Why it's a waste of time to play vs protoss, illustrated

General Discussion
84

Yeah, not surprising. Aligulac says there are now 25% more PvPs than PvZs which is insane because the probability of rolling two 3-sided dice and getting “P” each time is 1/3^2 aka 1/9 aka 11%. Meanwhile PvP happens 23% of the time and ZvZ happens 4% of the time.

It’s crystal clear to anyone with eyes that Protoss is advantaged in both PvZ and PvT. The only people denying it are the liars & grifters on the balance counsel who are, apparently, determined to gaslight the world that their own eyes are wrong because “muh serral beat muh hero at muh world cup :face_holding_back_tears: :cry:”.

https://i.imgur.com/nYJJCkE.png

PvZ for last Aligulac period clocked in at 57.43%. My prediction of 58.5% is spot on. Answers this obvious are literally the most obvious that you will ever see in a practical scenario in the real world. If the balance counsel can’t get the right answer in this instance, they will never get it right in any instance. By contrast, I said PvT/PvZ favors Protoss, and that TvZ favors zerg, and guess what the numbers say.

The problem with the balance counsel is that it doesn’t have leadership. A leader is a person who goes first and, as a byproduct, shows others the way. You can’t be a leader if you are scared that the cabal of protoss whiners might judge you. You can’t be a leader if you have literally no clue which race is advantaged and which isn’t. The balance counsel’s current “leadership” couldn’t tell a gold bar from a sack of :poop: and they don’t have the courage to do what’s necessary to fix the issue. These people should not be in charge of anything except maybe the grill at a fast food joint (and that’s being generous).

I’ve explained at length the issues of PvZ but I haven’t touched much on TvZ. TvZ favors zerg very slightly because Terran was nerfed to appease the protoss whiners. The liberator nerf I happen to think was a good thing. The mine nerf is what’s problematic. The mine nerf is a substantial reduction to terran’s mid game power curve. Their late game is fine because the ghost is very strong (perhaps too strong), so nerfing the liberator made no difference there. The effect of mine nerf on TvZ mid game drastically outweighs the impact of the liberator nerf. The liberator nerf is also very good for map diversity.

Revert the mine nerf & ignore the cries of balance whiners who can’t micro their zealots. We’ve all seen it before. They let 15 zealots charge onto a single widow mine where the mine is allowed to get the most incredible DPS density imaginable because the zealots pack themselves around it. This is a skill issue on the protoss’ part. Stop balance patching skill issues. You change this & you will likely fix both TvZ and TvP at the same time. That leaves only PvZ to fix. Protoss has a scaling issue no matter what style they use. Both ground toss and skytoss simply out scale the zerg. Nerfing chronoboost isn’t an option because it will affect TvP. I would simply buff microbial from 50% reduction to 75% reduction. Now zerg can actually fight carriers. Ground toss is easy to fix because the counter to ground toss used to be vipers, but toss just feedbacks them. Reduce the feedback range by 1. Problem solved. You are welcome, I just saved SC2 from oblivion.

85

I think the reason swarm hosts don’t work for the average player is because they also combine it with roach ravager that just nukes their supply count. I remember playing Protoss against a Zerg player doing it on golden wall and I just came to the conclusion that he can’t outright kill me with that comp so I just mass expanded and taxed his apm to Narnia. People are also meant to keep their oracles alive and even go up to ~5 just for insane map presence and vision. In a Pro example on the same map Lambo combined it with lurkers and it absolutely crushed Stats even though he defended well up until one GG move.

You should play team games if you want to see the brilliance of SC2 players creativity. So many gaming boomers claiming they’ve played since SC release yet they’re still massing void rays and dying to basic ling floods.

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86

Revert the mine nerf and address the target priority of widow mines and then it’ll appease the noobs that struggle while keeping midgame bio power spike relevant. Carriers/BCs/Thors shouldn’t auto target spellcasters while AA is near for the same reasoning.

