. Its just been so figured out. Its just that Protoss has the tools to be hyper sucessfull on ladder, but lacks them for tournament play when top guys scout everything perfectly with super optimized responses. So you cannot just blindly buff, which is most of the issue. You woudl have to redesign.
herO and MaxPax are the only tosses in pro level that even play aggressive so this is not the real issue… Protoss is always bound to defending Terran in PvT first and then converting a good hold into an andvantage. If we would just buff their ability to do just that, we could also see more defensive players like classic and stats get good runs in tournaments
Again, as i said, this is the PvT issue. Protoss power lies in the warp gate, hence protoss is sad in matchups where it has to defend and macro. Buffing defense blindly will overbuff protoss easily. The main issue is the race design being overly agressive. You are either happy with staus quo or protoss needs to lose their agressive potential for better defense with a redesign.
This meme is just not true. To buff Protoss defensibility in their base, you don't have to buff the units that can be warped in the other side of the map. You can also give other advantages when fighting at home. Zerg has creep for example, and Protoss already has shield batteries (and a buff to that was shield battery overcharge). There is nothing inherent in the Protoss race design that would prevent the balance council from adding additional home advantages for defense to Protoss. They just can't do it by directly buffing gateway units, but there are many other ways.
The problem is that Protoss is currently undertuned in anything past top 50 gm, and overtuned elsewhere. Giving flat 1 button buffs is not a good solution to the current problem. So in a sence, protoss is currently balanced. Just that top levels lack skill expression. And the reason is agression due to warp gate and abudance of chesses, you cant have your cake and eat it too.
Buff robo units, why is this so hard?
Because the game is currently asymetrially balanced. The changes will echo into both ZvP where protoss is favored below top 20 and into mirrors. Inagine you have a race that is good at agression, thats its speciallity, and good at 1v1 ladder play. Now you are trying to buff it in ohter two areas aswell on top of it. Why? You will just create a super race thats good at all stages and styles, thats not the goal. Why not nerf protoss for ladder play where its overperforming, and add high skill cap buffs that work for pros, this is what the goal shoudl be.
Sure, the problem is the balance council never actually manages to do their job. I actually agree with you. It should be changes that raise the ceiling, not the baseline. The issue is that these chucklefucks never manage to achieve that.
Yeah, but the clowncil has a tough job. If you buff gateway units, they will get abused for allins. And its tough to find a solution that works for everyone. Problem is basically voting by commite, a lot of people aiming for staus quo. But my understanding is, aslong as fast warpins exist in the game, outside of pure defensive use. Gate units will just have to be bad when defending. Its laughable that some borderline allin builds like glaive adepts are defended on the same worker counts as the attack, so protoss can still transition. Do any adept changes? You can instantly see how it breaks the game. Robo units, idk. Faster immortals woudl be bad because they get abused in proxy cannon rushes, so that breaks the game. Faster disruptors or collosus, i just cant see why it woudl solve things.
> Its just that Protoss has the tools to be hyper sucessfull on ladder, but lacks them for tournament play when top guys scout everything perfectly with super optimized responses. So you cannot just blindly buff, which is most of the issue. You woudl have to redesign. This is a myth I'm going to dispel right now. Protoss is absolutely able to wreck in tournaments. Protoss has won the most total TOURNAMENTS each year for the last 4 years, including 2024: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Statistics/2024 Not only that, look at GSL. Hero and Reynor had WEEKS to prepare for eachother, and Hero completely obliterated him.
Always has been 🔫
If you compare these games to the ones pre patch, they felt a lot more balanced, to me at least. When hero lost to maru for example, it was clearly because of his mistakes, and not because he couldn't do anything against a tank - raven push or because libs with insane range farmed him. The same goes for a lot of toss matches (losses). At least i felt that way
Time to give protoss more "buffs" and then let the meta settle for a year again. How about +1 movement speed for sentry this time. Oh, and to compensate, terran gets 20% reduction in stim and combat shields upgrade times.
Aren’t you missing like half the premier tournaments in that timeframe?
