Tvp root issue is terran economy disadvantage

General Discussion
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TvP is meant to be designed such that terran expands faster and has more stuff to attack protoss with (attacking being disadvantageous but with opportunity for high risk high reward type activity). LOTV additions havent changed this design but made subtle additions and changes that made this interaction much harder for terran. There are other disadvantages for terran like map design but the core issue that affects every tvp match is the economy disadvantage for terran. These are the main points economy-wise which are straining this design:

  1. protoss expands faster and safer
  2. protoss has easier time getting third base (similar to tvz at this point)
  3. faster nexus’s mean more chrono which means faster tech and better economy
  4. protoss easily recovers from failed all-ins, cheeses, and failed attacks due to an economy advantage
  5. protoss can easily get a third/fourth before attacking due to warp gate and warp prism deferring spending
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That’s a bomb of truth. I don’t know what is so hard for Balance to comprehend that they give these fake nerfs for protoss/irrelevant buffs that are way offtopic and the above is t he topic.

souL said the same, before he started playing protoss too lol.

if you don’t see top players or streams complaining too much it is because players like HeroM, demuslim are playing very actively and the protosses in EU are just weaker or strong players like Showtime play rare, Mana looks pretty off shape. So that’s why they do so well.

GSL is a mixed bag but should never be the only criteria. Although again the reason why you see Terran winning there is because players like Innovation or Maru are more or less the best in GSL, and if players like Stats play in less good shape they lose. We witnessed Protoss players who went Ro4 or Ro8 (Hurricane, herO, Parting) or Ro16 (Patience) with really poor execution.

And even there skill is more or less fixed, if you are the better player you will likely win most of the time, regardless of state of Protoss.

The reason why ladder is different is that unless someone is smurf, the ladder matches players with exact skill, both lack a lot of skill but somehow as long as they can macro and follow the correct playing, Protoss has advantage.

On pro level they fight the same advantage of Protoss 3 bases but when they are a bit better, they win. How much more often I see the same 2 streamers than Protoss streamers, probably playing more too.

On pro level, like high GM, they have reached the ceiling, Heromarine, Demu are all from the best on ladder so they can’t get matched w better, unless GSL players were online and played there. On lower level, you always get matched vs better and better and if the player is of equal skill, that’s why Protoss feels stronger.

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Thats true: the metrics used to gauge the state of the matchup like streamers and GSL dont reflect the real state of the matchup.

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I don’t know a single Terran streamer who doesn’t hate TvP with passion.

Reason for that is that toss have stronger eco, stronger units, faster production and faster technologies. Toss can defend from your 1 base all in with fast 3-d Nexus. This is absurd.

Your only chance is to kill whole bunch of probes by doing something weird and then all-in him. That’s not fun at all. And speaking of killing probes, you don’t have much options here because toss can easily defend from most of terran harass tools, e.g. most of protss players put shield batteries in probes by default, so that your e.g. bansee won’t kill a single one of these little sh!ts unless protoss is autistic.

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The economy thing is definitely an issue. Wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to fix that though.

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OP, how do you fix the Terran economy in TvP without breaking TvP balance at the GSL level?

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PvT balance already seems to be broken at the gsl level. What should be worried about is ZvT being disrupted by the theoretical economic boost to terran.
Also design team has shown that their willing to throw all balance out the window for a few months if they think it could lead to more healthy and interesting meta.

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I get your point, but what is the proposed solution to the Terran economy then without breaking TvZ balance? I have been hearing the Terran economy being weaker than the Protoss economy rhetoric for a while, but without any real solutions. Also, if this is a major design issue then realistically fixing the Terran economy cannot be done until November when the next major design patch is implemented.

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Eh, I’d say the root of the problem is just early game unit design. Stalkers can kite marines due to being faster and having more range, and they can regen shields, while damage to marines/marauders in the early game sticks until medivacs come out.

This means that unless Terran is rushing conc shell marauders or cyclones, which are more vulnerable to units like immortals or Pheonix, Protoss has an edge early on and can secure more eco/map control advantages. Combined with shield batteries to help on defense, Protoss can put some pressure on the terran with less commitment in the earliest stages of the game (the more valuable units are expected to survive), or expand a bit earlier without a significant risk of losing the game right away.

