Serral is a joke LMAO

[Miro-11607]

@abs-2628

few well landed EMPs renders HT/Archon completely useless (and possibly immortals as well as taking ton of HP from other units) plus excellent splits make disruptors useless, what can protoss do about this ?

Keep templar inside warp prisms to prevent them from getting EMP’d. Prisms have 5 range pickup and shouldn’t ever be in EMP range outside of when they drop the templar inside. It’s something that used to be done that almost never is anymore.

Archons basically don’t matter unless there isn’t anything more important to EMP, since they absorb 3 EMPs to actually drop. You morph them to keep the templar from dying so they continue to have a use afterwards (meat shield) but they’re very good against Zerg because of the Bio bonus.

As for disruptors, stagger the shots. Disruptors dont have to hit anything to be effective; their spell is a cool down and you want to force army movement from the opponent which takes micro and also means that your units can fire while theirs cannot since they’re moving and yours are generally longer ranged (archons and zealots being the exception).

[Adventurer-16000863]

@Miro-11607

Keep templar inside warp prisms to prevent them from getting EMP’d. Prisms have 5 range pickup and shouldn’t ever be in EMP range outside of when they drop the templar inside. It’s something that used to be done that almost never is anymore

Not to mention, zoning the ghosts out with disruptors. Parting had the highest ever recorded vs Terran ranking for any race, when he played, and he did carrier disruptor tempest. He wins this game vs the best tvp player on earth at the time:

[2020 GSL S3] Ro.16 Group C Match2 PartinG vs Maru

Granted, disruptor is nerfed since this game but so is the ghost. A better example might be Stats vs Cure:

[2024 GSL S2] Ro.16 Group C Match3 Cure vs Stats

Cure is known for his excellent TvP. He’s considered #2 or #3 on the planet. Stats is far from his performance level but makes short work of him with mass zealots. Stats even makes several enormous mistakes and wins anyway. It’s a pretty darn good example of how to beat terran atm.

[abs-2628]

@Miro-11607

As for disruptors, stagger the shots. Disruptors dont have to hit anything to be effective; their spell is a cool down and you want to force army movement from the opponent which takes micro and also means that your units can fire while theirs cannot since they’re moving and yours are generally longer ranged (archons and zealots being the exception).

In the end disruptors do nothing, other than just pushing army back. But as protoss you want unit to do actual damage rather than just preventing a fight. Protoss late game lacks micro potential to deal with best terrans on the planet. If terran scans protoss army in advance, then not even keeping templars in the prism will not do much, as templars can still be emp-ed.
We’re talking about highest level TvP, not just some diamond - low GM skirmish. If you disagree with this then tell me why it is nearly impossible for protoss to kill best terrans like Byun, Clem, Maru, Cure etc.

[Miro-11607]

https://youtu.be/ku_dlpd5CvM?si=iWbuJDI7JJtmdz86

GSL this year. Nightmare vs Byun. Nightmare 2-0’d Byun doing the exact thing I said that protoss players need to do - protect tempar in the prism. It’s something you literally never see, and Nightmare was very proactive with them too. Byun couldn’t really ever move out in game 2. Nightmare is not someone who I would have considered to be on Byun’s level, but he is one of the few people who actually did this and it was extremely successful. We literally see Byun scan the templar, which still manage to get a storm off before Byun can EMP them in front of his nat/third entry, and they escape in the prism before getting EMP’d if I recall. So many instances in this game alone in which the prism templar combo was prevalent, powerful and useful.

https://youtu.be/KR651Hb5J-M?si=ErK6vHWib3kDvdlv

HerO vs Clem. HerO 3-0’d Clem, despite ome of the worst control I have ever seen from him, by being aggressive and keeping Clem on the back foot. Again, something that I have repeatedly maintained protoss players rarely do, and its one of the things that arguably makes HerO one of the best protoss currently despite his garbage control in that game.

These are all series from this year, by the way. It’s not that they can’t beat them, its that the things that they can do to beat them are often ignored, for reasons that I genuinely cannot fathom. Protoss players complain about how little skill expression there is in their race, yet the things they do have that differentiate good protoss from great protoss are almost never ever done. And this is just one of several things that used to be prevalent; lost protoss arts.

