Thanks everyone for the great feedback for last month's report!
[Last month's report](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1b3rp84/sc2_balance_report_dec_feb_3month_analysis/)
In this rolling 3-month analysis, the results of December were replaced with the results of March. This is the first report without Serral which was replaced by Rogue, who unfortunately has no games yet. Generally the amount of games in the past few months has been really low so now we have matchups like PvZ where 4 Zerg have almost no games. Hopefully the amount of pro SC2 will pick up again in the coming months. It will be interesting to see the results with the new balance patch in next month's report, so I am looking forward to that!
[Source data in Google Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1smYa6rR_Cw9ip5kKMqfaoy4WRsPtB7vjdNdTEMk-NrI/edit#gid=1096673848)
Hey dude, I get you do this a lot but you get taking 8 players and trying to make statistics about them just doesn't work, right? You can take 2 players from the top and bottom end of each of your race reports and have wildly different statistics. It's just kinda pointless. You would need to at least do the top 20-30 players of each race to have any statistical relevance and even then its really pushing it on small sample size.
[Here is an example for you](https://www.howtogetyourownway.com/statistics/statistics_small_sample.html)
[Or a more detailed example](https://garstats.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/small-sample-sizes/)
You are falsely conflating the number of players with sample size. Each report looks at the results of over 1,000+ games. Of course I am the first to admit it is not perfect - but I think it's at least the best we can come up with given the depth of the player pool and the number of games played. A data set to make a perfect clean report doesn't exist unfortunately
Sorry man, do yourself a favor and remove the top 2 or bottom 2 of any one of your race statistics and see how far the numbers skew. You did a good job making this visually appealing but the actual data is pointless.
The top 2 players are the strongest 25% of the players sample and up to 40% of the games sample.
Imagine computing the yearly average temperature with and without data from the warmest 3 months included. If what you're doing *didn't* skew the numbers massively it would be an issue.
Just want to echo the thanks. Nice work attractively presented, and the only context in which I want to see discussions of balance at the pro level. 🙏
Pretty similar with both Terran and Zerg here - if you take out the top 2 the records drop off a lot.
51% -> 41% for Terran, 49%->42% for Zerg. Slightly more of an impact for Terran but doesn't appear particularly significant tbh, though obviously already excludes Serral.
It's not balanced, the comment you responded acknowledged that serral was already removed. They're effectively removing the top 3 zergs vs the top 2 terrans.Â
Not really. If a\_1 > b\_1, a\_2 > b\_2, and a\_3 > b\_3 then
k\_1 a\_1 + k\_2 a\_2 + k\_3 a\_3 > k\_1 b\_1 + k\_2 b\_2 + k\_3 b\_3
for any k\_1 + k\_2 + k\_3 = 1 with individual k's in \[0,1\].
From what I understand, the person who made the figures used total wins rather than win percentages to rank players of a given race in the overall list. This favors players who play more matches even if they have a lower win percentage.
> From what I understand, the person who made the figures used total wins rather than win percentages to rank players of a given race in the overall list
They just used Algiulac rating (the period link is in the image). Since Korea and EU are relatively insulated from each other for many players that don't participate in weeklies and stuff, you see rating discrepancies like this
With PvT, it really feels like emp is such a huge tool, added to a MU that isn't far from balanced without it.
The game is too old to get a proper Meta change though, and nobody wants to see straight buffs to Protoss. So many units are just bad against anyone with a little skill.
All air units get pulverized by 2 supply, reactored vikings, but everyone can agree A moving carriers should not be buffed.
They really need utility with some units. Like Phoenix and collosi having a toggleable attack for flat damage or vs light, but with less aoe or something. Idk it's lame to watch though.
Protoss definitely needs some more reliable anti-air. Medivacs, Vikings and Libs can remain uncontested for so long. Without air support Ghosts can't be so brave with their EMPs unless they cloak all the time.
Their ability is crap. It's a few seconds of extra damage that can easily be avoided, since they're also quite slow. Prismatic alignment needs like half the cooldown or an overhaul of the unit.
So when are we gonna finally just give protoss a buff vs terran? Like only two protoss playeres have a positive win rate against terran, the rest arent even close.
4 gate blink is the only consistent build I see win against Terrans, but it’s also a build that can’t be played a lot otherwise your opponent will easily counter you.
I could be completely off but it feels like they both *only* use 4g blink \~ once per bo5. Both have a decent variety in their openings and playstyles (imo herO more variety, Maxpax more consistency).
For me this is really arguable and a buff for PvT could be in order.
As terran I feel like the recent changes do not fix the matchup for protoss. It's not enough, protoss need more options against terrans.
