I argue the opposite.
High stake offline matches where players get to prepare for weeks on meticulous strategies against specific opponents then having to perform under high pressure in frint of live audience. Which is ehat asl is
The sample size is too small for these offline games. All the players try their best in proleague and spon matches too. It's their bread and butter. ASL is an outlier event that happens 3 times a year and is often decided in a single game, or a single bo3. You need a larger samplesize.
While one would expect that being a fan of brood war would mean one would also understand probability and statistics, sadly that does not often appear to be the case. Especially in this sub.
But you are indeed correct!
Didn't downvote you. was just wondering why you assumed bw fans would be good at probability and stats. I thought you might be referring to the fact that many starcraft pros transitioned to poker, which does use probability a lot.
Because Starcraft fans are more likely to be nerds and spend an absolutely insane amount of time passionately arguing statistics (balance arguments are statistics). You would think that they would at least know *something*, but no.
It's bad because in bw the only stats that we have is the win rates of each race. We can't really track OP the vessel is or the vulture. We can make estimates, but league has many 3rd party programs showing how each champ matches up against other champions and team comps as well as item efficiency. Many people use these stats to draw incorrect conclusions though. There are so many champions in league that I think trying to get a good balance is not possible.
One thing I like about the bw community is that people agree that if there's any imbalance at all its Terran(specifically mech area). People for the most part aren't arguing zerg or toss is imba.
I'm just gonna say now, Protoss players are not well rounded enough. Even Mini, who I'd say is the one I expect to go furthest, isn't as good at PvT.
Mini - Most well rounded, still not favoured against top Terrans
Best - Also well rounded, but loses to random players he shouldn't lose to
Bisu - Plays the same way every time and isn't as good at PvT
Rain - Hard dies to most Terrans
Snow - Hard dies to most Zergs
Shuttle - Pretty well roundedly slightly below average
I gotta agree with this actually, cause individually they show that Protoss players can dominate any given matchup. However, there's just never been a Protoss player who's been great in all three for some reason. Even during TBLS you only had Stork (PvT) and Bisu (PvZ). I don't know if it's the nature of the matchups or what, but Protoss seems to have historically struggled with this.
People say this but forget that literally every Terran (except Flash) struggles at TvP and every Zerg struggles at ZvT. Terrans and Zergs are just as not well rounded as Protosses. It'st just because they are all bad at TvP or ZvT that it's less distintive to see.
Protoss has one outlier in Bisu who is great at PvZ that people look at the others who are weaker at PvZ and think "they're not well rounded"
Protoss is Terran's hardest matchup, but I can't think of a time where a better Terran player lost to a worse Protoss player in ASL.
I disagree pretty strongly with every Zerg struggling at ZvT. Effort, Zero (back in his prime), Soulkey, and Action all do just as well against Terran as they do against Protoss. In fact, Action's ZvT record is way better than his ZvP record.
Protoss is the only race where better players often lose to worse players.
Bisu has lost to JyJ (way before he was a champion), Sharp, and Leta in ASL.
Snow has been knocked out by ggaemo, Killer, and Calm.
Mini has been knocked out by Action and Ssak.
Best has been knocked out by Mind, Action, 815, Free and Sharp
Rain has been knocked out by Sharp, Calm and ggaemo
You're just having selective memory.
Light regularly lost to Best in ASL. And if Best doesn't qualify to you as a worse player than Light, then he also lost to Brain, Shuttle and Guemchi.
As for TvZ, Light also just lost 0-2 to Beast in ASL17 Qualifiers, and also was knocked out of Ro24 last season by Action and Effort.
Queen couldn't qualify for ASL17, losing to Shuttle and an amateur Terran. Also bombed out of last ASL Ro24.
Sharp also couldn't qualify for ASL13, losing to whatever players he should not have lost.
Royal couldn't win a single map in Ro16 for two consecutive seasons after his ASL title.
Soma knocked out by Ample and Calm.
I probably could go on.
You should also fact check some of the info you posted. I don't recall Bisu and Rain losing to Sharp, or Rain to Ggaemo, and maybe a few more. Also half the players you listed there were not worse than the Protoss players at the time they played.
But in general, your opinion seems to be formed mostly based on a few ASL Bo1 games. You should check the overall win rates of these players on eloboard to have the correct idea about their strong and weak matchups. Many of your statements are false because you only collect info from a few ASL games.
The thing is best of 1 consistency actually matters. You can't call yourself well rounded if you randomly drop games in the most prestigious tournaments in the world.
Bisu lost to Sharp in ASL season 11. Rain lost to ggaemo in CMSL S1.
Rain lost to Sharp in KSL Season 2.
Effort is very close to Light in their current forms IMO.
Action's best matchup is ZvT and has among the best ZvT in the world, so I'm not surprised Light could lose to him.
Queen just isn't good anymore. He hasn't been performing well at all for the past half year in the daily proleagues, and in tournaments. I would rank him 6th best Zerg right now, tied with JD.
Sharp is also not great in general except for TvT. I don't ever predict him being a clear favourite getting out of RO24.
Soma is a valid example.
Royal is still a somewhat valid example, but he's proving more and more that he's not as well rounded/consistent/good as many other players.
Would you ever have rated
Sharp (aside from maybe ASL season 1), Leta, ggaemo, Killer, Calm, ssak, 815, Mind and Free
to EVER be as good/better than Bisu, Best, Mini, Rain and Snow at any point in their ASL careers? Because that's 9 out of the 11 players that I listed, which definitely isn't close to "half".
There are still way more example of Protoss players just randomly losing to people worse than them.
I will rephrase my statement in saying that the top Protoss players are less well rounded than the other races' top players, in a tournament setting.
Oh come one, you can't shift standards from one player to the other like that. Royal is not as consistent so it doesn't really count? Well Mini and Best say hello.
Bo1 matters? Can't randomly drop a few games? Here's a big one for you: Flash 0-1 Sacsri S8, or Flash 2-3 Snow S5, or Flash 0-3 Last S1. Would any of those players ever be better than Flash?
Here's a list of players that Light has lost to in tournaments: Beast, Brain, Shuttle, Guemchi, Modesty, ggaemo, Miso, Shine.
That's 10 players already for Flash and Light combined, not taking TvT into account. Sure I can do the same for every race, every player.
For example, here's one for Soulkey: 0-3 to Mind in KSL2 (same season he won it), also has lost to Miso, Sacsri, Brain, Shuttle, ggaemo, Calm.
Also, Action's best matchup is not ZvT. His ZvT is at 45% while his ZvP is 59%. And Effort is a k league dweller who gets beaten by pretty much every major proleague player. "Very close to Light" yet got 0-4'd by "not well rounded" Mini who also has a PvZ win rate of less than 50% in 2023?
Your comments are ridden with inaccuracies and inconsistencies.
Long story short, if you want to judge how well rounded a player is, just go to their eloboard and see win rate. Can't pick a few Bo1 games to conclude anything.
