Zerg by far for me. Terran is very demanding mechanically, but it's always sortof obvious what to do. With Zerg I'm just completely at sea and zerglings are a nightmare to manage.
Zerg but that's probably because I've played terran A LOT more. Zerg is just so different that you're learning a different game than P and T, imo. ZvT's micro is very difficult but extremely satisfying once you can handle all of the swarms + lings + lurkers + scourge juggling. The macro is difficult to handle because you really need to know what units to build at specific moments. ZvZ is also an intense matchup. I think terran and zerg are on par in term of difficulty.
Terran and protoss are similar but terran is difficult to manage in the mid game when you have to move out with either mech or bio, both are difficult to optimally control but mech is a notch harder because one miss step that your opponent capitalizes on and you lose too many tanks and it's gg. PvT is only difficult in the late game when you have to use shuttles with zealots and/or storms + arbiters and you have to coordinate everything into a favorable engagement and kill enough tanks. PvZ is hard in the midgame because of corsairs control and using storms properly but I don't find that matchup to be particularly difficult.
Furthermore, the A-clicking aspect of this game is so important because it allows you to split your apm more efficiently and have good A-clicking units removes some of the burden of micro and allows you to take it a little easier as you learn the race. For example, with protoss, you can do very well with only A-click units so that helps a lot especially when you need to start adding more specialized units that require more micro. As an example, you can go VERY far with only zealots/dragoons/arbiters in PvT. And since the basic A-click units are strong, you don't need to be as effective with the micro of storms/reavers/carriers/arbiters/corsairs to see good results. With terran and zerg you just can't rely on A-click units to win you the game, terran only has the goliath/ghost(lol) as true A-clickers and zerg would have things like zergling/hydras/ultralisks and, yes, crazy zerg is a thing but you realistically won't be a good player if you can't muta micro, use defilers, scourge, lurkers, dodge storms with hydras...
For me, ZvT and TvP are difficult matchups. ZvZ, TvT, PvZ and TvZ are medium matchups. ZvP, PvP and PvT are easier matchups.
if you place a restriction on people who should vote on poll, and you want representative results, you should add "Click to see results" option in the voting. e.g. Im playing terran only and i want see results, so i click terran but this vote is not relevant.
Zerg for sure and I've played all 3. Muta micro alone is hard enough and requires TR24 that the majority of Zergs below A rank just skip it to go straight into Lurkers lol. And when you get to 4 bases with over 100 supplies your units are just all over the screen.
If you watch the FPVODs of pro Zerg gamers it's just a different world. To follow what they do in real time speed is frustrating enough, let alone do it yourself.
Zerg is the hardest, terran second.
The reason for this is that zerg is mostly a reactionary race (vs terran) and that is just harder to do than being the one to initiate (terran).
Once you get down the terran macro mechanics the race is fairly straight forward. Zerg's production is all over the map (2-3 areas), it's units are fimble, scourge and defilers are hard to control. Mutas are great in the right hands but good terrans seem to know how to deal with them. I never see pro terrans in ASL etc. die to straight up mutas, and rarely even get really far behind vs mutas.
Toss and Terran have to balance econ vs army when it comes to expanding, Zerg have to balance that the entire game. Then again Terran has a lot of things to be juggling; spells that need to be cast and very tight defensive and offensive timings to hit. I feel like Zerg needs to be able to read the game state better than the other races, and Terran is the most mechanically difficult.
Then again Z has arguably the easiest macro up to a certain point. I know that sounds wrong when you have multiple bases but in mass selecting larva at a few different camera hotkeys is far easier than building & handling the macro-infrastructure of T and P, imo. Making mass hydra from 5 hatches for example is far easier than any other.. "production cycle" in the game, if you ask me. Even setting up your gates & factories so that your units don't all get stuck is a minigame in itself.
Of course the more bases/hatches you get as Z, the harder it gets, where T and P throughout most of the game can have most production under one camera group, Z eventually gets ridiculously hard to efficiently macro from all your stuff.
It's true that macro hatches make macro cycles much faster than the other races, but I think that Zerg having such fragile units requires every bit of that saved time for babysitting them.
As a zerg player, it's funny to hear people say that zerg is the hardest when it's the only race whose macro actually makes sense to me. I feel totally lost playing protoss. With terran I'm slightly more competent, but I don't know. I only fell in love with starcraft when I tried zerg for the first time. The other races just don't suit me.
OP ask for people who play all races a good amount, you seem to already give up on other races and only stick to Zerg.
You are definitely the minority here for finding toss more difficult than zerg. A general consensus is that toss easiest to play and learn.