[Adventurer-16000863]

@Miro-11607

These are all series from this year, by the way. It’s not that they can’t beat them, its that the things that they can do to beat them are often ignored, for reasons that I genuinely cannot fathom. Protoss players complain about how little skill expression there is in their race, yet the things they do have that differentiate good protoss from great protoss are almost never ever done. And this is just one of several things that used to be prevalent; lost protoss arts.

Yeah, I watched a series between astrea and byun. Toss dies to a repeat drop at his natural on post youth. Every time, he was out of position, even though he spotted it & it was done several times prior. Every time, he responded with zealots instead of stalker/disruptor. Stalkers can prevent a drop from unloading, a disruptor can force an unloaded drop to load, and stalkers can kill it as it retreats. So it has multiple levels of protection. But he sent zealots. Byun lost the series, lmao, poor byun.

And that’s not to mention the unit comp issue aka no templar or phoenix nor a void ray. Anti air is the biggest weakness of protoss in pvt because of medivacs and liberators. So it’s hilarious to watch protoss refuse to make anti air and then lose unlosable games. Gumiho vs Showtime comes to mind. I am sure you guys know the game I am speaking of. Showtime has the tournament won except for the fact that he throws away advantage after advantage because he absolutely refuses to adapt his unit comp to the situation. A single void ray would’ve been a slam dunk. Instead he bleeds out advantages to liberators on crimson court and slowly loses an unlosable game.

StarCraft II Game of the Year Gumiho vs ShoWTimE

Harstem titles this the “game of the year” and I have to agree because it perfectly represents the state of balance & the current ladder experience for non protoss players. You are playing with maximum effort to accumulate every tiny advantage only to win by the width of a hair.

At the moment I linked to in this video, it should’ve been crystal-clear what Gumiho’s plan was and what his win condition is. A stargate should’ve been dropped and a void ray made immediately.

So gumiho reveals his hand at 20 minutes and showtime finally makes a phoenix at 28 minutes. He’s ridiculously slow at identifying the problems in the game. He has better vision (obs stays w/ the army) and he has two mining bases vs ZERO. Gumiho is mining a single mineral patch in his main after the 20 minute mark. The game goes on for 12 more minutes, and showtime has mining that entire time.

It’s ridiculously bad play and it’s putting a world class terran on the struggle-bus. In order to make a world class terran struggle, I should be able to look at the protoss’ play and be amazed at how well the protoss is playing. I should be saying “holy cow, this protoss is insanely good”. Instead, I am wondering how he even qualified for the tournament.

[Miro-11607]

I remember this series. Showtime was up 3-0 and was literally in an unlosable spot and managed to not only lose the game but the entire series IIRC.

[snakeyes11-1924]

Instead of whining like a hardstuck 12 year old try to articulate what about zerg is broken.

The solution to the entire zerg roster is ghosts. They 2 shot all late game zerg armored units, can 1 shot all zerg casters, are not light units (takes 7 banes to kill a ghost) and they deal bonus vs light units.

The queen argument is a joke, they take up 16-20 supply in the lategame (avg of 8-10 queens mid/lategame) and have no utility beside transfuse, but are a mandatory unit to have if you do not have them you cant produce at the rate zerg units get wiped by terran units.

Serral was dominant for 6-7+ years, tripple crowned twice.

No one thinks clem is not equally as good as serral but to say zerg is a broken race, when terran can build ghosts to cure lategame zvt is absurd. On top of that, the AMP of all high level pro players is the same, there is no difference in technical demand between races. Infact the fastest player, Reynor is a zerg playera who loses to clem frequently.

I think youre also conflating all 3 players, dark, clem and serral when they all play insanely differently. Serral is the best macro player in the world, clem is certainly the best micro player and dark is by far and away dark is the best game knowledge/ build strategist ever. He will first time insane timings or win games with offbeat pushes compirsed of 7 units.

[DankTemplar-11542]

Here’s the thing, as you get older, you slow down. Serral has a legit, crazy bonjwa thing going on and WAS the best player in the world to the point where it was breaking tournaments.

After nerfs and time, he’s still amazing but he’s no longer the uncontested best player in the world.

[abs-2628]

@snakeyes11-1924

Serral was dominant for 6-7+ years, tripple crowned twice.