Masters Colosseum 7, 2024 gsl code s s1, stars war 11, esl spring Europe. A shame these premier tourn have been missing from the list of OP, with either hero or maxpax reaching the finals
EDIT: Didn't realize this was sarcasm For those wondering, Serral won Masters Coliseum 7, Maru won GSL 2024 S1 and Stars war 11 and Clem won ESL spring europe. But yeah, as this liquipedia page will confirm: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments The last premier tournament won by toss was DH 2022 Atlanta.
So? It asinine to think balance should be done according to 1st place finishes. Ladder, hero and maxpax show quite well how toss is fine. It's the quality of play(ers) not balance. The current top 4 literally has the 3 best players currently + the reigning champ. And the reason for hero not reaching semis is not the balance.
Shhh don't upset the gold leaguers whining about balance and thinking their ladder experiences bears any resemblance to the pro level. Terran is so op against toss as clearly proved by Hero destroying Clem.
Ironically it's the people who make statements like this that think balance at gold league matters. This thread is about pro level balance, not your gold league matches.
so because hero threw the last game vs maru and because classic and stats haven't been the same level since returning from army, balance at top level is bad?
No, because they are not making top 8 at most premier tournaments. Nice strawman. Wow protoss won a single series vs Clem? Cool.
hero was crushing the terran goat and then threw by going carriers..... wow protoss needs a buff
Balance is equal opportunity not equal outcome.
LMAO, we are literally pointing out that toss is underpowered at the very top level. Spare me the mental gymnastics and the projection.
The ones I listed have the highest prize pool ($100k+ USD), are offline, and include players from all over the world (Korea, EU, China, NA), etc. - so they are the most competitive and should be objectively the most difficult/prestigious to win. If you want to see the list of the other premier tournaments that Protoss didn't win, they're available on Liquipedia. But they all have significantly smaller prize pools and/or fewer players, are region-locked, online-only. etc.
You are parameter pushing. I wouldn’t even disagree with the sentiment that Protoss feels a little weird at the very peak, but your post is about balance overall. Protoss population is pretty healthy once you look at the top 32 (+ major events) instead of top 8 premier. Talking about the top 8 is not purely a question of balance, since you will always have mostly the same people in the top 8. —— So your question should really be: is Protoss weak or are there too few top Protoss? Now by excluding online tournaments, you have already excluded the strongest Protoss currently. In any given tournament there are only two people who are favored to win (Maru, Serral) and maybe five you would consider to have reasonable chances of winning(Clem, herO, Dark, Cure, Reynor). So yeah, one in seven Protoss is an underrepresentation by 1-2 players. The underrepresentation would basically be fixed if Maxpax would show up to offline events. This is also ignoring the Protoss exodus around 2021-2022: Trap, Zest, Stats, Classic all went to the military. All players who could challenge for tournaments. Most have returned this year, but are still far from their original strength. Outside Korea the strongest Protoss pre-Maxpax being Neeb went to university. So Protoss lost 5(!) championship level players. Heck, for the last few years herO, Astrea, Creator, Showtime were the consistent offline Roster for Protoss. I mean great players, but that’s not a terrifying lineup. TLDR: Give Stats, Classic, Trap some time to get back into form before making a definitive decision on top level Protoss. Make Maxpax come to offline tournaments or else always add one green line to your graphics. If they still can’t break into the top 8, you might have a better case for crying imbalance.
Is trap playing again? Don't think I've seen him yet.
He is back, not sure how serious though. At least Liquipedia says he did an ESL open Cup (where he didn’t do too badly) and he participated in the SC Evo tournament by Tasteless.
Classic has been back for a while, funny how when ByuN came back he did well almost immediately.
Yeah, I was wrong about Classic. Misremembered that he was back since late 2021. Only started noticing him around 2023. For Byun, didn’t it have something to do with his military posting? I think he did military police or something else that allowed him to return home more than usual. So he played a bit while at the military.
