@SirPsychoSexy said:

I used to play random, but have since switched over to Terran. Terran is definitely the most challenging race. With that said Terran also has the highest skill cap. The amount of micro Terran needs to win big engagements is pretty insane. Against toss you need to emp the temps, dodge storms, spread from collossus splash, focus fire viking damage, and kite chargelots to come out even or on top. Kiting chargelots alone can be daunting for the average player. Not to mention you take 1 or 2 bad storms during all this and you lose. Toss really only has to a move and throw down storms. As for versing Zerg you really need to know how to split well and can't get caught with tanks out of position or it's over. Again you have to spread for the fungals and try to emp or snipe infestors. The Zerg doesn't have too much micro, just trying to get a good surround and landing the fungals.

Another downside is Terran has to constantly be producing units as they lose them be because they take so much longer to resupply than zerg or toss. Even if you do win a major engagement you have to be ready for 30-40 supply of chargelots trying to clean you up. And zerg can force you to mass up vikings and change their composition on a dime to ultra's making half your army void.

Because Terran has all this micro and macro to do mid battle is why it is such a challenge. Sure top tier pro's can do all this and then some making Terran extremely strong. Terran probably is OP at the very highest of levels. The very best Koreans can do such incredible micro which is where Terran really shines, but for the average player like you and me I would argue Terran is by far the most difficult race. If you get upset about losing to terran and think they are OP in your Bronze - Diamond league think again. the amount of things to do as a Terran to come out on top is much higher than the other races.

Edit: Just realized this was bumped from over a year ago, not sure how people still feel about this, but this is my current thoughts on Terran

You make some good points. I especially agree with your point about Terran being OP at the highest level of the game - obviously its different at the skill level of mere mortals.

However I would disagree completely with your suggestion that Terran is harder for average players. With regards to macro, if I forget to use lots of mules I can quickly dump them all at one base - as opposed to a zerg who forgets to keep up his larvae injects,in which case they must inject as each base that they have. Substancailly more time consuming in the heat of the moment. Also, I find macroing up marine/marauder from barracks to be the easiest macro mechanic in the game. At the lower levels of play, I rarely find that micro plays too big a part. Hit stim - attack move, hope for the best.

The reason that I find this topic interesting, is that many people who say stuff like "OMG WTF TERRAN IMBA ALL TERRAN PLAYERS SHOULD DIEEEEEE!!!" are usually complaining about how Terran have things the other races dont. Like scans for example. However, the coolest thing about sc2 is that each race genuinely plays differently to one another. My main issue with Terran is that early game rushes (especially marine/marauder vs protoss) are very easy for low skill players to execute, but challenging for low skill players to defend. Sure, at the higher levels Protoss players will be much better at holding off these pushes, but for silver leaguers such as me, they are a total coin flip.

I'm in top Platinum, (so I still suck) but in my experience Terran is the overall hardest race to play. Every race has things that are harder to do than other races and each race has things that are better, but I feel like Terran micro is the hardest part of the game once it hits end game. You need to properly control vikings, hit solid emp's and stutter step correctly and maybe even use some raven abilities all roughly at the same time again protoss, against zerg and terran you need to stutter step and also have perfect siege tank placement as well as knowing when to constantly move your tanks forward. I play protoss and to me Protoss micro is harder earlier on because you have to rely on hitting you force fields and microing your stalkers, but at end game throwing up gaurdian shield hitting a few force fields and blinking correctly, while still difficult, isn't as hard as what Terran has to do. Zerg has the least micro to worry about in my opinion, they just have to make sure they get a surround with lings and a concave and that there broods are in proper position, and maybe hit a few fungals. While Terran does seem powerful because they can make MMM and beat anything, controlling everything properly as Terran is really difficult at higher levels of play. Terran is easily my worst race because of this.

Its interesting that you guys are saying that Terran gets harder as the play level increases. Im going to start to focus more on Terran micro next time i watch a pro game. Hopefully I will be able to get an better appreciation of what you mean.

I hate marines. I hate siege tanks. I hate Planetaries. I hate medivac drops. Freakin' Terrans.

This is an example of Terran being OP (skip to 16:30):

(or of high level Terran micro that has been talked about in this thread, same thing).

@FluxWaveZ: Seems like an example of a zerg player a moving his army not trying to get any sort of flank or surround or even waiting for the tanks to try to move up. He even had about 20 banelings still morphing when he pushed and 20 mutas not involved at all sitting by the Terrans main. Not to to mention the Terran had a big upgrade advantage and split/spread like a boss. That is poor play by the Zerg and Great Micro from the Terran, nothing more.

@SirPsychoSexy: Yeah, I'm really just kidding about Terran being OP. I don't really have an opinion on that matter, but I do know that its the race that I perform the worst against, so I always cringe a bit when I find myself going against one on ladder.

Too many Grand Master match-ups have proven that Terran are not that OP. Each race has it's transition from Early-Mid-Late game, and take a lot of control, macro'ing, and overall knowing what you are doing. I just think it's a little un-justified to run around screaming "OP!" when match-ups go a certain way. I mean, I am not going to come around and say SC2 is perfect, but a lot of work has gone into balancing and it seems a lot of points that I have read/heard/seen has been focused around the same mentality you hear from children in MMOPVP: "I should be able to take you one 1on1!"

SC2 takes a lot of thinking, countering, and microing, and that's where the main difference comes in, imho.

I know this topic would come up again after MarineKingPrime's recent success.

@EthanML said:

@Sooty: You're joking right? There might be lots of great stuff going on yeah but have you ever been in a stream chat? Or the bnet forums? The community is still like 80% retards.

Oh come on. Stream chat where assholes can say whatever they want on the Internet is not representative of how many great people are prominent in that scene.

@FluxWaveZ: That clip you put up of TaeJa is pretty amazing.

@FluxWaveZ said:

I hate marines. I hate siege tanks. I hate Planetaries. I hate medivac drops. Freakin' Terrans.

This is an example of Terran being OP (skip to 16:30):

(or of high level Terran micro that has been talked about in this thread, same thing).

terran isn't OP.... Taeja is one of the best terrans in the world... most people he plays (zergs included) he is just better than...

Give a machine gun for a zealot and watch the results.

@Spectreman said:

Give a machine gun for a zealot and watch the results.

That's got me pondering actually. Does anyone else agree that perhaps the reason Terran is so strong is that they have possibly the best micro unit in the game (marines) and they have them from early game to late game? Other than early game stalker harrass, which other units in the game can be micro'd in such a cost effecient way as marines?

@u03mja3 said:

@Spectreman said:

Give a machine gun for a zealot and watch the results.

That's got me pondering actually. Does anyone else agree that perhaps the reason Terran is so strong is that they have possibly the best micro unit in the game (marines) and they have them from early game to late game? Other than early game stalker harrass, which other units in the game can be micro'd in such a cost effecient way as marines?

Terran isn't the strongest raced.. infact most terrans are horrible becasue they basically rely on MULES to help there horrible macro and stim to help there poor micro.

If you have even half decent unit control you will dominate most terrans below top diamond.