I think there is a problem with your argument. I looked at the aligulac page, and as you said, the ratings were almost identical. Now imagine if there were some sort of imbance in the PvZ matchup that allows stats to beat zergs much higher than him. Why does it not reflect on the ratings? It should by all means, and other protosses should have their PvZ ratings be unnaturally high aswell.
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Do you mean like this? https://i.imgur.com/jKnVZeu.png. Notice how Protoss performance is basically neutral for all of LotV, then is overwhelmingly positive at the 2020 mark. You know, right after they delete the infested terran which was zerg’s only efficiency play vs skytoss.
That’s a common misconception and it stems from a misunderstanding in how rating systems work. When Protoss is favored, their performance goes up, which gives them a higher ranking in PvZ, and this effect bleeds over into other matchups. That’s because the probability of facing a zerg changes with respect to PvZ strength and that creates ranking deflation in general for all zerg matchups. The opposite is true for Protoss. There are more protoss playing more games, this creates a ranking inflation. This same effect is why the Grandmaster threshold is so low (4800) compared times in the past (5500). In the past, players were more active. When you change the activity level of a race in tournaments, by knocking out the players, it causes ranking deflation/inflation.
So we expect higher and more clustered performance, which is exactly what the data shows. We don’t expect a skew in PvZ rankings relative to other matchups, because that’s just not how the system works on a fundamental level. PvZ performance has a bleed-through effect that prevents that from happening. In order for there to be no bleed-through effect, there would have to be absolutely no co-dependency between PvZ performance and PvT/PvP, and that’s just not how it works. The matchups are definitely co-dependent because a PvZ can affect the probability of the other matchups occuring.
Because performance goes up in general, not just PvZ, it’s hard to assert whether this Protoss is simply more skilled or if it’s balance. You’d expect a Protoss to have a higher PvZ ranking than PvT but that’s not necessarily true as I have shown. So how do you tell the difference between a genuinely higher skilled player and one boosted by PvZ? That’s where the bradford hill criteria enter the chat:
This is why I keep emphasizing the fact that there are 6200 mmr Protoss GMs who don’t use hotkeys. There is a strong correlation between # of hotkeys used and SC2 performance, and that trend is highly skewed in the Protoss population. Protoss in GM have skill metrics similar to Masters-2 level zergs, and that just doesn’t happen unless Masters-2 level Protoss are being boosted into GM by PvZ. The same trend exists in APM, EPM, screen movements, spending skill, etc (https://i.imgur.com/wpOiKMQ.png, https://i.imgur.com/4KIy1M3.png, https://i.imgur.com/d2SXoFm.png, https://i.imgur.com/enGARya.png). It’s simply a fact that Protoss is highly favored by balance.
TLDR
Not only do Protoss have higher and more clustered performance, the skill metrics are highly skewed within the protoss population which is equivalent to saying less skilled players achieve higher rankings with protoss, and this trend is universally true for all known skill metrics. Protoss is overpowered. Nerf it.
Lol again @ Eli-liar saying I provided “no reason or evidence”. Lmao. When do you think he will apologize, or are my expectations just too high?
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Many of the things you say are indeed plausible, but I don’t really understand why the probability of facing a zerg changes with respect to protoss being more broken?
If toss has a 70% winrate then, by definition, 78.4% of zergs will be knocked out in the opening rounds of a tournament, if they face a protoss, in tournaments for which the opening round is a best of three. This changes how frequently zergs play, and changes the average performance level for zergs in the tournaments (tge ones to make it through are reliably higher performance players). There are second and third order effects that have to be accounted for, it’s not as simple as “herr durr PvZ rank go brrrrr.”
By the way, ladder win-rates can be used to estimate the proportion for each race in tournaments. If a toss has a 70% win-rate against Zerg, and the opening rounds of each tournament are roughly 1/3rd protoss, 1/3rd zerg, etc, then the number of zerg to qualify for tournaments should be (1 - PvZ_winrate) * ProportionOfZergs*ProportionOfProtoss which is 0.216 * 0.33333 * 0.33333=0.024. But that only accounts for Zergs who advance through the qualifiers via ZvP. We also need ZvT and ZvZ. Let’s assume ZvT is balanced. That makes it 0.5 * 0.333333 * 0.33333 = 0.055554944445 for ZvT. ZvZ has a 100% chance of a zerg advancing so it’s just the proportion squared aka 0.3333333^2=0.111. Now we add these together: 19.1%. We expect roughly 20% of each tournament, on average, to be Zerg if PvZ win-rates favor Protoss by 70%.