87

Yeah you want a unit comp that doesn’t overlap it’s weaknesses. You want it to overlap its strengths. Dark doesn’t understand that. He adds swarm hosts on top of ravagers and they are both supply-expensive and lacking in anti air which is a a dual overlapping weakness. For the same cost as his giant ravager morph, he could’ve gone mutas and banes:

https://i.imgur.com/zOUmHyl.mp4

W/ mutas, dark doesn’t take damage to Maru’s counter-drop maneuvers & he can hit with the mutas & the swarm host (via nydus) as the game ending move. You just move up to his third, launch the locusts, and amove.

That’s why you spread out the swarm hosts & burrow them. Get them into his main and burrow them all over. Hit with periodic waves of locusts from all angles while you look for a moment to run some ling bane into his mineral lines. If you simply send a giant wave, they just counter attack and win while using stall strategies like trying to get the locusts to drop on the ground in a bad spot. You expand the other direction at the same time & transfer workers. The harass style of burrow swarm hosts by contrast fixes this issue because there is no safe direction to expand, he’s run ragged by a bunch of little attacks, and he can never counter attack because you’ve built the great wall of spine crawlers (keep 10-20 banes there too).

No offense, I despise team games. I hate relying on other people. Perhaps you can tell by how frustrated I am with the balance counsel. I would’ve had this issue fixed 6 years ago before anyone even realized there was an issue to begin with.

Target priority has struck me as rather odd for quite awhile. I’ve often criticized how liberators will target fire infestors for example. The justification for it was that it’s hard to split and stutter step at the same time as target firing w/ the siege units (tanks, liberators) which is why they added widow mines in HotS to begin with. Liberators were added under a similar line of reasoning to combat the 8 armor ultras. But nowadays terrans are easily microing their marines and sniping with ghosts & everything else.

That’s one thing protoss doesn’t have, by the way. Both terran and zerg have “siege and forget” units while protoss has nothing like it. Sure you could say that the obs is a siege unit but not really.

But at the end of the day the win-rates are near 50% so there’s nothing to complain about. I also don’t like the idea of nerfing mech just because it’s a terrible unit comp. If mech were capable of winning games, that’s all gumiho would be doing. SuperNova is also at 5400 mmr (normally 6k) and he plays primarily mech. Even a soft nerf of increasing the micro requirements I think is uncalled for. Mech is a terrible unit comp excluding the ghost. Maybe if the micro requirements were changed to provide an increased reward for high micro players then I’d say that’s a good idea. But nerfing mech units will only cause more bio spammers and that’s a story that’s as old as time as far as sc2 is concerned.

88

I play team games for unique interactions. Try playing against disruptors when infestors are also in the picture. It’s just a shame that most players are just spamming the same easy builds on repeat (mass phoenix, 2 factory into mech ling spam into ultras). Then you get a prearranged team thinking they’d do things like that but nope, phoenix, mech ling ultra spam.

89

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5WkDdwcMtzM

Meme builds aren’t reserved for only sc2 :rofl:

Also these ideas crack me up because it displays a very clear protoss bias. They rushed to buff toss to the moon before the esports cup but now that toss is bonkers overpowered they’re gonna slow walk tiny nerfs, to act like they are fixing the issue, while what they’re really doing is trying to preserve the status quo. That’s what’s clear from that style of balance change so if that’s what they do then we know what they are up to. It’s clear their priority is esports over the player base like I pointed out many times. Premier tournaments are the priority. But, you won’t have anyone watching premier tournaments when average twitch viewership hemorrhages -3 per day. Why is the game losing players – anyone? :raised_back_of_hand:

The game has to be designed for the consumers. Imagine designing an $500k corvette with a 12liter v16 engine and then being surprised when a mom with 4 kids doesn’t want to buy it. Have these people never taken a class on business?

