I deliberately don't start that as a balance argument but I would like to present a very simple fact ("fact" - my personal observation that is) to you and ask about your thoughts on it: most players (maybe 40-50%) use Protoss, a bit less (maybe 30-40%) Terran and the rest is split between Zerg and Random. It appears to me, that Random is even more often used than Zerg. Why is that? Because Zerg are considerably weaker than the others? My observation stems from the opponents I am being randomly matched against; maybe that's only true for the lower leagues (I'm in copper myself).
In silver, I notice a fairly equal balance of race usage, except that protoss comes up a LOT more often in random than the other two.
blizz's stats show that there's less than 1% difference between win ratios with zerg vs terran and zerg vs toss. I think that zerg require more learning to play well, but I tend to see all races used.... look at your divisions' ladders and see what the top 10 of each is... ________ vaporizer store
top 10 in my 2v2 bronze division are 6 terran, 2 protoss, and 2 random. The highest zerg in my division is rank 18 :/ However, zerg seems to be a lot more used in my 1v1 bronze division.
in my 2v2 platinum, the top 10 teams are: ZP, TZ, TT, RR, TZ, RR, PZ, TR, TP, TZ so out of 20 players we see: zerg x 5, protoss x 3, terran x 7, random x 5 in my gold 1v1: Z, T, T, R, Z, P, P, R, T, T I think that the usage is pretty balanced. ________ cheap vaporizers
Idk if anything I would say that Protoss and Terran are equally used just as much. I often see these two, and sometimes teams like PP and TT I have never seen ZZ
I think this is a complicated issue. The numbers also vary regionally. For example, I seem to recall a Blizzard report discussing the win/loss/usage ratios and there was actually a higher percentage for Zerg when looking at the Korean statistics. In either case, remember this is still beta. Blizzard does a good job at balancing their games and is putting a lot of effort into this, which I'm sure won't stop even after beta is over. As for myself, I'm a die hard Zerg fan. They could nerf it into the ground and I'd still play Zerg.....actually I'm sort of an evil-badguy-nasty creature fan. Naturally my favorite WC race was Undead
I did ZZ with someone I met on b.net last week. But our main strat was double 6 pool. Didn't work too well in Gold though, so we've both changed races into ones we did better with.
Undead was also the hardest race to learn. That, and the Night Elves always seemed a bit overpowered after TFT was released. However, I have good faith in SC2's balance team for this title.
UD was only good in 2v2 and 4v4. Solo with undead was a joke =( Hu? imba, Orc natural advantage, Elf - need I say more?! Oh, and I saw ZZ in platinum, they did very well. ________ Honda H5 transmission
no ziggurat rush with the hero lich king was fricken awesome with 1v1 UD anywayz on topic imo, i just rkn the zerg concept is the hardest to grasp in terms of marco.
Thanks for your imput! I should have mentioned, that I was only referring to 1v1 though. Regarding the top ranks of the divisions I would say that good players will be good with any race, for them the difference (balance) might even out. This is why I was pointing to my perception of usage (of all/average players - just the people you meet while playing), because this shows, what people (who are not die hard fans of a certain race) really think is a viable option for winning more games. Of course, players w/o SC1 experience might find Zerg too complicated. Anyway, of course you are right, Blizzard is really good at balancing things out, so no need to worry. Nonetheless at some point a difference might remain. I remember Terrans being the (hardest to master and micro but) strongest race in SC1 at the end.
I find it a fault to mold the game only for top players. Saying Zerg are balanced because in top 10 there are 2 zerg is not OK. You also need to look at these numbers from different ranges of player skill. Average players should have just as much fun and balanced game as top players should. No everyone can achieve top level. Sometimes it is lack of skill and another lack of time. I got a wife and a job, I cannot spent 5h per day honing my SC2 skill. I want to jump into the game and have fun and not feel playing Zerg puts me at a disadvantage (and I felt like that in many games). Also when I would play Terran I would have easiest time against Zerg. Blizzard main income will come from selling this game to low or average skill players and they are the ones that will need to spread the good word about this game so it sells to more people. Also I noticed Terran players being in bigger numbers in top10/20.
I think all team combos are viable. I've seen a 25-2 ZZ team in a platinum ladder. There aren't many PZ teams in my 2v2 plat ladder but my teammate and I are one of them, and we made it to 1650 without much trouble (which is #1 right now). However it should be mentioned that you need to zergling/baneling/stalker or something...the roach/zeal thing is awful. It's just an inferior macro game. Well I suppose it could be okay if you know what you're doing. I don't know. There isn't really one strategy that you have to play either. For 1v1 my ladder seems to have fewer protoss. Mostly Terran and the top 3 players are Terran. I think there are like 2, maybe 3, protoss in the top 10, me being one. Seems maybe around even between Protoss and Zerg. I don't think anything is an issue here. Just learn to play your race or team and you'll be fine. As far as I know all the team combos are viable. I started a new 2v2 ladder and have been having incredible success with PT team, even with Terran fast expanding it slaughters in platinum ladder.
Looking at the other players / teams I had to fight against, I can second the statement that Zerg is played less. I also have most of my games against Terran and Protoss (about equally divided between them). But the point about "Zerg is harder to learn" seems to be true, too. I almost ALWAYS win against Zerg, against Terran it is about even (perhaps a bit on my side) and I lose a lot against Protoss, where the Terran and Protoss playes play right well, but the Zerg players where not really looking like they knew, what they did. But I am only in the Beta for about 10 days now, looking at 35 1on1 (pre patch 13: silver legue, all the time, just before patch 13 I was about place 12 in my silver division) and about 120 2on2 (pre patch 13: mostly silver, some games even bronze, just before the patch we where about place 15 in our silver division) games. Perhaps that is just not enough to judge right.
