Lets get one thing straight in this topic. At least for the last year, zerg have been dominant at the highest levels. In Korea? Dominant. In Europe? Dominant. Maybe its balanced now but Zerg literally was in the finals of every tournament. 3 out of 4 of the Ro4 in Blizzcon. And won 65% of all major tournaments. It wasn’t a few lucky wins.
That being said I respect people who play zerg. Its honestly arguably the most difficult race to play. if you don’t understand how to scout, balance macroing eco and army, and know opponents all in’s very well, its difficult. Especially if you are a macro player. If you just like to ling/roach/nydus/whatever all in every game then no, don’t respect you.
all of them appeared at the blizzcon finals once, twice or even more times. so its not true to put them in the “quite not good enough” group.
how do you judge this? soo beat zest, serral, hero and stats at iem. thats still quite impressive. so how can you say, that soo wasnt at his peak at this time? same with rogue. what makes you think, that they werent in topform at that time?
aligulac isnt always representive, because you have a really sh*tty europe and na section of terrans. terran only does well in korea. because of balance? maybe. because of skill? maybe. there are plenty of arguments for both sides. taking that in account, its obv, that the terran winrates on aligulac are bad, but for the longest period of sc2 (not only lotv), terrans dominated everything in korea.
yes, zerg won a lot in 2019, we all know that. does it have to do with balance? maybe. does it have to do with maps? maybe. does it have to do with individual skill? maybe. theres no way, that you can be sure that one of these points is a bigger factor than the other.
btw, it doesnt matter, if zerg is the least or most played race. what matters is the number of total pro players who are on a competing lvl. on that note, zerg was always in the majority.
Ranked FTW stats showing a clear trend upwards from massive underrepresentation in bronze all the way to massive over representation in the pros: doesn’t mean anything
Winning 65% of premiers for the last two years: inconsequential
The opinions of top pros even saying the race they used was overpowered and they deserved less than they got: less than credible
Your feelings that all the best players in the world just so hapoen to be Zerg: the only stat that matters.
Yes. Since its more likely, that new players will play terran, since its the first campaign and people who played the campaign and want to try out multiplayer, will choose terran because of that.
Doesnt mean alot, since like 30-40% comes alone from serral and reynor. With the same argumentation, terran overperformed in 2018, because maru won every gsl.
4 . Only rogue did so. None other. No, serral didnt say that zerg is op and that he didnt deserve to win. He said, that if the zerg plays perfect, he shouldnt lose. But you cant play sc2 perfect, so this is a theoretical saying.
Name me guys, who are OBJECTIVELY better than dark, serral and reynor. I bet you cant.
Maru 4 time consecutive GSL champ, arguable GOAT. Innovation, umpteen time GSL champion been playing since the beginning, arguable GOAT. Classic, multiple time GSL champion, micro god.
Foreigners have gotten better by leaps and bounds like Special, Neeb, Elazer, TIME or even slightly lower tier guys like MarineLord, Showtime, etc. But only the Zergs have found success. Have you ever seen Serral struggle against Toss or Terran, foreign or Korean? Only the highest skilled Koreans (and TIME who plays on Korean servers) have ever even so much as taken a game off him. No matter how sharp the timings zerg has an answer. Serral has alluded that if you don’t make a mistake zerg wins every time. And Rogue said explicitly that zerg is overpowered.
This nerf to zerg was warranted and zerg should be happy it wasn’t worse. For now lets see how the meta shakes out.
i could say the same with serral - blizzcon champ (first foreigner ever), most wcs wins any player ever had. won literally everything in sc2. i guess that makes him also a GOAT.
reynor - never lost against someone else than serral at wcs events, so hes wrecking foreigners. had some mixed/bad results against koreans, but lately, he is doing good against them. so if not, hes on his way to be at that very top lvl. you cant reach #2 at blizzcon, if you dont atleast have some skill… no matter the balance.
