Starcraft 2: What is the Best Race for Online Play?

Starcraft 2 is almost out on store shelves but play has been going on for months in the beta testing period.

Many people who pre-ordered the game have been playing and many opinions have come out on which race is the best to use in Starcraft 2 for online multi-player games.

With tournaments under way and people experimenting with the various races, a near-consensus has been reached about the strength and rankings of the SC 2 races.

Here is how they stack up before the final tweaks are made by Blizzard:

1. Terran-

The humans are the strongest race in Starcraft 2 in most peoples' eyes. They have hard counters to virtually anything the other two races can throw at them.

With so much versatility and so many ranged weapons along with all the tricks they have up their sleeve (cloaked banshees and reapers to attack workers, EMP blasts from Ghosts to take out Protoss shields and stop spellcasters, siege tank range and powerful, cheap infantry), Terran stands as the current best race according to most high-level players in most rankings.

Some people believe that they might even be overpowered but perhaps the other races could use a few tweaks to give them a few more weapons to combat Terran players. But for most people, skill conquers these issues.

2. Protoss-

This advanced alien race has been doing better in tournaments recently during the SC 2 beta as more people learn to use them.

With high templars' excellent psi storm ability, a strong corps of ground units and the powerful void ray in the air along with the ability to warp in buildings and troops, Protoss has plenty of strength and tricks up its sleeve for combating the other two races. They could pull even with Terran with more time.

3. Zerg-

Many people believe that Zerg is at a disadvantage in the game so far. Whether or not that will continue to ring true in Starcraft 2 is yet to be determined as there are about to be a ton of new players that will get their hands on the game who will seek to unlock better strategues, however.

But the Zerg can't win in brute force matchups, they have to be very active and disruptive just to compete, and they lack a strong finishing unit as brood lords and ultralisks are a bit too slow right now.

But if you can effectively manage their strength-in-numbers advantages and stay away from big Protoss and Terran armies, you can win with this race in Starcraft 2, although it's far from the best right now.