And SC2 devs had years to think about this… and didn’t fix it and haven’t simply removed the muta from the game because it’s simply so so so fun to play against… so fun to play against that pros auto-lose to it while playing bio.
Just for a short summary:
If my opponent goes 2 base muta and I have 3 factories and 4 cyclones at the time his mutas arrive, then his mutas do NOTHING and he bleeds 2 of them for free, while I get my third base earlier… the game is over. It’s over but for the terran. Tho I don’t need to clarify that because I assume anyone reading this has over 3 brain cells.
Killing those 2 mutas isn’t nearly enough to be able to expand while my opponent can do ANYTHING at his side of the map because a counter-attack is impossible. Very obviously, even if I get out 8 cyclones they won’t beat the mutas in a straight up fight outside of my base and out on the map… okay so I can’t counter-attack despite my opponent failing that badly AKA the game doesn’t instantly end the second my opponent fails that badly, that’s already enough of a problem.
You can expand but you have to delay your expansion substantially while your production is a fraction of your opponent’s and your eco is a faction of your opponent’s. This stems from the fact that terran is just so weak after being forced to defend let alone taking any damage at all from a zerg cheese. Zerg can’t even reasonably fail 2 cheeses (that aren’t all-in) and be behind.
You can’t kill your opponent in this situation, even with bio they can just attack your base with mutas in order to try to prevent you from moving out. You have to wait until your army is good enough that the zerg ground army will die to it and also all those mutas will die to it… so you need 6-7 minutes to get to the 200/200 maxed out mech tank thor hellbat army, at which point it’s like the zerg never took any damage at all and never failed any cheese at all, because just 1-2 minutes of not harassing the zerg and letting them expand + drone up means you are in severe danger of losing the game. Killing 10-20 drones with hellions is unlikely, pro play shows how easy hellions are to counter, but doesn’t matter in the first place.
At this point it comes down to the zerg not completely messing up and doing anything effective against the weakened opponent to auto-win.
Same as BW, you just can’t kill your opponents as terran if you utterly outplay them, you have to wait until a late game at which point it’s as if the early and mid games never happened and they just abuse vipers/swarmhosts/ultras and you’re dead.
Here’s the rule: If a player’s opponent fails 2 cheeses and they spend all their money, if their army then gets annihilated when counter-attacking, any blame you can possibly place on the player is nothing compared to just how awfully horrible the game balance is designed. Currently as T, everything that can realistically go your way against a cheesing zerg player for the first 9 mins can do so, and you are hopelessly behind.
Meanwhile, again (I’ve talked about this in my previous threads), the only cheese that even ends the game against zerg is a 4rax and this automatically loses if your opponent abandons their natural, while also having free vision of anything you’re doing with speedlords/overseers so later cheeses can be easily spotted.