"These maps are considered a little bit favored..."

General Discussion
1

“These maps are considered a little bit favored for the terran, at the moment, is the consensus among the pro gamers. [The consensus] is that the current map pool [has] lots of good terran maps and, you know, the zergs are so afraid of Maru’s turtling they have to get rid of Neo Humanity, but these maps -Babalyon, Dragon Scales- have some fantastic aggressive pushes from the terran.” - PiG.

Hat’s off to PiG for stating the obvious. I took one look at this map pool and was like “This is probably the most terran favored map pool that I think I’ve seen since Wings of Liberty days”. Back then, terrans could lock zergs into their main by walling the ramp with a barracks and a depot. That’s how busted the maps were back then. In this map pool, they are small maps that allow the terran to siege your third or fourth, and give a direct doom-drop path into the main. They have lots of hiding spots for medivacs that can’t be reached by ground units, meaning the medivacs have “safe zones” they can run to which is equivalent to risk-free harass. All the bases are curled together by ridiculously long ground travel times between the bases yet extremely short air travel times. The maps are also “squatted”, meaning you have to expand towards your opponent rather than away. A single one of these would make the map pool good for Terran, but they’ve got it all. It’s like Avilo’s christmas list come true. This is obviously going to favor terran. Anyone with eyes could plainly see that would be the case.

Nonetheless, everyone’s like “nah man, you’re crazy, it was the balance patch that nerfed zerg”. Except, here’s the catch, the balance patch was a huge net buff to zerg. The ghost nerfs and brood speed buffs make late game zerg frankly busted (did you see Gumiho vs Dark in the ESL Summer – yeah, exactly). It’s obviously the map pool that creating the issue. The typical terran GM went from being a free win to feeling like you are 1v1ing maru for crying out loud. I am like playing vs this Masters-1 terran who can barely stutter step and it’s herculean effort to win a macro game.

So here I am with everyone telling me I am cray-cray and suddenly we have an all terran semi finals in the GSL. Huh. How about that. Now a top WCS caster is calling out the obvious. I guess I win again. Barcode: 1000 to 0 vs forum whiners.

You guys didn’t think I wouldn’t cash in with yet another “I told you so”, did you? I mean, who’s even keeping track at this point. We’ll just assume you guys lose future debates by default. :rofl:

2

Thank you for stating the obvious. And this is exactly what i feared. After that Patch zerg began to lose meaning everyone and their mother Made fun about the zerg Cabal thingy…except that the Cabal was Just torpedoed by the map Pool.

It reminds me of the tragedy of Darth Plagueis.

3

They’ve always blamed the maps for terran’s performance this isn’t anything new. You had Byun abusing tank positions on Data C every single game, Inside and Out had the doom push and possibility of dropping the main as well. I guess Maru had to take full advantage by doing reaper builds into SCV pulls. Wake me up when you have to defend a 3 rax reaper on Sequencer or have to deal with flying tanks on Moonlight Madness. Zerg players really have rose-tinted glasses.

4

And that is something that terran really needed. Do you imagine how many games terrans lose just because they lose their initial medivacs that are supposed to do dmg ? Consider 2-1-1. You knock zerg door at 5:10, if you lose 16 marines to bunch of banes because zerg knew exactly where you’re going to drop - it’s pretty much game over. I’m surprised that 4.9 k zerg like you hasn’t figured that out.

5

since it is so clearly understood that Zerg is better than Terran in open maps where they don’t get stuck in choke points and Terran is better than Zerg in closed maps where they can set up siege tanks in relative safety, isn’t the solution to balance the game to make Terran better in open maps and Zerg better in closed maps.

If Vipers were available earlier to counter siege tanks and Hellbats were a barracks unit that allowed Terran bio to more easily deal with ling harass, then we could have more interesting maps in the map pool without this Terran/Zerg favoured dynamic.

6

Do you know what is new? This map pool.

Terran had a 45% winrate on Sequencer notwithstanding reapers. Terran had a 51% winrate on Moonlight Madness notwithstanding flying tanks.

