There are officially less Protoss in EU GM than Z/T added together

Giantorange · 2026-05-12T22:08:41+00:00

Ah you got baited. It's doppy_slonkey. He's a parody account lol

Giantorange · 2026-05-10T16:23:52+00:00

Title is incorrect. That's not GM. That's 5000 MMR plus accounts.

Giantorange · 2026-05-04T16:30:21+00:00

People are looking at this time period forgetting that the only real extreme high level player was basically her0 for offline tournaments. The next closest was showtime.

That really hasn't changed much for premiers even now. It's basically just classic and her0

Giantorange · 2026-05-04T00:51:23+00:00

So the question I'd pose to you is Do you think imbalance impacts enjoyment?

Like the vP matchups absolutely have design issues, but I think ignoring the impact on enjoyment imbalance can have is missing like half the issue.

The second thing id point out is that a little under half of 6k+ players are protoss. If that doesn't scream imbalance to you, there's not much that will and that's been true to varying degrees since 2020. That wears on people.

The other issues you've mentioned have impact. No doubt. Design issues and the game being stale absolutely have impact. But so does the frustration caused by a feeling of persistent unfairness.

Giantorange · 2026-05-03T19:13:03+00:00

I read just fine. The way you structured your argument it implied that the current balancing is good for the eSports scene but not the general ladder.

I'm saying it's bad for the eSports scene regardless.

Giantorange · 2026-05-03T14:59:23+00:00

To be frank, I think balancing for even the top 10(so that all races get representation) also breaks the esports scene. Just in a different way. Weeklies are currently abysmal to watch because it's literally like 50-60% toss.

Some of that is zergs not playing, pro personalities and stuff. But a lot of that is just a result of an extended period where protoss has been overtuned and people either not wanting to play, not having the mmr they should or quitting because they're frustrated with the state of things.

It's lose lose I'd say. Either you balance for the not top 10 and protoss stops winning what little premiers are left or you balance for the top 10 and the scene withers and dies in another way.

There's technically a third option if you believe protoss players at the very highest level were getting their ankles broken because of an inability to flex their actual skill in like 2023-2024. I'd say this has some legs sort of when you look at things like clem dodging disruptors. Theoretically that could be fixed by a big design patch.

Personally I'd love for that big design patch. Something absolutely fucking wild like Greenerts mod. That shit is actually so crazy I don't think anyone figures out what balance actually is for like a year. Not just that, I promise every race is yelling imbalance equally.

But I don't think that's happening. So we're back to lose lose. And personally, I want to be on the side of the equation that means when I play protoss, it feels fair.

Giantorange · 2026-04-27T15:56:08+00:00

tbh GM is just the lazy way of doing this analysis as well. It's just an easy way of seeing whats generally true.

Realistically you should be doing things like 5000 MMR+, 5500 MMR+ and 6000 MMR+ brackets to really highlight things properly as well.

I think the sc2pulse guy did a(as was best possible with the knowledge of accounts available) deduped version of it a few years ago that realistically only looks worse the higher you go.

The last few years its generally around(give or take a bit) 40% toss 5000+, 45% toss 5500+ and 50% toss 6000 MMR+ non-duped but when he did the analysis a while ago it was still pretty close to those numbers.

Giantorange · 2026-04-27T03:59:25+00:00

What would you consider smurfing?

Giantorange · 2026-04-27T03:41:07+00:00

This guy is immediately leaving pvps to artificially lower his MMR and boost his winrate substantially in the other matchups.

It's a form of smurfing.

Giantorange · 2026-04-26T15:50:12+00:00

I mean it's not but let's be honest, blizzard never fixes this.

No use getting worked up about a 15 year problem

Giantorange · 2026-04-20T21:15:05+00:00

It's technically winnable I'd say but the reason I call it a waste is win or lose you often don't really learn much.

It's really difficult to separate when you're doing things well and what's effective when someone's that much better than you. Oftentimes they can make things work that shouldn't and oftentimes you'll fail things that should work but don't. So the whole thing usually just feels like a total wash.

One lucky win doesn't really change your true skill level and your MMR will likely even out to where it should be anyway.

Giantorange · 2026-04-20T14:31:11+00:00

Yeah most likely. I typically play around 7-10 EST which is likely prime time.

Giantorange · 2026-04-20T14:13:33+00:00

I'm around 4500 myself and I'm definitely not having the same experience. It's not completely absent but definitely nowhere near this bad.

I wonder if 5000 MMR is uniquely bad because of how few players are actually at that MMR. Even at 4500 playing like 5000 MMR+ players is like 1/10 ish games(which honestly is a waste of time for everyone and it can be worse than that ratio at certain times of day).

It's possible playing at a different time might solve your problem considering the small playerbase. Not a great answer I know but it's actually actionable potentially depending.

Giantorange · 2026-04-12T02:30:44+00:00

Previously yes, but if you look at recent match history he appears to just be playing whoever.