What about Dark, Rogue and Reynor ? Weren’t they dominant too ? Rogue eventually had to quit going to military. Now it’s Dark turn.

You need to be naive to believe ghost is solution to late game zerg army. They are mostly efficient in fortified territory behing tanks, libs and planetaries. In open combat - ONE fungal shuts them down and they do almost no damage at all. And queens are still solution to ANY early aggression. This zerg hipocrisy is so blatant it’s insane, accusing ghosts of being OP while denying queens strength.

But yeah, keep shouting: “Nerf ghost/skytoss and f knows what else so that we can F2 a-move to victory with inflated APM.”

[snakeyes11-1924]

What about Dark, Rogue and Reynor ? Weren’t they dominant too ? Rogue eventually had to quit going to military. Now it’s Dark turn.

Not for 7 years, and serral beat them at every major for 2 years IN A ROW. So no the magnitude of their skill was not the same and still isnt.

You need to be naive to believe ghost is solution to late game zerg army. They are mostly efficient in fortified territory behing tanks, libs and planetaries. In open combat - ONE fungal shuts them down and they do almost no damage at all.

Ghosts can solve every major threat in TvZ and the whole point of playing terran is to clear creep and move up because zerg cant fight off creep. Your ghosts should always be near your army but just because you have to move up a siege tank doesnt mean the ghost should be able to insta resolve ZvT and PvT.

ZvT

• They 2 shot BroodLords, 1 shot infestors, 1 shot vipers, 4 shot ultras from 10 range up to 13.5. They deal bonus vs light and are not light units themselves.
• They have the added capability to drop nukes which is certainly not overly consequential to the outcome of games but the unit is really overloaded.

PvT

• EMP does 100 damage to shields.
• Does not require an upgrade
• removes up to 100 energy
• For context: EMP AOE removes all stalker shield which is 50% of their hp pool, all imortal shield which is 33% of their total hp pool, all zealot shield which is 33% of zealot hp pool, all tempest sheild which is 33% of their hp pool, all voidray shield ~45% hp pool, all disruptor shields.
• Collossus and carrier and mother ship are the only units that dont get their shield stripped.

Ghost is easily the most overloaded unit in the game and is a 1 stop solution to every other races lategame composition and they are the only caster that terran ever needs to use given scans, which can be used one after another once you reach 5 CCs, largely reduce the use of ravens.

Terran can see the whole map and cloaked units without ever needing to build or micro any observer unit.

accusing ghosts of being OP while denying queens strength.

Queens are obviously strong, but in most cases they cannot and should not be used as an offensive unit, they are not useful in the lategame and its mandatory to have queens when playing zerg. That means -16 → -20 lategame supply.

Queens exist because the way zerg are designed, to rebuild attack rebuild attack, if zerg could trade evenly (even the best zerg players in the world cant against top level terrans) then it makes sense zerg gets to mass produce units.

But yeah, keep shouting: “Nerf ghost/skytoss and f knows what else so that we can F2 a-move to victory with inflated APM.”

There is no apm difference among pro players stop coping.

And if youre getting a moved in your base by zergs and dont come out with a 50-70 supply lead youre probably awful at terran. Widow mines and tanks alone do most of the work.

[abs-2628]

@snakeyes11-1924

• EMP does 100 damage to shields.
• Does not require an upgrade
• removes up to 100 energy
• For context: EMP AOE removes all stalker shield which is 50% of their hp pool, all imortal shield which is 33% of their total hp pool, all zealot shield which is 33% of zealot hp pool, all tempest sheild which is 33% of their hp pool, all voidray shield ~45% hp pool, all disruptor shields.
• Collossus and carrier and mother ship are the only units that dont get their shield stripped.

Hard time finding counter arguments so you conveniently switch to PvT. We’re talking about terran vs zerg interaction. You shouldn’t bother with protoss. They have their own problems.