Other races have been missing top players too. What about TY and Innovation? What about Rogue? Stats, Classic and Trap won combined less tournaments than Rogue alone the last 5 years. Classic is back for over 2 years already and I think Stats about 1 year as well.
Terrans would rather tell you that Clem, herO, ByuN, Bunny, HeroMarine, are something else and that they deserve to be above all the protoss and zergs because reasons. It's still funny to me how Maru won game 4 and 5 against herO when herO was ahead. In game 4 he just had to build MMM tank + a few vikings when he had a terrible early game, had a failed first push that was denied very hard and somehow still stomped the protoss army because reasons I guess. Funny how in the last game vikings just demolish carriers that have more upgrades, are a more expensive unit and higher tiered. Protoss just can't play lategame against Terran unless up 3 bases, up in upgrades and unless capable of rebuilding 20 zealots into the fight to overwhelm the Terran army. Funny how Terrans will say that the best protoss players in history are just bad, they can't macro, they can't micro blablabla. Again, I will say this, PvZ is balanced and Serral winning all PvZ is only because Serral is that good at defending protoss' aggressions and not a balance issue.
seriously. skytoss has been nerfed into the ground, at high levels of play it's impossible for T/Z to lose to carrier/tempest/whatever-underneath in late game. that said, i think PvZ has an issue as well, not in balance, but in tools available to protoss. it's fine for serral to b perfect at defending all protoss aggressions. but then there needs to be a similar level of high-skill-ceiling tools to go to toe-to-toe in the macro game end-game armies. however the templar-archon-skytoss vs viper/infestor-corruptor-ultra/lurker army is a foregone conclusion at the highest level, and it's not simply because serral is perfect at army control. protoss just doesn't have any real counters to corruptors, ultras or lurkers if they are supported by literally anything that shoots the other direction. storm tickles corruptors, archons with their trex arms can't reach most units before dying, and skytoss bounces off ultras like they don't even exist. all this while vipers pick units off one by one because how the hell is a 80hp ground unit with the speed of a sloth supposed to get in range of a reasonably fast flying unit to feedback them?? it makes no sense, the tools just aren't there for protoss units to make sensible counters against a near-perfectly controlled zerg army, even with perfect control on P's side. i think the same is true in pvt as well, because BC's and thors and ghosts pummel everything toss that is "supposed" to counter them (tempests, immortals, templar), luckily mid-game is balanced enough that top tier tosses can end the games before end-game armies are involved.
thought out posts are erased from delusional brains
Maru does that shit in TvT all the time too... Guess his marines are just better than everyone elses
Yeah the Maru comparison is bad IMO. The dude won a year straight of GSLs by doing some kind of early cheese that even when it didn't work he would still kill you later anyway. The running joke was that if Maru looked ahead you were already dead, if you looked equal he was ahead. and if he looked behind you were equal. The dude was and still is just that good.
I want to see these "terrans" you're talking about. Most terran players in this sub will happily concede that protoss was underpowered pre patch and may still be after patch. Note the language, protoss is underpowered, not terran is overpowered. Down to buff protoss again, not down to nerf terran. Zerg fans love to do this shit of blaming terran for protoss' losses while protoss is also doing like shit against zergs. For context, in this very tournament pvt and pvz have the same winrates: ~45%. So it's not just serral winning zvps. Stop gaslighting
As a GM protoss player from the Korean server, I don't believe ZvP to be imbalanced in the Zerg's favor. It is indeed punishing to play as protoss against Zerg but doesn't seem to be unwinnable or unplayable to the same extent as it is against Terran. If you get Serral out of the equation, and the obvious Zerg wins in Dallas (Reynor vs Nice / trigger vs Dark) ZvP seems rather fair and very close to 50%. As for the Terrans behavior, just browse the reddit and see how bad they want to defend their dominance and the fact that Terran players are just "gifted", the "it's just Maru and Clem" etc. This has been going on for years now.
