Protoss is currently sitting at 44% of GM worldwide and over 50% in EU. I think it’s just such a coincidence that so many players at that highest skill level just happen to play Protoss.
Terran is the player base with the most average games per day, the most experienced player base, and by far the lowest average MMR. It’s just crazy to think that all those casual players just randomly chose Terran.
I used to be a Terran whiner. What I never got before was that Terran players pick that race because it was the first campaign. You might counter with: “well, wasn’t that true in Brood War, where Terran was by far the most difficult race and the rankings were similar?” and I’d counter with, shut up, Terran whiner, you’re clearly an idiot.
See, what Terran whiners like me, Adventurer, and, well, Showtime, don’t get is that we are the problem. You see, Protoss didn’t win a tournament for over a year (while their best player refuses to play on LAN and the sample size is 5) . That’s the statistic that matter.
You see, Sample sizes of 100,000 or 800 are clearly inferior to sample sizes of 5. Protoss was always just as difficult as the other races. You Terran whiners just don’t want to see things clearly.
Clem, who has superhuman speed, literally loses to low tier pros despite getting lucky and to 4.5K protosses who know how to deathball.
But come on man after protoss won 7 games in a row and showed it’s impossible for terran to win, terran won 4 games in a row in the finals against a way worse player who showed 10 different signs of matchfixing. Obviously those terran whiners have no idea what they’re talking about, Protoss isn’t the most overpowered thing in gaming, oh no, it’s not viable in pro play because their units are more expensive so they can’t afford to lose them.
Oh, and harstem beating Maru 3-0 because he doesn’t do the korean style and just does the safe and practically invincible EU style even with pheonix chargelot? Yeah he just happens to have played really well. We should listen to youtube chatters about how maru (or insert whichever terran just lost a matchfixed game in their favor) should have played better.
Obviously, there are more protoss gms because there are more protoss gm players. Despite having more players, they still can’t win a premier. That’s how underpowered protoss is. Protoss needs the zealot, immortal, archon and carrier buffed even more. Buffing high micro units is too much to ask when protoss already requires so much micro. In fact we should also nerf the high micro units to reduce the insane difficulty of playing protoss, aka stalkers. With carriers, voids, templar, zealots, archons, immortals, and other f2 amove units buffed, protoss will finally be as easy as terran. To counteract the insane imbalance of inject we need to buff chronoboost by 200% if protoss can’t max 5 minutes before zerg, they stand no chance at victory. In fact why don’t protoss units begin with 1/1 already researched? Toss units are such literal trash that they just can’t win fights.
Adventurer, when will you realize what a sarcastic whiner you are? The game will only be truly balanced when there’s a 200/200 Protoss in all 4 GM leagues and some of them are in literal comas.
You Terran whiners are the worst. Especially ones like you and Showtime who don’t even play Terran!
if protoss was broken, professionals would have more success. if the race was broken like you suggest, other professionals would switch to this race and make money. its been 14 years since release. my guess is by now many have tried it and many have failed.
protoss is the weakest race in an extended series, just like in broodwar. because they have to do the same thing every game, just like in broodwar.
terran is just like it was in broodwar, mechanically the most difficult, but unbeatable if they play “perfect” they are totally unbeatable.
zerg is just like it was in broodwar, 18thousand chances to end the game instantly against protoss, you basically get a guaranteed “good opener” since protoss has to open stargate, but in sc2 its melee upgrade not carapace upgrade. you really think ur special for playing the “i win automatically if u dont attack, and my opponents do basically the same build every game” race. LOL
You mean the 2.3% advantage Terran currently has? I know. It’s basically insurmountable. And the 5.8% win advantage Protoss has? Obviously due to skill! And in the ladder? It’s only 45% Protoss in GM? We really need to buff Protoss more. The last round was definitely insufficient. If Protoss isn’t at least 60% of GM while being 28% of the base, then clearly the game is broken!
I’m sorry but that’s really not true if those professionals continue to make mistakes that would be game ending for another race.
Nightmare vs Byun in the ESL cup the other day, for example. Game 2 was a game that was over 20 minutes. Despite making a minimum of 5+ colossus and having multiple of them on the field at several points, Nightmare completely forgot to research Extended thermal lance.
To give you an idea of just how bad that is, that’s like never researching combat shields or hydra range for the duration of the entire game. It’s a mistake that would be game ending for any other race, but Nightmare was not only able to draw out the game to a full 20+ minute game, but the game was, at multiple points, still not only winnable but actively ahead during that match.