dark - gsl winner, super tournament winner, blizzcon winner, super tournament runner up. placed atleast top4 in almost every tournament he participated in. wouldnt that also make him a GOAT, if “playing since the beginning” makes inno a GOAT?
on foreigner lvl, only serral and reynor had success. which other zerg is also successfull? theres a HUGE gap between these two and every other zerg. elazer had a run at gsl vs the world, but he had really great bracket luck.
if nobody is able to take maps of serral, maybe that means, that serral is simply at god tier? problem of most people is, they want to have maru as the first “real” bonjwa so bad, but if everyone would be honest… theres no way that this title wouldnt go to serral. hes the only foreigner, which koreans FEAR to meet at tournaments.
and yes, zerg got its nerfs, but people allrdy crying about lurker being suddenly op…
hell, during HSC, and special and heromarine were on the casting couch, they legit said that ultra linb bane was more dangerous than even old infestor brood lord LOL
it’s crazy how even pros immediately hop onto the next balance whine agenda
thats what im trying to say. there is no objective way to proof someone just one because of balance, maps, skill etc. that are all claims, which arent proofable.
the only thing you can say, is that serral, dark, reynor, soo and rogue are winning tournaments or atleast doing really well in them for atleast 5 years now, which also means through different patches. so neither of them is patch depended.
so you CAN argue that these 5 are argueably the most constant players over the last 5 years. to say that everything comes from balance and maps, is a claim which is not proofable. thats why i wont ever be conviced.
problem with aligulac is, that it takes literally every tournament in count, while most of the tournaments arent really usable for such a statistic, because of skill variety.
Right. Neither are Premier tournaments. Because the sample size is too small. So there’s no science you accept, only subjective feeling. And surprisingly, your subjective feeling choose to protect your ego that"):
Your race is not easier and the fact that Terran has lower MMR means they are not harder.
A 2 year long sample size of Terran getting passed around means nothing.
The top 5 players in the world all seem to be outperforming their Protoss and Terran counterparts at the same time magically.
Who would think that analysis was biased? I’m the one who’s wrong here, clearly.
so here youre even bringing up the main argument, why the winrate of zerg in especially 2019 means nothing. a problem with the argumentation of most of the people is, that mostly they claim zerg just abused infestor, sh and nydus. but neither of the zergs really abused these units. abusing would mean, that you would use it every game to win. but none of the 5 zergs did that. maybe once or twice in a series yes, but not a whole series long. the closest to an abussive play was rogue against classic at blizzcon, where rogue used sh nydus like 3-4 times, but guess what - rogue lost that series.
so its often claimed, that zergs just abuse op units, but in reality, this isnt the truth.
mmr means nothing. so it doesnt matter, if someone has 6,8k mmr or 7k mmr. mmr is a good indicator until like 6,5k, but everything above, it doesnt say much.
again, even if you take 2 years in account, its still a too small sample size. but to look too wide into the past doesnt matter either, since different patches are different. only conclusion you can get there is that zergs are really consistent, while terran and toss arent.
again, not true. i allrdy said, that rogue and soo had their one championship this year, but nothing else. if you wanna talk about outperforming their opponents, i only talk about serral, reynor and dark.
Nydus swarm host went undefeated at Blizzcon. The one game that Rogue was able to go nydus SH against Classic he won. The only reason why classic won that series is because Rogue is a macro zerg and is more vulnerable to the cannon rush, adept immoral sentry all in, and creative DT harass into chargelot archon all in that Classic did.
Back when Maru was the only Terran winning tournaments there was an argument to that case (for Terran specifically).
Zerg have been overperforming on both the ladder and the pro scene for years though. This is far more than just Serral or just Serran and Reynor or “0.01% of players” winning tournaments or overperforming in general.
Neither of those abilities is problematic like Neural Parasite is, and Protoss would arguably not stand a chance against Zerg without them–whereas Neural Parasite is normally unnecessary and can be easily substituted with Blinding Cloud, Fungal, or Abduct in many cases.