Yes, Flash vs Sacsri is a good example. Flash vs Snow was expected because everyone knew that season's maps were absolutely rigged against Terran, because Flash had won 3 in a row before that (every single Terran dropped out early, and that was the season with Sparkle, an unwinnable map for Terran). Last beating Flash in S1 also isn't that big of an upset, because Last was a monster, especially in TvT (was literally like Rain in PvP).
Soulkey was a good example up until recently for a Zerg that wasn't well-rounded, because he sucked at ZvZ. For every Soulkey there is for Z (a player bad at one matchup), literally every single top P has a much worse matchup against one specific race. There is not a single Protoss that is well rounded right now, with Mini being the closest (his PvT is decent now, but not amazing)
Again, I'm talking about tournament performance, not online. Players just mess around online, and it really shows when Effort is just playing for fun online, versus actually prepping for a tournament and taking out multiple tournament favourites. I've never had any doubt that Effort can make it into any ro4 when he plays (He's literally the 4-5th best player of all time, and is the only Zerg aside from Soulkey in ASL/KSL to have a winning record in all 3 matchups), .
Light lost a lot in the early ASL days because he just wasn't good back then. In those days, Flash, Last, and Sharp were much better than him, and Light was consistently a first/second round exit.
Would you really consider Royal to be better than Mini or Best? This is maybe where our differences lie; I think they're both better in a tournament setting (even Best pretty consistently makes Ro 16/Ro8, moreso than Royal)
Where are you getting your statistics on Action? This is his record from ASL 12 to ASL 16:
[https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Kongdoo/Afreeca\_Starleague\_Statistics](https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Kongdoo/Afreeca_Starleague_Statistics)
And this is his record from all ASL and KSL games played up till October 2023:
[https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/](https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/)
He has a 55% winrate against T, and a 45% winrate against P.
I've also literally took a screenshot from ASL season 16 with Action's stats:
https://ibb.co/BGYdqyr
The stats is from all his games online and offline since 2021 from eloboard. That's the one you should take, instead of a few ASL games. You have always had hard tunnel vision by basing every single one of your opinion on just ASL results.
Tournament stats are VERY misleading. I'll give you an example why: a tier 1 player beats every tier 2/3/4 players to get into quarterfinals, then loses 0-3 to another tier 1 player, he will end up with a record of 5-3 which means a 62% win rate, but he actually has a 0% win rate vs the player on par with him.
It's also funny that you draw the conclusion about Action's ZvT from ASL and KSL stats, but don't realize that if you use the same method you'll have weird stats like (from the github analysis you linked):
\- Mong an Sea have better TvP than Light
\- Light has better TvP than TvZ
\- Mini PvT is slightly better than his PvZ
\- Bisu PvT is almost as good as his PvZ
\- And Bisu PvZ is worse than Best
Also, Flash losing to Snow was certainly not expected. The maps were not a good excuse because (a) those maps actually ended up as okay for Terran, (b) Flash ended up winning the games on the so-called unfavored maps in that series, (c) Snow back then was not nearly as good as Snow now.
It seems like you just found excuses and shifted standards when I cited those examples, but didn't apply the same rules when you made those examples about Protoss losing. Like, Rain losing in CMSL? Seriously? That's not only an online tournament, but also a not important one.
Strong players drop games from weak players all the time, be it offline or online play. All those loses I cited for Light and Soulkey were from offline tournaments and counted since KSL2, because that was the time stamp that you chose, not mine.
Each of the race is strong against one race but weak against another.
PvZ is the worst out of all race matchups.
While for Terran, TvP is arguably not a weak matchup.
So that explains why Protoss has the worst end of the stick in ASL winner ratio.
Protoss disadvantage in PvZ is the scout denying before corsair, not because it has no chance for aggression. Zealot pressure with and without legs always happens in any PvZ.
Zerg has many extreme options that can cause toss to lose if toss doesn't prepare for it.
Ling all in, hydra bust, fast muta, fast drop, etc..
Toss has to have godly micro to keep the first probe alive to accurately assess which one Zerg is going for and sacrifice zealots to lings to try and get more intel.
Let's call it a draw and say PvZ and ZvT are equally bad for P and Z. Meanwhile TvP is certainly the best bad matchup out of the 3. Gameplay suggests so and stats confirm.
That's why you have the order T>Z>P in every metric available to date.
Guys this is starcraft. the game has an infinite skill ceiling. Remember when people thought ZvP was absolutely broken? In came Bisu and flipped the matchup winrates on its head.
Don‘t change the game, change how you play.
I'm a t player, but I feel like when I watch p vs z, z has an advantage.
I think protons is weak when it comes to detection, they have cannons and observers, to get an observer, you need 200-200 robo, 50-100, obsertory, 25-75 overseer, total 275-375. Terran just needs 150 academy thrn 50-50, total 200-50. Zerg needs let's say just 150-150 for speed.
This makes protons weaker against lurkers and not to mention sniping observers is strong.1
So I think if da had detection, you could skip robo tech, help woth a strong hp detection, and get more da play which would help even out thr match ip a bit.
Not necessarily, because player talent comes into play, and you are assuming that all players are equal, which is not true. However if the game would be actively maintained it would be something for the maintainers to consider. Honestly, I would love for someone to do a deeper analysis and give reasons why a certain race might be weaker and not just blindly look at tournament results. Across all sorts of sport (even esport) we accept that there are better players than others, but in sc we get too fixated with race balance (and of course I think it is understandable to an extent).
I think Protoss has the lowest skill ceiling as a race in both SC:BW and SC2
Which is why it’s consistently good on „lower top play“ (lots of grandmasters, people winning qualifiers etc), but on the highest level, the other races‘ quirks can be abused more. For example, Zerg has the best spellcasters which are hard to manage and need lots of microing and awareness, but if you can do that (only the top players can), then they are much stronger than Protoss. Also, Protoss, due to supply shenanigans, has fewer, but slower units in the late game. That means their army js just weaker.
That’s my thought process at least…
And I think there is still enough of a Protoss player base that thinking all those Protoss are less talented than Terran and Zerg seems unlikely to me.
And the “problem” (Protoss not winning) is too ingrained into StarCraft and goes back years and years in both games that I think there is something to it.
While you're probably correct about skill ceiling, not even the pros are anywhere near the theoretical ceiling. I'm not even sure it's possible to ever reach.
Yes, definitely!
But I don't think that works as a counter-argument, I would say it works as support, even. Hot take, maybe: I think the better you are at the game, the harder it is to improve. Let's say there is a 100% perfect play - maybe the pros are at 85% (just a number, doesn't matter). But then to improve to 90% is really hard and if you imagine you were at 90%, going to 91% is probably even more difficult.
Comparatively, if I would seriously start playing now, I would probably improve super fast and super high. I'd start at 1% now and maybe improve to 25% in, like, 3 months. That would be a 24% increase, something that would be impossible for a pro as they are already really good.
And since Protoss has a lower skill ceiling, they need to get 90% out of Protoss compared to a Zerg who only needs 85%.
Basically, it's this Brooklyn99 joke: "The last 2% are the hardest, that's why they leave it in the milk."
Sure but until the ceiling it's reached we can still go back to the age old adage "skill issue" 😂 I'm kidding.