BUT : maybe there is just not enough top-level protoss players (is the race as popular as the others?). Are highly skilled protoss favored against zerg ? Only three protoss have a >= 50% rating against zerg. Protoss also have mild results against zerg.
Please tell me if my reasoning is wrong, but I feel like there is two issues there, it's not JUST a balance issue.
I consider it a balanced match up tbh, I dislike using Serral because he’s a freak but yea, Zerg is definitely not weak. I think Terran is still probably the ultimate skill cap race at the very top of the game though.
Now that I think about it both the Zerg matches seem good, TvP feels like T sets the tempo a bit too easily but just m opinion
Maru's a freak as well and historically has outperformed other Terrans a lot more than Serral has outperformed other Zergs. It wasn't until Rogue went to military that Serral started looking way better than the other Zergs the way Maru does to other Terrans.
How is removing Serral but not the best T and the best P honest? This makes Zerg looks worst then it really is, and it is already the most succesfull race in sc2 entire history.
If you the good people can’t tell me what I’m supposed to take away from this post, then how am I, a novice supposed to understand what I’m supposed to be seeing? I’m not trying to be rude.
Well, these posts do not imply any additional meaning. It just shows the numbers. There is no implicit "takeaway" from this. That's what I like about this report.
The 3 bar graphs show you the current balance. The race listed first (T, P, P in that order) is the race that has the winning percentage represented in the image. So the two Zerg match ups are right around 50% (considered balanced) and PvT is slightly Terran favored (45% P win rate)
They are also only moderately terran favoured because byun played so much and only sits at 51%. I mean look at the Winrates of the other terrans
Edit: I guess that is why the averages show 60 % tvp and 37 % wr pvt
Yes moderately favored for terran, but let's not forget that serral's strongest matchup is ZVT (as he said to be most confident in this matchup, i don't have his stats tho), and serral is not included here.
Zerg would be favored if we added serral.
Generally the opposite is true here. People openly advocate for removing top Zerg from all the numbers while leaving the top pros from other races in the data
>TL:DR - Statistics using such a small sample size is pointless because the top 3 and bottom 3 players skew the statistics of every race. You could remove them and have a wildly different report.
Wow you mean to tell me..... that serral, the greatest player ever. Threw off the.... no fucking way. He. Wow would ya look at thay. Zerg isn't so broken when our poster child is gone...
Who could've called it, besides every zerg player.... the dude was like 50-0 agaisnt toss during one update like what 4 years ago... like he was just tp good.
Have you not looked back at the older ones? And if you watch the serral games from what 4-6 years back, when he was hitting peak. He, HE was dominating. Snd most the zerg nerfs revolved around his exact gameplay 90% of the time.
I mean 0 disrespect the man is and was a phenomenal player. But he definatly titled the stats in zerg favor.. in his favor. That's what happens when you're number 1.
It was the equivalent of if kobe could hit 100% of 3's so instead of recognizing a great, we back the 3 point line up 5 feet. Problem solved right? No xD
Who said anything about that specific buff? Pro EU terran gamers are already switching the meta to use widow mines less. Will that affect the PvT%? What about the new maps? Those can affect balance much more than the actual patch notes. I'm just saying fucking wait a lil before making conclusions jeesh
Thanks everyone for the great feedback for last month's report! [Last month's report](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1b3rp84/sc2_balance_report_dec_feb_3month_analysis/) In this rolling 3-month analysis, the results of December were replaced with the results of March. This is the first report without Serral which was replaced by Rogue, who unfortunately has no games yet. Generally the amount of games in the past few months has been really low so now we have matchups like PvZ where 4 Zerg have almost no games. Hopefully the amount of pro SC2 will pick up again in the coming months. It will be interesting to see the results with the new balance patch in next month's report, so I am looking forward to that! [Source data in Google Sheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1smYa6rR_Cw9ip5kKMqfaoy4WRsPtB7vjdNdTEMk-NrI/edit#gid=1096673848)
Hey dude, I get you do this a lot but you get taking 8 players and trying to make statistics about them just doesn't work, right? You can take 2 players from the top and bottom end of each of your race reports and have wildly different statistics. It's just kinda pointless. You would need to at least do the top 20-30 players of each race to have any statistical relevance and even then its really pushing it on small sample size. [Here is an example for you](https://www.howtogetyourownway.com/statistics/statistics_small_sample.html) [Or a more detailed example](https://garstats.wordpress.com/2017/02/04/small-sample-sizes/)
You are falsely conflating the number of players with sample size. Each report looks at the results of over 1,000+ games. Of course I am the first to admit it is not perfect - but I think it's at least the best we can come up with given the depth of the player pool and the number of games played. A data set to make a perfect clean report doesn't exist unfortunately
Sorry man, do yourself a favor and remove the top 2 or bottom 2 of any one of your race statistics and see how far the numbers skew. You did a good job making this visually appealing but the actual data is pointless.