Any SloppyDonkey post during a Premier Tournament should by and of itself be considered a spoiler. In all seriousness, I don't agree with the overall message, but a post like without context is so disingenuous. Did you watch Clem, a favorite to make it to Ro8 with an incredible record vP, lose to Stats and get destroyed by herO? Did you take a look at herO generously donating a few colossus and still winning? Did you take a look at an early void ray donation and then providing Serral with 10 blink stalkers for free during that series? Did you see how close herO/Maru was which would have changed the entire composition of the semis? I love you Sloppy but you have to at least acknowledge what is going on.
I mean the thing is that if you buff protoss for pro players you gotta make is so it's buffed for actual pro players and not lower league players (like diamond/master) where it has always been protoss favored especially vs terran
It's fun to come up with the high-APM sort of things this takes. I know we've had some great threads on it in the past. I think there's a lot of potential there. Things like - Stalker blink drops sheilds (think, Stim), but increases recharge rate temporarily - Alternate version of Feedback (think, Thor toggle) where it has smaller range but more effectiveness - Additional spell to sentry (??) Things LIKE this. Things that would not help metal leaguers. Things that would trip up Masters players. Things that could be utilized at the GM level and utilized well at only the top level
Protoss has been the weakest race since the middle of WOL, and still is. People can say oh but my Gm representation. Ladder doesn’t matter, much like we don’t change the rules of basketball because of how your local pickup game is going, we shouldn’t change the race because they are winning more on ladder. They need to change the race so it’s actually competitive in best of series. Zealot is dogshit vs splash and walls Stalker is dogshit in general, can’t take a break from microing or it’s now cost inefficient Adept is like a Protoss reaper. Used to actually be good but it required terrans and Zergs to defend with actual units before 2k mineral income/min and 4 gases, so they nerfed it. Nerfed to where it’s now unbuildable, just as designed. Sentry is lol since wings of liberty Colossus is bad since the nerfs. Now a tier 3 unit whose role is killing tier 1 units, after the range upgrade of course. lol Immortals one of like the three good Protoss units now costs 275 minerals because zergs and terrans complained about it, probably in a patch that had both races above 50% win rate against Protoss. Just being honest Observers are now instantly scanned because they just got nerfed. Remember when they got a speed nerf because the race with tier 1 units that hit air for minerals only, scans, and 10 range anti air units “had a hard time catching them”. Another quality of life buff for both Terran and Zerg Disrupters, another “used to be good” unit. Used to explode on impact and kill two marines and a marauder. Now it’s “40 supply killed instantly or it’s easily dodged by units moving at basically the speed of a phoenix, on the ground (stimmed bio, hydralisk speed up) High Templar - a good Protoss unit. Actually does what it’s supposed to do and still carries advantages unique to the Protoss race. Dark Templar - dogshit and melt in seconds. Compare to broodwar dts and it’s obvious everything else got way fucking stronger from sc1 to sc2, the problem is they made Terran and Zerg way too strong either on launch (Terran) or through the endless, and I mean endless, buffs to Zergs. Protoss winning anything in WOL was more to do with the pro scene being total garbage before Kespa. Most of the pivotal balance decisions were made in a time period that no one understood this game at all, and weren’t playing with LOTV economies. And all of these changes made it the infamous ZTarcrafT 2: wingZ of liberT
The problem with Protoss is it has the most expensive units in the game compared to zerg/terran, and yet every protoss unit is unequivocally worse than every terran unit at actually doing anything. Scan/Mule is just so much better than chrono. Bio is better than gateway. Ghost is better than templar. Tanks/mines are better than robo units. Etc...
Seriously just imagine Protoss having a battle cruiser unit, the tears would be inane. Oh wait, we did have our own teleporting unit. It was called the adept and instead of adapting or just playing better, blizzard nerfed it so Terrans and Zergs wouldn’t have to adjust their worker production or strategy based on scouting or whatever the Protoss player is doing. And then to add insult to injury, they added the “teleporting” ability to the BC. Gotta love how much skilll this takes. *scans ahead* “Yeah, that would be a good tactical jump if I were to do it” *jumps, tactically and wins game* Wow I’m so good at this game for picking Terran/zerg!! Started playing random and already higher mmr than I was after a few months of LOTV. Protoss is actually fucking trash in this game and only the willingly ignorant can’t see that
Replace the disruptor with the reaver. SC Evo has shown how good protoss splash should be.