Interestingly part of what kept him alive during that match - despite a sizable ghost count and Vikings on the field - was storm, which people unironically believe is unusable when ghosts are out. Pairing them with a prism to protect them from EMPs meant that they were much, much safer, especially given the Prism’s long range pickup capability allowing it to stay out of viking range fairly consistently, and forced Byun to constantly have to predict when and where the templar would be dropped to EMP before he got off a storm.
Such a thing is genuinely a rarity from Pro Protoss players, and I genuinely don’t understand why because it’s clearly very strong. Despite the massive mistake from Nightmare it was, genuinely, some of the best Protoss play I’ve seen in a long, long time.
HerO vs Dark from IEM Katowice is another great example, to which I will link this post I wrote during the tournament:
They do not.
In fact, Protoss is very, very well known for having “The Great Big Book of Protoss Bullsh!t” - though it has admittedly been curtailed marginally in recent times. Good macro players are few and far between. Really from what I can see it’s only Stats, MaxPax and Showtime, and the latter isn’t on the level of the other two, though he has gotten significantly better by being able to compete with Reynor at times during long macro games.
MaxPax specifically has a huge breadth of play that he utilizes regularly that makes him somewhat unpredictable. While his staple TvP is a 4gate blink build, he has stargate openers, robo openers, twilight openers, various proxies, macro games, full blown cheeses and all ins in his repertoire that it’s hard to consistently predict him without 100% information. The other two are much more predictable as they have much less variety with their openings and are therefore more exploitable one way or another.
The irony is that Protoss is the only race that has had multiple players switch to it and have success within a year of doing so. Granted, that was a little while back, but even so.
Genuinely speaking, the players who I personally feel are currently the best toss in the World are MaxPax (who doesn’t ever compete offline), followed by Stats (see current condition from GSL), and then Reynor… Who is a Zerg player.
Protoss win the majority of tournaments because they don’t have more success! Got it, guys? Logic so sound it definitely doesn’t make your head spin. After all, it is just a coincidence that there are so many protoss tournament wins:
https://i.imgur.com/ZJc5izy.png
Since protoss are doing so immensely poorly, why don’t we talk about making gateway units stronger? Why is it that zealots have charge instead of blink, and why doesn’t the warp prism do auto micro? Liberators have smart fire, they will automatically hit templar but not zealots, and why exactly doesn’t the warp prism have this same auto micro feature? Terran is the easy race.
Why is it that individual terran units can have infinite range teleport, but the whole protoss army only has one teleport? Geez louise, protoss is literal trash!
Good point, being >50% of gm and winning >42% of tournaments clearly shows how slow zealots just can’t compete with the insane mobility of the zergling! Nerf zerg!
If those people are in fact failing and have 10% of the speed of maru, byun etc. then why switch to a viable race when your race can still win when:
Pro protosses let liberators kill 17 probes before pulling them away.
Pro protosses haven’t tried defensive EU style play even a single time, despite harstem beating maru 4-1 with it.
Pro protosses might go carriers and a-move byun but will go tempests to counter a 2 base SCV pull from maru.
“protoss is the weakest race in an extended series, just like in broodwar. because they have to do the same thing every game, just like in broodwar.”
Why are these amazing, perfect pros, who won 7 games in a row against terran but somehow magically started playing even worse in the finals, not doing that same thing then, genius?
“terran is just like it was in broodwar, mechanically the most difficult, but unbeatable if they play “perfect” they are totally unbeatable.”
Even in brood war, if everyone played mathematically perfect, terran would be the worst race due to it’s by far slowest maxout, and every unit relying on human error to be effective because it’s so gimped. Terran is by far the lowest winrate race in the hands of narrow AIs. AlphaStar’s terran is not nearly masters 2 level and it can beat pros with protoss.
“zerg is just like it was in broodwar, 18thousand chances to end the game instantly against protoss, you basically get a guaranteed “good opener” since protoss has to open stargate, but in sc2 its melee upgrade not carapace upgrade. you really think ur special for playing the “i win automatically if u dont attack, and my opponents do basically the same build every game” race. LOL”
Cannons mostly stomp zerg cheese in ZvP in BW. In SC2, force fields and blink dominate zerg in the early game if you have any idea what you’re doing, while ling rushes are a waste of time that zerg can’t afford, and then the protoss gets an auto win because their a-move deathball counters every conceivable zerg ground unit. You can be at silver league skill level and just go for a deathball timing with protoss every game and get to mid diamond with protoss.
