Maynarde stopped casting sc2 a few years back. He didn’t want to travel anymore, said it was taking its toll on him and his relationship with his wife, if I recall correctly.
Interesting. I talked to him on the ladder awhile back, maybe a month ago, and he said that blizzard abandoned the casters. He wouldn’t be wrong. Esports was downsized & that means fewer events and fewer casters. The casters felt the same crunch that the pro scene did.
So far as I’m aware, he’s stopped playing sc2 entirely and has for a few years; I’d wager it was likely someone posing as him.
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Nah it was one of his accounts that I documented years back. He played on it while streaming.
I hate the “nerf Protoss” crowd so much…
Of course, everyone agrees Protoss needs to be changed at lower rank to retain players and fix the frustrating climb.
Then what does EVERY single Protoss hater do? Blanket complains they need global nerfs.
No. Please stop killing this game. Protoss needs to win big tourneys to prove the game is balanced at the TOP LEVEL. Protoss needs BUFFS, VERY CLEARLY. This is the ONLY way for the game to survive, no NEW PLAYERS want to see Protoss have no big tourney wins, that’s grounds for them to (RIGHTLY) never watch the game again and never play.
What you REALLY want, but either don’t have the brains or courage to admit; you want Protoss to be harder to play so they need the same APM to do what you do.
Great! Now we agree! Now you can tell us all the complex QOL and changes to make that world real. Now I want to hear what you have to say!
It’s literally near impossible to win against. If you feel proud playing protoss you literally have to have zero neurons firing in your brain.
Clown logic. The #1 toss in the world doesn’t show up to offline events and the #2 toss in the world doesn’t use multiple hotkeys. You’re trying to buff protoss to win premiers when it is 100% a skill issue and as a result you’ve given protoss massive advantages across the whole ladder. Protoss are twice as common in Grandmaster as Zerg & TvP in masters league has a negative win-rate in favor of toss – at the 10 minute mark, Protoss has a 60% win-rate in masters league.
So basically you are ignoring 99.99% of games played, which prove protoss is overpowered, and focusing solely on the 0.01% of games played in the best of 7 finals of premier tournaments. Translation, you don’t have an elementary school understanding of math & logic. I refuse to entertain the idea that anyone can have such a hard time understanding very basic math/statistics, which means everyone advocating for protoss buffs knows protoss doesn’t need buffs & they are lying to use balance to cheat & gain an advantage for themselves. They are simply cheaters. I am just calling a spade a spade. People who want protoss buffs are cheaters. It’s that simple.
Pick 5 random protoss stats and reduce them in 5% increments until Protoss GM representation balances out to 33%. Any other suggestion is absurd. Interceptor health, forge building armor, stalker warp in time, zealot charge cooldown. Go. Nerf them by 5% each. In a month we will see if Protoss is still >33%. If so we pick another 5 stats and nerf them 5% again. We rinse and repeat until the game is fair. It’s not hard. It’s actually very simple & easy to accomplish. This is a statistical technique called “simulated annealing”. It’s not rocket science, it’s basic math: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing
The reason we pick at random is to avoid adding bias to the equation. We need to flat-nerf protoss. If bias is in the equation, that’s how you get Protoss at 50% of GM. Remove bias. Pick stats at random. Reduce them 5% each until Protoss is 33% of GM. The preferential treatment of Protoss needs to stop. After picking at random, you can re-roll 1 item a single time. That’s it. That means you can veto the singular worst change. The best way to veto is do a poll & re-roll the one that scores the lowest. But after that singular re-roll, that’s it. Move forward with the nerfs.
That’s some intense confession through projection there buddy.
They absolutely do not. They need to step up their game. If protoss players can’t win tournaments with how strong they are currently, they won’t ever win - it’s genuinely a skill issue at this point.
Side note; frankly, ladder toss is REALLY strong right now, in both PvZ and PvT.
What I want is for Protoss to utilize the skill expression that they have available to them instead of throwing key units away constantly for literally nothing, instead of screaming for more buffs.
What I want, is for MaxPax - who is unequivocally the best Protoss player in the world right now to such a degree that it isn’t even close - to actually compete in offline tournaments.
Stop hurtling Oracles into mineral lines for one more worker kill, when it would be much better served putting up stasis wards, tagging units for map vision and control.
Stop front-lining with warp prisms and losing them because they’re ahead of your army, and instantly losing the game because they lost their reinforcement point that would otherwise have killed their opponent then and there.
Stop rallying colossus and carriers into the enemy army for free.
Stop forgetting key upgrades for not just multiple minutes on end (though that’s bad enough), but the entire game.
