Serral is a joke LMAO

General Discussion
183

The biggest issue w/ the ghost is that snipe can be rapid fired. So if you have an overseer out of position for ~1 second, you lose 10 broods. Broods are supposed to be zerg’s ultimate tech and they die for energy cost only. That’s equivalent to the infested terran days when zergs could wipe-out skytoss armies with fungal and infested terran while retaining every infestor.

That’s why I think energy based abilities MUST have one of two traits:

  1. The ability comes with severe trade offs. Swarm hosts are a good example. If locusts land in the wrong spot, they are useless. The swarm hosts are wasted supply until the next wave. The locusts are hyper vulnerable to splash such as banes, parabomb, javalin missiles, etc. So, big trade offs.
  2. The ability can’t kill units on its own. A good example is fungal vs thors. Fungal can’t kill thors, but it can lock them in position which makes them more vulnerable to be killed.

If an energy based ability doesn’t have either #1 or #2 as limitations, it has always been overpowered historically. Seeker missile was that way. Anti armor missile was that way at one point. Neural was that way. Fungal was that way. Infested terrans used to be that way.

Vipers are fine because, again, it doesn’t kill the unit on its own. Vipers only move the unit to where it is more likely to be killed.

Another interesting parallel between Ghosts and the “imbafestor” from WoL was that the imbafestor could cast fungal while burrowed, which was insane. Ghosts can do that as well, but with a slight restriction in that use energy which creates overlap in between the ability cost and evasion cost, meaning sometimes the terran can’t do both. So the ghost’s evasion is a bit weaker, but it’s still crazy similar to an old mechanic that was bonkers overpowered. It’s really not hard to see why the ghost is so strong right now.

I am still reserved to call the ghost “imbalanced” because the map pool is extremely good for terran at the moment. The maps are cramped (short rush distances = lower drone counts for defending timings), squated (you expand towards your opponent), and have lots of air space around mineral lines (good for medivacs and liberators). So it’s partly a map issue.

The fundamental issue with map design is that they can’t make maps without these traits or protoss simply stomp terran. Terran has to have positions where liberators can hit the 4th/5th mineral lines or chronoboost just causes protoss to have so much stuff that toss f2 amoves the terran and that’s that. The problem is then that terran is good against zerg.

I don’t think TvZ balance favors terran. I think it’s a map issue. The ghost is would be fine on different maps where zerg could afford higher drone counts for the same timings, which would allow the late game tempo to be tilted slightly more in zerg’s favor than it is currently. That means terran is working with fewer ghosts to defend certain attack timings, and that would probably balance the ghost.

That’s a good way to have TvZ balanced because it means the shape and size of the map alters the strategy of the game, and that makes it interesting and dynamic. I think that’s why TvZ has been the most interesting matchup at the pro level.

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184

The problems with Snipe could be mitigated somewhat by changing the ability to deal partial damage upfront, and the rest over time. That said, it would be better to remove Snipe and rebalance the game without it, if the balance council and community was actually willing to commit to that and deal with a few months where balance is worse.

Storm can and does kill units without being problematic, so you might need a third point to your list. The key there is that Storm’s damage doesn’t stack, putting an effective cap on how many High Templar will be useful in a fight.

Seeker Missiles, Snipe/Steady-Targeting, and the problematic version of AAM all did stack, which enabled mass caster armies to scale up to deal with just about everything (assuming Steady-Targeting isn’t interrupted). The interrupt mechanic is an attempt to balance Steady-Targeting (effectively your #1), but it is questionable how much that actually works.

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185

Nope, because I consider storm problematic for the exact reasons I mentioned. Storm is a big part of what makes PvZ so imba at the moment. Storm hard counters hydras meaning the only option is corruptor. Corruptors lose to tempests as long as the protoss never fights and any time the zerg tries to fight the protoss zones with storms while stutter stepping back. Following this formula it is impossible to win a ZvP without there being a substantial skill gap between the protoss and zerg. Using a variety of calculation methods, that advantage is roughly +150 mmr for protoss and -150 for zerg, totaling a 300 difference. Storm is the primary issue here because it’s an energy based ability that can kill units on its own, with no substantial trade offs or risks.