It’s a race so completely broken it can’t be compared to the other 2 races. Zerg can’t even max out as fast as it because of chrono boost. Protoss is so thoroughly overpowered in every aspect it breaks all rules of RTS. If protosses tried EU style, it wouldn’t even be vulnerable to cheese.
One of my favorites. I should release a Bingo score card. Spot all the mistakes that professional protoss make. Protoss is just so incredibly hard to play. That’s why they make so many mistakes. The first person to complete the bingo card wins the “congrats, you have eyes” award. What can we include? Let’s see here:
Bad F2.
Single army hotkey.
Robo unit rallied to its death.
Blink into a meat grinder.
Sends a warp prism into turrets (bonus points if it’s full of high templar or dts).
Rallies a carrier or a tempest or a void ray into a spore crawler.
Recalls to the wrong base.
Lets charge trigger at the wrong time.
Overcharges the shield battery too late.
Overcharges the shield battery too early.
Doesn’t overcharge the shield battery at all.
Loses an oracle to a widow mine.
Loses an oracle to a cyclone.
Loses an oracle to AFK’ing.
Forgets to build gateways.
Floats 1,000+ minerals at a critical timing when spending is the difference between winning and losing.
Places tech buildings in places where they are easily sniped.
Loses key upgrades right before the finish.
Lets the shields on his immortals be pinged for free.
Misses a critical forcefield.
Wastes a forcefield for no reason.
Blinks his DTs into a field of widow mines.
Lets his zealots derp out on a choke.
Forgets to make detection vs a banshee.
Forgets to make anti air vs a liberator.
Has anti air but lets a liberator kill a base of workers anyway.
Has detection but it’s out of position for the banshee.
Loses far more probes than necessary vs a widow mine drop.
Doesn’t split his zealots vs widow mines.
Doesn’t utilize flanks / basic army engagements aka f2 + aclick from a single direction.
We can’t forget the single best one of all, which is that you can watch uthermal play against a plat~ protoss and he will storm his army in the middle, while pro protosses will only storm the edges of the bio and casters will say “what an AMAZING storm!” when a plat protoss can clearly do a much better job.
“If protoss was broken, more professionals would switch to it and have success”.
Not really. Most of the people you watch playing Terran are Korean. They have mandatory military service. They have a vested interest in playing as the human race, regardless of small balance concerns.
One good example is FlaSh. He was considered the best in the world, playing Terran. Well, now after finishing his military service, he’s playing as random.
By the way, I tried one of my 1 base ultra rushes on berry’s stream. He gave the camera a double-bird, lmao. He afforded 3cc and a BC in the same time it took to get to hive. Meanwhile there are a few GM terran memesters who do do 1 base BC rushes. They bunker rush your natural and then go 1 base BC. That’s a common one. If I hatch rush a terran’s natural and then go 1 base ultra, he can go 3cc, get a big ball of marines, and afford a BC before the ultras are even out.
That’s why aggressive / tech / upgrade zerg styles are such a meme. Literally the only way to get an advantage, as zerg, is via drone-spam. Zerg is so far behind in all other metrics that it’s ludicrous. If you prioritize tech progression, you end up with 1/3rd the economy of your opponent. That’s an impossible gap to bridge.
That’s why it’s always bust-your-gut funny when someone is proud to beat a meme build. I have to take a 1,000 mmr hit to make these builds work and the only reason they work at a GM level is because my skill level is 1,000 mmr higher than the GM threshold. They struggle to beat these builds and then they give a double-bird to the camera when they win, lmao. It’s like, dude, that’s not a win to be proud of. You had literally every advantage and you struggled. A MEME BUILD PUT YOU ON THE STRUGGLE-BUS, DUDE. You’re on the public bus, with Rosa Parks, not because of racism but because you were given a million dollars and blew it on blow and hookers.
I ran into SortOf awhile back. I haven’t played standard Zerg in so long because it’s just so detestable to sit there mindlessly spamming drones. I run into him and I give it a try. No practice, right. 3 hatch before pool straight into muta ling bane off 8 gas. It’s a 50 minute game and he barely wins. This is a professional player. I play like 1 or 2 times a week. Drone spam is just insanely strong compared to tech-progression or upgrades. I am not exaggerating, in the slightest, when I say tech based zerg styles delete 1,000 mmr out of your ranking. You don’t even come out ahead in tech when you rush tech vs a terran who isn’t even rushing tech. It’s mind boggling how bad it is. Tech based zerg is the worst style in the game, bar none.
Even Ace switched to Terran after his prayers weren’t answered.