Start hiding templar in Warp prisms like players used to do; that we almost never see even from top pros now, despite it being commonplace before Stats and Classic went to military service.
Start utilizing late-game DTs again.
Start utilizing multiple prisms for multi-prong, or multiple prisms in pushes (one for reinforce one for micro)
Protoss genuinely has so many options and has enough potential for skill expression currently that they don’t need buffs. I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if they got nerfed, because they’re to strong currently.
Here’s a fun fact for you:
Protoss’ win rate goes up drastically the longer the game goes on. In TvP, you have about 8 minutes (from the start of the game) to kill a protoss player. If you don’t, their chance of winning goes up exponentially. It’s the same for ZvP.
Protoss currently has around a 52.5% win rate in both ZvP and TvP across M1+GM.
They have a positive winrate on each map in TvP with the exception of Post Youth, some of which are 54-55% win rate for Protoss against Terran. Zerg is in much the same boat against protoss, though they have one more map that’s actually a positive win-rate for them.
TvP and PvZ have been favoured for protoss for a few months now.
https://sc2pulse.nephest.com/sc2/?season=59&queue=LOTV_1V1&team-type=ARRANGED&us=true&eu=true&kr=true&cn=true&bro=true&sil=true&gol=true&pla=true&dia=true&mas=true&gra=true&page=0&type=ladder&ratingAnchor=99999&idAnchor=0&count=1#stats-match-up
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Dude I used to buy into that, but then they buffed Protoss AGAIN and still none can get a W… Face it. Your best players all left you behind. Even from the beginning, I’m talking since the says of Flash and Jae Dong, there’s never really been a Protoss that was at the absolute Zenith, but now? With Rain (the best Protoss of all time) gone and Parting out of form from his military service, you just don’t have anyone who can make it. Max Pax could, but even he’s not on the level of a Serral or a Maru.
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This has really been the problem the entire time. There isnt a single Toss player that compares to Serral or Maru. Its that simple. They either all retired or had a military break leaving them behind everyone else in skill. We need to go back to the last 3 years of patches and revert pretty much all of them except the ones buffing Protoss. Its why this game is doing so poorly.
No one wants to queue in ladder and struggle with Zerg/Terran when they can just queue as Toss and sit behind a shield battery with the only end-game micro being a-move and storm/nova. We need to take a step back and actually look at whats going on with the Pro and Ladder level. Protoss should not be almost 50% of the highest level in a 3 race game.
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That’s right, and I think it’s even worse than that. Toss has had too much strength since the beginning. As long as the player knows how to abuse Tosses strengths, the game is a nightmare. You need hard nerfs to Toss earlygame in particular, zealots and cannons, early chrono, it’s too much.
I’ve said similar stuff before, but here are changes both SC1 and SC2 needed since the beginning:
- Buildings can’t be made too far from the base
- New overlord required before Spawning Pool
- Zealot and Photon Cannon 30% weaker before Cybernetics core is complete.
There’s a difference between early aggression and the game being a total coin-flip.
That heavily limits map design, and it can become a problem later. There are better solutions.
This particular suggestion is absurd. There is no base unit that you can nerf by 30% without causing serious problems, even if the nerf only affects the first few minutes. Even if some Gateway unit base stats were nerfed for the early game (with an upgrade to restore them later), I doubt they could be more than a fraction as severe as your suggestion.
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Can you actually give some concrete suggestions?
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No map has a problem with new buildings being about 40 tiles from an existing town hall.
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Give me an actual example where my zealot + cannon nerf is a problem.
It depends on what you are targeting. If the concern is repeated aggression with units such as early Blink Stalkers, then one option is to go after shield regeneration. Reduce the base shield regeneration rate of some units (mainly Gateway units), and then the upgrade restores their shield regeneration rate to full. This could also be used to affect cannons.
Increasing the build time of cannons could also provide more time to react to Cannon rushes and kill each cannon without having too bad of an effect on Protoss who build cannons to protect their bases.
I doubt your particular suggestion could actually affect more than 5-10 total shields or health before it becomes a problem. Instead, you are suggesting anywhere from 30-50 total health on Zealots and 50-100 total health on Photon Cannons, which is unreasonable.
For Terran and Protoss, it is often important to setup defenses while or before your expansions are built. Even Zerg can do this if they spread Creep Tumors or setup a Nydus first, and Zerg sometimes builds Spore/Spine forests in the late-game, where the positioning matters more than the proximity to a particular Hatchery.
Proxy Pylons for reinforcements and other tactics that rely on setting up buildings far from command structures are also common.
You were too laser focused on Cannon rushes in particular to consider any other problem cases.
I don’t really need to, but I expect the first problems would involve proxy Reapers and early Zergling plays. There are any number of other problems that can start to occur if the earliest Protoss tools were nerfed so significantly.