You can also blame chronoboost because toss eco is insane to the point they can afford so many storms. But storm plays a very large role in why Protoss absolutely dominate zerg at the moment.

Subnote to this point: before the recent brood range nerf, storm did have risks. Templar were at risk vs broods if they wanted to do an aggressive full-range storm. This limited templar to only being able to storm units that charged forward, beyond the range the brood was capable of zoning. After the brood range nerf, storm now has the range advantage, meaning templar themselves are capable of hitting the broods. That means there are more risks for the broods than there are for the templar which, again, violates the “if it kills units on its own, it must have substantial trade offs or risks to compensate” principle.

The bane HP nerf also changed this dynamic because banelings simply can’t penetrate storms to get on top of the high templar. The high templar have no significant risk while having an energy only ability capable of dealing out 1000’s of hp of damage from a single one, which is nuts. It’s barely distinguishable from WoL-era “imbafestor” that could melt skytoss armies using fungal and infested terran. That’s exactly what storm does do, in fact.

Like I said, anytime you have an energy ability that kills units on its own, and which don’t come with significant risks, it has always been imba every time that’s been tried historically. At its core, sc2 is an economical game based on efficient trading of resources in battle, and the ability to spend only energy to gain a resource advantage is obviously overpowered. This was true every time it was tried – seeker missile, anti armor missile, WoL era imbafestor, etc, and it’s true for psi storm.

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186

What are you talking about ? I’m talking about late game T vs late game Z battle and i assure you terran lost decisively even with ghosts because ghosts are apparently NOT solution to every zerg unit composition as you claim them to be.

LOL no.
You need a single fungal to cancel almost all snipes. Imagine - one spell renders 150min/125 gas unit nearly useless.
The problem with ghost is that it is “binary” unit - either they deal 170/130 dmg or they don’t do dmg at all - and if they do no dmg terran loses. I already told you that ghosts are mostly efficient behing solid static defenses - PF, tanks, libs, mines etc. On open space there is no way that ghost can launch all their snipes without being cancelled, banes, infestors and broods are really potent at dealing with ghosts especially if terran enters creep which is unavoidable since 70% of the map will be covered with it.
Personally as a terran main i would prefer old snipe - less dmg but instant and guaranteed.

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187

SortOf is 6.1k. It is absolutely ok for 6.1 k player to lose to someone who is 500 MMR - it happens all the time, regardless of race and playstyle. I’ve seen Maru 7k losing to 6.6 k player on his stream.

What advantage ? Can you explain to all of us what advantage does protoss have except mechanics ? It is zerg which is advantageous in nearly every stage of the game. During LOTV era 4 zergs were winning 50 % of all premier tournamets - Serral, Reynor, Dark and Rogue. Can you prove that these 4 zergs were magically more talented than every protoss or terran player ? You can’t because the explanation for this is zerg imbalance which was blatant in 2018-2019 (spammable nydus, infested terran with rockets etc). And only after nerfing these 2 things, terran and protoss players even had a chance to compete against pro level zergs. But still as of 2024 zerg is overpowered, though to a much lesser degree than 2019.
But you keep talking about your delusional protoss advantage while reality clearly shows you are bad player who needs to improve. At least that’s what i would do instead of coming to this forum every day spamming QQ threads about protoss - this won’t really do anything - you need to put some extra work.

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188

Not while trading at 1.5x efficiency.