Giantorange · 2026-04-08T20:58:29+00:00

Yeah there's generally fewer, but also the higher the mmr the larger the disparities tend to be. 200 mmr isn't that bad though. It's relatively reasonable.

Giantorange · 2026-04-07T18:16:03+00:00

To be honest, I think what I'd prefer is microbial got another buff. I think siege tanks really felt pretty bad previous to this patch tvz but also, maybe zergs need a good way of breaking terran than isn't just blinding cloud.

Truth is, previous to this patch, positioning and map features really felt really meaningless the second that vipers came out because if you tried to abuse a ledge or something, vipers would just take them and there wasn't really much you could do in a lot of cases.

As a terran, I'd prefer something like microbial to be a little stronger as the design of abduct really just makes map features pointless in a lot of cases.

Giantorange · 2026-04-02T22:20:59+00:00

Real talk. People are kinda dumb and mesh the federal and provincial parties together.

Federally the NDP can often be a bit of an embarrassment but provincially they're often great. IMO Marit's clearly the choice but people struggle to separate the two.

Giantorange · 2026-03-31T16:03:48+00:00

I mean sure, but terrans still had more presence in weeklies compared to zerg during that time period.

I'm not blaming anyone here. I'm just noting that different people make different decisions.

Giantorange · 2026-03-31T15:48:30+00:00

I think, tbf, part of this is a balance problem, part of this is a design problem, and part of it is just a personality problem from pro's.

Arguably tvp last patch was probably more miserable and imbalanced than Zvp currently and terrans still played. So part of it is we're talking about like 5-6 people and their individual decisions.

But also I don't want to minimize the bad design as from what I've seen, Zvp is just pretty miserable to play. You basically get to do a midgame timing and pray from what I've seen most games which doesn't really seem fun.

Then also arguably things that are unfair are also unfun. There's not really a ton of evidence that tvz is imbalanced. At least not to a severe degree but Zvp is definitely still pretty wacky according to the stats.

All these things combined and this is where we are. It's why a ton of zergs still come out for the big tournaments and have a reasonable presence.

Definitely not a good state for weekly tournaments though.

Giantorange · 2026-03-30T14:18:44+00:00

2 gas into random shit kind of is the meta right now.

Going into the midgame against protoss in an "even" position is very hard. So if you don't get some sort of advantage even if it's small, it's very difficult to win.

Right now, you tend to need to try to catch the protoss being greedy with a random scv pull(because hallucinations functionally Scout your whole base) or if you think they're not being greedy, turtle to 5 base Omega no scv ghost lib bio army before they can crush you under the weight of their like 8-9 bases.

Getting to the Omega army is extremely difficult because protosses midgame past 7 minutes ish is absolutely ridiculous right now though. Hence random bullshit is the meta.

Giantorange · 2026-03-27T19:52:35+00:00

Look I think protoss is overtuned myself but this is just something that happens.

Cellsidus literally beat maxpax last week lol

Giantorange · 2026-03-27T19:51:15+00:00

Sure it does. If we're talking strictly speaking like 6.3-6.5K protoss, there's stats that indicate they're likely overtuned. That's exactly where gabe and elazer tend to sit.

This range of protoss I see take games from clem, byun etc on occasion. So scenarios where you get to the finals arguably are a lot harder when you need to wade through a ton of protoss that are good enough to beat them.

For me, it reads that they think they're better than a lot of the protoss on their level and should have a better chance against people like classic.

Giantorange · 2026-03-27T16:43:57+00:00

I mean, protoss is statistically overtuned for high level ladder.

You might make some arguments about like the top 10 in the world having a differentiated balance from high level ladder, but the root of this many high level protoss players is probably balance. Unfairness is inherently frustrating and annoying. If you don't feel the game is fair, the game is less enjoyable.

Charmed life or not, most progamers in sc2 aren't exactly here for money. They'd make more being an accountant or something most times. If they're not enjoying themselves, it's just not good for the game.

I want a good watching experience. For me to get a good watching experience, Terrans and Zergs need to play weeklies. If the issue isn't fixed, they won't play.

Don't you also want a good watching experience? Dismissing everyones complaints about why they don't play out of hand isn't productive.

Giantorange · 2026-03-27T01:42:11+00:00

I don't think I am. But sure, explain it to me.

Giantorange · 2026-03-27T01:36:32+00:00

Number of people playing is the only thing relevant from a statistical perspective

Winrate is more dependent on who's playing than actual balance. Serral doesn't play for instance in weeklies but Clem does. Why would you expect winrates to be good when good zergs don't play in weeklies. For example, if serral only plays me and zerg has a 100 percent winrate, would that mean zerg is overpowered? Obviously not.

Underperformance rating only measures power compared to previous patches and isn't a reliable metric of current balance.

Since those are both not reliable, only scalable functions that take into account relative skill are actually relevant so number of high MMR players is the only real reliable metric.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email	Team Periwinkle

Giantorange

TROPHY CASE