Google “empirical vs anecdotal evidence”, to help you slowly understand why your anecdotal experience isn’t sufficient. Hopefully it will help you understand that “big word” empirical.
It will even help you with your worry about autism! Anecdotal vs emprical evidence is directly related to that! Congratulations!
You have a great life lol.
As always, let me know when you can live up to your own standards, champ. I’m sure I’ll see a picture of you confirming you’re not a brick wall before you can show me “empirical evidence” of something OP in this game before.
Everything is perfect. Balance has always been 50/50. Everyone is awesome but Playa. Love me some Playa impersonators though and guys who cannon rush every game, but I still don’t think anyone has ever cannon rushed every game. I like crayons. Like em even more when they’re up my nose. Yada, yada. Great stories.
Dude…seriously. Go google it. You’re not even aware the data on aligulac is empirical evidence…
It literally just took me 3 seconds to provide you empirical evidence of something in SC2, which suggests to me you really don’t actually know what it is.
Seriously…google…its your friend.
Give me a second. Let me go check out the win rates for P vs P. Omfg… they’re 50%!!! Oh my god… but… I was sure cannon rush was a 80% strat. How can this be!
I’m in hell. I can only wonder what I did in a previous life. Maybe I cannon rushed someone in a prior life and this is my proper punishment.
P vs Z went years without even reaching 50% on aligulac. You know what happens when I try to mention that “empirical evidence.” Random geek: but playa… it doesn’t matter. I saw a gold league Toss player sign up for a tournament!
Before this year, the last time Toss even reached 51% vs Zerg in a month was like Feb of 2011. No one cared, because they’re just like you. Always going to try to act like it doesn’t matter/is invalid.
I’ve looked at the win rates of every single person to cannon rush every game at a GM level. None of them are below 55% win rate in P vs P. But, w/e… not enough evidence. Like it should matter. Everyone knows losing games within 2 minutes before you can even make a unit is something worth debating.
I’m happy someone gave you a heart. I hope you keep at it, so someday someone else can get to experience my pain of hearing from you.
What could it be now. Time to try to act like they know words Playa doesn’t. Got a real big boy here. Maybe you can tell me where to find a computer next. Never seen one.
You find this data, you figure out how many games they’ve played, separate win rates vs every race, use that data to estimate how prolific cannon rushing is in GM league. You put it all together and present it? And its accurate? I’ll believe you in a heartbeat. You could separate it by region so we could see who struggles most against it! It would be really cool to look at that!
But you won’t do that, even though if you really know every cannon rusher in all 3 regions it wouldn’t even be that difficult. Why? Personally I think its because you know you’ve exaggerated the problem, and that mostly this is just a case of you hating cannon rushes. But hey, prove me wrong. Go get that data.
EDIT: Hell if you do that I’ll even help you evaluate it. I’ll analyze that data with statistics, help determine a hypothesis, create a P value, find out if that data is significant. I’d love that. It would be fun. Just need the data.
Wow. Playa and AntiSora are really at each other’s throats!
Lol, all I’ve really done is ask for real proof of his claim. He seems to rather prefer insulting me for requesting that proof.
If anyone in the entire scene just says what it is, it’s me. My biggest exaggeration in god knows how long is probably the typing thing. Yeah, I have an account with 147 WPM score and 100% accuracy, but I just took the test twice, while recording, and posted the 137: Ten Fast Fingers 137 WPM, 1 missed word - YouTube
That’s me “lying.” I wouldn’t be this worked up over a lie. I’ve wrote a book where I mentioned I check my opponent’s race stats after every game. I have a book where I describe the maxpax idea, from numerous years ago. Build after build that became the meta 10 years later (BW) is described in detail there.
Yet, all SC 2 is just me hearing from noobs about how the antithesis of reality is true. I would say just read it sometime… but prob illiterate.
It’s sad. I’m not saying some impossible thing to verify. Most people who are really into the scene/GM players… they know who cannon rushes every game. I’ve already listed around 10 of them. Check their stats. Do it yourself. Prove to me I’m a liar instead of just parading around like “you got me.”
I’ve played this game for years, and I’ve yet to see someone say hey Playa made up something, Here it is… It doesn’t happen. Has not happened. Won’t happen. Not in my nature.
You know, Toss hasn’t been the “leading race” on Aligulac in the leading versus lagging race indicator since the middle of 2015. There is no indicator that Toss could fail at where anyone would admit a matchup isn’t Toss favored. Nerds aren’t as smart as they think they are. They might be, but they’re sure more discriminatory than anyone should be.
I never said you were lying. I said your personal experience is biased. This bias can be subconscious (usually it is subconscious). A simple example: we don’t say the mother is lying when she thinks her son got autism from vaccines. We say her individual experience isn’t sufficient to support the claim that autism causes vaccines! When we gather enough data to remove that personal bias, suddenly we don’t find an increase in autism in vaccinated children.
The reality is there are lots of variables involved in why you might personally think cannon rushes are too prolific and too good. Your personal experience isn’t sufficient to conclude that cannon rushes are actually overpowered or that protoss uses cannon rushes too often. We need far more data-enough to remove each individuals personal bias-to properly evaluate the claim.