@snakeyes11-1924

Ghost is easily the most overloaded unit in the game and is a 1 stop solution to every other races lategame composition and they are the only caster that terran ever needs to use given scans

Literally you sound as if ghost was so powerful that it is terran’s unstoppable tool to victory which is far from the truth. Like i told, as long as ghost takes no damage it is very powerful unit. The moment when they take damage from banes/fungals they do ZERO damage and the unit itself is quite expensive - 150 mins/125 gas. Imaging spending those money and not doing any damage at all. Banes do not need to kill a ghost, all they need is to do damage, cancelling snipe. Ghosts with 170 damage weren’t really that strong, and now with only 130 dmg vs non-spellcasters they are garbage.
I’ve seen games at pro level where zergs literally curb-stomped terrans even with ghosts.
But zergs are still crying “Nerf ghosts” because zerg players on average have the lowest IQ among SC2 players. Even Harstem himself said that zergs are complete idiots (i’ll try to find that video for you if you need proof).

[TerranicII-1450]

@snakeyes11-1924

Ghosts can solve every major threat in TvZ

Zergling/Baneling based armies can overwhelm Ghosts, and Lurkers, Infestors, or Brood Lords can interrupt them at range. Ghosts also have a limited time to get shots off against melee units like Ultralisks before they will get overrun. Ghosts are not as powerful as you are making them out to be.

@snakeyes11-1924

They 2 shot BroodLords, 1 shot infestors, 1 shot vipers, 4 shot ultras from 10 range up to 13.5. They deal bonus vs light and are not light units themselves.

Yes, the Steady-Targeting is currently a counter to casters (that is literally why they kept anti-psionic damage in the recent nerf) and high-supply targets.

Ghosts are often necessary to deal with Vipers, and that is because of Steady-Targeting rather than EMP. Blinding Cloud hard or soft counters almost all Terran ground units apart from Ghosts using Steady-Targeting and Widow Mines. EMP isn’t going to be sufficient against Vipers because the Vipers can use consume to regain that energy much faster than the Ghosts.

@snakeyes11-1924

Ghost is easily the most overloaded unit in the game and is a 1 stop solution to every other races lategame composition and they are the only caster that terran ever needs to use given scans, which can be used one after another once you reach 5 CCs, largely reduce the use of ravens.

To be blunt, Science Vessels did the same in Brood War. The Science Vessel was arguably even more effective because Irradiate and EMP were stronger spells, and the Science Vessel fit better into both Bio and Mech compositions. Blizzard basically swapped the roles of the Ghost and Raven/Science Vessel in StarCraft 2, even if it took some time for Ravens to get an equivalent of Lockdown.

Also, Vipers and Infestors are each about as versatile as Ghosts.

@snakeyes11-1924

• EMP does 100 damage to shields.
• Does not require an upgrade
• removes up to 100 energy
• For context: EMP AOE removes all stalker shield which is 50% of their hp pool, all imortal shield which is 33% of their total hp pool, all zealot shield which is 33% of zealot hp pool, all tempest sheild which is 33% of their hp pool, all voidray shield ~45% hp pool, all disruptor shields.
• Collossus and carrier and mother ship are the only units that dont get their shield stripped.

None of this is relevant to TvZ.

Even so, EMP is not a problem. EMP cannot kill, it takes 2 shots to fully disable a caster, and its damage is limited by the shields of the target (assuming they have shields at all).

This is why the EMP doesn’t require an upgrade like Storm does. EMP doesn’t kill, and it doesn’t enable any problematic timing attacks that Protoss is unable to deal with. The real purpose of upgrades in an RTS is to prevent certain timing attacks and delay the strength of units to a point in time where the other races can reasonably deal with it. This is the same reason why the Siege Tech upgrade was removed after WOL, why the cost and research time of many upgrades such as Blink and Stimpacks have been changed over the years.

[Adventurer-16000863]

@abs-2628

But zergs are still crying “Nerf ghosts” because zerg players on average have the lowest IQ among SC2 players. Even Harstem himself said that zergs are complete idiots (i’ll try to find that video for you if you need proof).

https://i.imgur.com/I7gqs2n.png

In game factors favor protoss, it’s simply a fact of reality, so zerg and terrans have to win through out of game factors. Out of game factors include multitasking, reaction speed and, yes, IQ. Because balance gives protoss an advantage, they will score lower in out of game factors for the same performance level. The advantage of Protoss is equivalent to taking a B+ grade student and giving them an A. These things have been confirmed numerous times in research papers.