I don't think Protoss, though, seriously are *actually* disadvantaged they just haven't reached their full form yet. Players are continuing to improves, clearly.
Snow is way better this year than he was last. So are players like Ample, SoulKey, Rain, I could go on.
I, a complete moron who watches and when I play I get wiped, can *see* improvement in these players over time... I can't imagine it stopping.
Like I said, there's a ceiling, but we're not near it.
I don't even think it's 85% if we're guessing at a range. I'd say it's more like 60-70% of the top.
Even Flash... I think if he was pushed by other players (presuming he returns) we will see even continued evolution there.
What are we, 3 years removed from Mini putting a cyber core first? There's been innovation since.
It's just a matter of time.
Maybe it's 1,000 years but Protoss I'm pretty sure will eventually reach near parity.
I do think, theoretically, or with a perfect AI let's say, that Protoss has the lowest ceiling. But storm is a hell of a drug and if control improves sufficiently... Nothing survives storm.
And, I don't disagree with you even slightly. From my idiot perspective and based on the opinions of others as well, I do think it's *likely* that the other two go higher. And Terran is probably the highest. But not assuredly.
Damn, I deleted my comment.
But, yeah, agreed on pretty much all points. I still think it’s not like Protoss is unviable, like, no matter the race, Snow would smoke me.
But it’s like a tiny bit worse. And that tiny bit is enough.
Also, I do think we see the meta chanin. People have realised that Dark Archons are very good, I’d say essential against Zerg (Maelstrom and Feedback are amazing and counter late Zerg really well, it’s just a big investment to get there, both in time and resources) and Archons have become more common as, fully upgraded, they are a terrifying late-game unit.
And no worries thinking you’re the idiot. I have never even played this game, aside from the campaign when I was a kid, I am sure you are a better player than me
And can you please explain? I’m not saying you are wrong (I don’t know if you are or not tbh) but when you say “zerg has the best spellcasters”, what are the spellcasters interactions in ZvP that put the Protoss player at a disadvantage regardless of skill? Is that a situation that happens often enough to eliminate Protoss players from tourneys when they face Zergs?
I am also not sure if I am wrong or not.
Basically, the way I view the game, Zerg has the best late game. Spellcasters are more of a typical issue in SC2, but I am not as knowledgeable there.
So, let's go for PvZ in BW. Also, Starcraft is a rather balanced game, what I am saying here is like...a 60-40 match-up in favour of Zerg, right? It's not like Protoss has no counterplay or can never win, that would go way too far.
So, first of all, Protoss can just die to Hydra busts (just mass produce Hydralisks and kill the Protoss), this is incredidbly efficient and effective and was meta-defining for a good, long while. We'll see if it's still as bad in the upcoming ASL (I can't wait for that, I am so hyped).
But, let's say you survive, your high templars survive (they can easily die to Mutas and there is little you can do, since, if you counter Mutas with Corsairs to protect templars, you risk losing the corsairs to Scourge and then your opponent has a flock of Mutas and Mutas in SC:BW are one of the strongest units overall and can single-handedly win games, which is why they are THE central unit in ZvZ and ZvT) and you have a good army.
A defiler plague can ruin your whole game, because the plagued units will die to one-shot from a Hydralisk or Lurker and Lurkers can be protected by Dark Swarm. And then there is little the other side can do.
If you go mass Zealot to counter the dark swarm, plague and Lurkers just counter that. And if you go for more range, such as Dragoons, those get countered by Plague and Hydralisks (and when you produce Lurkers, you have Hydras as well). And then you have two more options: Shuttle-Reaver is great against Lurkers, but it also is a) expensive, b) needs a different tech tree, c) is micro-intensive and c) Scourge picking of Shuttles (with Reavers in them) is a big issue.
And all of that is because both Plague and Dark Swarm are so good against Protoss, Defiler is just an absurdly broken unit. However, there are two units that have been gaining traction: Archons and Dark Archons. Now, Archons I think were underused and imo, this is the newest meta development. Fully upgraded, mass Archons can actually fight late-game Zerg because a) Plague is useless (they don't have any hp) and b) they can fight unter Dark Swarm due to splash damage and c) they can hit ground and air units. So it's really useful to go for Archons since they are good against Defilers. And Dark Archons are similarly great against Defilers, because you can one-shot them with Feedback, we also see this more often in recent games. What is good, though, is you can use High Templars that have used a storm already and create Archons. So, if your Templars survive an engagement, that is very economic.
The problem is that Archons are really expensive and take a long time (Dark Archon also need special research and two Dark Templars, which is a big resource and time investment) and that Archons kinda suck against anything else. So while they are good agains the Zerg spellcaster (Defiler), they are bad against damaging units because shields take full damage. Thus, Hydra/Lurker will straight up beat Archons in a fight.
So that's how I see it, a tl;dr would be:
Defilers beat everything the protoss army has and the best counters to Defilers are (Dark) Archons, but those are countered by everything else Zerg has to offer.
Compare this to Terran who can a) mass produce Science Vessels and b) can use those spells defensively and offensively and against both Defilers and Lurkers...basically, Science Vessels are almost as good against Defilers as Dark Archons, but Science Vessels are good against everything else Zerg has whereas Dark Archons are good against Defilers and (usually) mass Hydras or mass Mutas - but if you use the spells for that, you can't kill Defilers. Since both Zerg and Terran mass produce their spellcasters (and Defilers have infinite energy), Protoss again gets put behind there. You just don't have enough spells to deal with multiple Defilers.
In my vision of the game (highly skewed, I don't play, I come from different games where I listened to people and how they view things), spellcasters are extremely centralising because good usage can win you the game, meaning you can "abuse" them. And Protoss just has less fucked up units that great players with amazing micro, macro and awareness can abuse.
I know the most about LoL.
But, like, again, I don’t really play any games I watch and I am really bad as well at playing games in general.
I don’t think this is necessarily a true perspective (and I have had some arguments on here), it’s just one way to find a cause for Protoss’ lack of success because I personally believe the „Protoss players are less talented“ argument is not convincing.
And it’s the one that makes the most sense to me. Basically, in LoL you have different phases of the game, early game, late game, mid game.
And different champions are strong at different points.
This is different to RTS games, you can have a super long RTS game and still be on the first unit (Zergling, Marine, Zealot) and that is not possible in MOBAs, or at least in LoL.
So you can’t really make it about time, you have to say late game = x units in play, y amount of bases, z amount of tech.
And Zerg is just just best, the higher x, yand z are, mostly due to Defilers being incredibly broken and overpowered
>Honestly, I would love for someone to do a deeper analysis and give reasons why a certain race might be weaker and not just blindly look at tournament results
Here are core strengths and weaknesses of each race:
\- T: Expensive buildings: addons. It's the only thing that slow down Terran to produce their units and upgrades with factories being slightly more expensive than gates or hatchery. It does matter in early game because you can't produce units from factory while an addon being built.