In a balanced scenario the win-rates on aligulac should have a 50% chance of being >50% and a 50% chance of being <50%. In the past 40 aligulac seasons, PvZ win-rates have been <50% a single time, and they only dipped below by 0.44%. What’s the probability the number of periods at >50% win-rate should have occurred <39 times assuming a balanced game? 100%. https://i.imgur.com/SZBAfzE.png. They are still timid. Unreal.

This is the challenge of being a scientist who is ahead of your time. The politics of game balance simply haven’t caught up with the reality of game balance and they will ostracize anyone who is realistic. It will be too late before they finally realize what’s going on, and when the game’s viewership flat lines all I can say is that I told you so. You can’t design a game for esports and expect casual players to play it.

Oh well, we’re beating a dead horse at this point in time. I just had to brag and rub their nose in the fact that my math models accurately predicted the last aligulac period’s win-rates. Every troll on bnet took his swing and I came out on top yet again. You can’t out flex the flex master. :muscle:

90

Time for this gem to shine. The only thing to criticize is that he sucks and blows at the same time. On one hand, pro players are bad analysts who steal builds because they can’t make them on their own. On the other hand, they are masterminds manipulating the public’s opinion through lies and omissions and misdirection.

The hardest part of lying is having no tell. Astrea made a big micro mistake in the world cup and looked up at the camera with a terrified expression on his face :hushed:. He’d make a bad liar. Good liars are calm. They have a good explanation for why they did what they did because they planned to lie in advance – they worked out the story in their head & they practiced it in the mirror to get every gesticulation in accordance with the story. An honest person by contrast will be caught off guard, confused, agitated, and not sure what to say. So the way you tell the difference between the two categories that Goba conflates is in how calm they are.

Are you dealing with a machiavellian or dinkum? Observe their calmness under pressure. “Protoss can’t win a premier tournament”, he said calmly, “Can we buff Protoss so that it doesn’t suck just this once?”.

By the way, if paxmax is who I think he is then all he needs to do is change his name & wear a wig. It works for ridiculously famous people like Matt Walsh & James Okeef. Mr Naughty could stroll onto a tournament stage as paxmax and nobody would be any the wiser. Might want to add a beard, weight change, and some earrings just for good measure. You are welcome. :kissing_closed_eyes:

Speaking of weight change, it’s hilarious that one of the most common cosmetic surgeries is to add silicone inserts to make your cheekbones more pronounced. It makes your face look skinnier. Most people don’t want to engage in the kind of keto dieting required to get your body far that low so they get these implants. It’s easy to spot when they do this, though, because their face still has a roundness to it that simply doesn’t exist for low bodyfat individuals. The actor who played Sherlock Holmes is a perfect example: https://i.imgur.com/kCcUPIs.png. You can tell his bodyweight is real. Contrast it to this rando woman I found on google: https://i.imgur.com/FbMxuq1.png. Very smooth and rounded features notwithstanding the pronounced cheekbones.

Now that you know what to look for, you will be forever cursed to see this everywhere you go, just like I am. You are welcome. But don’t worry, MaxPax can make his tournament entrance and nobody will be any the wiser because absolutely no one pays this close of attention to detail as I do. Just for the love of god do whatever it takes to give protoss their premier win so that the community can move on & heal from this grotesque period of protoss dominance.

https://i.imgur.com/TQrp63D.png

Seriously. It doesn’t take much. He’s one of the most famous people on the planet and all he did was change his hairstyle and his worst enemies were willing to spill their darkest secrets to him. If MaxPax has a dirty secret, nobody will ever know if he just puts on a wig.

Speaking of silicone inserts, Maynard from TOOL blesses society with his great wisdom once again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et4VKehLANs

We have been overrun
By our animal desire
Addicts of the immediate
Keep us obedient and unaware
Feeding this mutation
This Pavlovian despair

We’ve become
Disillusioned
So we run
Towards anything glimmering

Time to put the silicon obsession down

91

-1 for not showing Robert downy JR but instead that dragon from the hobbit.