On this map pool, Terran is dominating GM with 60% more GM slots than the mean performance would allow for a balanced map pool, which hasn’t happened since the first few months of Wings of Liberty, and achieving all-Terran TvTvTvT semi-finals in the GSL, which has never happened before in the history of the game.

The balance patch clearly favored zerg. If you contrast the thor and brood dynamics in the GSL before the patch (Dark vs Cure, GSL) and after the patch (Dark vs Gumiho in ESL), the difference is like night and day. The hydra was buffed, the ghost was nerfed, the broodlord was buffed. The issue is clearly the maps.

In the history of legacy of the void, it has never been easier to win a late game ZvT as zerg. That’s just a fact. The new brood deals with counter attacks better. It’s more microable. It’s less committed to a bad position. It is so fast it can chase down retreating mech units, lmao. I’ve even been able to use it to corner bio which would normally be literally impossible to do with broods.

The issue is that this map pool was practically designed by Avilo himself. It is frankly astounding that the ESL guys gave a green-light to this map pool. Anyone with eyes could’ve seen this coming.

Every terran player from here to timbuktu magically turned into maru the moment this map pool hit the ladder. What’s more likely, every Masters-1 terran magically leapt to top code s level, or the map pool is busted? It’s the map pool.

7

Problem with Hellbat is that it moves a lot more slowly than bio-army.
And don’t have Stim.
Its already a nightmare to control a Terran army and adding yet another unit would make it beyond human capabilities.

Plus Hellbats are light and will just die to Banelings

8

As a front line unit, this doesnt necessarily matter. Bio only “needs” to move fast to kite and defend itself. If the hellbats are tanking for them, they dont need to kite, they can just sit there and unload.

This is the real problem. Dead units can’t act as front line.

1 Like
9

It work both ways if terran can drop and hide easily why don’t you rush mutas? It deals with drop and force the terran to make turrets. If 3rd is hard to defend why don’t you just tech (4 gas) on 2 base to gain map control then expand? I would think bane drops being equally hard to defend against.

If you know exactly what the opponent is doing there is a counter-play. Just because people sticked to the “standard” and dies due to its flaws doesn’t mean that the map is the problem. The sample is too low anyway and it will only take ONE player’s ingenuity to completely reverse the situation.

10

Zerg cannot survive on 2 bases for long. Terran Mules means they outmine Zerg on less bases so Zerg has to be half a base ahead all game to keep up with Terran.
Also the Queen is the most cost effective Zerg unit and Zerg cannot survive without it. When going for tech on 2 bases you only have a single base to make queens from and you cannot reach the number of queens needed to deal with harass.

11

If Hellbats were actually rebalanced for Bio’s speed, they would have to trade off durability and damage, which would make them a terrible front-line unit. It’s better not to try to change Hellbats for the sake of Bio.

Currently, Hellbats have quite a few uses in mech, as a potential harassment unit, and as a buffer unit for Thors against Brood Lords. You could probably use a few Hellbats in Bio-Tank comps to effectively guard your Tanks from Zerglings if you wanted to. The Hellbats don’t need speed for that, and it would be an easy way to make killing Tanks more costly.

There are a few other problems with trying to mix Hellbats into a bio-ball that you just can’t get around:

  • The range difference means that they have to be controlled separately, or the shorter-ranged Hellbats mixed into the bio-ball may just take up space that “can’t attack”. Co-op Firebats have 4 range for a reason.
  • Hellbats themselves are countered by most of the same splash damage units that counter Marines. Individual Hellbats may be about 2-3x tougher (depending on the attacker).
  • Bio doesn’t have the range to utilize Hellbats as an effective meat-shield in most situations. Banelings and Archons are counters to Hellbats (at least soft-counters), and most other splash units (the units you really don’t want to target the Marines) have enough range to target Bio units over the Hellbats if they need to.

That’s irrelevant. Hellbats have good enough stats that they don’t need an attack-speed bonus, and they would actually lose damage and/or a significant amount of health if they were rebalanced for the movement speed and attack boost of Stimpacks. It is better for Hellbats to be a tough wall that can use their burst+splash to punish units that get too close to them.