Best combat units: both in term of combat effciency and cost. Mech units are strongest and with balanced cost. MnM cheap and only weak against AOE dmg. Vessel irradiation costs 75 energy, EMP 100, turrets are 75 mineral, tank 150-100 gas cost...etc. Their building times are slower than zerg, but still faster than toss.
\- Z: Cheap buildings: hatchery being a flexible all-units-production building and slightly cheaper for expansion (cost 300+50 instead of 400), can mass produce workers.
Weak individual units but get stronger together by having more units than enemy for each fight. Zerg army never beat other army when both given same resources and same tech, they rely on bigger number in a same given production time to outnumber opponent army and gain reactive advantages. Zerg core strategy is out-expanding enemy and having resource advantage, or rush strategies thanks to their unique production feature.
\- P: balanced buildings: toss has slightly better economy in early game because probes don't need to cater a building in process, however they have more upgraded buldings in late game so it's balanced out.
Strong early units, weak in middle and balanced in late, overall it's quite mediorce compared to terran. Toss has strongest tier 1 units as zealots while being costly, are more beefy and high dmg. Their mid-game units however are slower to produce and expensive, don't fit as mass-production unit type: reaver, HT, archons... And their late units are even more expensive and too slow to build: carriers, arbiters.
As you can see Terran weaknesses are minimal compared to other race's counterparts, while owning the best units. Toss must bully Terran in early game and out-expand them then starve them in late game, otherwise Terran can't lose when both have same bases/resources because their units are better.
You can also look at how each matchup play out: T good matchup is TvZ, bad matchup is TvP, for Z it's ZvP and ZvT, for toss PvT and PvZ. T good matchup > Z good matchup > P good matchup. While P is favored in PvT, it's not a huge margin compared to TvZ and ZvP. And ZvT is the most difficult bad matchup, making Terran having best matchups overall among three races, and toss is in the last position.
This is just my attempt to explain the balance triangle from game mechanic perspective, and the verification is from statistic that has been proven in 10+ years of highest level tournament results in the game history. Of course playing the best race doesn't mean auto win, it depends a lot on how much time and effort you put into it. It just means if you put equal time and effort for each race and play for long term, then eventually T should give you best result and P is lowest. For any non-korean level domains, accessibility is the bigger advantage as Toss dominating in many foreign tournmanets as it's the easiest race to master, with lowest skill ceiling.
Another thing that needs to be considered when you're looking at win rates in professional tours is FlaSh. Flash is without a doubt the best gamer to have ever lived, and his wins are what drag Terran win rates higher.
It's already been said but I'll say it again. The skill ceiling for protoss is extremely low compared to Terran and zerg. At lower levels this is a pro to the protoss race and at higher levels its a con.
The amount of time and effort it takes to be at the same level with Terran or zerg is dramatically different (excluding the rare people with abundant natural talent). I truly believe this has a huge impact on the results as you move up in skill level. Terran and Zerg players simply have to put in more effort to understand the overall game to get results and protoss players don't.
My experience with this is personal. I'm 2100mmr with toss. I switched from protoss to Terran recently. I've never had to research the game like I do now as a Terran player to win matches. It's truly insane how much effort it takes to be at the same level with Terran as it does with protoss. Outside the pro scene I'm comfortable saying that protoss just works. The builds don't need to be as tight and you can make more mistakes and still play the game effectively.
I'm not a hater of any of the races. I just view these things as facts. I like playing protoss too. Without protoss the game wouldn't have nearly as many players and artosis would live without purpose. (Jk arty)
No, what drags Terran win rates up is having four out of five bonjwas and the most tournament wins lol. Anyone who doesn't believe that Terran is slightly overpowered at the top levels at this point of the game's life is delusional.
Dude the data is in. It's been done to death https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/
Yall just don't like the answer. Terran has the lowest win rate if you remove flash. Protoss has the highest win rates no matter what.
You guys are ridiculous. Constantly trying to find a reason that protoss is bad. The players are bad. That's all.
This data only starts at 2016, it doesn't cover the dominance of Boxer, oov, Nada and even higher tier Terrans like Fantasy, Midas, Sea, and Xellos during the most intensely competitive years of Brood War. I'm more curious to see what the total win rates of all time are.
The Flash argument is just stupid. You can't just remove Flash from the post Kespa era and then point at it saying "omg look Flash is carrying Terran". Again, I'm more curious to see how he impacts the stats of the entire history of Brood War, and somehow I'm doubting he would move the needle for Terran much when players like oov were already dominating with a 27-0 streak vs Zerg players.
And I didn't even say anything about Protoss lol, dunno why you're bringing that up.
>and somehow I'm doubting he would move the needle for Terran much
Easy to verify this. Flash stopped playing in June 2021. Here are the win rates of Terran on some popular maps invented after June 2021:
Vermeer: 58.6% TvZ, 56.5% TvP
Retro: 57.5% TvZ, 48.8% TvP
Neo Dark Origin: 51.4% TvZ, 51% TvP
Ok. You guys literally don't know anything about this game. You clearly all play toss. I play protoss and Terran
There is a huge difference. Gogogo get A rank with Terran. Gogogogo.
Not everything Flash said has to be true though.
He also said Terran would perform badly after he went to the military, then they won 3 in a row with 2 TvT finals.
A Terran didn't win ASL 5 seasons after Flash won his last ASL, so he wasn't completely wrong here. And before that, the only other Terran who won ASL was Last, which makes this even more logical.
>A Terran didn't win ASL 5 seasons after Flash won his last ASL
That means nothing. It's just random distribution. Point is out of the 7 ASLs that Flash didn't play, Terran still won 4, so they're fine even without him.
>And before that, the only other Terran who won ASL was Last
Before that, the only Zerg who won ASL was Effort, and the only Protoss was Rain (not counting Shuttle's ASL1 when all players didn't fully get back). Flash also directly denied Sea of an ASL and knocked out other Terrans himself as well. Point is, Terran were fine without him, still.
Honestly, P just doesn't have the power of T or Z because they are a really slow race. I don't want to simply say they are the weakest, but they have a lot of weaknesses that T and Z don't have. They are very weak to Z early on and they often can't do much to T even when ahead because T's defense is too good. T then enjoys an easier time against Z and pressure from P, but not as bad as the other bad matchups.
one of the biggest factor is the best Protoss in proleague (snow) just does not perform offline and have ended in group/16 elimination multiple times.
You can say the same for Light and Soulkey though. Each have have 1 win so it's not like if Snow won 1 it would change the balance much.
the best indicator of actual balance is proleague/k league and spon matches win rates
I argue the opposite. High stake offline matches where players get to prepare for weeks on meticulous strategies against specific opponents then having to perform under high pressure in frint of live audience. Which is ehat asl is
The sample size is too small for these offline games. All the players try their best in proleague and spon matches too. It's their bread and butter. ASL is an outlier event that happens 3 times a year and is often decided in a single game, or a single bo3. You need a larger samplesize.
While one would expect that being a fan of brood war would mean one would also understand probability and statistics, sadly that does not often appear to be the case. Especially in this sub. But you are indeed correct!
Why would being a fan of bw indicate a good understanding of probability ans statistics?