Protoss scaling is better than zerg scaling. Video game balance really isn’t hard at all. You learn how to do it like day 1 or 2 of a game development course at your local university. You data mine to figure out how army strength scales & if faction A outscales B then you nerf faction A. Immortals trade at 2.58:1 efficiency despite the fact that zerg has ~40% more army supply and 20% more income. That means three things: A) protoss peak army strength is drastically higher than zergs, and B) the army strength you can afford on the typical eco is much higher for protoss, and C) protoss armies are much more resource efficient. That means protoss is advantaged in resource efficiency scenarios, direct combat scenarios, maxed-out scenarios, mine-out scenarios, and a variety of other scenarios that I won’t bother getting into.

The fundamental issue, though, is that Protoss only lags in income by 20% but their units trade at +158% efficiency. It’s obvious that there is a scaling issue here. The typical army that you can build with the typical eco of protoss is simply drastically stronger than zergs. That’s the definition of a scaling issue. The eco is supposed to be balanced such that protoss armies trade at 1.2:1 effieciency which perfectly balances out the eco advantage of zerg. Instead they trade at a bonkers 2.58:1.

This issue became a thing after they buffed chronoboost in 2017, doubling the duration. They buffed protoss scaling even more by reducing the cost and duration of upgrades off the forge, and nerfing the baneling, widow mine drop, and liberators which were all used to take protoss eco down a peg. Protoss scaling is insane.

Protoss now win twice as many tournaments as zerg, have dominated grandmaster for years, have held statistically impossible win-rates in the pro scene for years, have statistically impossible outlier representation while those outliers can be visually verified to play worse than their terran or zerg counterparts. Protoss is overpowered. It needs to be nerfed.

The way to help protoss win tournaments is by changing the tournament format and rules to prevent Serral from winning more than 1 premier per year. The tournament rules need to be rethought under the realization that it’s an issue with the structure of the tournaments that make it impossible for lower skilled players to win. Because protoss professionals are less skilled, they will never win a premier unless the rules are restructured. Balance is not capable of fixing this issue.

The scenario where Serral is most likely to win is in a multi elimination bracket system where each match is a best of 7. Serral had an 80% chance to win the world cup from the start of the tournament, for example, because it required you to be eliminate 3 times and the later stages all had best of 5’s and 7’s and 9’s. Statistically, this format is practically guaranteed to advance the best player. Protoss players will never win a tournament under this format. The format that is most likely to produce a protoss tournament victory would be single elimination best of 3’s.

It’s a problem with the tournament format, which brings us to the next question: why does protoss dominate ESL cups? It’s obvious why: they are single elimination best of 3, which is the perfect format to maximize the probability of lower skilled players advancing over the higher skilled players.

TLDR
Player representation & tournament format predict protoss performance, not protoss itself.

189

Blah blah blah - but you’re forgetting one important thing: protoss does not have remax and larva mechanics which implies that terran/protoss armies should always trade efficiently vs zerg and should win 1v1 battle almost all the time, but THIS IS NOT THE CASE because oftentimes zerg is winning battle in the middle of the map. Now if you add larva mechanics and ability to produce from a single structure how is zerg balanced. It is clear like summer sky that zerg needs nerfs in that regard.

190

Warpgate is the equivalent, albeit more expensive version of the larvae mechanic. It’s a huge part of why PvT is such a pain in the butt to deal with (on both sides). Gateway units would be significantly stronger if it wasn’t for warp-gate, but we also wouldn’t have to deal with them warping in a literal army on the front lines and instantly reinforcing with a swarm of extremely dangerous units (post twilight upgrades).

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191

Serral is back? against Showtime bo5 in the first game race swap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI6tm22CacI

would disagree here. otherwise you can say reactor is the same as larval mechanics.
T- has queue time.
P- cd.
cd + warp. is better for reinforcing.
for remax in the base the difference is not big.

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192

They’re both aimed at evening the rate at which remaxes happen, that’s certainly true. Warp-gate is definitely the mid-way point with its CD; given that their units can be built instantly.

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193

But only at a certain stage of the game. In the late game warp-gate is almost negligible because protoss is producing high tech units - carriers, tempests, immortals, disruptors and only HT is a late game unit produced from gateway. So in the late game protoss does not have ability to remax on their most powerful/expensive units and the only compensation for that is chronoboost while zerg maintains larva mechanics throughout the entirety of the game.