92

Benedict Cumberbatch had to lose a ridiculous amount of weight to play the role because he’s basically a super genius who uses drugs to escape. That’s the premise of the story. It’s a darker take than Robert downy JR’s which is a know it all trickster who simultaneously doesn’t care what other people think and yet jumps through hoops to show off. Benedict’s version is more realistic. He’s cold, distant, doesn’t care about anything except finding relief from an over active mind that tortures itself by reliving the mistakes he’s made. He eventually does discover that solving mysteries provides a distraction from his problems.

Edward Nygma was a similar character, with a lot of overlapping traits, but with a more evil spin:

Gotham was pretty decent excluding the final season. Oh my goodness, it was terrible.

93

Yikes. Next you’re going to tell me that baked beans goes with everything.

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94

Nygma’s brain tortures him over mistakes he hasn’t even made yet. He develops an alter ego that mocks and derides his weaker self as a mechanism for dealing with his fears. He ends up with some kind of split personality disorder where his confidence randomly cuts out, resulting in the weaker version slipping through. It’s the facade of narcissism covering up a gooey inner core, built to protect itself from things that are inevitable due to actions he takes to protect himself. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The weaker version sees what’s coming, but the stronger version refuses to accept reality. It’s absolutely brilliant. It’s the same thing that ultimately befalls Saul Goodman.

Saul Goodman is a similar character type but I think his need to trick people is pathological. He does it automatically and without thinking about it. So his trickster nature manifests in unpredictable ways. He then tries to control the outcome, knowing disaster is imminent, but the situation has grown out of his control.

You could say that Nygma is a neurotic trickster while Goodman is not. That’s a good explanation for the difference between the two.

95

Did you study the psychology of star trek at university?

96

I actually don’t know basically anything about the star trek universe. Babylon 5 is very good with a very thought provoking story. Dune is also. Dune is a critique of messianic religions much in the vein as Nietzsche. Nietzsche thought that civilization declined post-socrates because it lost confidence due to an incessant need to ask the question of “Why?”. Everything needs justification but how do you justify things that aren’t rational by nature? It’s cold outside. I will wear a coat. Why? I don’t want to get cold. Why? If I get cold, I could die. Why don’t you want to die? Because I want to live etc. Religion is created out of this need to justify the irrational. Why do you do it? Because it is God’s command. Nietzsche points out that this is a cop-out. You do it because you want to, not because God commands, you just don’t want to take credit for it because you plan to do something terrible and unjustifiable aka irrational. Nietzsche theorizes that mankind will eventually grow strong enough that it does not need to burden itself with endless rationalizations. The first person to become that powerful is called the Uber-mensch. In Dune, selective breeding produces an Uber-mensch and the story covers what happens when that happens. Spoiler alert, everything goes wrong.

You can apply Nietzsche’s framework to analyze modern day movements. Veganism comes to mind. Why do you eat this and not that? [insert some explanation about saving the world]. It’s the same argument used by religionists to justify the irrational. Veganism is not a religion but it relies heavily on religions style logic which makes it religion-adjacent. You can apply this also to climate change and a bunch of other social movements. They are bouncing baby religions that will eventually turn into something similar to Catholocism. The reality of mankind is that the need to be religious is deeply intertwined with human psychology. The ubermensch in dune is treated like a God and that throws civilization into a ten thousand year long cycle of superstition and nonsense. You can obviously see how it’s a criticism of Christianity for example because we are just barely exiting the era of an ubermensch delving society into superstition. But like all cycles it repeats with a new religion and a new plunge into superstition.

97

Nepo-babies :red_circle:
selective breeding :green_circle:

98

Fun fact, Tolkien hated Herbert because Tolkien was a Christian and he incorporated a ton of his religious beliefs into the story. He has rings of power and ordinary rings. The One Ring is the most powerful ring ever created, and it is desperately sought by the powerful to change the future. Aragorn by comparison is given a ring from his girlfriend’s father and it is a reminder to him to rise to the occasion and become the man he is meant to be. It’s a story about how good will rises to triumph over the most powerful evil.