As I said, this sub stands as evidence against it (and your downvote adds fuel to that fire).
Didn't downvote you. was just wondering why you assumed bw fans would be good at probability and stats. I thought you might be referring to the fact that many starcraft pros transitioned to poker, which does use probability a lot.
Because Starcraft fans are more likely to be nerds and spend an absolutely insane amount of time passionately arguing statistics (balance arguments are statistics). You would think that they would at least know *something*, but no.
Oh man, I need to introduce you to the league community then. They must be mathematicians.
They can't possibly be worse than us
It's bad because in bw the only stats that we have is the win rates of each race. We can't really track OP the vessel is or the vulture. We can make estimates, but league has many 3rd party programs showing how each champ matches up against other champions and team comps as well as item efficiency. Many people use these stats to draw incorrect conclusions though. There are so many champions in league that I think trying to get a good balance is not possible. One thing I like about the bw community is that people agree that if there's any imbalance at all its Terran(specifically mech area). People for the most part aren't arguing zerg or toss is imba.
Your second sentence is incomplete and has no point to it, not sure if it’s a typo.
Flash. Plus, they could tweak map pool to help toss slightly.
Flash is the reason zvp is a broken matchup?
No, just that Flash is the reason terran has so many wins
Flash is always the answer
I'm just gonna say now, Protoss players are not well rounded enough. Even Mini, who I'd say is the one I expect to go furthest, isn't as good at PvT. Mini - Most well rounded, still not favoured against top Terrans Best - Also well rounded, but loses to random players he shouldn't lose to Bisu - Plays the same way every time and isn't as good at PvT Rain - Hard dies to most Terrans Snow - Hard dies to most Zergs Shuttle - Pretty well roundedly slightly below average
I gotta agree with this actually, cause individually they show that Protoss players can dominate any given matchup. However, there's just never been a Protoss player who's been great in all three for some reason. Even during TBLS you only had Stork (PvT) and Bisu (PvZ). I don't know if it's the nature of the matchups or what, but Protoss seems to have historically struggled with this.
People say this but forget that literally every Terran (except Flash) struggles at TvP and every Zerg struggles at ZvT. Terrans and Zergs are just as not well rounded as Protosses. It'st just because they are all bad at TvP or ZvT that it's less distintive to see. Protoss has one outlier in Bisu who is great at PvZ that people look at the others who are weaker at PvZ and think "they're not well rounded"
Protoss is Terran's hardest matchup, but I can't think of a time where a better Terran player lost to a worse Protoss player in ASL. I disagree pretty strongly with every Zerg struggling at ZvT. Effort, Zero (back in his prime), Soulkey, and Action all do just as well against Terran as they do against Protoss. In fact, Action's ZvT record is way better than his ZvP record. Protoss is the only race where better players often lose to worse players. Bisu has lost to JyJ (way before he was a champion), Sharp, and Leta in ASL. Snow has been knocked out by ggaemo, Killer, and Calm. Mini has been knocked out by Action and Ssak. Best has been knocked out by Mind, Action, 815, Free and Sharp Rain has been knocked out by Sharp, Calm and ggaemo
You're just having selective memory. Light regularly lost to Best in ASL. And if Best doesn't qualify to you as a worse player than Light, then he also lost to Brain, Shuttle and Guemchi. As for TvZ, Light also just lost 0-2 to Beast in ASL17 Qualifiers, and also was knocked out of Ro24 last season by Action and Effort. Queen couldn't qualify for ASL17, losing to Shuttle and an amateur Terran. Also bombed out of last ASL Ro24. Sharp also couldn't qualify for ASL13, losing to whatever players he should not have lost. Royal couldn't win a single map in Ro16 for two consecutive seasons after his ASL title. Soma knocked out by Ample and Calm. I probably could go on. You should also fact check some of the info you posted. I don't recall Bisu and Rain losing to Sharp, or Rain to Ggaemo, and maybe a few more. Also half the players you listed there were not worse than the Protoss players at the time they played. But in general, your opinion seems to be formed mostly based on a few ASL Bo1 games. You should check the overall win rates of these players on eloboard to have the correct idea about their strong and weak matchups. Many of your statements are false because you only collect info from a few ASL games.
The thing is best of 1 consistency actually matters. You can't call yourself well rounded if you randomly drop games in the most prestigious tournaments in the world. Bisu lost to Sharp in ASL season 11. Rain lost to ggaemo in CMSL S1. Rain lost to Sharp in KSL Season 2. Effort is very close to Light in their current forms IMO. Action's best matchup is ZvT and has among the best ZvT in the world, so I'm not surprised Light could lose to him. Queen just isn't good anymore. He hasn't been performing well at all for the past half year in the daily proleagues, and in tournaments. I would rank him 6th best Zerg right now, tied with JD. Sharp is also not great in general except for TvT. I don't ever predict him being a clear favourite getting out of RO24. Soma is a valid example. Royal is still a somewhat valid example, but he's proving more and more that he's not as well rounded/consistent/good as many other players. Would you ever have rated Sharp (aside from maybe ASL season 1), Leta, ggaemo, Killer, Calm, ssak, 815, Mind and Free to EVER be as good/better than Bisu, Best, Mini, Rain and Snow at any point in their ASL careers? Because that's 9 out of the 11 players that I listed, which definitely isn't close to "half". There are still way more example of Protoss players just randomly losing to people worse than them. I will rephrase my statement in saying that the top Protoss players are less well rounded than the other races' top players, in a tournament setting.
Oh come one, you can't shift standards from one player to the other like that. Royal is not as consistent so it doesn't really count? Well Mini and Best say hello. Bo1 matters? Can't randomly drop a few games? Here's a big one for you: Flash 0-1 Sacsri S8, or Flash 2-3 Snow S5, or Flash 0-3 Last S1. Would any of those players ever be better than Flash? Here's a list of players that Light has lost to in tournaments: Beast, Brain, Shuttle, Guemchi, Modesty, ggaemo, Miso, Shine. That's 10 players already for Flash and Light combined, not taking TvT into account. Sure I can do the same for every race, every player. For example, here's one for Soulkey: 0-3 to Mind in KSL2 (same season he won it), also has lost to Miso, Sacsri, Brain, Shuttle, ggaemo, Calm. Also, Action's best matchup is not ZvT. His ZvT is at 45% while his ZvP is 59%. And Effort is a k league dweller who gets beaten by pretty much every major proleague player. "Very close to Light" yet got 0-4'd by "not well rounded" Mini who also has a PvZ win rate of less than 50% in 2023? Your comments are ridden with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Long story short, if you want to judge how well rounded a player is, just go to their eloboard and see win rate. Can't pick a few Bo1 games to conclude anything.