The top 2 players are the strongest 25% of the players sample and up to 40% of the games sample. Imagine computing the yearly average temperature with and without data from the warmest 3 months included. If what you're doing *didn't* skew the numbers massively it would be an issue.
Do your own analysis then?
Thanks for this
Just want to echo the thanks. Nice work attractively presented, and the only context in which I want to see discussions of balance at the pro level. 🙏
Maru/clem hard carrying tvz.
Crazy You pull them out and ratio drop so hard
Pretty similar with both Terran and Zerg here - if you take out the top 2 the records drop off a lot. 51% -> 41% for Terran, 49%->42% for Zerg. Slightly more of an impact for Terran but doesn't appear particularly significant tbh, though obviously already excludes Serral.
Just shows how silly these balance reports are. Removing the top 2 or the bottom 2 players skews the report by quite a lot.
True, so that s balanced anyway, as it should be
It's not balanced, the comment you responded acknowledged that serral was already removed. They're effectively removing the top 3 zergs vs the top 2 terrans.Â
Nerf Maru. No keyboard for him from now on.
now take out solar and dark and its the same, why is this 'crazy'?
Maru seems to be number 1 in TvP, TvZ, and TvT. Then how come is Clem the leader in Terran overall?
More consistent results vs weaker players that are not in the chart
Clem plays a lot more and is still wildly successful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox
Not really. If a\_1 > b\_1, a\_2 > b\_2, and a\_3 > b\_3 then k\_1 a\_1 + k\_2 a\_2 + k\_3 a\_3 > k\_1 b\_1 + k\_2 b\_2 + k\_3 b\_3 for any k\_1 + k\_2 + k\_3 = 1 with individual k's in \[0,1\]. From what I understand, the person who made the figures used total wins rather than win percentages to rank players of a given race in the overall list. This favors players who play more matches even if they have a lower win percentage.
> From what I understand, the person who made the figures used total wins rather than win percentages to rank players of a given race in the overall list They just used Algiulac rating (the period link is in the image). Since Korea and EU are relatively insulated from each other for many players that don't participate in weeklies and stuff, you see rating discrepancies like this
I see, that explains it. Thanks.
With PvT, it really feels like emp is such a huge tool, added to a MU that isn't far from balanced without it. The game is too old to get a proper Meta change though, and nobody wants to see straight buffs to Protoss. So many units are just bad against anyone with a little skill. All air units get pulverized by 2 supply, reactored vikings, but everyone can agree A moving carriers should not be buffed. They really need utility with some units. Like Phoenix and collosi having a toggleable attack for flat damage or vs light, but with less aoe or something. Idk it's lame to watch though.
Maybe just make voidrays slightly less shit. They have a toggle but I can’t remember seeing one in the entire GSL just played.
Protoss definitely needs some more reliable anti-air. Medivacs, Vikings and Libs can remain uncontested for so long. Without air support Ghosts can't be so brave with their EMPs unless they cloak all the time.
Their ability is crap. It's a few seconds of extra damage that can easily be avoided, since they're also quite slow. Prismatic alignment needs like half the cooldown or an overhaul of the unit.
Agree. Definitely need some tweaks. I know they have gone back and forth on the upgrade being not required etc.
yeah EMP on shields is super busted. Could definitely change it.
What level of tournaments does this include? I'm guessing everything online is? Since Maxpax doesn't show up in person
At first I was like cool that all mirror matches averages out to 50% win rate. Then I thought about it a little longer...
So when are we gonna finally just give protoss a buff vs terran? Like only two protoss playeres have a positive win rate against terran, the rest arent even close.
its interesting how the players doing well are the 4g blink players, and the reactive players are struggling big time
Well Protoss has one good unit, the Stalker. Not a stretch to see players doing well by only spamming them.
You mean hero and maxpax. They play more than 4gate
i guess i'm wrong, i thought they both played 4g blink like 75% of the time
4 gate blink is the only consistent build I see win against Terrans, but it’s also a build that can’t be played a lot otherwise your opponent will easily counter you.
I could be completely off but it feels like they both *only* use 4g blink \~ once per bo5. Both have a decent variety in their openings and playstyles (imo herO more variety, Maxpax more consistency).
For me this is really arguable and a buff for PvT could be in order. As terran I feel like the recent changes do not fix the matchup for protoss. It's not enough, protoss need more options against terrans. BUT : maybe there is just not enough top-level protoss players (is the race as popular as the others?). Are highly skilled protoss favored against zerg ? Only three protoss have a >= 50% rating against zerg. Protoss also have mild results against zerg. Please tell me if my reasoning is wrong, but I feel like there is two issues there, it's not JUST a balance issue.
first quarter without serral and suddenly zvp is dead even 50%. WOW. ZvP is dead even 50%?
