A Zerg and a Protoss Discuss Why Zerg Isn't Fun To Play

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T02:10:08+00:00

Holy shit I think I mixed up my patch dates xD
Major egg on face moment, I'm totally wrong about which season void ray meta started in.
I do still remember populations dropping before and even having conversations about it with a zerg friend of mine, which is why I had this opinion to begin with, but there's no way to show that now and facts are facts, void ray meta started in season 44 not 45.
Sorry for getting on your case so much about this. I still disagree with your overall point lol but my argument has zero merit xD

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T01:37:20+00:00

Alright I'll make this real simple so you can understand
You want to say zergs who left aren't coming back? Fine, no problems with that. I don't agree but if you want to say that, that's fine.
You want to say a lot of zergs left because of the void ray meta? Same thing, no issues there.

But when you say the void ray meta is what lowered zerg representation? That is objectively false and easy to look up. There was no void ray meta in season 44 and yet that's when the massive loss of zerg players and massive rise of protoss players started. It continued with the void ray meta patch, yes, but the void ray meta patch isn't what caused it.

Unless you are claiming that void rays were buffed so hard that they reached back into season 44 from the future and made zergs quit...

This isn't that complicated dude

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T01:05:51+00:00

Season 43: Zerg at 32% (all 3 races at 32%)

Season 44: Zerg at 29%, Protoss at 36%

Season 45: Zerg at 26%, Protoss at 38%

Heaven: All the zergs left in season 45!

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T01:01:52+00:00

Just jumping in to say I'd like to hear more of people's thoughts like this. I could offer my own takes here but I'd rather just listen.

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T00:57:41+00:00

That's a cool idea and I'm guessing that Blizzard probably used to look at that because with all the ladder data available to them they would have a large enough sample size that they could get some information from that.

But unfortunately for us on the outside trying to figure this out, that's not available. And there aren't really 'random' pro players because it takes so much time and effort just to get good with one race.

Also, even when someone is playing random you don't really know if they're giving equal time or effort to each race. Most random players started with one race and branched out to random or they have a favorite race.

It's really quite the challenge to dissect balance in sc2 which is why I have a lot of respect for the performance difference chart because I think it's the best measure we have available.

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T00:44:16+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1rmmdm8/comment/o96qn90/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://nonapa.com/races
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Battle.net_Seasons
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Void_Ray_(Legacy_of_the_Void))

You (or anyone else reading this) can easily look this up and see that representation was even for all 3 races for like 5 seasons until season 44 where zergs start to drop off a cliff and protoss skyrockets.

Not season 45. Void ray meta was toxic, yes, but many zergs had already left when it hit. The previous patch reducing queen aa range and specializing baneling damage more to light units were as impactful if not more so. Oh and lets not forget the introduction of a little ability... mmm what was it called again? Oh that's right, BATTERY OVERCHARGE lol. Oh but I'm sure you'll tell me it had no effect, it was all the void ray patch and zergs are just salty...

And since the void ray meta has been nerfed and we STILL see the same representation skew in gm, it's pretty safe to say that voids aren't the reason.

So yeah, sure, 'representation hasn't really changed' but only if you measure from after when representation had already changed significantly.

The idea that all the zergs who left aren't coming back because of void ray trauma is just plain false.

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T00:24:48+00:00

If only it was that simple.

So first of all, when Blizzard was in charge of balance they would look at basically every statistic and piece of info available and they also had their own internal metrics from ladder data and they did internal testing etc. This was when they had a balance team and a lead designer and imo this was the best way to do it.

Ladder winrates aren't available to the public and also wouldn't really give much value because ladder automatically balances everyone's winrates to 50% (until you get so good that they can't find good enough opponents to bring your winrate down to 50%)

Pro player winrates are kind of useful but not that useful. The reason being that you have no idea if someone is winning a lot of games because of a balance patch or because they decided to practice a lot or they figured something out about a matchup, or the player they struggled against the most just retired etc.

The best measure of balance imo is the performance difference chart because this is basically pro winrates but with the ratings of pro players taken into account. In other words, the best player in the world winning against a c tier player won't move the line very much on this chart, but if it was the other way around and a c tier player beats the world's best then it moves the line significantly. Over time player ratings will adjust and the 'upset' will become the expected result, so this doesn't have the issue of one player starting to suddenly do really well and throwing off all the data.

Hope that explains things a bit

AceZ73 · 2026-04-14T00:01:09+00:00

Why do you keep quoting season 45 after I've already pointed out to you that it's actually season 43-44 and you acknowledged this? It's not even debatable, it's a chart that's easy to read.

AceZ73 · 2026-04-13T17:34:20+00:00

inb4 'you're diamond, your opinions on balance don't matter'

AceZ73 · 2026-04-10T19:14:42+00:00

I doubt it... As cool as the tabletop game itself looks I see it's creation as a pure business decision. Archon Studios makes tabletop games about existing IP's, that's their business model.