Yep, it’s kind of hard to use a unit as a buffer when it has a similar weaknesses to the unit it is trying to defend. One of the reasons why Hellbats work as a good buffer for Tanks and Thors is that they have different armor-types and counters, but if a change in armor type is what you need, Bio already has Marauders that can tank to some extent. Marauders also have similar range to Marines, and they can limit an enemy’s ability to chase with Concussive shell.

12

Alright, let me explain to you the basics of TvZ. Terran has the tech and upgrade lead in TvZ. This means zerg trades at negative efficiency for most of the game. Zerglings and banelings for example trade at a 1:0.6 ratio, meaning you spend 1 mineral to trade 0.6 minerals with the terran. This problem explodes exponentially as soon as 3/3 finishes for the terran. Zerg’s typically have 10-20% more income than a terran, which means they are on the clock: the longer they stay on ling bane, the sooner they go bankrupt. If you don’t have ultras, or at a bare minimum vipers, by the time the terran has 3/3, you just lose the game. It’s that simple. On this map pool, this issue is incalculably larger because the maps are so small and so incredibly good for bio plays.

You can’t side-track yourself by making mutas. The cost of the spire and the mutas is greater than the cost to reaching ultra tech. The upgrade advantage heavily outweighs any economic damage that you can find with the mutas, which won’t be much because terran is spamming marines in mass from square 1, and even if you managed to find damage you’d still be run-over by hoards of marines, because 0/0 mutas are virtually worthless vs 3/3 marines. But let’s say some “pie in the sky” scenario occurs and you find tremendous economic damage: this still won’t put you in a winning position because you’d have to close out the game one upgrade-inferior and tech inferior units, which is borderline impossible. You have to go up to hive tech at some point, and that gives the terran the breathing room he needs to pump a round of SCVs and start making ghosts, aka your economic damage was totally irrelevant.

Terran’s biggest weakness is their production. Economic damage is virtually irrelevant to terran. Mutas really can’t threaten the terran’s production. The amount of gas you have to spend to have the ability to kill factories is insane. If you are going for a harass-based style, it’s better to put lurkers into a nydus, or do baneling-bombs with overlords. But both of these require the terran to make a big misplay in order to work. In other words, they will never work vs an equally skilled terran. They will see the nydus and right click it and that’s that.

13

The point being is that they’re extremely different maps from one another allowing unique gameplay. It will be incredibly disappointing going back to every map being a reskinned clone with the same presets. Look at the early lotv map pool for even more proof, when was the last time we had a map like Ulrena? I am astounded that the person who misses creative play is pushing the opposite.

Dark didn’t defend the counter attack with broods, wasn’t able to engage until Gumiho walked his army through a choke into every fungal twice but it was the patch. XD Even you are sleeping on the EMP nerf it seems. The only benefit I saw is that the movement buff slightly helps engaging thors but Dark was adamant that Gumiho attacks into him. The same is true for Spirit verse Reynor and there’s no interesting broodling spam in sight.

14

Is this a joke? This is the least diverse map pool in perhaps the history of the game.

That’s exactly where the process went wrong on this map pool. Every map in the pool looks like it was CTRL+c and CTRL+v’d.

I dunno what you are smoking man, because this map pool has a horrendous lack of diversity, and that’s my exact contention with it. Not only does it lack diversity, the features strongly correlate with what’s good for terran.

When was the last time they designed a map where players spawned in the middle? Why do they always spawn in the corner? When was the last time they designed an island map, e.g. all the bases are islands? When was the last time they designed an assymetrical map – THOSE would be really interesting. I could go on and on. This map pool is awful and has zero creativity to the design.

Prior to this patch, dark had to meticulously whittle down cure’s army by targeting his own creep tumors with the broods. Even with tremendous effort, he still barely won. Yes, the EMP nerf helps here because you end up with more energy on your infestors which is equivalent to more thors caught with neural and more ghosts caught with fungal. I have no doubt that on the previous patch Gumiho would’ve landed 1 EPM and all the infestors would’ve been useless.

