Thursday, June 21, 2012

New queen buff











 I  have to agree that the new queen buff broke TvZ. Why is it that Terran just keeps getting nerfed with every patch? Remember when you learned how to play with ghosts? Nerfed!!! Now they buff Queens with a knee jerk reaction to some pro players whining over and over again about imbalance. Way over did it this time  Blizzard!


Here is a  quote from a recent post on battle.net:


 I  have to agree that the new queen buff broke TvZ. Why is it that Terran just keeps getting nerfed with every patch? Remember when you learned how to play with ghosts? Nerfed!!! Now they buff Queens with a knee jerk reaction to some pro players whining over and over again about imbalance. Way over did it this time  Blizzard!
Here is a recent post on battle.net about the subject that I totally agree with:
The recent overlord speed buff and queen range buff have changed TvZ more than I think blizzard has intended and it's basically broken the matchup in my opinion. It wasn't at first evident after the buffs because many zergs were still playing how they normally played and we didn't really see the true problems. But now we're starting to realize Zerg can play extremely greedy every game vs Terran without risk, and since they will always see/scout with overlords at 6-7 minutes they can react to any possible Terran aggression or 1 or 2base allin. Especially if they just make a couple extra queens which zergs are already starting to do as a norm now. Many of the problems Zerg always had against Terran historically in sc2 was dealing with aggression and the various builds/options Terran had to throw at Zerg. Slowly things started getting worse/removed patch by patch. Banshees became easier to deflect with faster moving spores. 2rax and bunker rushing got harder with bigger maps and longer build times on bunker and rax. late game things that were good for Terran such as mules on gold, ghost snipe were removed or nerfed so much it became quite cost inefficient to consider anymore. These are just some of the bigger changes. All of this has added up to a point where the matchup just feels wrong now and isn't fun to watch, play or be involved with at all.


Zergs can just produce extra queens as a response to everything which doesn't even slow them down, plus having the extra queens serves more than just defensive purposes as well so it's not even a bad thing at all by forcing them. This makes allining from a terran perspective really risky without any chance of even damaging zerg to a point where it was worth it. There are extremely limited options now for Terran to slow a greedy Zerg down. The only games I'm really seeing Terran win consistently over the past few weeks are where Terran is allowed to do something extremely greedy or Zerg makes some really big mistakes either decision or tactical. I really hope Blizzard is watching and reviewing numbers (I'm sure they are) because it's pretty bad. Some of the best terrans I've been watching replays and vods of are doing extremely greedy builds vs zerg which are capable of keeping up with zerg (many super fast 3cc builds are quite good) but from the zergs perspective when they see or know the terran is doing a 3cc they have options to exploit that. They can either play even greedier or go for a build which can punish the terrans greed. Terran on the other hand can see the zergs greed and be playing with maphacks and still lose. As a Terran player when I'm working out any new build TvZ you have to ask the question "can it survive a roach ling bane allin, a roach ling allin, or any variation of bane ling allin?" Zerg does not ask those questions at all they simply just say "Make an extra couple spines/queens while continuing to pump drones." and you will always have overlords to spot for armies moving out. Terran will have hellions spotting but even these are repelled easier now that zerg is capable of pushing them around and back faster.


Some of the best terran players are playing 15cc builds quite often these days, Taeja and MKP come to mind, but these builds automatically lose to some zerg builds if they choose to coin flip, MKP lost to back to back 6pools the other day in TSL4 KR qualifier. When I was complaining about this one of my friends on skype said "well everyone knows MKP is one of the greediest mofos around." Why can zerg exploit the greediest terran mofo around but terran cant do the same to zerg anymore?


Most of these aggressive zerg builds don't even need to win the game and zerg can still get ahead. If terran does an equivalent build to a roach ling bane allin (hellion maraduer allin with scvs etc) the only way it might work is if zerg doesn't scout it, even if they scout it and it does some damage, terran is still behind if it doesn't win. In general we're still seeing Terrans beating Zerg in games but it's when zerg makes extremely bad moves or doesn't play/react properly to the terran player. When both sides play a "perfect" game I'm seeing zerg win most of the time. And we're not even seeing perfect games hardly at all from most players. We are not going to see Terran players winning any big championships anytime soon if they're playing vs zerg. Mark my words and please follow results on this but its been really bad already. Only two terrans in the top 16 of the recent TSL4 KR qualifier. I'm not saying all terrans are going to lose to zerg 100% of the time but it's going to be over 60% and late in tournaments I would not expect to see terrans winning at all as zergs become more comfortable with their autofree greed.


I've talked to lots of people about this from both sides, many zerg players are just telling terran players to micro better or figure out something new or play greedier, (pretty basic responses I get from many players who don't really have a deep understanding of the game) I'm scared about the "finding something new" path because if anything gets found new that helps SO much to change or skew balance back in terran favor it gets nerfed. Micro better is fine advice and definitely something terran players can work on to help in the matchup, but what if both players micro better? It almost feels like zerg players are telling terrans to just play 100x better than them to win which is what it feels like terran needs to do these days, is that good for a competitive game? If one player plays slightly better that player should win. It shouldn't require one of the players to make massive mistakes to lose games. I'm only seeing zerg lose with massive mistakes lately which is pretty sad.


Honestly Terran cant make a single mistake at any point in a TvZ or they're basically going to autolose all the while hoping their zerg opponent makes massive mistakes (sometimes takes 3-4 huge mistakes in 1 game for T to win) I mean zerg can literally throw away maxed armies and still be fine. what the !@#$ is this broodwar TvP all over again???


Terrans were dominating for a while in korea but it was more because it was easier for terran to abuse maps/positions and I always felt that some of the more skilled players that switched to sc2 at first were playing terran so it was hard to really judge results based purely off sc2 stats early on. I really felt things were fairly balanced before the queen/overlord buffs. As maps had gotten bigger there really didn't seem to be any blatant issues before the buffs, now it seems there ARE blatant issues in my opinion. Too early to tell still? Maybe for blizzard but not for me.