There is a huge difference in the skill requirements required to play zerg compared protoss, with zerg requiring 30% more screen movements for example. It’s practically guaranteed that zergs score higher in memory tests because you are essentially splitting your attention across 30% more areas of the map.

Not only is protoss easier, requiring less out of game factors for the same performance level, but it was deliberately designed this way to appeal to the low skill moba players. RTS has an issue and MOBA solved it and SC2 designers tried to copy that idea by making Protoss the “MOBA” race of SC2. It was always designed with that goal in mind. That’s why Protoss ball their army in a single glob with f2 and attack down a single lane of the map. They are treating their deathball as a hero unit and attacking down one lane of the map exactly like how League is played.

The issue is that people then expect this mastery of the game to be capable of winning tournaments, and that’s just insane. It’s insane to expect a moba-level mastery of the game to win premier tournaments. If the game were fair, it would be impossible to get grandmaster without mastery of hotkeys, for example, but it’s totally normal for protoss to be in premier tournaments with one hotkey. Why no more hotkeys? Because they are treating their deathball like a hero unit. People who play the super-simplified version of the game, aka protoss, are punching deep into premier tournaments and terrorizing the other pro players. The strain that is being created I think will ultimately be the death of SC2 esports.

The dominoes are already falling. The lowest level terran and zerg pros will be the first to fall because they will realize it’s impossible to compete with protoss on an equal skill basis, and, since they are the lower tier pros in skill, they will realize they can’t do it. So they will retire. Then protoss will be the most common race in tournaments and PvP will be the most common matchup. We’re already seeing this happen, with protoss winning 2x as many esl cups as zerg, and with PvP being 4x as common as ZvZ.

Protoss has destroyed SC2 esports and will continue doing so going into the future.

@Adventurer-16000863

The lowest level terran and zerg pros will be the first to fall

https://i.imgur.com/NLHNL21.png

I predict Gumiho will be among the first to fall. Idra and Nerchio were ahead of the curve because they figured this out way sooner than anyone else. Why play a game that is rigged against you?

[abs-2628]

@Adventurer-16000863

Zerg has destroyed SC2 esports and will continue doing so going into the future.

I fixed the typo for you.

Keep zerg overpowered at pro level, allowing only few best zergs to win majority of all premier tournaments while still buffing the race and blaming protoss for it. Please for the sake of this discussion, accept that you suck at ZvP and you need to improve.

[Adventurer-16000863]

@abs-2628

Keep zerg overpowered at pro level

Zerg’s so overpowered, they win 1/2 as many tournaments as protoss. In fact, zerg is so powerful that they managed a positive win-rate in 3% of Aligulac periods for the past 2 years. How high was that single time they managed a positive win-rate? 50.44%. Zerg so powerful! Omg! They have a positive win-rate 3% of the time!?!?!??!!? NERF NERF NERF!

@abs-2628

Please for the sake of this discussion, accept that you suck at ZvP and you need to improve

You are talking to one of the best ZvP players on the planet. There are maybe 50 people on Earth who are better at it than me. I am better at it than 99.998% of people who play the game. 1 person in 62,500 people scores this high in ZvP.

You say that I need to improve – correction, you don’t know the ABC’s of the game, have no clue what you are talking about, and have to resort to absurd personal attacks because your argument has absolutely no merit whatsoever.

Saying a top 100 gm is bad at ZvP is equivalent to saying water isn’t wet. The only way you believe that is if you drank so many beers that you can’t even recognize your own reflection in the mirror. You’d have to be so hammered that you couldn’t walk.

@abs-2628

allowing only few best zergs to win majority of all premier tournaments

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

Again, Gumbel analysis of the pro scene shows that it’s likely that skill is the cause of peak performance differences between races. When you split the playerbase into 3 parts, you can’t expect every part to have a god-tier player because god-tier players are incredibly rare. The probability of getting a god tier player for each group is simply very unlikely. Protoss simply got unlucky. Protoss was the odd one out. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.

Show me the protoss who plays as well as serral and I will show you the protoss who will win premier tournaments. Unfortunately such a protoss doesn’t exist.