Reactor is not even remotely close to both larva and warpgate as it allows terran to double production of basic units - marines, hellions, vikings and the only high-tier unit that can built off of a reactor is liberator. Every other high tier terran unit requires tech lab - tanks, BC, ravens, thors etc.

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194

There’s a variety of reinforcement mechanics in the game (BC teleport for example). How strong larva remax is depends a lot on what units are being made and how fast those units move. If you are making broodlords, for example, you have the corruptor build time (29 seconds) and then the morph to broodlord (24 seconds) for a total of 53 seconds. Then they have travel time. Broods move at 2.62 and on a map like Crimson Court that’s 193 between opposing corners. As an approximation, we will cut this in half. That’s (193/2)/2.62=37 seconds to get across the map. That means a zerg can attack with a broodlord remax about 90 seconds later.

Warpgate on the other hand can remax in one or two waves:

  • Zealots @ 13.3 seconds (no travel time).
  • Stalkers @ 15.3 seconds (no travel time).
  • Archons @ 21.3 seconds + 8.57 second morph time = 29.87 (no travel time).
  • High templar for storm @ 21.3 + 25 seconds to accumulate energy = 46.3 (no travel time).

It’s important to note that these units typically hard counter everything zerg makes EXCEPT broodlords or lurkers, and even then there are situations where a zealot surround can beat lurkers or storm+blink can beat broods. This happens because zergs usually skip upgrades on ground units to get out the broods as fast as possible, meanwhile the protoss is at 3/3/3. Really the only way to beat this remax is to have broods ready and in large enough quantities they can’t be swarmed by stalkers.

Therein lies a big problem: in the typical PvZ, protoss has the reinforcement advantage. Warpgate is drastically stronger than inject when it comes to reinforcing.

Warpgate has another advantage in that it’s also highly random. It’s impossible to know where the protoss will warp in next. It could be at literally any pylon or the prism. That makes preparation of defenses drastically harder because you don’t know where to put your army.

The longer production and travel times also have enormous risks. You miss out on benefits because the remax time prevents you from taking advantage of a weakness that is time limited. But it also has weaknesses because in that time frame backstabs can happen that require the broods to retreat. You are also hyper vulnerable to a counter attack while the broods are building because there is a huge time window when they are useless. Another weakness is that it gives the opponent more time to scout and adapt their unit comp and the positioning of their army. For warpgate, none of these are an issue because you have a new army 15 seconds later. You can make exactly the units you need, exactly where you need them.

The historical PvZ balance advantage that Protoss have enjoyed, across all versions of the game & all maps, factoring out skill differences, is about 58.5% vs 41.5%. Warpgate has been one of the most common elements across all versions of the game, and it’s also one of the most nerfed mechanics in the game. Does anyone remember when they could use a lowground pylon to warp dts onto the high ground? The reason this metric is useful is because it shows that protoss has held a balance advantage consistently throughout the history of all of SC2 and that despite this advantage there are periods where protoss can’t win tournaments. It’s a very strong indication that it’s a skill issue on the part of the current protoss professionals.

This is a fabulous example because washed-up serral w/ protoss can easily stomp Showtime’s zerg, even though Showtime is an active professional. I wish we had more of these examples. I’ve been wanting to create an “off race index” that measures how players perform when off racing. Protoss offracing w/ zerg will have much lower performance than terrans or zergs offracing as protoss (almost certainly). I’ve tested this theory on a few streamers who offrace and it’s generally true, but to really know you’d need a thousand data points.

The reason I am so confident it is true is because AlphaStar did essentially that. The same bot played all three races and it was drastically better w/ protoss than with zerg. So if you can eliminate all factors except the game itself, which is what alphastar did with millions of bots, millions of builds, millions of micro styles, protoss is drastically advantaged over zerg.