Machiavelli pointed out that good intentions are not sufficient to produce a good outcome and this causes those espousing good intentions to meet an undesireable end. Jesus was bopped for example. So was Joan of Arc. So was Socrates. According to Machiavelli, good people must be willing to set aside their morals & engage in combat with the enemy or the enemy will simply devour them. You can see that in Lord of the Rings, where they engage in a ruthless war against Sauron.

Now the obvious question is where does Machiavelli draw the line between when you should engage in combat and peace. And the way the lines are drawn is usually between infighting and outfighting. You don’t find your allies inwardly, you fight your enemies outwardly. That requires identifying your enemies and separating them from your friends. You see that also with Greema Wormtung, Saruman’s servant who convinced the king of rohan to be complacent. So it’s a very christian story. Not a first-wave christian story, “turn the other cheek” tec, but a second-wave christian story, “have a sword but keep it sheathed”.

Dune annoyed Tolkien because Herbert illustrated how the leaders of revolutions ultimately become God’s and, in the ab sense of those leaders, humanity is plunged into thousand year periods of superstition and nonsense. The current world is experiencing this exact mechanism because ChatGPT is becoming an Ubermensch of sorts, as is AI and phones in general aka search engines and whatnot. We’re in the part of the cycle where a God is created and mankind becomes dependent on that God to define it’s future. But after the God goes away, maybe ChatGPT’s headquarters are hit by Russia or something, and mankind is plunged into superstition because it’s dependent on the God to function and without it it is totally lost. You could say that this cycle will be even more extreme than past cycles because ChatGPT is doing some truly amazing things. The rationally minded people just get to sit back and watch the cycle repeat.

That brings us to the irony of the Dune story. You could make the argument that Dune is prophetical. How ironic. It’s a prophetical story that criticizes prophets. Lmao.

Also, Battlestar Galactica is a really cool story if they could get rid of the trope of “Gias Balter ruins everything all the time”. Anyway the long and short of this rant is that silicon implants prove that chatgpt is a god and that humanity is doomed. Thanks for attending my ted talk.

99

I think its funny to see how people look at things and predict how they see it and recently as a grubby watcher and wc3 lover I’ve seen both uthermal and harstem playing wc3 and I love it. I’m sure harstem left because there was so much PVP and not that the game is unfun by nature and wc3 mogs it since its about strategy understanding unit micro creep routes etc how good you can click come second as it should be. I don’t think a perfect 33% nor a heavily favored balance will chnage the fact this games a mechanics factorio trashcan give us a real rts game. God what i would give for a good WC4. Look blizz here is the recipe heroes based leveling power fantasy RTS. Mid pacing with a focus on the combat not the macro. focus on unit fighting units not units slaughtering workers while dodging each other. wc3 units too many hits / much time to kill sc2 unit way too fast time to kill. need something in between

100

BREAKING FOOTAGE OF BALANCE COUNSEL FIGURING OUT HOW TO NERF TOSS WITHOUT NERFING TOSS!

101

By the way, anyone who says TvZ is terran favored is out of their minds:

https://i.imgur.com/Ytehcl1.mp4

This matchup isn’t even close. Infestors are insane as are hive rushes which combo well w/ the infestors. Terran’s early and mid game detection vulnerability is the biggest vulnerability by far and you can exploit it like crazy if you just rush burrow or proxy a hatch and spread creep. They have no choice except to go raven, and that means zerg is free to drone like crazy and start a hive because he won’t have banshees nor medivacs nor liberators on the way to harass you with. The only thing you have to worry about is tank pushes and those are shut down ez pz with fungal.

102

Bleh. I’ve seen you neural all tanks and have a 360 surround of hydras but still lose the engagement.

103

That only happens if he has a very large bio count. Hydras can’t stand on their own vs bio without fungal. So if you spend your energy on neural, you’d better pray for amazing tank shots or he’s just can stim and amove you. By the way, I am 95% certain Ukko just popped up on the radar again.