Balance will never solve this issue. A more practical way to solve this issue is to limit a player to winning 1 premier tournament per year. Serral can only win 1. Reynor can only win 1. Etc. This will drastically increase the probability of a protoss premier win. Balance will never do it. You would have to FUBAR PvZ balance to where Protoss had a 70% win-rate before they start to have decent odds of winning vs Serral and Clem.

If I were running the show, any tournament with a 1st place prize pool >=10,000 USD would be limited in this fashion. You’d see protoss winning roughly 45% of the tournaments if this were implemented, because, without Serral to stop them, they’d mirror their Grandmaster performance. The effect that this would have is that lower skilled pro players would play more tournaments while higher skilled players would play fewer. Why? Because the higher skilled players want to win the most lucrative tournaments. Since they can only win 1, they will strategically pick which ones to show up for. Lower skilled pros will be glad to win anything and so they will show up to literally ever tournament until they win one. That’s how protoss can win premiers. This makes lower skill professionals play more frequently and that increases their odds to win one.

[abs-2628]

@Adventurer-16000863

You are talking to one of the best ZvP players on the planet. There are maybe 50 people on Earth who are better at it than me. I am better at it than 99.998% of people who play the game. 1 person in 62,500 people scores this high in ZvP.

Yeah “one of the best ZvP players on the planet” cannot beat 120 apm skytoss abusers… well, well. That’s contradictory a little bit isn’t it ?

Hey batz. I am one of the best terrans on the planet, yet i cannot get master league - TOTALLY not because of my fault. It’s because all of those protoss, zerg and terran abusers who stand in my way. If not them i’d be easily master if not GM… - this is literally your narrative.
I already gave you an advice - team up with better zergs than you - it’s okay to ask for help. We all struggle against different things in the game.

@Adventurer-16000863

Zerg’s so overpowered, they win 1/2 as many tournaments as protoss. In fact, zerg is so powerful that they managed a positive win-rate in 3% of Aligulac periods for the past 2 years. How high was that single time they managed a positive win-rate? 50.44%. Zerg so powerful! Omg! They have a positive win-rate 3% of the time!?!?!??!!? NERF NERF NERF!

How many PREMIER tournaments have zergs won ?
Oh i forgot - “PreMieR TOuRnaMentS doN’t MaTTer beCaUSe tHey Are OutlieRs” - tehBatz.

[snakeyes11-1924]

The moment when they take damage from banes/fungals they do ZERO damage and the unit itself is quite expensive - 150 mins/125 gas. Imaging spending those money and not doing any damage at all. Banes do not need to kill a ghost, all they need is to do damage, cancelling snipe. Ghosts with 170 damage weren’t really that strong, and now with only 130 dmg vs non-spellcasters they are garbage.

Ghosts have 10 range, and it takes 1.43 seconds for snipe to hit. Zerglings off creep move at 6.57 UPS (units per second). The only way that all ghosts get consistently cancelled is if the lings are perfectly exactly just outside the snipe range and react IMMEDIATELY to seeing the ghosts. This doesnt factor in the marines and siege tanks that accompany ghosts.

Many of the nearest lings/ banes will die before coming into contact with ghosts and snipe will go off on the important zerg targets (infestors, ultra, broods etc) and even if the ghosts do die, theyve killed the most important supporting units. Of course you can just load them into medivacs if theyre not fungaled but its more likely than not that they get their shot off before lings make contact, unless youre on creep then lings will more likely than not make contact.

Youre using anecdotal experiences or interactionst that only exist in a vaccume to try and justify a unit 1 shotting all high level zerg and removing all protoss shields while saying the unit is bad. Its insane cope.

I’ve seen games at pro level where zergs literally curb-stomped terrans even with ghosts.

This is the most absurd claim ever lmao, what pro terran is getting curb stomped by zerglings alone?? Likely not “pro” for long after that match aired.

[snakeyes11-1924]

Zergling/Baneling based armies can overwhelm Ghosts, and Lurkers, Infestors, or Brood Lords can interrupt them at range. Ghosts also have a limited time to get shots off against melee units like Ultralisks before they will get overrun. Ghosts are not as powerful as you are making them out to be.

I made a point about this above, but a cluster of snipe targets a cluster of broods, many of the shots will go off because broods have a really slow wind-up and attack animation (all-in 1.76 cooldown) where as snipe only takes 1.47 seconds to fire. The issue is that even if some snipes are cancelled, more broods than ghosts will die and broods cost way more.