The reason protoss whiners absolutely hate alphastar is that it showed it was possible to beat Serral with protoss, it showed the same balance trends as Grandmaster, and it showed the same correlations between APM, race, and performance (with the lowest APM race being the highest performace race). Another thing is that it best with its mirror matchups, excluding PvZ (due to balance), which reinforces the theory that mirror matchups are the most skill based matchups. Protoss struggle in PvP because they are not very good at starcraft, excel in PvZ because balance is FUBAR’d, and that APM requirements are a good indication of skill & balance. That’s what AlphaStar proves.

With that in mind, check out this chart:

https://i.imgur.com/n3M23e2.png

:rofl:

The spending quotient chart is really interesting because it means zergs are beating protoss’ army strength advantage by having better spending. Toss will be floating money, having a small army than they are supposed to, which weakens their army. The difference between z/p professional level macro is about 25%. But this metric is logarithmic, meaning the true difference in spending is much larger than the metric indicates. The spending skill metric is absolute proof that protoss players are simply being outplayed. Nothing stops protoss players from spending their own money except themselves.

This point is especially poignant because we previously established protoss has the strongest reinforcement mechanic in the game. They can have a new army in 15 seconds. They have the easiest spending mechanics, but they still have the worst spending and that is 100% a skill issue.

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195

Elon Musk is also using the same strategy. An obvious Machiavelli fan.

So, a leader doesn’t have to possess all the virtuous qualities I’ve mentioned, but it’s absolutely imperative that he seem to possess them. I’ll go so far as to say this: if he had those qualities and observed them all the time, he’d be putting himself at risk. It’s seeming to be virtuous that helps; as, for example, seeming to be compassionate, loyal, humane, honest and religious. And you can even be those things, so long as you’re always mentally prepared to change as soon as your interests are threatened. What you have to understand is that a ruler, especially a ruler new to power, can’t always behave in ways that would make people think a man good, because to stay in power he’s frequently obliged to act against loyalty, against charity, against humanity and against religion. What matters is that he has the sort of character that can change tack as luck and circumstances demand, and, as I’ve already said, stick to the good if he can but know how to be bad when the occasion demands. So a ruler must be extremely careful not to say anything that doesn’t appear to be inspired by the five virtues listed above; he must seem and sound wholly compassionate, wholly loyal, wholly humane, wholly honest and wholly religious. There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious. In general people judge more by appearances than first-hand experience, because everyone gets to see you but hardly anyone deals with you directly. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few have experience of who you really are, and those few won’t have the courage to stand up to majority opinion underwritten by the authority of state

What’s interesting here is that Machiavelli is laying out a framework to understand political power. Political power comes from perception and not reality. This allows you to act like a terrible person but appear as a virtuous one as long as you have a mechanism to signal how virtuous you are, which Machiavelli attributes to religion. Combined with the power of the state, nobody would dare challenge your image because you can accuse them of being the unvirtuous ones as you secretly use the powers of the state to destroy them. This is why modern Atheistic politics has latched onto Climate Change – it provides them with a mechanism to signal their virtuosity, which is the fulcrum of power in politics. They can say they are acting to save the world from doom. Without a tool to signal your virtuosity, it becomes easy to criticize your actions & this undermines your ability to use the power of the state to stifle your enemies because all your actions become suspect.

Elon Musk started out in the same category because he created a bunch of green energy companies. But, he’s shifting from green energy to other investments and he’s changing the fulcrum he uses to signal his virtuosity. This tells me he doesn’t believe that the Atheistic fulcrums are sufficiently durable to maintain power on a national or global scale. I think the reason he wants power on those scales is because wants to get to Mars and you need ridiculous amounts of funding to do so and that kind of funding simply doesn’t exist except through taxation. My prediction is that he wants federal level power to dump trillions into colonizing mars. I think he plans to take this money away from the industrial military complex which spent 2 trillion in Afghanistan. That’s why he’s allied himself with the anti war candidates.