This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/starcraft by /u/Alex_Capt1in on 2024-10-25 23:56:15+00:00.
Greetings ladies and gentleman, a lot of people suggested to just play on ptr to gather more info, so I kind of decided to give it a try.
Disclaimer: my mmr right now is 5k on Europe and the difference between me and current top10 pro gamers is approximately as big as the difference between me and gold/plat players. So I am not saying that all the info you're about to see is 100% objective facts.
First 10 games were on ptr. 5 against Zerg, 1 against Terran and 4 against Protoss.
PvZ was 2-2, most definitely I just didn't adapt well enough and could've probably get faster storm at one point, one lose was against proxy hatchery from ~5300 random player alex007, we managed to both transition into macro with similar economy and I died against mutalisks switch, because I made reactive robo to deal with proxy and didn't have stargate or blink on a way. The other two games I played adept stalker into oracle into charge/sentry all-in from 3 bases, one time won, one time lost. I played one more to make it perfectly 18, it was on ptr vs 4650 zerg, his build was german taxy and I went oracle into double robo after scouting roach warren at 4 min. It didn't felt impossible or anyhow hard to defend on ptr balance, so I am starting to believe battery overcharge is definitely way more crucial in PvT than in PvZ. The last game was against baneling bust, I sent oracle and adept to defend third (unsuccesfully) and afterwards I spotted the green dudes that were about to blow my stalker in the wall, so I kind of played horrendously but still managed to win. I think in PvZ energy recharge is kinda stronger early on in this regard and I'd probably lose that game if not for it, because:
A) I didn't have a battery on natural ready in first place
B) Oracle is still a bit stronger than battery, since battery requires any "alive" units to heal.
At the same time I think oracles became worse at harass due to spore changes, but at the same time protoss in PvZ probably can play slightly different and perhaps a bit greedier? Overall I think meta was already dominated by stargate openers and now it would be pretty much nothing but stargates, but I don't think I'm competent enough to make any strong comments or suggestion on changes regarding high level PvZ.
In PvP can't make any comments at all. Previously I played ~65% of the games with gate expand, then approximately 1/3 with photon cannons and extremely rarely I played occasional nexus first on side delta if I knew my opponent loves to skip scout. Gate expand is kind of dead, trying to play robo all-ins or defending 2 robo all-ins from 2 gate openers also seems tricky, especially when half of your opponents are progamers/casters, so instead I just cannon rushed with 200+ ping. Lost 3 out of 4 and the guy that lost got a redemption but that's about it, overall I didn't spot a single map in a ptr pool that looked terrible nor borderline unwinnable for cannon rushes.
PvT on the other hand I played only one game and my opponent wasn't very high level and I just won with a pressure play. So instead of gambling on PTR I decided to play with my 5k Terran friend. But he said he hates starcraft, so I said I'd pay him 1$ for every game he takes off me. In-before our games in practices were 50/50. This time we ended our series 1-7 in his favor. Main differences between our games and games of pros were:
A) I am probably not as good as pros at scouting.
B) Unlike pro gamers half of the games from my friend was just 1 base all-ining me. And yes, I lost all of them. And yes, all of them I either played 2 gate or 3 gate openers before tech. And yes, I tried to make batteries, they're looking borderline useless.
The closest game against 1 base all-ins was some sort of weird 1 base stimpack marauder/marine timing, where he managed to kill ~7 out of 9 of my probes from natural, then proceeded to retreat, expand afterwards, I proceeded to kill his expand with 4 gates counterattack and "stabilize" at ~30 probes against 20 scv, and then he pooled half of the boys and I just died.
The worst ones were against tank lib pushes, I already struggled with them in the previous patch and in the new patch it wasn't even close to holding.
Also not a single game my friend played was 4 barracks or 2 racks marauders, so I can't comment on these ones.
From macro games the only thing I'd like to mention is that 3 racks doesn't feel nearly as strong as I'd expect it to be.
Overall out of these games I think the biggest protoss problem is that variety of strategies becomes lower. On current ladder patch a lot of the time you could go gasless nexus and be fine with it even if your opponent decided to make a pressure build, in new patch doing so is basically almost the same as instantly losing, so if somebody liked parting opener like I did sorry to bring bad news for you.
And yes, not a single game lasted till lategame, which on one hand doesn't imply anything because there is a too little scope to prove anything, but still it is kind of interesting, considering that on a normal balance I think half of my games usually get to 200 limit without any issues, including games vs my 5k terran friend I just mentioned.
TL;DR: Variety of openers dropped, midgame changed significantly (I am uncertain whether it became worse or better for P) and Terran's 1 base all-ins look scary and require extremely precise response from protoss side.
P.S. If you're interested you can check another post I made in-before playing on ptr.