The Protoss eco advantage is pretty small, and only relevant for the first 4-5min of the game, with Terran getting an eco advantage once mules start paying for themselves. They can’t nerf protoss eco because of PvZ, where the early game is heavily in favor of the Zerg as is. They could rework Terran eco a bit by nerfing mules, but making terran CCs start as orbitals (probably at 0 energy), but that could very easily run into problems in TvZ. Another solution would be locking the stalker speed or range advantage behind an upgrade and reducing their cost a bit to compensate, which would also make stalkers a bit less awful later in the game.

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What about units? They are not that much expensive, but they have huge value, what means, he can keep you down in units early, so you (Z and T) must spend your money for units to not die, and Protoss can do what he wants.

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Right now I’d say change the nexus.

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Personally I see 2 options, maybe some combination of both should be implemented.

  1. Nexus starts with zero energy. This would significantly reduce amount of probe lead that Protoss have over Terran, OR delay Blink and Charge making Protoss play less greedy.

  2. Buff Mule. Current Mule is only a compensation for the fact that SCVs waste mining time on building buildings, they don’t give you better income until 3 bases are saturated (and majority of TvP ends before this point, one way or another). This change obviously has potential to break TvZ so need to be extremely careful with it.

If I was in charge of balancing SC2 I would hire several retired progamers to be my balance testing team, so they could try both options and see how it will play out.

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I think thats the simplest solution. I’ve read posts where they say reduce starting energy of nexus to 0. I think thats where blizzard should start and test.

I also think Just even adding a 100/100 upgrade to unlock chrono, Just to delay the economy of the PRotoss. Prior to the removal of MSC protoss had to spend 100/100 on MSC + spent energy to overcharge. But with the buffs to T1 units they are not on the defensive in the earlygame instead they are on the offensive vs Terran. This allows them to chrono mostly probes… The problem persists when they can get 3 nexus’ all chronoing probes that allows their economy to skyrocket.

But I dont know how these proposed changes will affect the ZvP matchup at the moment.

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As a Terran, I think Nerfing the Protoss economy early game would be bad, because then 1-2 base all-ins would become too powerful and/or all Terran would ever do. (Isn’t this amazing Goba? A Terran siding with Protoss? Who would have dreamed of such a thing?) I just think there needs to be a way to de-incentivise taking a super early third while also being able to cripple Terran. It needs to be a choice again.

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I don’t think this is a bad Idea, but buffing mules could screw up zvt though, as it may give terran too much extra eco against zerg. If a balance change needs to happen, I think it should be more of a nerf on protoss than a buff on terran, and even then mostly on economy. I don’t know, maybe a slightly slowed probe spawning speed? Or maybe extra cost/time for nexi?

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It is obvious that terrian two bases economy is equal to P three bases with many mules，even better.
That’s why Protoss must have one more base than terrian otherwise there is no way to win.

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For this nonsense you should be banned from discussing the balance issues.

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I would say that eco disadvantage for Terran is a consequence of heavy early game advantage of Protoss. They have the best early and midgame now, but their lategame’s weaker.
The balance team wanted Protoss be able to benefit from Stalker micro early on, but it turned out that Terran has to scout with SCV, build a bunker and tanks. So Protoss benefits not from Stalker micro, but Stalker’s existance rather.
I would love to see a new upgrade for Stalkers. Maybe an upgrade for range, like in Brood War. So w/o an upgrade Stalker’s range was 5 instead of 6, but with upgrade it was 7.

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The most hilarious way to ‘fix’ Terran economy as players say (I don’t think it needs fixing but if you want a suggestion) is to increase the minerals on the large mineral patches to 2200.

Why? So mules can mine for longer on larger patches giving terran a safer economy for longer. It’s a logical suggestion, and to hits every single race differently. The smaller patches will still mine out quickly, but the larger patches will remain for a longer time, having the protoss and zerg leave workers behind to mine those patches and reduces efficency on new bases, while terran can leverage mules to to keep their income high, without reducing that efficiency on new bases. Theoretically this works, but in practice, no idea.

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Frankly, i’d prefer to just go back to a lower number of starting workers. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 4 or 6, but with your economy slingshotting out of the starting ring, little differences build up a lot quicker and more noticeably. With fewer workers, the protoss needs to spend more time on one base, which means access to fewer chronos. On top of which, terran is penalized for building their Orbital Command less, and theres a little bit more time for everybody to scout and get information.

Really, the economy change just completely killed everything that isn’t an early game all-in or a super late game comp.