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Proxy Reapers and early Zerglings were already solved by my other 2 suggestions, which include the Spawning Pool requiring a new overlord. You STILL haven’t given me an example of my Zealot + Cannon nerf being bad.
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The Reapers don’t necessarily have to be proxied. That is just the first of several cases that can be expected to become problems in TvP with your nerfs. Non-proxy Reapers and Marine pushes would most likely be the next points of failure.
Yeah, I obviously won’t have specific games involving a change that has never been implemented. That is not a reasonable request.
In another thread you even explicitly ignored other people when they gave you examples that you requested: Specifically, games handling cannon rushes at specific drone counts. This is evidence that Cannon rushes can be reasonably held by Zerg (i.e., not really a problem), and your denial of that evidence when it was presented to you can be taken as evidence that your opinion will not change based on what is presented to you.
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You haven’t told me any problem with my suggestion. Reapers hitting your base at 3 minutes isn’t a problem unless your bronze league.
Denial of evidence, lol. That’s your problem. You sound like a lawyer. Defending rushing in a kids game. You are a filthy rusher yourself. Go to hell.
I have, you just ignore anything that you find inconvenient.
There are multiple posts of you doing just that on the thread listed below, despite people providing you exactly what you requested:
Premier tournaments winrate in LOTV expansion - General Discussion - SC2 Forums (blizzard.com)
I have a good case.
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I am a macro player who plays mech almost exclusively, and I prefer long games using mech & sky in all match-ups in both StarCraft I and StarCraft II.
I have tried Vulture rushes before in StarCraft I against the AI on a few maps to see if I can pull it off, but that is fairly rare for me.
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Except that it doesn’t solve that at all since Zerg spawns with one overlord already, which would fulfil the requirements; You’re not making the requirement a certain number of overlords because overlords aren’t buildings, and even if that was a requirement it would actually hinder due to the potential problems with other strategies not even considering proxies, nor are you considering the effects any of your changes might have on mirror matchups.
Your suggested changes are, genuinely, terrible changes for a multitude of reasons.
Zealots are often some of the only units that are actually available to defend certain timings; proxy hatchery, for example (which, though rare, does occasionally get used even at a pro level), requires zealots and probes both to defend effectively in PvZ, and reducing their life, DPS, shields etc can have drastic consequences.
Not to mention that it was often common a few years back to run your first few lings into the protoss base off a standard opening to deny the first pylon in a low-ground wall and outright win the game, something that a Zealot helps guard against, and something that weakening the Zealot would only be more likely to bring back.
Drone drills through protoss walls are another example of how weakening Zealots could be problematic at best and busted at worst.
Sniping the cyber-core before a key fight would also immediately weaken zealots again much like how killing an armoury made widow-mines reveal themselves after firing prior to the most recent change; the difference is, these are much earlier and potentially more numerous units as well.
Forge after gateway. That alone would mean that early cannons can still be used defensively early, but the delay of the gateway means that the more aggressive cannon rush doesn’t get to happen because barracks are up, spawning pool is completing/completed so lings and marines can start dealing with the cannons far earlier and it’s much easier to prevent them from going up (not that they’re hard to stop in the first place)
Pylon blocking a hatch first build, or Ebay blocking a nexus first is suddenly gone. Meta shifts that have occurred to deal with either of these things no longer matter (14/14 or 15/14 to prevent pylon blocking for example), and the strategic risks you take on both sides are now eliminated because they’re no longer feasible.
Your 2nd overlord can always go over to the other side of the map as well, meaning more free scouting for Zergs; you never ever have to be concerned about any form of rushes ever. Games become super stale because every match is all the same with no strategic variation whatsoever - and some would argue that’s already a problem (it’s not, there’s still strategic variation, people often don’t see it, or straight up ignore it though).
Defending expansions as they’re going up suddenly becomes almost impossible for Protoss, and becomes significantly harder for Terran since they have to wait to fly over a command center and land it before they can build a bunker defensively.
Spotting pylons and Supply depots are no longer useable for map vision and control.
Proxy gateways for post-warpgate timings (blink, 7 gate charge all in and a few other builds) are no longer usable anymore.
And that’s just the start!
Your inability to comprehend any of the actual counter-arguments and continued goal-posting of the point made any further responses entirely irrelevant. I - and a few others, I might add - quite successfully rebutted and explained exactly how to hold a cannon-rush as a Zerg - who, I might add, has by far the easiest time of it compared to the other two races given that they have creep to protect their base. You simply continue to live in a delusion that you actually made any pertinent point and think you won an argument you lost quite convincingly. As you’re doing here again.
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