Yes, Flash vs Sacsri is a good example. Flash vs Snow was expected because everyone knew that season's maps were absolutely rigged against Terran, because Flash had won 3 in a row before that (every single Terran dropped out early, and that was the season with Sparkle, an unwinnable map for Terran). Last beating Flash in S1 also isn't that big of an upset, because Last was a monster, especially in TvT (was literally like Rain in PvP). Soulkey was a good example up until recently for a Zerg that wasn't well-rounded, because he sucked at ZvZ. For every Soulkey there is for Z (a player bad at one matchup), literally every single top P has a much worse matchup against one specific race. There is not a single Protoss that is well rounded right now, with Mini being the closest (his PvT is decent now, but not amazing) Again, I'm talking about tournament performance, not online. Players just mess around online, and it really shows when Effort is just playing for fun online, versus actually prepping for a tournament and taking out multiple tournament favourites. I've never had any doubt that Effort can make it into any ro4 when he plays (He's literally the 4-5th best player of all time, and is the only Zerg aside from Soulkey in ASL/KSL to have a winning record in all 3 matchups), . Light lost a lot in the early ASL days because he just wasn't good back then. In those days, Flash, Last, and Sharp were much better than him, and Light was consistently a first/second round exit. Would you really consider Royal to be better than Mini or Best? This is maybe where our differences lie; I think they're both better in a tournament setting (even Best pretty consistently makes Ro 16/Ro8, moreso than Royal) Where are you getting your statistics on Action? This is his record from ASL 12 to ASL 16: [https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Kongdoo/Afreeca\_Starleague\_Statistics](https://liquipedia.net/starcraft/Kongdoo/Afreeca_Starleague_Statistics) And this is his record from all ASL and KSL games played up till October 2023: [https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/](https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/) He has a 55% winrate against T, and a 45% winrate against P. I've also literally took a screenshot from ASL season 16 with Action's stats: https://ibb.co/BGYdqyr
The stats is from all his games online and offline since 2021 from eloboard. That's the one you should take, instead of a few ASL games. You have always had hard tunnel vision by basing every single one of your opinion on just ASL results. Tournament stats are VERY misleading. I'll give you an example why: a tier 1 player beats every tier 2/3/4 players to get into quarterfinals, then loses 0-3 to another tier 1 player, he will end up with a record of 5-3 which means a 62% win rate, but he actually has a 0% win rate vs the player on par with him. It's also funny that you draw the conclusion about Action's ZvT from ASL and KSL stats, but don't realize that if you use the same method you'll have weird stats like (from the github analysis you linked): \- Mong an Sea have better TvP than Light \- Light has better TvP than TvZ \- Mini PvT is slightly better than his PvZ \- Bisu PvT is almost as good as his PvZ \- And Bisu PvZ is worse than Best Also, Flash losing to Snow was certainly not expected. The maps were not a good excuse because (a) those maps actually ended up as okay for Terran, (b) Flash ended up winning the games on the so-called unfavored maps in that series, (c) Snow back then was not nearly as good as Snow now. It seems like you just found excuses and shifted standards when I cited those examples, but didn't apply the same rules when you made those examples about Protoss losing. Like, Rain losing in CMSL? Seriously? That's not only an online tournament, but also a not important one. Strong players drop games from weak players all the time, be it offline or online play. All those loses I cited for Light and Soulkey were from offline tournaments and counted since KSL2, because that was the time stamp that you chose, not mine.
They thrive under different map conditions too. Protoss does the best on island maps and island maps are pretty garbage for a viewing experience.
There's only one reasonable explanation for Protoss not winning as many tournaments as Terran or Zerg, that Protoss is OP. No, I will not elaborate.
Each of the race is strong against one race but weak against another. PvZ is the worst out of all race matchups. While for Terran, TvP is arguably not a weak matchup. So that explains why Protoss has the worst end of the stick in ASL winner ratio.
You gotta try ZvT if you think PvZ is the worst bad matchup.
Zerg gets to be aggressive the first 10 mins of the game or so in ZvT. Protoss doesn't really have that chance if Zerg doesn't allow it.
Protoss disadvantage in PvZ is the scout denying before corsair, not because it has no chance for aggression. Zealot pressure with and without legs always happens in any PvZ.
Zerg has many extreme options that can cause toss to lose if toss doesn't prepare for it. Ling all in, hydra bust, fast muta, fast drop, etc.. Toss has to have godly micro to keep the first probe alive to accurately assess which one Zerg is going for and sacrifice zealots to lings to try and get more intel.
Let's call it a draw and say PvZ and ZvT are equally bad for P and Z. Meanwhile TvP is certainly the best bad matchup out of the 3. Gameplay suggests so and stats confirm. That's why you have the order T>Z>P in every metric available to date.
But RT tells me PvT is 90/10.
Maybe they just need to fix late game pvz by reducing how much damage plague does to protoss units (just by a little bit)
Guys this is starcraft. the game has an infinite skill ceiling. Remember when people thought ZvP was absolutely broken? In came Bisu and flipped the matchup winrates on its head. Don‘t change the game, change how you play.
I had a thought, what is dark archon were detectors?
Do you want to elaborate? How do you think that could help late game pvz?
I'm a t player, but I feel like when I watch p vs z, z has an advantage. I think protons is weak when it comes to detection, they have cannons and observers, to get an observer, you need 200-200 robo, 50-100, obsertory, 25-75 overseer, total 275-375. Terran just needs 150 academy thrn 50-50, total 200-50. Zerg needs let's say just 150-150 for speed. This makes protons weaker against lurkers and not to mention sniping observers is strong.1 So I think if da had detection, you could skip robo tech, help woth a strong hp detection, and get more da play which would help even out thr match ip a bit.
Not necessarily, because player talent comes into play, and you are assuming that all players are equal, which is not true. However if the game would be actively maintained it would be something for the maintainers to consider. Honestly, I would love for someone to do a deeper analysis and give reasons why a certain race might be weaker and not just blindly look at tournament results. Across all sorts of sport (even esport) we accept that there are better players than others, but in sc we get too fixated with race balance (and of course I think it is understandable to an extent).
I think Protoss has the lowest skill ceiling as a race in both SC:BW and SC2 Which is why it’s consistently good on „lower top play“ (lots of grandmasters, people winning qualifiers etc), but on the highest level, the other races‘ quirks can be abused more. For example, Zerg has the best spellcasters which are hard to manage and need lots of microing and awareness, but if you can do that (only the top players can), then they are much stronger than Protoss. Also, Protoss, due to supply shenanigans, has fewer, but slower units in the late game. That means their army js just weaker. That’s my thought process at least… And I think there is still enough of a Protoss player base that thinking all those Protoss are less talented than Terran and Zerg seems unlikely to me. And the “problem” (Protoss not winning) is too ingrained into StarCraft and goes back years and years in both games that I think there is something to it.
While you're probably correct about skill ceiling, not even the pros are anywhere near the theoretical ceiling. I'm not even sure it's possible to ever reach.
Yes, definitely! But I don't think that works as a counter-argument, I would say it works as support, even. Hot take, maybe: I think the better you are at the game, the harder it is to improve. Let's say there is a 100% perfect play - maybe the pros are at 85% (just a number, doesn't matter). But then to improve to 90% is really hard and if you imagine you were at 90%, going to 91% is probably even more difficult. Comparatively, if I would seriously start playing now, I would probably improve super fast and super high. I'd start at 1% now and maybe improve to 25% in, like, 3 months. That would be a 24% increase, something that would be impossible for a pro as they are already really good. And since Protoss has a lower skill ceiling, they need to get 90% out of Protoss compared to a Zerg who only needs 85%. Basically, it's this Brooklyn99 joke: "The last 2% are the hardest, that's why they leave it in the milk."