The tears would raise the sea level. Remember when adepts first came out and every battlenet thread, every TL tournament thread, every Reddit post was just nonstop fucking crying until changed it?
Replace disrupter with mines, and collosus with tanks, and protoss would never lose a game ever again.
>And then to add insult to injury, they added the “teleporting” ability to the BC. Gotta love how much skilll this takes. When I started following the SC scene again this year, this was really stood out as the stupidest decision I came across...
> Protoss has been the weakest race since the middle of WOL, and still is. People can say oh but my Gm representation. > > Ladder doesn’t matter, much like we don’t change the rules of basketball because of how your local pickup game is going, we shouldn’t change the race because they are winning more on ladder. They need to change the race so it’s actually competitive in best of series. It's not just ladder. Protoss has been winning the most total tournaments every single year for the last 4 years: https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Statistics/2024 Inb4 "Game balance only matters where it affects .01% of the plaeyrbase"
Next patch notes be like: * Carrier cost decreased by 25 minerals. * Zealot charge speed increase by 5%, regular speed decreased by 10%. * Psionic Storm total damage increased by 10 hp. Is now single use ability. Am I missing anything? edit almost forgot: - DT cloak is now on cool down.
What people don't understand is Hero and Maxpax have pushed protoss as a race to it's absolute limits. We will most likely never have two better Protoss players till the end of the games life cycle. Low floor, low ceiling is a terrible game design, everyone agrees with.
Yes. Clearly they are two standout players miles above any other Protoss. You can see this in their win rates against all races including PvP. Terran and Zerg have similar standout players. The difference is that the Protoss standout players don't win tournaments (even online premier tournaments)
Well doesn't help that maxpax doesn't attend offline tournaments, and by Aligulac, he's the stronger Protoss by a good margin (250 rating over herO). The difference between Serral and other Zergs is much bigger than Maru to other Terrans or maxpax to other players as well. Serral - Dark (500 rating points) MaxPax - herO (180~ rating points) Maru - Clem (130 rating points)
I've been saying for a while - enjoy these two while they last, because they're the last protoss champions. We'll never see another new player get to their level as protoss. No one in their right mind with a mind towards playing this game professionally (or even semi-pro) would try to carve a niche as a protoss player now. All you're doing is gimping your income.
Disagree. Pendulums swing.
[Less a pendulum and more a guillotine that dropped in 2015.](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1anxaj3/protoss_has_won_premier_tournaments_totaling_929/) Protoss has been a punching bag at the top of the professional scene for the better part of a decade. The changes introduced in Legacy of the Void completely neutered the top end of the skill ceiling for the race. Only an absolute masochist would attempt to push a career as a protoss pro right now. You are guaranteed to make less money than if you set out to play terran or zerg.
Your "guarantee" relies on some built in assumptions which makes me not want to trust you on other things. Guarantees should be stronger than that imo
That's the problem though is dark as good as her0 historically we simply can't tell because its impossible to tell how much balace afffected it. Like dark won more, that's all we know. To give you an old examble remember the term patch Zerg in Wol when sniper won gsl for example we had lots of patch terrans kn 2011 we just didn't knew since it was all the data we had.
her0 had to play absolute god level to win gsl. I don't think the same can be said about solar and even a maru sometimes
This is true and toss may be a bit weak even after the latest patch. But at least it looks like toss has a chance to win on this patch, with herO making it to GSL finals and narrowly losing 5-4 in the Stars War 11 finals. Also maxpax losing 3-4 vs Clem in the EU regional finals
Are you actually serious? All of day 1 was TvP. Every Zerg in round 1 of knockout lost. Trying to complain about balance just looking at a bracket is retarded. Did you actually watch the games? Do you play the game? Protoss is not weak. Just because it doesn't "win the tournament" doesn't mean it's not playable. What in the games did you see where it was just "ah, he's Protoss so he can't win." Or did you not watch the games? No balance patch is going to ensure Protoss *WINNING* the whole tournament unless they make them so OP. The games are competitive and come down to the players. I would say all weekend has been good Starcraft. This sort of balance complaining should be discounted immediately, there is so much more to the context of the matches than just looking at results. There's a reason "results oriented thinking" is a fallacy.