This outcome is exactly how the game should resolve when there is a big skill gap between the zerg and the terran. Dark is #2 worldwide behind serral. He’s an absolute beast. He was beating skytoss with ravagers when protoss was hitting 61% win-rates in the pro scene. I don’t think you understand just how wildly outclassed Gumiho is. That battle looked exactly like it should, but in the past it would’ve been close and slightly terran favored notwithstanding the poor micro.

The brood speed buff alone makes it so much easier to interrupt snipes. The brood itself retargets more quickly, the broodling gets onto the field faster, and these things matter when the snipe has a cancellation period.

15

You tech slow because you waste your minerals on 3rd base.

I will say this again, it takes 2 minutes to gain back what you invested on workers and new base. Which means a third have no impact to economy until 2~3 minutes later. If you rush enough tech and units and cause your opponent to lose units/workers it can break even rather easily. You can just get ahead by killing his harrass units (medievac drop/banshee etc) and immediately expand while drone up. If he don’t harrass you can drop bane or kill his third while building yours to get ahead.

It is the “staying on tier 1 and survive” mindset makes you predictable and easy prey.

16

2 base muta is not a viable build vs terran. He will be able to afford equal tech, will be ahead in upgrades and ahead in economy, and you will be trying to harass a terran with mutas as he camps on 2 bases aka you aren’t going to do any damage whatsoever. When you are on 2 bases your economy is screwed, when a terran is on 2 bases he has 3 base income thanks to mule over-saturation.

The proper way to play out 2 base muta isn’t to use it for harass. You use it as a defensive style and you immediately take a third and a fourth while making ling bane as necessary. That was the defacto way to play ZvT in early HotS. The problem in LotV is that the economy rework significantly shrunk the economic advantage that zerg has, and now it’s impossible to hold onto your fourth base after opening 2 base muta. The mutas are useless vs a deathball push, and your ground army is weakened by all the gas spent on mutas. You simply lose the game by not being able to establish a fourth base.

Mutas are hard countered by turtling at home, with no counter-harass, and doing large move-outs that are meant to deny bases.

Basically your only hope to beat a terran with 2 base muta is to get baneling speed and allin him when he tries to establish his third. The mutas only exist for map control and denying his scouting. You don’t take a third or if you do you don’t saturate it, and you wait for his first move-out to leave his base. You camp your army behind some grass and ram banelings into his marines. If you can’t do that, you can base trade. Those are the only win conditions for a 2 base muta play, barring something like a gold base play.

My man, I have beaten 5800 mmr terran players with 1 base swarm host. It’s a technically impossible feat. It should never win a game, ever. Nobody sees my builds coming, because I don’t know the builds. I legitimately spam completely random build orders. It’s free style. I will decide to rush ultras on 1 base for the lulz and I will make it work vs high GMs because, what can I say, SC2 is an easy game, man.

I rail on 2 base muta because I’ve done it a lot. I know how bad it sucks. When you go 2 base muta, every terran in masters league magically leaps 1,000 mmr in skill. Are they suddenly Maru? No, the build I choose to use is bad (that’s why I choose it, lmao).

2 base muta is a build you can pull out to troll masters-1 terrans or maybe low GMs. I am talking 5300, max, and even then it’s going to be situational on if it’s viable or not. If you get any terran that can play standard well and you will lose every game you use 2 base muta.

There have been games where I went 2 base muta, killed 2 BCs for free, and still didn’t end up winning. I can’t understate how incredibly bad muta plays are in general but especially on 2 base. Perhaps the only thing worse than 2 base muta is 1 base muta and, yes, I’ve beaten GMs with 1 base muta.

I once did a proxy hatch vs a terran and took control of his natural with creep spread. He made 1 raven, tanks, and hellions. That’s it. I was like “Ok, I guess I win this game by going 1 base muta, lmao” and I fired up a lair. The proxy bought enough time for the lair to finish because he was chasing the creep around to clear it out and land his natural. By the time he started to move across the map I already had 5 mutas in his main base’s mineral line.