Let’s take a look at ESL spring masters to compare our calculations with reality:
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/ESL_Pro_Tour/2023/24/Masters/Spring/Regionals/EU
Ah, what do you know, there are 7 zergs out of 32 players which is 22%. 6 zergs would round down to 18.75 which means our estimate of 19.1% is within rounding error for actual tournament representation.
In the famous words of Adriane Monk, “thus it is proved”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dSaw5kbeXM&t=257s
Or, should I say, “thus it is proved (again, again and again, because the balance counsel is blind as a cave bat when it comes to game balance, which is actually hilariously ironic if you think about it, LOL! RIP sc2 because, with these idio-- uh, I mean-- fine gentlemen at the helm, we’re doomed)”.
The balance counsel is obsessed with buffing protoss when protoss have a 70% win-rate in PvZ. Insanity. I am just calling it the way that it is. These people have no clue what they are doing. Who wins premier tournaments should be their last priority.
The SC2 balance counsel has shattered my belief in power structures. Power structures in theory favor competent people because competent people are the ones who can maintain the power structure and prevent it from eroding. Left wing political theory is skeptical of this because they view power structures as a manifestation of pure tyranny – it’s power used to maintain power for power’s sake. I am not sure I agree with the conclusion that power structures exist for the sake of power, but I am 100% convinced that power structures do not favor competency. In the case of SC2, some kids are handed the keys to the kingdom to manage a billion dollar video game enterprise, and they can’t recognize imbalance even when it’s so massive literally anyone with eyes can see. 70% is so huge you’d have to be blind not to see it.
In the case of SC2, I blame political correctness. The community lashes out at anyone who has a realistic conversation about balance. You can see it happen in this thread. George Orwell predicted that political correctness leads to double-think because people train themselves not to think the “unclean thoughts” which they do to avoid backlash. The balance counsel has been trained, like Pavlov’s dog, to pretend that imbalance doesn’t exist. Their pretending has gone on so long that they actually believe it now. That’s why words have power: if you don’t speak the truth, you will start to believe lies and you will build your life around those lies via the actions you take by believing them. That’s how we end up with 70% PvZ win-rates and tournaments 40-60% protoss.
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P>Z
T=Z
T>P, if both palyers are high skilled. otherwise its toss favored
my view on the matchups. it is easy to win pvz if you can survive to 3 bases. terran has a huge advantage over protoss once a certain skill level is breached by both players and its pretty obvious to anyone who is honest
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I watched a video recently that made a really good point; Zerg is the strongest in the early game, terran in midgame, and toss in late game. The point of many big toss units is to be extremely expensive yet extremely efficient. However, this trades off for toss having a slow early game, and their static defense only being strong with super battery and en mass. Since terran is so aggressive in the midgame, it is really hard for toss players to compete, while a zealot wall can usually shut down ling floods and any most skytoss and robo beat roaches. because of this, toss has historically always had the lowest winrates in GM. Something that I actually wonder is if it isn’t so much protoss being IMBA, as zerg being too weak. They are pretty balanced in ZvT, but tend to get demolished in any form of late game ZvP (though, again, since the late game is supposed to favor protoss, this does make some level of sense.)
I agree with most of your post but this is totally wrong. There are loads of gm toss with dumpster-tier play in general but a mildly decent cannon rush, for example. The onlyreason they are gm is because they know how to cannon rush. Parting was competing with serral at one point with 1 and 2 base allins. Toss has the stronger early game because they can take risks knowing they have a lead in the late game. Tge risk may not pay off and they enter the late game slightly behind from normal but still ahead compared to the other player. Only if they really screw up do they fall behind enough that they are truly behind. Zerg and terran on the other hand cannot take risks because if they do they instantly fall behind. So the risks truly are risks rather than spending an advantage.
Chronoboost is absolutely insane and I suspect they will end up nerfing it. Toss really don’t utilize it much anymore. In HotS the placement and timing of Chronoboost separated a god-toss from a gm. But nowadays there is so much going on that you couldn’t put in that kind of effort even if your name were serral. So the energy is used to chronoboost probes and upgrades and that’s about it, meaning toss is always ahead in eco and upgrades which is an insane combination to have, and that’s where most of their advantages can be traced to. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a toss chronoboost a gateway in the mid game, lmao.
Tge strength of carriers could be fine if toss eco were adjusted to compensate. Played a game vs a kr gm and he lost FOUR tempests for free and was still able to defend a +1 hydra timing. Chronoboost is insane.
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Well I always said after the creep and queen nerf, Protoss is the new zerg. No one believed me at that time.
Well here you have it!
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This varries so much depending on MMR/League you are win!