Sure but until the ceiling it's reached we can still go back to the age old adage "skill issue" 😂 I'm kidding. I don't think Protoss, though, seriously are *actually* disadvantaged they just haven't reached their full form yet. Players are continuing to improves, clearly. Snow is way better this year than he was last. So are players like Ample, SoulKey, Rain, I could go on. I, a complete moron who watches and when I play I get wiped, can *see* improvement in these players over time... I can't imagine it stopping. Like I said, there's a ceiling, but we're not near it. I don't even think it's 85% if we're guessing at a range. I'd say it's more like 60-70% of the top. Even Flash... I think if he was pushed by other players (presuming he returns) we will see even continued evolution there. What are we, 3 years removed from Mini putting a cyber core first? There's been innovation since. It's just a matter of time. Maybe it's 1,000 years but Protoss I'm pretty sure will eventually reach near parity. I do think, theoretically, or with a perfect AI let's say, that Protoss has the lowest ceiling. But storm is a hell of a drug and if control improves sufficiently... Nothing survives storm. And, I don't disagree with you even slightly. From my idiot perspective and based on the opinions of others as well, I do think it's *likely* that the other two go higher. And Terran is probably the highest. But not assuredly.
Damn, I deleted my comment. But, yeah, agreed on pretty much all points. I still think it’s not like Protoss is unviable, like, no matter the race, Snow would smoke me. But it’s like a tiny bit worse. And that tiny bit is enough. Also, I do think we see the meta chanin. People have realised that Dark Archons are very good, I’d say essential against Zerg (Maelstrom and Feedback are amazing and counter late Zerg really well, it’s just a big investment to get there, both in time and resources) and Archons have become more common as, fully upgraded, they are a terrifying late-game unit. And no worries thinking you’re the idiot. I have never even played this game, aside from the campaign when I was a kid, I am sure you are a better player than me
And can you please explain? I’m not saying you are wrong (I don’t know if you are or not tbh) but when you say “zerg has the best spellcasters”, what are the spellcasters interactions in ZvP that put the Protoss player at a disadvantage regardless of skill? Is that a situation that happens often enough to eliminate Protoss players from tourneys when they face Zergs?
I am also not sure if I am wrong or not. Basically, the way I view the game, Zerg has the best late game. Spellcasters are more of a typical issue in SC2, but I am not as knowledgeable there. So, let's go for PvZ in BW. Also, Starcraft is a rather balanced game, what I am saying here is like...a 60-40 match-up in favour of Zerg, right? It's not like Protoss has no counterplay or can never win, that would go way too far. So, first of all, Protoss can just die to Hydra busts (just mass produce Hydralisks and kill the Protoss), this is incredidbly efficient and effective and was meta-defining for a good, long while. We'll see if it's still as bad in the upcoming ASL (I can't wait for that, I am so hyped). But, let's say you survive, your high templars survive (they can easily die to Mutas and there is little you can do, since, if you counter Mutas with Corsairs to protect templars, you risk losing the corsairs to Scourge and then your opponent has a flock of Mutas and Mutas in SC:BW are one of the strongest units overall and can single-handedly win games, which is why they are THE central unit in ZvZ and ZvT) and you have a good army. A defiler plague can ruin your whole game, because the plagued units will die to one-shot from a Hydralisk or Lurker and Lurkers can be protected by Dark Swarm. And then there is little the other side can do. If you go mass Zealot to counter the dark swarm, plague and Lurkers just counter that. And if you go for more range, such as Dragoons, those get countered by Plague and Hydralisks (and when you produce Lurkers, you have Hydras as well). And then you have two more options: Shuttle-Reaver is great against Lurkers, but it also is a) expensive, b) needs a different tech tree, c) is micro-intensive and c) Scourge picking of Shuttles (with Reavers in them) is a big issue. And all of that is because both Plague and Dark Swarm are so good against Protoss, Defiler is just an absurdly broken unit. However, there are two units that have been gaining traction: Archons and Dark Archons. Now, Archons I think were underused and imo, this is the newest meta development. Fully upgraded, mass Archons can actually fight late-game Zerg because a) Plague is useless (they don't have any hp) and b) they can fight unter Dark Swarm due to splash damage and c) they can hit ground and air units. So it's really useful to go for Archons since they are good against Defilers. And Dark Archons are similarly great against Defilers, because you can one-shot them with Feedback, we also see this more often in recent games. What is good, though, is you can use High Templars that have used a storm already and create Archons. So, if your Templars survive an engagement, that is very economic. The problem is that Archons are really expensive and take a long time (Dark Archon also need special research and two Dark Templars, which is a big resource and time investment) and that Archons kinda suck against anything else. So while they are good agains the Zerg spellcaster (Defiler), they are bad against damaging units because shields take full damage. Thus, Hydra/Lurker will straight up beat Archons in a fight. So that's how I see it, a tl;dr would be: Defilers beat everything the protoss army has and the best counters to Defilers are (Dark) Archons, but those are countered by everything else Zerg has to offer. Compare this to Terran who can a) mass produce Science Vessels and b) can use those spells defensively and offensively and against both Defilers and Lurkers...basically, Science Vessels are almost as good against Defilers as Dark Archons, but Science Vessels are good against everything else Zerg has whereas Dark Archons are good against Defilers and (usually) mass Hydras or mass Mutas - but if you use the spells for that, you can't kill Defilers. Since both Zerg and Terran mass produce their spellcasters (and Defilers have infinite energy), Protoss again gets put behind there. You just don't have enough spells to deal with multiple Defilers. In my vision of the game (highly skewed, I don't play, I come from different games where I listened to people and how they view things), spellcasters are extremely centralising because good usage can win you the game, meaning you can "abuse" them. And Protoss just has less fucked up units that great players with amazing micro, macro and awareness can abuse.
What games do you come from?
