Why does Protoss have the least APM and Zerg have the most APM? Scientifically?

General Discussion
1

Also, has anyone looked at the average EPM for once? Because as a Zerg I do like to spam Zergling commands subconsciously. They run fast, gotta click fast even though it is unnecessary. Something to look into perhaps.

WHat is said below is theory, not on statistics, if you look at WCS winnesr you see that there are Zerg, Terran, and Protoss winners. But the sample size is too small and the meta and patches are constantly changing so the data isn’t statistically viable:

The top should not be the only indicator, but it does to an extent show the highest potential of the races, the learning curves show that the Zerg have a really high ceiling eventually.

But then in the mid-high skill level the Protoss dominate as some have said that the Protoss dominated Blizzcon.

Maybe even out the curves.

Theory End.

When I say scientifically I don’t mean, “Protoss is a-move reeee” because all other races a-move as well.

I mean hardcore, statistically sampled.

And the player compositions for races are not a good indicator of balance. Yes you will have players who tend to flee to the “easiest” race, but don’t we all. We tend to use a race that we like. Let’s say that Terran is OP because a glitch gave marines Yamato Blast for free. Now, the player composition could be possibly Protoss 50%, Zerg 40% and Terran 10%. Now you might whine that a lot of players will flee to Terran, but the example does show that both statistics can be discordant with each other logically.

Instead, if we were to look at the win ratios between TvX, PvX, ZvX, then we have a massive indicator. Marines with Yamato blasts? Logically the Terran win ratio has to be higher unless a massive amount of players refused to use marines for some reason. This measure is not immune but it is more reliable the “player preference”. Because we can see directly how Terran stacks up overall against other races. We can see head to head.

For most whiners, statistically sampled means that it is random and that you tell us: What your sample space is, how you randomly chose it(did you use a good statistically viable random number generator algorithm such as the Mersene Twister?), what is your raw data?

I would recommend blocking by league and by tournament and strategy type. (Aggressive(attacks before 5:00, spends more than 60% of income to army units), Medium(Attacks before 9:00, spends 40% on resources), Macro) or (Cheese, Non-Cheese). %s are just examples.

I will say that that Protoss is my favorite and I enjoy Cheesing, but I also play Terran and Zerg in immensely Cheesy manners. Nexus Rush, 12pool faster expand, 2base zergling flush, 2base roach bust, drone rush, zergencio build, proxy barracks are some of my favorites. Don’t forget to mention photon cannon. 4gate is dead. Will be learning 1-base Nydus Swarm host as well.

Most players will get angry at a race when they lose. But when has complaining got you anywhere? Understand that there is one thing that inferior players do. BCD: Blame, Complain, Defend. You point out all of the other players stuff while not even looking at your own. Did you scout? Photon Cannon fails when scouted. But I can’t waste mining time looking around my base. Bro, is there a pylon, and a forge warping in? Just look around your base, and actually study the cannon rush yourself. You cannot defend against something you don’t know. Scout. And if you don’t do not complain. Post the replays, let the people see what both players did.

Also, if you haven’t studied game design, before whining to the developers. I know Starcraft II is intended to be balanced but it does show that an unbalanced game can still be balanced and that developers do follow such principles sometimes.

Now, even though I am mainly a Protoss player, I do play the other three races and really don’t care about the hate to Protoss because either way, at the end of the day. I will be cheesing with any race. HAIL FLORENCIO.

2

It is easy, there were couple changes which made protoss even easier to play:
1.warpgates transform automatically
2. you don’t even need to hotkey them, they autohotkey
3.chronoboost cost 50 energy instead 25 = less multitasking
4. observers doesn’t move when you f2
5. economy is broken, you just a move chargelots now without any control, since you are so ahead and can afford do 10 mistakes…

Zerg is just holding button for injects, creep and units and have more bases to micro from and more units which cost 1 supply… Like lings. More important than apm is epm and more important than that is your skill and how you spend them and multitasking…

3

1000 minerals of zerglings: select hatches, select larva, hold zerglings key, tallies up to 22 actions.
1000 minerals of zealots: select warpgates, select zealot, hold shift and spam zealots, tallies up to 12 actions.

Basically same effort for Protoss and Zerg, a lot more APM.

But another very large component is that Zerg is the chore race. You have to inject a lot. You have to spread creep a lot. You have to move your screen to each hatch to do said injects and move screen to the edge of the creep to spread. These all are easy mindless tasks with virtually no thinking involved, but you rack up a silly amount of APM, because it takes a lot of time to do these things.

There’s a reason the fastest SC2 player on earth (Serral) went for Zerg: when it comes to APM, Zerg gives you the most bang for your buck.

3 Likes
4

I disagree. I think terran gives you more returns.