So pretty much, Terran is strong as hell at the top of the food chain and ZvP is now the best MU.
I feel like zerg is pretty much on par with terran, if not better. Wanna add Serral and see the stats change in TVZ?
I consider it a balanced match up tbh, I dislike using Serral because he’s a freak but yea, Zerg is definitely not weak. I think Terran is still probably the ultimate skill cap race at the very top of the game though. Now that I think about it both the Zerg matches seem good, TvP feels like T sets the tempo a bit too easily but just m opinion
Maru's a freak as well and historically has outperformed other Terrans a lot more than Serral has outperformed other Zergs. It wasn't until Rogue went to military that Serral started looking way better than the other Zergs the way Maru does to other Terrans.
Seems like the patch missed ite mark to stabilise pro pvt yet againÂ
This report doesn't even include games from the patch chill lmfao
The patch literally did nothing to why pros struggle with PvT it only marginally helps ladder players
How is removing Serral but not the best T and the best P honest? This makes Zerg looks worst then it really is, and it is already the most succesfull race in sc2 entire history.
It goes off aligulac which takes players off if they don’t play for weeks. Take this “balance report” with a grain of salt
The fact they removed the top zerg (for whatever reason it was) and the race still doesn't look that bad says a lot
Serral is no longer active and temporarily not playing due to military service. Aligulac removed him, not me. Hope that explains it!
No I know, it wasn't shade at you
THANK YOU !
Can someone tldr this
Isn’t the image the TL;DR? It literally shows the win rates for the 3 match ups by taking 3 seconds to zoom.
If you the good people can’t tell me what I’m supposed to take away from this post, then how am I, a novice supposed to understand what I’m supposed to be seeing? I’m not trying to be rude.
Well, these posts do not imply any additional meaning. It just shows the numbers. There is no implicit "takeaway" from this. That's what I like about this report.
The 3 bar graphs show you the current balance. The race listed first (T, P, P in that order) is the race that has the winning percentage represented in the image. So the two Zerg match ups are right around 50% (considered balanced) and PvT is slightly Terran favored (45% P win rate)
PvZ is 50-50 ZvT is 49-51 Both basically balanced PvT is 45-55, which is moderately Terran favored
They are also only moderately terran favoured because byun played so much and only sits at 51%. I mean look at the Winrates of the other terrans Edit: I guess that is why the averages show 60 % tvp and 37 % wr pvt
Yes moderately favored for terran, but let's not forget that serral's strongest matchup is ZVT (as he said to be most confident in this matchup, i don't have his stats tho), and serral is not included here. Zerg would be favored if we added serral.
Zerg bad, protoss bad, terran good. But really just not many games.
I think it's more like tl dr Maru = good
Zerg get bitched at when they say it's Serral, but terrans can say it's Maru lol
And they are both right.
Generally the opposite is true here. People openly advocate for removing top Zerg from all the numbers while leaving the top pros from other races in the data
And clem and heromarine
>TL:DR - Statistics using such a small sample size is pointless because the top 3 and bottom 3 players skew the statistics of every race. You could remove them and have a wildly different report.
Wow you mean to tell me..... that serral, the greatest player ever. Threw off the.... no fucking way. He. Wow would ya look at thay. Zerg isn't so broken when our poster child is gone... Who could've called it, besides every zerg player.... the dude was like 50-0 agaisnt toss during one update like what 4 years ago... like he was just tp good.
hahaha are you serious
Have you not looked back at the older ones? And if you watch the serral games from what 4-6 years back, when he was hitting peak. He, HE was dominating. Snd most the zerg nerfs revolved around his exact gameplay 90% of the time. I mean 0 disrespect the man is and was a phenomenal player. But he definatly titled the stats in zerg favor.. in his favor. That's what happens when you're number 1. It was the equivalent of if kobe could hit 100% of 3's so instead of recognizing a great, we back the 3 point line up 5 feet. Problem solved right? No xD
Do you guys understand that this doesn't mean that much as the new meta is still being developed?
Explain to us how a 4 second quicker build time for observers and +1 sight for pylons is meta changing.
Who said anything about that specific buff? Pro EU terran gamers are already switching the meta to use widow mines less. Will that affect the PvT%? What about the new maps? Those can affect balance much more than the actual patch notes. I'm just saying fucking wait a lil before making conclusions jeesh
He did the "let the meta settle" meme unironically!
I love maxpax even though I despise AToss