EDIT: I will add to this that I’m certain Blizzard has this data available. It would be extremely easy for them to design a program that collates data at every level of starcraft involving all sorts of strats. They could easily gather data on cannon rushes just like you did-using build orders-only at a much larger scale. A scale capable of actually determining if there’s a problem.
The fact that they haven’t found a problem suggests to me that there likely isn’t any. Cannon rushes are annoying, for sure. People don’t like them, for sure. But I find it unlikely Blizzard hasn’t looked into the data. Their silence suggests the problem doesn’t extend beyond annoyance.
You know what man. I hate cannon rushers enough that I will gather the LotV career numbers. And I was guilty of being beyond dumb. I’ve known forever that cannon rushing is imbalanced. But, I was just like everyone else. Telling myself “don’t worry about it Playa, it’s just one bad apple. Just suck it up and be thankful that most of the apples aren’t bad like that.”
Then, I played on EU and it got “real.” No one cares about injustice or w/e bs until it really hits home. Playing a bunch of clowns every game that are barcoding and cannon rushing.
I’m a man of logic/common sense. I don’t need to run endless numbers to figure out cannon rushing needs a tweak. When cannon rushers themselves have no idea how to beat cannon rushing. When top GM players are just conceding losses to these guys, whether they have 200 APM or 10… you don’t have to be a betting man to take this bet on imbalance every time.
You need to understand something about the numbers to come in the future. It’s WORSE than what it looks like. We’re talking about clowns who cannon rush EVERY SINGLE GAME. People are trying to blind counter them, more times than not, yet… you’ll see.
What does PvP cannon rushing have to do with ZvP?
I can’t answer that specifically, but if cannon rushing is OP in any strat I would think its ZvP. Cannon rushing their natural is generally a low risk, low cost investment. If it fails you cancel them and you’re really not behind. If it succeeds you have a huge lead.
I’m skeptical of it being OP in PvP. Especially if you know its coming. Fully wall your ramp with a gateway/forge instead of 2 gateways, drop a cannon on the high ground. The only way he has vision is bringing a unit up your ramp. If the person canon rushes every game (so you know its coming) you should be able to prevent him ever even getting in your base by doing that. But I’m willing to admit I could be wrong.
Wasn’t a big complaint in PvT that the Terrans felt they needed to go all-in to win games? While the Ghost changes make the late game better, there’s going to be a whole new host of all-in timings with the Stim buff. I think this is a very volatile change they’re making. Good luck everyone vs Maru.
Also Lol @ the guy who thinks Missle Turrets are the answer to Warp Prisms.
Cyclones, Vikings, and Turrets all are very effective at killing Prisms.
Hey, Blizzard. Address the Cannon Rushing. It is getting out of control, specially on PvP. Cannon Rush is an embarassment for the game. Doesn’t belong in a competitive RTS. Do something, please!
What the world has been waiting for. What should be pinned and talked about until it’s no longer an issue… The cannon rush results for all matchups.
I took the career LotV stats from 6 GM players – Ninja, Printf, GrimReaper, Genesis, TheMusZero, Hawk – who have only cannon rushed in P vs P, to the best of my knowledge. If there is a random game where they didn’t, it shouldn’t skew the overall picture.
I took the stats from their main account: No barcodes and No smurfs. I did not, for example, take stats from GrimReaper’s NA accounts and EU accounts and combine them. If they’re from EU, I took those corresponding stats and vice versa.
Caveat: I know KingCobra cannon rushes in every P vs P that he plays. But, he instant leaves nearly every P vs P he gets on ladder, thus his stats are rendered irrelevant, thus not taken.
The overall numbers, without further ado:
P vs P
6811-4227: 61.7%
P vs T
5345-5438: 49.5%
P vs Z
6245-6052: 50.7%
The only thing that stands out to me is Genesis. He’s the only “serious” cannon rusher I’ve ever seen to have sub 55% in P vs P. He’s at 53%. Moreover, he also has the best win record of the cannon rushers vs Terran at also 53%.
This is all highly unusual. To make things even weirder… but could definitely help explain his P vs P numbers, is that it appears he often plays games at under 100 APM. He might be the only Toss player to claim that (in GM). Ever.
I was 100% sure Cannon Rush was overpowered, specially vs. Toss. Now I’m 200% sure. Just hoping Blizzard to not wait until 2050 to fix this broken and cancerous strat. People who do only CR cannot be mentally healthy. Just take a quick look at printf and you’ll soon realize he’s deranged.
Really cool that you guys took the time to explain your reasoning. Appreciate it - but you are totally reinforcing the PROTOSSED community hatred that has become so tiresome. I actually felt hope when you said this:
Being a long-time Protoss player, I would absolutely LOVE a less binary Protoss race. Less hard counters, more back and forth and so on. Like TvZ can be. Instead, Protoss is the race that has so many niche units and hard-ish counters.
But those are more fundamental issues better left for a bigger end of year update.
As for the changes:
Protoss vs Terran
Stim change will be interesting, especially given what was said about 2-base tank pushes…which you have buffed with this change (eg. pushes that no longer had stim might now have it). Let’s try it and see. Here’s the dilemma I see unfolding, and I’ll use WoL as an example.