1 Like
5

zerg requires a lot of APM to macro, also creating new units artificially increases zerg APM. zerg also requires a lot of unit control, because it’s the hardest race and you have to be defending against 3 drops and a hellion runby at the same time.
terran players tend to apm spam a lot so they dont look very bad. also they are more active on the map than protoss players, they spam click hellions into mineral lines so they get 200 apm from that
protoss is really chill to play, you can focus on your macro and 2 base amove allin.

6

Mmh, I guess you’re referring to marine micro? Marines just aren’t the time and APM drain that creep and inject are. It feels like more because it’s not 1 infinitely repetitive task on an egg timer. But I don’t think terran micro really can be compared to the to-do list of a Zerg player.

1 Like
7

Those turkeys like to complain for the 20 sec Chrono. I would give a lot to return to the 50-Energy 10 sec Chrono with 100% acceleration…
We had it and MoronTeam gave this …

It’s a fair deal: Protoss wold have to return to base twice as much to Chrono…

8

This is pretty easy to figure out with some basic testing… Mostly it just comes down to how the macro works and what units you’re making.

Ling/bane as Zerg is the “highest” APM playstyle, even if you’re just a-moving most of the time. Making .5 supply units, then morphing those .5 supply units just adds a LOT to the APM counter.

Play some games as all 3 races doing different styles and then look at your APM in replays and you’ll see what I mean. It’s not even more difficult to play that “higher APM” style in that case.

People like to make a big deal about micro towards APM, but the reality is that the bulk of the difference is coming from macro mechanics at all levels of play, and that APM difference has very little to do with player skill or the difficulty in doing what the person is doing if it’s within 30% or so (and the Zerg is higher).

Of course, within reason; a Zerg with 200 APM probably has more potential skill at that time than a Protoss with 50 APM but the difference is very rarely that large. It’s generally closer to 20-30% higher for a Zerg of roughly equal skill - that’s about how much higher my APM is playing Zerg compared to Protoss for example, and if anything, I find Zerg to be the easier race to play.

Even the difference among the best players in the world is often close to 20% for PvZ, and that’s fairly consistent (at higher skill levels, the difference decreases, as players are more capable of spending more time on micro, where the difference is less affected by race mechanics).

1 Like
9

This can also be seen by the unit kill counter at the end of a match too. If you notice zerg has killed far less cause there wasn’t much to kill, but toss was able to kill a lot in a more or less back and fourth game.

10

I don’t have a problem if im 180+ APM and a Protoss is 110. Last year I had big problem when a Protoss with 60 APM and is in Diamond (btw by EPM i can reach 160 while those with low remain with around 100) can win by just massing air and not needing any other control…

Protoss is not A move alone but some builds last year like mass air - this IS AN A Move build. Chargelot archon too, rest requires control.

When we say A move it is not meaning literally but some builds like the ones I mentioned are like that.

On the other hand, why would HT need a babysit like having Attack if not easing the player hard control? Why would Observer need a static function to be scouted less, while it got a bunch of other buffs ? Was it so bad before?

Why would DT have a shadow stride, is the damage they do so bad they are useless without it?

Then blame us for Tactical Jump

11

I always thought of it as a way to be fair. Zerg has the ability to poop creep and creep tumors that don’t move when F2 is pressed. Terran has scan that F2 is not effected by, so why not give obs static. Also with HT, though it does feel unfair that a caster has an attack when so many don’t, if you look at it in terms of splash, tanks don’t roll forward when attacking, Lurkers don’t move forward when attacking so I figure its just a way to give that to toss. Most of those were QOL improvements for Toss, but I can see how others view them as unfair.

The changes are really only effective in low ranks anyway as higher rank people were able to already control those units. As a Plat leaguer I very much appreciated the help.

12

Zerg has higher apm requirements due to how the mechanics demand apm changes over time. Terrans and Protoss have to build their base which can require a lot of apm switching back to your main, dropping builds and going back to your army. This goes down as the game progresses because eventually you have enough buildings. For zerg, the opposite is true. As the number of hatcheries increase, the number of injects increase. As the number of bases increase, the amount of creep spread increases. Zerg’s multitasking requirements go up as the game goes on, while for Protoss and terran it goes down.

For terran you have to drop mules which is similar to inject, but at a certain point you have enough workers and dropping mules is less important than using the energy on scans. Once again, the multitasking requirements of terran goes down the longer the game goes on.

The same goes for Protoss. You have to hit precise chronoboost timings which is similar to inject but become less important when upgrades are finished, warpgate counts are high, and the game reaches the stage where focus on efficient army trading is much more important.

For zerg, injects and creep spread are incredibly important especially in the later stages and that’s also where they demand the most multitasking.

1 Like