It’s crazy the kinds of builds you can get away with these days. Before covid, it was impossible. After covid, SC2 became much easier. I think covid will have ended up being a lot like lead poisoning. They think lead poising robbed humanity of billions of IQ points, and there are good reasons to believe COVID did the same thing because it does negatively affect cognition. Brain fog is one of the most common long term symptoms. SC2 is an incredibly difficult game that puts a tremendous tax on your nervous system, and, around the time COVID hit, the GM ladder talent dove off a cliff. You’re telling me that’s a coincidence? No way. I remember the days when bnet wouldn’t promote you to GM until 5500 mmr. Nowadays there are 4800 mmr grandmasters. It’s totally covid, man.

So, if 2 base muta works, you have COVID to thank for it. I am just saying, if your argument on a build being viable relies on hoping a super-virus sweeping across the planet, it’s probably not a good build.

17

It is 2 base but what you do is you get the magic number (which is 7 mutas) stop it and and expand.

What muta does is to prevent the terran from harrassing. What a “normal build” doesn’t do is to allow the terran to harrass with no risk, they just pack-up and retreat if the position is unfavorable, that snow-balls up because the zerg keep losing units while terran units retreated could be healed or repaired. With mutas in the air they cannot retreat as they will lose everything.

Forcing the opponent to turtle is what exactly a zerg wanted to do. Expand fast and when they finally move out, you can delay the defense giving up a base or two while destroying his reinforcement, build up your forces and crush it as your hatchs are all over the place.

18

Nope, you need at least 12 to threaten missile turrets. 8 with +1 attack can also threaten turrets, but that means no turret harass until +1 finishes and that’s not very good. You need 12.

That’s not the issue. Terran will have an economic lead that will produce a huge ground army advantage which is mostly marines, and mutas are useless vs that. You just can’t keep a fourth base.

You misunderstand. He “turtles” in the sense that he doesn’t send out harass. He bulks up a larger army and does periodic move outs.

This is how muta play goes in current LotV. DRG does tremendous economic damage, has complete map control, and it just doesn’t matter because mutas are awful units:

19

A Terran player spends 150 minerals for an orbital on the first CC and 550 for the 2nd orbital, this is 700 minerals. Orbitals are as good as 3.5 worker units, so this is a 7 worker advantage over a 2 base Zerg player. Zerg also has to spend 350 minerals on a hatch but then needs at least 7 workers to make catch up with Terran mules costing a total of 700 minerals, exactly the same as 2 base Terran.

So Zerg on 2 hatches spends the same minerals for the same economy as Terran, but Terran can build 7 more SCVs. Zerg play greedy because the more bases they have, the less investment they have to do to get the same income of Terran. But on 2 bases, Zerg has no advantage whatsoever.

There is simply no window where Zerg has the ability to have a bigger and better army than Terran in the early game. The only time that happens is when a Zerg fools their opponent into thinking they are playing a macro game but instead go for an all-in, punishing their opponent for playing normally. Without the ability to take a 3rd, 2 base play is useless.

1 Like
20

Dude, this is one of the strongest Zerg cheese that there is. It is literally +500 MMR build )

Assuming perfect micro from Terran, this part is correct.
All it takes is one baneling to connect…

And this part is not.
Making mutas means that T player suddenly can not trade super efficiently because you can’t get into Medivacs and leave the moment lings get a surround: because if you do than Mutas will kill Medivacs for free.
That’s the entire point!

Recently there was a fame that Winter casted of Wayne vs Clem where Wayne went for Muta and won. So its definitely not ladder only story.

On the ladder however its not that unusual for people to go for ling-bane-Corruptor for the same reason (except Corruptor is better at killing Medivacs and have a T3 switch).

This part is correct

And this part is not.
Terran’s worst fear is Mutas camping in production killing every unit that comes out.
You need to focus fir WMs I guess, but don’t tell me its a hard micro.

Point was it is very inconvenient to keep them in the same control group as bio because of lack of Stim button.
I already have to use 6 control groups, adding another one is too much.

Besides, we were just theoricrafting about what would it take to make Terran not so bad in the open field.

good point

They are too thin: if you put them in front then they are quickly get eaten by lings. They are not Archons…