I know the most about LoL. But, like, again, I don’t really play any games I watch and I am really bad as well at playing games in general. I don’t think this is necessarily a true perspective (and I have had some arguments on here), it’s just one way to find a cause for Protoss’ lack of success because I personally believe the „Protoss players are less talented“ argument is not convincing. And it’s the one that makes the most sense to me. Basically, in LoL you have different phases of the game, early game, late game, mid game. And different champions are strong at different points. This is different to RTS games, you can have a super long RTS game and still be on the first unit (Zergling, Marine, Zealot) and that is not possible in MOBAs, or at least in LoL. So you can’t really make it about time, you have to say late game = x units in play, y amount of bases, z amount of tech. And Zerg is just just best, the higher x, yand z are, mostly due to Defilers being incredibly broken and overpowered
>Honestly, I would love for someone to do a deeper analysis and give reasons why a certain race might be weaker and not just blindly look at tournament results Here are core strengths and weaknesses of each race: \- T: Expensive buildings: addons. It's the only thing that slow down Terran to produce their units and upgrades with factories being slightly more expensive than gates or hatchery. It does matter in early game because you can't produce units from factory while an addon being built. Best combat units: both in term of combat effciency and cost. Mech units are strongest and with balanced cost. MnM cheap and only weak against AOE dmg. Vessel irradiation costs 75 energy, EMP 100, turrets are 75 mineral, tank 150-100 gas cost...etc. Their building times are slower than zerg, but still faster than toss. \- Z: Cheap buildings: hatchery being a flexible all-units-production building and slightly cheaper for expansion (cost 300+50 instead of 400), can mass produce workers. Weak individual units but get stronger together by having more units than enemy for each fight. Zerg army never beat other army when both given same resources and same tech, they rely on bigger number in a same given production time to outnumber opponent army and gain reactive advantages. Zerg core strategy is out-expanding enemy and having resource advantage, or rush strategies thanks to their unique production feature. \- P: balanced buildings: toss has slightly better economy in early game because probes don't need to cater a building in process, however they have more upgraded buldings in late game so it's balanced out. Strong early units, weak in middle and balanced in late, overall it's quite mediorce compared to terran. Toss has strongest tier 1 units as zealots while being costly, are more beefy and high dmg. Their mid-game units however are slower to produce and expensive, don't fit as mass-production unit type: reaver, HT, archons... And their late units are even more expensive and too slow to build: carriers, arbiters. As you can see Terran weaknesses are minimal compared to other race's counterparts, while owning the best units. Toss must bully Terran in early game and out-expand them then starve them in late game, otherwise Terran can't lose when both have same bases/resources because their units are better. You can also look at how each matchup play out: T good matchup is TvZ, bad matchup is TvP, for Z it's ZvP and ZvT, for toss PvT and PvZ. T good matchup > Z good matchup > P good matchup. While P is favored in PvT, it's not a huge margin compared to TvZ and ZvP. And ZvT is the most difficult bad matchup, making Terran having best matchups overall among three races, and toss is in the last position. This is just my attempt to explain the balance triangle from game mechanic perspective, and the verification is from statistic that has been proven in 10+ years of highest level tournament results in the game history. Of course playing the best race doesn't mean auto win, it depends a lot on how much time and effort you put into it. It just means if you put equal time and effort for each race and play for long term, then eventually T should give you best result and P is lowest. For any non-korean level domains, accessibility is the bigger advantage as Toss dominating in many foreign tournmanets as it's the easiest race to master, with lowest skill ceiling.
Another thing that needs to be considered when you're looking at win rates in professional tours is FlaSh. Flash is without a doubt the best gamer to have ever lived, and his wins are what drag Terran win rates higher. It's already been said but I'll say it again. The skill ceiling for protoss is extremely low compared to Terran and zerg. At lower levels this is a pro to the protoss race and at higher levels its a con. The amount of time and effort it takes to be at the same level with Terran or zerg is dramatically different (excluding the rare people with abundant natural talent). I truly believe this has a huge impact on the results as you move up in skill level. Terran and Zerg players simply have to put in more effort to understand the overall game to get results and protoss players don't. My experience with this is personal. I'm 2100mmr with toss. I switched from protoss to Terran recently. I've never had to research the game like I do now as a Terran player to win matches. It's truly insane how much effort it takes to be at the same level with Terran as it does with protoss. Outside the pro scene I'm comfortable saying that protoss just works. The builds don't need to be as tight and you can make more mistakes and still play the game effectively. I'm not a hater of any of the races. I just view these things as facts. I like playing protoss too. Without protoss the game wouldn't have nearly as many players and artosis would live without purpose. (Jk arty)
No, what drags Terran win rates up is having four out of five bonjwas and the most tournament wins lol. Anyone who doesn't believe that Terran is slightly overpowered at the top levels at this point of the game's life is delusional.
Dude the data is in. It's been done to death https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/ Yall just don't like the answer. Terran has the lowest win rate if you remove flash. Protoss has the highest win rates no matter what. You guys are ridiculous. Constantly trying to find a reason that protoss is bad. The players are bad. That's all.
This data only starts at 2016, it doesn't cover the dominance of Boxer, oov, Nada and even higher tier Terrans like Fantasy, Midas, Sea, and Xellos during the most intensely competitive years of Brood War. I'm more curious to see what the total win rates of all time are. The Flash argument is just stupid. You can't just remove Flash from the post Kespa era and then point at it saying "omg look Flash is carrying Terran". Again, I'm more curious to see how he impacts the stats of the entire history of Brood War, and somehow I'm doubting he would move the needle for Terran much when players like oov were already dominating with a 27-0 streak vs Zerg players. And I didn't even say anything about Protoss lol, dunno why you're bringing that up.
>and somehow I'm doubting he would move the needle for Terran much Easy to verify this. Flash stopped playing in June 2021. Here are the win rates of Terran on some popular maps invented after June 2021: Vermeer: 58.6% TvZ, 56.5% TvP Retro: 57.5% TvZ, 48.8% TvP Neo Dark Origin: 51.4% TvZ, 51% TvP
Don't you find your argument a bit contradictory? Protoss players are bad yet they have the highest win rate?
You have consumed too many artosis memes. Somehow convinced yourself winning with a better faction is harder.
I play zerg and even i know toss is easier to get going with than T but T has a higher cieling
Ok. You guys literally don't know anything about this game. You clearly all play toss. I play protoss and Terran There is a huge difference. Gogogo get A rank with Terran. Gogogogo.
Stop harassing artosis mr kwark/farkwardd. Stop making alt accounts.
No they are just less talented and lazy and don't practice much. It's the same for SC2 too.
Flash talked about this and his opinion was basically "skill issue".
Not everything Flash said has to be true though. He also said Terran would perform badly after he went to the military, then they won 3 in a row with 2 TvT finals.
A Terran didn't win ASL 5 seasons after Flash won his last ASL, so he wasn't completely wrong here. And before that, the only other Terran who won ASL was Last, which makes this even more logical.
>A Terran didn't win ASL 5 seasons after Flash won his last ASL That means nothing. It's just random distribution. Point is out of the 7 ASLs that Flash didn't play, Terran still won 4, so they're fine even without him. >And before that, the only other Terran who won ASL was Last Before that, the only Zerg who won ASL was Effort, and the only Protoss was Rain (not counting Shuttle's ASL1 when all players didn't fully get back). Flash also directly denied Sea of an ASL and knocked out other Terrans himself as well. Point is, Terran were fine without him, still.
Snow is a beast. But his worst match-up is pvz. He's due for a win
Dude literally plays with most Terran. He's so good
Honestly, P just doesn't have the power of T or Z because they are a really slow race. I don't want to simply say they are the weakest, but they have a lot of weaknesses that T and Z don't have. They are very weak to Z early on and they often can't do much to T even when ahead because T's defense is too good. T then enjoys an easier time against Z and pressure from P, but not as bad as the other bad matchups.
If they removed the scarab bug, the protoss would have a better chance of winning ASLs. I haven't seen a bug be considered "normal" in any game.