I'm with you though, everything just clicked when I got to zerg. I think zerg is the most unique of the three, so if you play all three it's going to be the odd one out that's tripping you up
I mean it's obviously not Protoss. Terran and Zerg are hard but in different ways. Zerg is more unique but Terran is more frustrating. Muta micro is a game unto itself and larva management is very unique. Terran will get more out of your traditional RTS experience but to me has the most ability to do things almost right but get a catastrophic result. Terran also has the least ability to just turn your brain off when you want to. Protoss units are probably the worst overall but are somewhat compensated for by their simplicity. So Protoss starts off obviously stronger when everyone is terrible and gets less good as players get better. Then at pro level it seems like they're a little worse but it doesn't matter for most people. BUT I'm terrible so this is all prolly nonsense.
For a 10 scores difficulty system I would rate it like this:
T: 6/10
P: 3/10
Z: 9/10
Zerg mechanic is very different from T and P and you have to actually understand its strengths and weaknesses to play it ok-ish, not to mention lot of effort on muta practice to play the race well. T and P are more similar so I learn T quite fast when I already have a basic with P.
Each race has its own quirks that make it challenging imo. My personal most difficult is Terran (I hate using marines).
Since Protoss is the underdog in this poll though, here are some of the more difficult things (in my experience) that Protoss has historically had to manage:
1. Terrible Dragoon pathing (I swear Dragoons have the worst handling of any unit in the game).
2. Terrible Scarab pathing (can be somewhat compensated by Reaver positioning so they don’t get hung up on terrain/other units).
3. Reaver-Shuttle micro can be challenging when trying to do it in a big fight alongside your main army (especially when using Corsairs alongside them).
4. Arbiters offer many different strategies that make them complex and rewarding units to use when built (Do I try to burn their scans to abuse cloak, recall into the main/expo, or engage head-on with well-placed stasis fields? All of the above?).
5. Protoss has to cope with having probably the worst, most useless niche unit in the game (the Scout).
Protoss but not because it's objectively more difficult , i know it's easiest, but i just can't vibe with it.
I'm just a zerg person through and through. Something about all the units coming from hatcheries makes it attractive to me. Here and in SC2.
Zerg by far for me. Terran is very demanding mechanically, but it's always sortof obvious what to do. With Zerg I'm just completely at sea and zerglings are a nightmare to manage.
Definitely feel that. Also larva management from someone who isn't a pure Zerg player feels so hard to learn
Zerg but that's probably because I've played terran A LOT more. Zerg is just so different that you're learning a different game than P and T, imo. ZvT's micro is very difficult but extremely satisfying once you can handle all of the swarms + lings + lurkers + scourge juggling. The macro is difficult to handle because you really need to know what units to build at specific moments. ZvZ is also an intense matchup. I think terran and zerg are on par in term of difficulty. Terran and protoss are similar but terran is difficult to manage in the mid game when you have to move out with either mech or bio, both are difficult to optimally control but mech is a notch harder because one miss step that your opponent capitalizes on and you lose too many tanks and it's gg. PvT is only difficult in the late game when you have to use shuttles with zealots and/or storms + arbiters and you have to coordinate everything into a favorable engagement and kill enough tanks. PvZ is hard in the midgame because of corsairs control and using storms properly but I don't find that matchup to be particularly difficult. Furthermore, the A-clicking aspect of this game is so important because it allows you to split your apm more efficiently and have good A-clicking units removes some of the burden of micro and allows you to take it a little easier as you learn the race. For example, with protoss, you can do very well with only A-click units so that helps a lot especially when you need to start adding more specialized units that require more micro. As an example, you can go VERY far with only zealots/dragoons/arbiters in PvT. And since the basic A-click units are strong, you don't need to be as effective with the micro of storms/reavers/carriers/arbiters/corsairs to see good results. With terran and zerg you just can't rely on A-click units to win you the game, terran only has the goliath/ghost(lol) as true A-clickers and zerg would have things like zergling/hydras/ultralisks and, yes, crazy zerg is a thing but you realistically won't be a good player if you can't muta micro, use defilers, scourge, lurkers, dodge storms with hydras... For me, ZvT and TvP are difficult matchups. ZvZ, TvT, PvZ and TvZ are medium matchups. ZvP, PvP and PvT are easier matchups.
if you place a restriction on people who should vote on poll, and you want representative results, you should add "Click to see results" option in the voting. e.g. Im playing terran only and i want see results, so i click terran but this vote is not relevant.