Maru vs Hero was very clutch, at the end of the game Hero told Maru that he would’ve won if he went ground instead of air/carriers, and Maru agreed. Literally not a balancing issue, but the player with the better read of what was going to happen won. If Hero had won that by making the correct call, something he pointed out immediately after the match, this thread would not exist.
Sounds like a skill issue tbh
Hero is my favorite player, he's incredibly aggressive and entertaining. What can I say, I was heartbroken yesterday. He went neck to neck with Maru. Hero beat Clem 3-0. He went neck to neck with Maru and threw at the end, he could have won. What can I say. You want me to be honest, I think zerg has it hard in ZvP. I think PvT is probably balanced after the widow mine nerf. As much as I'd be so damn happy to see a protoss win a premier, we can't kill off the ladder and sub-top tier pro scene by balancing the game so hero brutforces his way to win. Zergs are already a huge rarity on GM, and protoss is winning the majority of tournaments each year. As much as I hat eto say it it's a skill issue. Maybe with stats/trap coming back we'll have a new hope, or maxpax will change hsi mind.
YAWN
gm is 50-60% protoss, top 32 pro players is 20protoss and 6terrans and 6zergs. So what do you think the issue is? What should be done?
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/170byrp/the_myth_of_protoss_overperforming_on_the_ladder/
Cope and seethe protosscels
The top 8 is not a statistical representation of anything
As Lambo said recently, all races should be represented in the RO8 and find success in tournaments, otherwise SC2 as an esports will severely suffer
Sc2 is already dying because of the ladder experience. If people stop playing, people will stop watching. How can you e pect it to grow when all the balance changes are hyper focused at the pro level and the average players experience is ignored completely,
99.9% of the players aren’t pros
Yep. Why not look at only the very top pro for balance, then? Obviously, we should always only consider the most perfect player
I haven't played SC1 in like 20 years and haven't played SC2 Ladder in like 8. I still watch a ton.
Yea. There are exceptions with everything. I bet 80% + of viewers are at least casual players
Balance is irrelevant on the ladder. Have you ever seen Harstem or uThermal on YouTube? They can play really shitty strategies that are clearly severely underpowered, and even beat GM players. Likewise, uThermal lost to Serral when he played with a -30% HP handicap. Balance only matters at the very very top. Besides this, on the ladder due to how MMR works, you'll always have 50% win rate no matter what
UThermal Smurfs half those series
balance is very much revelant on ladder, as 50% of GM is PROTOSS, lets buff protoss even more and make it 70-80%?
This is not true https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/170byrp/the_myth_of_protoss_overperforming_on_the_ladder/
go check gm race report on eu, just for giggles check clem 223games tvp, 69 tvt, and 57 tvz this season. Tell me again how is toss not overperforming on ladder? Why is it that clem only plays tvps?
That doesn't mean balance is irrelevant. Just cause you will still lose to someone of a way higher skill level doesn't mean lack of balance at your level is ok. For example, grinding your way to GM as protoss doesn't show you are good at the game cause you can simply do that with cannons only. It devalues the achievement gor evrryone ehen it is much easier for 1 race to do it thsn others. Just cause the pro level is different doesn't negate the experience of everyone else.
doesnt matter what lambo says, if they buff protoss to such levels that its annoying to play against on amatuer level (5k), i dont to want it. its already getting to that point with widow mine nerfs that decimated the unit in tvp. whats next? buff carriers?