Back then, Protoss never took an early third. You needed higher tech units (splash) to safely hold. Conversely, a Terran couldn’t just shove the front and win. They had to drop (a dying art form for Terrans, it seems), start to do damage, counter your tech, and so on.
I’m happy to delay the Protoss third, but how does this weaken the 2-base shoves from Terran? The mineral change has meant that delaying the third for a bit whilst teching just leads to getting crushed in the mid-game.
I think the Ghost change is pretty big, but moreso for Zerg - that EMP radius is huge, and will affect Infestors heavily. Again, let’s give it a go.
I’d personally like to see some kind of buff for drop play (being pulled apart by a Terran player was brutal but admirable - now it’s just Widow Mine drop after Widow Mine drop). Also, BCs having no effective Protoss counter is an issue.
Protoss v Zerg
Carrier buff is totally underwhelming. They are still trash. Nerfed into extinction - which probably pleases most of the community, so job done.
Infestors are the root problem in PvZ lategame. Anytime a spellcaster is simply being masssed, there is an issue going on. Infestors do it all - anti-air ‘free’ units, damage whilst removing micro opportunities from the opponent, and select mind control on high value targets. Add in burrow, and you have a very potent unit. Taking a little nick off the AA damage of Infested Terrans won’t change how heavily used Infestors are, or Protoss’ willingness to play out a longer game. And Mothership being abducted - that is just crazy.
Recall change is fine - I kind of forget about it half the time. Would be nice to have the bigger radius back and not needing Nexus energy to do it (just the long cooldown). But those are compensations to Protoss, and the community won’t like it.
Lastly, the Prism change - this is one of the biggest nerfs we’ve had, which says something. Maybe you are trying to target Immortal allins (which seem to be receding in popularity anyway), but in doing so, there are SO MANY macro builds that will be completely gimped by this change.
Archon drop. Gone.
Stalker pressure. Gone.
Adept pressure. Gone.
I won’t bang on about this. It’s a change that will reduce options and just make Protoss turtle into deathball even harder.
Concluding Remark
Let’s count the nerfs:
Adept
Immortal
Carrier
Shield Battery
High Templar
Oracle
Colossus
Tempest
Recall
Every one of these have been nerfed, and yet this patch keeps up the pattern. Some were entirely justified, but it’s got to the point where Protoss players just know it’s coming.
Yep, Protoss did well in a couple of Korean tournaments. But this season looks pretty well rounded in racial distribution, and neither Parting or SoS rode the imba-ness through the round of 32. And you also mention WCS.
Yet in saying that, you basically say it counts for little compared to Twitch and Reddit whine - how Protoss is perceived is now more important than results when it comes to balance.
That’s pretty scary as a Protoss player. I think that many in the community would be happy to turn Protoss into a clunky, immobile but sometimes powerful race that they can basically take a dump on and feel good about it. It’d be nice to see Blizzard show some community leadership in reducing the invective against Protoss…but I don’t have too much hope after explanations like this.
The results, how I wanted them to be, are not 100% accurate, but it perhaps helps explain the lowest win rate ever seen by me for a GM cannon rusher:
Hawk appears to be an alt account of Genesis.
The Genesis account is 135-100 in P vs P this season: 57%. Hawk is 58% for his career in P vs P and 202-138 for 59% this season.
I don’t know if he was instant leaving games or didn’t start out cannon rushing or what. Hard to make sense out of the 53% for career on Genesis.
I would say around 58% should be as low as a cannon rusher should have in P vs P, if they make it their only build. If they use a barcode, then it obviously becomes even higher.
It’s clearly a very oppressive strategy, either way. It’s hard to pinpoint another strategy that nets a higher win rate. Someone would probably have to investigate proxy rax in T vs Z to find a comparable.
I would include TurkeyDano if I could find his account in the client, but it only has 1k career games, and I’m not sure if he cannon rushes in P vs P at a high enough %: he didn’t use cannon rush vs puck tonight and I don’t think he cannoned me either.
Anyone know what account he has that has games on it? I didn’t even know about the guy until like a few months ago, yet people talk about him as if he’s a legend that’s been around for ages.
This is awesome stuff. Thanks for putting it together! Cannon rushing in PvP definitely seems to be overpowered. Especially with 11,000 games to gather data from.
I’m actually surprised its as high as 49.5% in PvT. I wouldn’t expect that. The race can literally just lift off their buildings and go somewhere else lol. Maybe the protoss, once the cannon rush succeeds, follows the command center and blocks it from landing or something.
I will say that, while I definitely agree cannon rushing is overpowered in PvP, this doesn’t seem to suggest its used prolifically. 11,000 games across 3 1/2 years is only about 10 total games a day, across 600 GM players (who also play vs masters at times).
Now, clearly there are more than 11,000 cannon rushes across those 3 1/2 years. Others you didn’t catch probably cannon rush, just not every game. But this data still seems to suggest cannon rushing isn’t being used a ton on a daily basis, even if it is clearly overpowered when its used.