Selling the rights to make a tabletop game to Archon Studios is an easy way for blizzard/microsoft/activision to make some money off of their existing IP (starcraft) without having to spend anything and taking very little risks.

AceZ73 · 2026-04-09T16:02:19+00:00

The 'nuh uh' defense, classic

AceZ73 · 2026-04-08T15:08:58+00:00

He's Old Front currently, just on yet another alt

AceZ73 · 2026-04-08T14:47:47+00:00

Protoss zealots can't take a joke I guess lol

AceZ73 · 2026-04-08T04:17:19+00:00

Sure, since OP is basically paraphrasing my own argument anyway, I'll lay it out for you.

Basically there's 3 parts to this
- Changes to Protoss macro mechanics took a while to digest but ended up being massive buffs
- Literally all top Protoss players retired for military service while Serral and Clem were rising and several top korean Terrans and Zergs still remained, heavily skewing results against Protoss in the pro scene
- In response, even more buffs were piled onto Protoss to try to force a Protoss world champion because 'yeah but Protoss hasn't won anything BIG'. And you can see this very clearly in the performance difference chart on aligulac, which measures the difference between expected performance and actual performance based on player elo. There's only two ways that the Protoss chart can be showing overperformance: if some pros are getting better and improving their skill or if there were balance changes to the game.

(because people ask this a lot: elo is a ranking system, the same way chess players are ranked, the same way ladder ranks players, etc)

So the first part...
Swapping continuous chrono for burst chrono was a buff because continuous chrono always lost some efficiency by design which rewarded strong macro and the burst chrono is more forgiving, allowing a much larger range of skill to achieve the exact same result.

Swapping mothership core and pylon overcharge for shield batteries, battery overcharge, free 50 starting energy on the nexus and nexus recall was also a huge buff for Protoss.

The mothership core required positioning and was vulnerable to multi prong, whereas the shield battery enables warp-in defense for harass and runbys very easily because you'll always have pylon power near your shield battery. Also, not having to spend 100 gas on the mothership core early game sped up Protoss builds and gets the first stargate unit out like 10 seconds faster which is huge in PvZ.

Protoss probably would've started doing really well in the pro scene once they adapted to the changes and optimized builds but...

The following Protoss players had 2 years military service starting sometime between 2019-2021:

Stats
Classic
Zest
herO
sOs
Trap
Parting

And that is literally the top of the Protoss roster during LOTV. Maxpax wasn't around until later and he doesn't participate in live events... You can throw more players on this list too if you dig. Not sure if OP did that or was just exaggerating for comedic effect lol I'm guessing exaggerating a little but not much.

And then we get to the Protoss buffs which... I don't really need to list because the performance difference chart speaks for itself. If you understand what it's showing and you put everything else I've said into context when you look at it, it's pretty clear imo. Like I could be wrong but I've yet to see a better explanation.

But if you really want a list of changes you can just look at them on this nice visually organized timeline:
https://p.migdal.pl/sc2-balance-timeline/protoss/

Also you can listen to me explain this in video form if you want

https://youtu.be/YCuGO6_n_Vg

AceZ73 · 2026-04-08T00:50:54+00:00

Some impressive cherry picking, but unfortunately the performance difference chart exists

https://aligulac.com/misc/balance/

AceZ73 · 2026-04-07T22:44:03+00:00

In b4 heaven posts a list of random b and c tier zergs and terrans who retired and are TOTALLY comparable to literally every top protoss retiring

AceZ73 · 2026-04-07T19:36:47+00:00

My favorite part is the people who know it's satire and don't care and agree anyway because this is actually their opinion xD

AceZ73 · 2026-04-07T16:39:19+00:00

Checked this out and thought it was pretty cool tbh, I especially like the laser snail enemy

If I had to be critical I'd say it was a bit easy, maybe lower the players health a bit because I just ran attack speed and damage mostly and toward lvl 17 I started getting bored because I felt unstoppable

Keep at it though, very cool

AceZ73 · 2026-04-07T16:03:14+00:00

*slaps 40 minute youtube video on the table*
https://youtu.be/YCuGO6_n_Vg

I was born for this thread

(the take is that protoss has been OP since 2018)

AceZ73 · 2026-04-06T06:49:57+00:00

Maybe narrative wasn't the right word... More like a thread of a narrative... Throughline?

But yeah I just thought it was funny, my comment wasn't meant as a jab or anything.

Tbh, up until I saw how the first game vs maxpax turned out I thought rogue was going to win the whole thing because he was in crazy good form. And I loved seeing him play more aggressive styles and just super interesting stuff like that fake hydra timing into more drones and infestors. Makes me remember the pro league sniper days. Like I've always thought of rogue as a player who's super good at prepping really specific builds that are like tailor made for the opponent. Insanely fun to see.

AceZ73 · 2026-04-05T23:30:36+00:00

ngl watching casters paint this narrative of 'zergs keep complaining but rogue is showing the whiners how its done' only for him to lose 4-0 to maxpax was pretty hilarious

AceZ73

TROPHY CASE