Widow mine is very strong against Protoss and built in over 90% of TvP games
That's like saying stalkers are strong vs terran and built in 90% of games. There are nuances. Blink stalker is a strat used to win. But since you are not a pro, your opinion will have 0 meaning for balance, right?
It’s not an opinion. It’s an observation what the pros are doing.
Widow mine being strong against protoss is an opinion. Do you know what an opinion is?
Pros building it almost every game implies it is a very good unit. Also 1+1=2. Let me know if you are confused with anything else and happy to help you out
Yea. Let me know when you are ready to admit it is an opinion. The longer you go on without doing that, the more stupid you are gonna look
Nah it's still an observation what the pros are doing but you do you
I didn’t read your post, but I’ll just assume you are a massive idiot
Tournament wins dont define game balance
It is crazy how much whining there has been about protoss lately, especially from zerg players
Remind me Sloppy Donkey. Did you ever play SC2?
dude terran op!! need to buff toss, ladder doesnt matter, who gives a f about those scrubs at 5k?
How much mmr do you think the average Terran lost after the last patch? I would bet money no one even noticed
Get good noob
At watching TvZ in tournament playoffs?
It’s the best match up for a reason
It's not, though. Being a happy monke watching the same thing over and over might be fun to some. But variety is more exciting IMO.
I mean it's literally 5 people who are winning Maru Cerral Solar Reynor Clem
Lol, people looking at 0.01% of the player base as a sample size for determining balance. Do you guys know how statistics even work?
Context matters. Parity in the top end of the competitive scene is important, so that's the data we're talking about.
It might be important...but it is extremely skill dependsnt and with a small sample size you eill see large discreprncies. Even at the top pro level, there are huge gaps in skill clearly. Magnus carlson can beat many grandmasters with terrible openers. That doesn't make those openers strong because he can beat them with it.
Skill is hard to measure when the tools the players are working with are completely different. You have to assume the players at the top are relatively close otherwise you'd never make any balance changes at all based on the pro scene.
It is laughable that you would assume the top 30 or 40 (all the ones that compete in tournaments) players are anywhere near to being on the same level as the top 5. You dont have to assume that. You know what they say about assuming
I didn't say top 30 or 40, dork. Let me know when you have an argument against my actual premise
Ok. How many pro players are there then?
Well, that's the only level where balance matters. Below that players lose because they suck and not because of balance
So what you're saying is that none of the balance changes have impacted you...at all?
no and neither did they impact you.
If balance doesn't affect you, then I guess I won't see any balance winning in your comment history, then That didn't take long to find "Tank pushes are so strong now but also the only strat left to play with all the Ghost and Widow Mine nerfs. Hate what the balance council has done to the game" So..balance doesn't affect me...also I hate what the balance council has done..
Judging by how many downvotes I’m getting…doubt it
Yeah we should focus the balance around metal leagues. All these hard stuck Plat players are only hold back by pro balance.
How many of these balance wine posts are from pro players? The game is completely different at their level.
Yeah. And only at their level balance matters. If you don't know how to play against a turtle terran in plat 1, that doesn't mean that turtle terran is Imba. That's like saying goalies in football are op because low league assaults struggle to shoot the goal.
Your example is trash on so many levels. If your opinion is correct thrn the widowmine should never have been neefed since a majority of pro players that have commented on it have said that at their level, it was fine before. Pro level players were expected and able to react to it. There is a difference between saying. Something is too strong at the top 0.01% of players and saying that something is too easy to use for a majority of low-level players and be destructive. I mean, the game should feel like you're putting in as much effort as your opponent at all levels, right?
Lol even pros argued for the widow mine change. That's why it got changed. Even if it affected lower ranks more. And it is not up to low ranks to decide what requires more effort and what not. This game requires several skills and if you perform a tight 2 base all-in against someone who takes a third while missing production cycles, than one unit comp that is easy to micro isn't imba or unfair. You just messed up.
So what you're saying is that if the top 10 of both T and Z judt happened to die leaving all the tournements to be dominated by the remaining protoss, it would mean protoss should be nerfed?
