If a zerg makes 10 roaches for an attack, it’s an instant reduction of workers. Zerg has guaranteed damage to his own economy if he is aggressive. Terran has nothing to lose and everything to gain by being aggressive – even investing into aggression, the terran keeps up economically. When the aggression fails, he loses nothing but a free chance to win the game. Even if he falls behind, he can turtle up at home and the game goes on. In reality, the aggression is an opportunity to either win or gain an advantage, and only rarely results in the terran being behind.
Make terran like zerg. Make attacks costly so that there is risk to the reward. Right now it’s reward with no risk, so they get to YOLO units at you with no consequences.
I was watching Uthermal “carpet bomb” widow mines into the zerg’s bases. Even when he got no drone kills he still came out ahead just from the lost mining time. They can literally throw units away at you and it’s guaranteed damage, and this is done off the back of a virtually impenetrable defense.
That’s exactly how it works, except they can do that while carpet bombing units into your face. Zerg does that by cutting corners, delaying tech and skipping upgrades. Terran keeps up economically while being aggressive and while reaching tier 3 tech at the 6 minute mark.
There are 8 terrans, 5 protoss, 3 zergs, who qualified for the GSL, which almost perfectly mirrors GM representation by the way, and you are saying to nerf zerg? That is what you call brain damage. Listen, if you are statistically illiterate then this conversation is over. I don’t have time to talk to 70 iq internet crazies.
TvT finals in 2/3rd’s of premier tournaments this year.
2 zerg wins in 11 major/premier tournaments this year.
2 zerg second place finishes in 11 major/premier tournaments this year.
22% of Grandmaster is Zerg but 38% terran/toss.
Zerg wins 22% first and second place finishes in ESL cups.
What’s the conclusion of 70iq internet randos? NERF ZERG!
When literally every zerg statistic, from GM representation to 1st place finishes to GSL ro16 representation, converges on the magical number of 20%, it’s time to realize zerg is literal trash. I mean, I wouldn’t play Zerg unless it were trash. SC2 is an easy game designed for apes. I wouldn’t even play if Zerg were as easy as Terran/Protoss. In fact, I think we need to nerf zerg until that 20% number shrinks down to about 5-10%. I think that would be more ideal. I am still getting GM without watching replays and without scouting and without optimized build orders. The game is just too easy, so if we nerf zerg to 5% representation in tournaments then I think I might have to start watching replays again. The game might actually be challenging at that point.
The funny thing is that around the time COVID hit it became drastically easier to be GM at SC2. It used to be insanely hard. It wouldn’t promote you until 5500 and it would kick you out at 5300. We now have GMs who are 4800. What a joke. My theory is that COVID / the shot caused a bunch of “micro strokes” that drastically reduced the IQ of the planet. Stuff like that has happened before. Lead poisoning comes to mind. Why else would it go from being impossible to get GM to being so easy an ape could do it?
4800 mmr is not bad. It’s top 1%. But, back in the day, it was 5500. 5500 was top 0.037%, aka it was literally 27x harder to get into GM. What changed? Something did.
The point is, we need to nerf zerg. Let’s just delete the queen and rely solely on spore crawlers for anti air. That ought to do it.
Nope, the relative MMR ratings can’t change as a result of demographic changes. If you have two people who are 1,000 mmr apart, that only changes if their skill level changes. If you look at the MMR history of GMs, their skill levels tanked. There are loads of 6k mmr players who are now ~5.1-5.2k. Snake, Avenger, Riddler, the list goes on and on.
Nope, game activity is still higher than it was in 2017. People in 2017 had much higher rankings on average. There was a massive drop in GM level performance around the time that COVID hit, which is the opposite of what you’d expect since COVID put people indoors where they played more video games.
The upper tail of the bell curve would be the most sensitive to micro-strokes. By definition they are small with a tiny impact, so reducing someone from average to slightly below average would be barely noticeable. But, when you reduce someone who is 160 IQ by 5 IQ point, that’s a change by a factor of 4x. So that’s flipping massive.
It’s not a change in the ratings, it’s a change in the actual skill level. Anyone who played back then and plays now could tell you the talent just isn’t there anymore. The last time I saw a 15 pool 15 gas ling flood was I don’t know when. It used to be an extreme challenge just to secure your natural in HotS. In theory it should be even harder because they’ve done loads of nerfs to queens and creep. The transfuse nerf alone would make it impossible to secure your natural in ZvZ vs a ling flood.
The players are just bad. That’s the reality of it.
It’s an established fact, through research, that COVID affects cognition. Studies have established that people who had severe COVID had an average IQ drop of 10, which is absolutely monstrous. We know it could attack the “olfactory bulb” because it caused loss of sense of smell. I think it’s likely that it did brain damage, and this shows up in SC2 performance. We can’t attribute that on an individual case by case basis, because player activity and skill can vary, but as an average the group performance has gone down.
For me, personally, it completely wiped-out my sense of smell and taste. I was able to eat an entire bag of “ghost pepper” jerky from Buc-ee’s without tasting any of the spice. Do you know how hot ghost peppers are? I instantly had the flu as a result of eating that bag of peppers. I could feel the burning inside my torso. That’s how bad it was. I could not taste it, though.