But I will say this: The game is much more balanced than it was before (And I mean all history)
That’s a common misconception. For Protoss to be the cause, the performance trend must affect all elements of the set “Protoss”, excluding 1% as outliers. You’re describing variance with league and invariance with race. This is the basics of how correlations work. You can’t say balance flip-flops depending on league because that’s a fundamental denial that protoss is the cause. If Protoss causes a change in performance, then performance should change between the “protoss” and “not protoss” groups. If performance changes within the “protoss” group on it’s own, you are describing a scenario where protoss isn’t the cause.
Balance trends do affect the whole ladder and this has been proven in previous posts, most notably the one on applying the Bradford-Hill criteria to the APM/MMR correlation.
100%. Their eco is stronger and they swarm you with massive amounts of basic units. They also have the mobility advantage which is a weird thing to say but it’s totally true. The zealot speed buff was viscous. The difference between modern toss (and old zerg) is that they have faster tech, they can go carriers on 2 base or multiple tech paths on 2 base (stargate & robo, stargate & twilight), and have faster upgrades. Aka these things that made terran bio strong.
Modern Protoss is basically zerg economy with the ground army of terran. Look at GM in EU: https://i.imgur.com/IZGsv3G.png
Insanity. Anyone who thinks this is OK has severe moral and ethical issues. Think of all the pro zergs and terrans who miss out on $100 here and $1000 there because of this. It’s sheer insanity. When life match fixes, he goes to jail. When the balance counsel rigs the entire game balance, what happens next. Hmm. Good question. We’re all waiting with bated breath for what happens next. You really gotta wonder why they are OK with this. It makes you think. Is there a financial incentive for some of the balance counsel to keep the status quo? I dunno. I am just asking the question.
Nope, that’s definitely false. The game has never been more imbalanced than it is currently, and that’s a historically verifiable fact. Please see the chart I shared. Never before has the performance of both zerg and terran been funneled downward so hard and consistently.
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Every game in those upper GM tiers just turn into carrier tempest slags
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Yeah it’s obnoxious. I’ll get up to 5200 mmr by beating several 5500 terrans and zergs, and it’s easy. Well, it’s not easy, but it’s not hard either. Then I face a 4800 mmr toss abuser and it’s like I am playing against serral. The game is so hard it’s unreal, and I lose and bomb back down to 5k. I watch the replays and the toss plays terribly. We’re talking tons of supply blocks, missed timings, F2’s, single army hotkey, no map awareness, low APM, losing units for free. I once had a toss who rallied a carrier into my natural’s spore crawlers where it sat there until it died. Yes, he won the game.
If the GSL thinks they are going to get good content by letting a protoss play bad in the finals, think again. That’s going to be boring, and it’s going to be highly embarrassing for the balance counsel.
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I was in the same boat with Zerg around 4.9k. Its exhausting having perfect injects, perfect micro, perfect macro, and then getting stomped by a 200/200 Protoss army that a-moves and presses storm over and over. Looking at the stats after game is always disheartening as well. So tired of playing Toss with less than 150 apm in GM.
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What League benefits Terran? Protoss is overrepresented in every higher league, whereas Terran is under-represented.
If you check the right boxes on sc2pulse, it shows you what race is over/under represented in each league:
https://i.imgur.com/MzP9GgM.png
Note the gargantuan protoss representation in Grandmaster. This doesn’t account for race switching which is much harder to quantify but it gets the point across well enough. Protoss is busted.
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What you’re missing is that that statistic doesn’t matter. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking to mental giants like Eliwan and Sentry, it’s that only Premier Tournaments are a valid statistic. Why? Because they said so!
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Ok honey. I try it again. For the Last Time. Maybe you can follow this time.
A) where is the Proof that gm representation has anything to do with Balance? As Said before (you ignored it because you dont have an answer to that) in 2019 zerg was completly broken. Through the Roof. Protoss were completly helpless vs Them. IT had the anti Air Bug and nydus and broodlords and infestors. Protoss got nerfed heavily and werent even allowed to all in. But still protoss Had a high GM representation.
B) again: the Balance Team Tries to Balance the Game around Pros.
Only because you think your Point of View Matters doesnt mean everyone thinks the Same.
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Didn’t you read? I’m on your side! The only question when Protoss is 40% of GM is why aren’t the other 60?
If Protoss are doing well on the ladder but not at the top tournaments that definitely doesn’t suggest that Protoss is easier on the ladder. That would be so stupid only a professional player playing Protoss could say it
(x. com/IEM/STATUS/970101525166075904)
Clearly what I say or Adventurer says doesn’t matter, certainly what Showtime says doesn’t. True mental giants like you and Eliwan know what’s up.
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A quote Out of context 6 years ago will do it.
Exactly, he’s got to be wrong. You knew what he really meant. It definitely wasn’t that “Terran is the hardest race,” he must’ve meant something else!