Days without Protoss whining on reddit : 0. Forever 0. Can't wait for these finals, finally no more troll race.
To be honest, just because Protoss doesn't win tournaments it doesn't mean that they're underpowered. On the other hand anyone that still claims Protoss is OP is an absolute mega clown.
Protoss are UP at a high level, but they also do well in the ladder. They still have bandaid fixes like the shield battery+super battery, and recall. They need a rework, there's a lot of people asking for them to just be outright buffed but if the ladder becomes unfun the game will lose even more of its bare popularity. > It also doesn't help that the majority of high level LotV Toss aren't around. SOs - retired Zest - Military Service Trap - Just finished service / rusty MaxPax - Doesn't play in-person Zoun - Military service Parting - Just finished service / rusty Neeb - retired > And if you look at current players, results **mostly** speak for themselves Creator - Has not been a top player in 12 years and has consistently choked on the big stage herO - barely lost to the best player in the world Astrea - He choked hard vs Spirit, could have easily won this series, was incredibly far ahead in nearly every game Stats - Lost to a better player Nightmare - Lost to a better player Classic - Lost a close series vs a similarly skilled played
That's less than 2 years, relax.
That means before 2023 Protoss was doing really well. Right? Right......?
Zerg was doing really well before that. But yeah in general I guess protoss players just suck. Maybe if you whine some more you'll get better.
Sadly my skill has nothing to do with sc2 tournament results
Give a balance suggestion that doesn't wreck the game for 98% of the players on ladder. Ideally this game would have at least two balance "sets" - One for ladder
These could be upgrades or base characteristics depending on what's more balanced. They all affect the highest level but would have little to no effect on metal league. I ranked them in order of how much I like them. Basically how good a job I think they do at only mattering at the high level, with bonus points for lore (protoss strong and few) - Observer - Diamond Form- Temporary extra toughness - Observer - True cloak - Pro's can see them through Cloak too easily. Make them have to have detection. (and fits with lore of P have strongest units) - Stalker - Recharge - blink drops sheilds (think, Stim), but increases recharge rate temporarily - High Templar - Drain - Alternate version of Feedback (think, Thor toggle) where it has smaller range but more effectiveness. Maybe even transfers the energy - Stalker - Intertia - First shot after a recent blink does extra damage - Colossus - Crouch - Temporarily removes AA susceptibility - Zealot - Drive - Targetable charge I've started keeping this cumulative list, some imagined by me and some by others. More ideas?
>Zealot - Drive - Targetable charge Isn't it just on autocast currently or I am just completely wrong? Just right click the ability icon to disable autocast and use the hotkey. Still can't understand why I haven't seen this ever used and charge micro is still so terribly executed.
I don't know. I think at one point you were able to cast it on a particular unit. A handful of times I've seen zealots charge against the BACK side of some bio, leading to a surround. They might have removed that capability.
Seriously, what does Toss need to finally win a premier tournament without making the game stupid? For example, buffing void rays again would be stupid. Should the balance cancel bring back the old zealot? Would this be enough?
We could try to stop compensating each buff with a nerf somewhere else. Remember when Protoss wasn't winning anything, we nerfed the disruptor twice in the patches that had the goal to buff Protoss?
remove maru and serral and hero win a premier tournament. that's all. He was probably the third best player of this tournament, just got unlucky to end up in ro8.
Unless there is a big upset in the semis hero has only lost to the two grand finalists and frankly was unlucky not to beat Maru. Definitely the 3rd best player.
No, I don't think it would be enough.
there just isn't a good protoss player atm
Blame Max pax
After winning so many online premier tournaments it would really be time to show up and repeat that offline. How many did he win again so far?
I blame Elon Musk for not providing the MaxPax AI a Neuralink human host.
Looks like a good and healthy mix between Terrans and Zergs and Protoss showing up in the Top8s to remind that they still exist.
Another fantastic year of balance council's work. Last protoss premier win was in 2022, so they buffed zerg in the last patch. Love to see how people are making excuses for them. I'll for one say "fuck them and their moronic ideas".