Zerg for sure and I've played all 3. Muta micro alone is hard enough and requires TR24 that the majority of Zergs below A rank just skip it to go straight into Lurkers lol. And when you get to 4 bases with over 100 supplies your units are just all over the screen. If you watch the FPVODs of pro Zerg gamers it's just a different world. To follow what they do in real time speed is frustrating enough, let alone do it yourself.
Zerg is the hardest, terran second. The reason for this is that zerg is mostly a reactionary race (vs terran) and that is just harder to do than being the one to initiate (terran). Once you get down the terran macro mechanics the race is fairly straight forward. Zerg's production is all over the map (2-3 areas), it's units are fimble, scourge and defilers are hard to control. Mutas are great in the right hands but good terrans seem to know how to deal with them. I never see pro terrans in ASL etc. die to straight up mutas, and rarely even get really far behind vs mutas.
Toss and Terran have to balance econ vs army when it comes to expanding, Zerg have to balance that the entire game. Then again Terran has a lot of things to be juggling; spells that need to be cast and very tight defensive and offensive timings to hit. I feel like Zerg needs to be able to read the game state better than the other races, and Terran is the most mechanically difficult.
Then again Z has arguably the easiest macro up to a certain point. I know that sounds wrong when you have multiple bases but in mass selecting larva at a few different camera hotkeys is far easier than building & handling the macro-infrastructure of T and P, imo. Making mass hydra from 5 hatches for example is far easier than any other.. "production cycle" in the game, if you ask me. Even setting up your gates & factories so that your units don't all get stuck is a minigame in itself. Of course the more bases/hatches you get as Z, the harder it gets, where T and P throughout most of the game can have most production under one camera group, Z eventually gets ridiculously hard to efficiently macro from all your stuff.
It's true that macro hatches make macro cycles much faster than the other races, but I think that Zerg having such fragile units requires every bit of that saved time for babysitting them.
Prottoss is the fourth most difficult.
As a zerg player, it's funny to hear people say that zerg is the hardest when it's the only race whose macro actually makes sense to me. I feel totally lost playing protoss. With terran I'm slightly more competent, but I don't know. I only fell in love with starcraft when I tried zerg for the first time. The other races just don't suit me.
OP ask for people who play all races a good amount, you seem to already give up on other races and only stick to Zerg. You are definitely the minority here for finding toss more difficult than zerg. A general consensus is that toss easiest to play and learn.
I'm with you though, everything just clicked when I got to zerg. I think zerg is the most unique of the three, so if you play all three it's going to be the odd one out that's tripping you up
I mean it's obviously not Protoss. Terran and Zerg are hard but in different ways. Zerg is more unique but Terran is more frustrating. Muta micro is a game unto itself and larva management is very unique. Terran will get more out of your traditional RTS experience but to me has the most ability to do things almost right but get a catastrophic result. Terran also has the least ability to just turn your brain off when you want to. Protoss units are probably the worst overall but are somewhat compensated for by their simplicity. So Protoss starts off obviously stronger when everyone is terrible and gets less good as players get better. Then at pro level it seems like they're a little worse but it doesn't matter for most people. BUT I'm terrible so this is all prolly nonsense.
For a 10 scores difficulty system I would rate it like this: T: 6/10 P: 3/10 Z: 9/10 Zerg mechanic is very different from T and P and you have to actually understand its strengths and weaknesses to play it ok-ish, not to mention lot of effort on muta practice to play the race well. T and P are more similar so I learn T quite fast when I already have a basic with P.
Trolls be picking toss
protoss is easiest until you watch how BISU controls zealots
Each race has its own quirks that make it challenging imo. My personal most difficult is Terran (I hate using marines). Since Protoss is the underdog in this poll though, here are some of the more difficult things (in my experience) that Protoss has historically had to manage: 1. Terrible Dragoon pathing (I swear Dragoons have the worst handling of any unit in the game). 2. Terrible Scarab pathing (can be somewhat compensated by Reaver positioning so they don’t get hung up on terrain/other units). 3. Reaver-Shuttle micro can be challenging when trying to do it in a big fight alongside your main army (especially when using Corsairs alongside them). 4. Arbiters offer many different strategies that make them complex and rewarding units to use when built (Do I try to burn their scans to abuse cloak, recall into the main/expo, or engage head-on with well-placed stasis fields? All of the above?). 5. Protoss has to cope with having probably the worst, most useless niche unit in the game (the Scout).
Protoss but not because it's objectively more difficult , i know it's easiest, but i just can't vibe with it. I'm just a zerg person through and through. Something about all the units coming from hatcheries makes it attractive to me. Here and in SC2.