The issue I take with terran balance

General Discussion
21

Usually it is easier to overextend than doing definitive damage to a turtle terran because the advantage comes mainly from maceo differences between players,after an attack,Z will need lots of resources to replenish the army and still have some bank,if you have a normal econand do an attack,that can be a disaster for you vecause T will lose less every time,to losing 3-4 armies you will need a lot of eco and time,sometimes after the attack the econis not enough,the remax is slow and T will advance and take another base.

I find really infuriating the way turtle T plays,not even P players are so turtle as they always try to attack sooner or later,turtle terran just maybe try some early attack,realize they lack skill and after losing the first skirmish they turtle.
I once fought a dude who made around 3 PF per base,and turrets and sensor towers,he didn’t move out except for random 2 med drops,made a ton of libs and ghosts. It was my fault of not attacking/allining earlier,but the game ended in a point I was bored because I couldn’t attack because he would snipe all my broods,infestors and too many things to try blinding clouds.In these cases I just leave the game,I play unranked and I don’t like wasting my time and I feel no need to fight for some points.

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22

It’s not that bad… There are also posts with the claims:

  • Protoss is the easiest race
  • Zerg is the easiest race
  • Terran is the hardest race
  • Protoss is the hardest race
  • Zerg is the hardest race
  • Unit X is OP because
  • Playstyle Y is OP because

Apart from the ‘trust-me-bro-experiments’, more sources are used to defend those statements, including those from ‘the made up or randomly picked statistics datacenter’, clownfaces.comm and the “I’m cornered so let me pivot or use some ad hominem studies”. The ones not using those obivously don’t know what they are talking about :wink: .

23

No, they’re not siege units. They’re Zone Control, not Siege units. There is a difference - though they often share properties, they are not mutually exclusive. One is a large area denial and importantly, the ability to damage structures.

Widow mines are another example of a zone control unit that aren’t a siege unit. Both mines and liberators have a small zone in which they deny and control.

Irrelevant as they:
A) require large cargo space,
B) are generally unable to unsiege and run away before getting pounced on,
C) are only boosted for a short period of time, and
D) also wrong because they are only slightly faster than Mutas and slower than lings even with boost.

Tanks are good - I’m not denying that. But they’re definitely not as good as Lurkers are, even with the Lurker requiring hive tech.

I’m not complaining about the Lurker, I’m stating facts - the Lurker is undoubtedly over-tuned, and breaks pretty much every single rule that Siege units have. There is no getting around that.

Yes, its true, they are. But again, they have very clear cut counters, and even producing 3 at a time from expensive production structures, they still take a long time to get up into numbers.

And that’s the only thing that makes them even vaguely balanced. That doesn’t stop them from being over-tuned.

25

There’s at least claims to back that up, like Terran having the lowest average MMR for going on 12 years.

26

Most beginners will pick up terran, due to being the first race in the campaign. Thus lowering the average terran MMR.

27

I’m not complaining about the Mine, I’m stating facts - the Mine is undoubtedly over-tuned, and breaks pretty much every single rule that aoe suicide units have. There is no getting around that.

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28

Yeah, this is what everyone who denies what literally every pro has said for an eternity now… How many “beginners” do you think there are at this point? After almost 13 years?

29

± 400 a day. You can see the data at htt ps://w ww.nephest.c om/sc2/?season=51&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-day

I think there is still an influx of players who get bored of co-op/arcade/whatever they play, some teenagers playing RTS’es for the first time, some kids following their fathers trails :stuck_out_tongue: , people installing the F2P version which only has the terran campaign → 1v1 they pick terran as well,… I see numerous reasons for the lower leagues to be inflated with terrans

When comparing hardest/weakest/… I prefer to look at it patch by patch: there is a big difference between the time of the OPtoss laserball that won everything and the recent patches where zerg seems to have the edge at the very highest level. The last 6 years where only 2 protoss and 1 terran made the blizzcon/Katowice final, as well as the % of premier tournaments won by zerg is an indication of that. Whatever causes that edge I leave to all the forumGM’s here which will happily tell me the(ir) truth, which I probably won’t spend too much attention to :p.

Can’t deny that except maybe just for the very first stages of WOL terran never has been the “OP”-race that won everything, but that’s not a reason why it should have such an era: after all we want it to be as equal as possible right ?

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30

Nevertheless, you always choose some subjective measure of skill or newness that there’s zero data on.

You have a million and one pros who’ve said that Terran has the hardest mechanics and is the most difficult race, but every forum Protoss and Zerg all act like they’ve no idea what they’re talking about.

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31

Except its not a suicide unit. And has never been designed as one. Though I agree that it is poorly a designed one - the argument you think you are making isn’t as strong a counter-argument as you think it is.

Still, I will humour you. In what way does it break the rules that have been laid out for zone control units? It has a short range, which means you can pick it off with longer ranged units. It has a very, very slow reload time to make up for the fact that it is a splash unit (during which it is effectively wasted supply), along with the fact that it takes a full second and a half to fire. It does burrow itself quickly, but unlike the long range lurker this is less of an issue (though still an issue) for the mine than it is for a unit that has 10 range. Even so, I would still say it’s not exactly a well designed unit.

For lurkers specifically, they are mobile siege units that take no time to set up and still do splash damage.

A siege unit can have a few properties. Either it can have long range and splash damage, but be immobile, take time to set up and squishy. Alternatively, it can have long range, mobility and not take time to set up, but be squishy and have no splash damage.