The issue isnt that terran has something to kill broodlords, its that that unit counters ALL late game zerg units, especially when those lategame units are built to fight midgame terran units which already trade very efficiently with zerg.

There should be counters to each unit and if youre saying to just build mass zerglings when marines and siege tanks already do very well against them already its not easy to see your point of view.

I’ve made this point before, if terran players think snipe and emp should be in the game, they should be on seperate units. Put emp on ravens and leave ghosts with snipe so that terran has to manage two casters like the other races.

To be blunt, Science Vessels did the same in Brood War. The Science Vessel was arguably even more effective because Irradiate and EMP were stronger spells, and the Science Vessel fit better into both Bio and Mech compositions. Blizzard basically swapped the roles of the Ghost and Raven/Science Vessel in StarCraft 2, even if it took some time for Ravens to get an equivalent of Lockdown.

none of this is relevant to SC2

Also, Vipers and Infestors are each about as versatile as Ghosts.

Disagree, ghosts kill units on their own vipers and infestors do not.

[Hallo-2564]

@snakeyes11-1924

Also, Vipers and Infestors are each about as versatile as Ghosts.

Disagree, ghosts kill units on their own vipers and infestors do not.

Ghost is only: poke dmg(snipe), zone tool(nuke), harass tool (nuke, cloak), direct combat tool, anti caster (emp), anti shield(emp), solid mobility.
Clearly Ghost is as versatile as any other caster.

[Adventurer-16000863]

EDIT:

Also, here is an updated Gumbel chart for the SC2 ladder, which tells us the likelihood that pro players are equally skilled for each race:

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

X axis is win-rate between the lowest and highest skilled top player(s) for each race and this is done for the best player as well as average of the top 5. Y is the probability of occurring. It gives 90% confidence intervals which are the vertical dashed lines. That means there is a 90% chance the skill difference between each group is less than or equal to this win-rate. That is a 74% win-rate difference (582 mmr) between the strongest and weakest top player for each race, and a 65% difference (350 mmr) between the strongest and weakest top 5 for each race.

So if the strongest player has 7000 mmr there is a 90% chance the strongest player for each other race is >= 6418 mmr. And that’s exactly what we observe on the ladder – Serral is peak 7160 and MaxPax is 6946 (6646 after the balance advantage is subtracted out). The difference between 7160 and 6646 is within the confidence interval for what is possible to occur without balance issues because the lower limit of the 90% confidence interval would be 6578. That means protoss could be nerfed by 300 mmr and Serral’s performance would stay within the confines of what’s statistically likely under a balanced game assumption.

Translation, it’s likely that the performance differences at the absolute highest levels is due to skill and not game balance. The fact Protoss and Terran and Zerg all have players clustering so closely to one another is actually statistically impossible. Outliers of this size are occurring too frequently. Again, balance issues.

@abs-2628

Yeah “one of the best ZvP players on the planet” cannot beat 120 apm skytoss abusers… well, well. That’s contradictory a little bit isn’t it ?

You pretend it’s just me, but this happens literally everywhere. It happened live on SortOf’s stream a day ago. He lost to a skytoss player 500 mmr below him. This player threw away his army for free on four different occasions. SortOf was trading at 1.5x efficiency. This is insane because in a typical PvZ the protoss is the one to trade at positive efficiency. It’s objective proof the protoss was being drastically outplayed. SortOf lost anyway. Analyzing the replay, there was literally nothing he could’ve done better to win.

This pattern is so apparent you could see it from outer space. The only way you can’t is if you wear a blindfold, which might be the reason you think zerg is overpowered. Have you tried taking blindfold off during games? It might solve your problem.

There is an index I created awhile back that tracks skytoss players before and after chronoboost was buffed. It’s called the “Great Ape Index”. Masters 1 protoss players leapt to top 50 grandmaster after chronoboost was buffed. Modern chronoboost+skytoss quite literally adds ~800 mmr to a player’s rank. Not every protoss is willing to play this way, there are some honorable protoss left, and so the average across all protoss is ~300 mmr. That’s how a 5500 toss can make a 6000 zerg lose despite playing like trash.