Nearly as many Wins+Losses vs. P as just losses vs. Z this season. Protoss players quitting/swapping in droves.
Posted May 11, 2016, 2:31 PM UTC
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That decline started over 3 months ago so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise to anyone.
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I think it's fairly obvious why this is happening. Let's just say for the sake of argument that PvZ is 100% balanced. That doesn't mean that it's fun. When I play against Z I feel that even though I can win, I'm constantly under threat of making one very tiny mistake and being immediately overrun. It's far more stressful than any other match.
The current meta has Protoss playing in PvZ in a horribly restrictive "one way or die" style. Open Phoenix, take a third with double robo, immortals, chargelots, get some AoE, wait for zerg to take a horrible engagement. Or you know, just be a-moved and die. Compared against the fun that a Zerg has, choosing whether to all in, hyper expand, play for tier 1, 2 or 3 etc and it's not surprising that many no longer enjoy "Cower around my pylons and pray there's no muta switch" strategy.
Add to this the fact that Protoss has gone from the old A-Move race in WoL and HotS to being harder to micro than Terran with 10 different spells in your army, and that's probably frustrating enough that a good lot of players just can't be bothered to skill up.
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Add to this the fact that Protoss has gone from the old A-Move race in WoL and HotS to being harder to micro than Terran with 10 different spells in your army
You probably havent played terran much ;) Protoss is definitely harder than in HoTS now, but still has ways to go.
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Hey now, I've won plenty of games in PvZ without taking a third base.
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It does make sense though, Protoss has been privilegied for the entire HotS with so many different (almost equally) viable builds because of the WG mechanic. One can say that with the amount of bullshit Protoss players had in their arsenal, it was more lighthearted to play. Additionally protoss had a lot of the game-deciding micro in their hands due to sentries and blink. Now that protoss is more difficult to play, requires more mechanics multitasking etc, people wont have as much fun. The race is more punishing due to how theres counter micro to sentries stalkers etc and "easy" splash armies like massing colossus is no longer viable.
Frankly it does make sense that there would be less protosses atm than other races.
On the other hand Zerg got way more fun to play now that they actually have viable aggressive options and counter micro to protoss armies. Losses no longer feel as frustrating because there are less cheeses in ZvP nowadays.
Additionally, there are way more zergs in EU than other races.
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So uhm.. don't get me wrong, but hasn't this been the case ever since LotV?
For some reason there just are way less protoss players, at least that is my experience.
No, at least not if this is accurate protoss only started declining after the adept nerf.
If accurate that would indeed show a small decline in protoss population over the last months. Much more remarkable however is the steady decline of zerg players and the huge rise of terrans.
Also interesting enough those trends appear on each server region, arguably with small nuances each times, but generally the behavior seems to be the same.
Edit: Remarkable at this point is that the protoss population in higher leagues is way below race average.