The first option is the siege tank. It has great range (and requires a spotter to use full range) and incredible damage output but is squishy and immobile. This means that it takes time to get into position, and its immobility can be abused to get around and hit places it isn’t in. It also means that it takes time to get into position and get into its “siege” mode, which means that a player can easily catch it out of position and kill the unit if it isnt set up because it takes a long time to set up. And, as an additional measure, the siege tank has a minimum firing range, within which it is vulnerable. It’s counters are clear cut. There are ways to engage it to pick off tanks, and ways to avoid it if its in a sieged position.

Alternatively, you have a unit like the tempest, and to some extent the broodlord.

Both units are long range artillary units that are, as far as siege units are concerned, reasonably mobile in the fact that they have some limited ability to kite and maintain a maximum firing range without the need for a lengthy set up into a siege mode. However, as a trade off, neither unit gets any form of splash damage on their attacks, though the broodlord does have broodlings that mess with pathing which makes kiting easier, and both are reasonably frail units as far as air units specifically go. Like the tank, their counters are relatively clear-cut as well. The tempest is vulnerable to reasonable numbers due to its lack of splash, and the broodlord similarly so.

The lurker however, is all of these things. Theyre tanky for a ground unit. They have long range, they have no setup time, they are extremely mobile (being one of the fastest units in the game), and they do splash damage. Not to mention they are also cloaked units which adds a whole other level of difficulty to dealing with something that already has few, if any clear cut counters, which are, at best, soft counters when combined with other units, and at worst, straight up ineffective. You cannot catch them out of position, because they can burrow almost literally instantly on the off chance that you do catch them above ground. If somehow you manage to bypass creep and overlords alike and circumvent them, they’re so fast that they can reposition within moments to be where they weren’t and deal with, say, a doom drop into your main, even when you’re out defending a fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh base. Thus, your only real choice is to engage on them yourself, which is exactly what lurkers want - they want you to engage into a pre-set position, which you have no choice but to engage into.

Now if that said, it is possible to deal with Lurkers. Very, very difficult, regardless of if youre terran or protoss, but possible nonetheless. That does NOT make them well designed units, and that doesnt mean they are not overtuned. Broodlords infestor in WoL was wildly overtuned, even though it didnt have a 100% win-rate. The same applies to the lurker now.

32

Ehh… HotS Hellbat era is the only other one that comes to mind but that got nerfed pretty swiftly.

33

It costs the same as a roach yet one shots the majority of air and ground units in the game from cloak as well as dealing enough splash to one-shot workers and lings/banes. Suicide/disposable units are never this cost effective and good at both splash and single target, vs air and ground.

I understand the lurker is advantaged to the tank in terms of cloak, but the lurker at least costs 150 gas, that’s more than a dt, meanwhile mines have cloak and only cost 25 gas, you could argue that is ‘rule breaking’ for a cloak unit.

Compare it to spider mines or banelings, maybe suicide is inaccurate but I think they can fit in the broader category of disposable splash at least, which is the idea I’m getting at with the comparison: insane cost efficiency.

A liberator sieges a base and shuts down that base’s most important function: mining, as well as being able to siege ground defenders. Siege units are also typically not as effective at harass as liberators.

I recall many pro games where lurkers are out of position as a doom drop or recall happens in the main. Moreover you can still boost your tanks, I don’t buy the cargo space excuse, there’s no way you have less than half the medivacs to your tank count past your first 2 medivacs.

Even still I guess lurkers can still reposition faster with nydus, though the lurker being able to reposition itself faster doesn’t help that much if it’s being outranged so heavily by tanks. You never have to siege tanks into lurker fire but you do sometimes have to burrow lurkers in front of tanks. Tanks are 3 shotting groups of lurkers while lurkers, although tankier and faster, are 6 shotting tanks.

Then consider which type of aoe is more beneficial in that engagement, the tank’s long range burst comes on top of the lurker’s steady line damage. Lurkers want to engage from concave, tanks want to be spread out so during the engagement tanks will be almost guaranteed to hit groups of lurkers while lurkers will have trouble hitting multiple tanks.

Their function as siege units is also different, tanks are often seen shelling a base with only a few able to fire at a time, slowly killing the town hall over time, lurkers rarely do that, their lack of range and burst means they are going in all at once or sending a few to harass behind mineral lines. Like if you leave your lurkers scattered they’re gonna get picked off by straight up bio, you leave your tanks spread out and no ground army is making it through that. That’s the difference in range and attack.

Another pet peeve of lurkers vs tanks is lurkers can’t attack over chasms, pretty annoying.

Anyway the point I’m making is an asymmetric rts with 15-20 units per race will be bound to have units that break conventional rules, it doesn’t mean they’re broken.

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34

i don’t think the comparison fits.
sc2 has many things that are fundamentally not well designed and also questionable:
nydus, Sh, Bl, WM, Ghost, stim, prism juggling, the whole warp mechanics, disruptor etc…

That’s why I find it funny how you can get upset about lurkers. also the comparison to tank, lurkers work a bit different.
Which race must engage? zerg therefore the lurker must come into the fight and also use corresponding fast burying, because only then they make damage.
btw lurker is the only unit whose auto attack can be dodged.
so i think the design is understandable. and roll types are stretched.

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35

Then you get to fight in the late game… As a Terran… With doubtlessly the hardest micro in the entire game… Sounds smart!

36

At diamond micro is not that hard and Z overcommit very easily and trade bad, so T can have the edge in that scenario. At top level?,yes, Z can overrun T during a bad rotation

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