On February 15 2012 13:50 RevTiberius wrote: It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out on lower levels. I'm a mid-diamond level terran, and I simply don't have the necessary micro/macro skills to stand a chance in late game vs. toss and zerg.
So my point is this: this patch is bad enough for pros who can micro late game terran armies well. It is even worse for players below pro level because we struggle with the complexities of large armies anyway. Handling large protoss and zerg armies is much easier than handling a large terran army.
And because of all this I find it very unlikely that this patch will go through as suggested. They'll either change it before it comes into effect, or adjust it soon after.
Pretty untrue dude. You struggling at the game with Terran at your level is not an argument to not patch something. While i agree that maybe not such a drastic change should be made ... maybe just to massive units or something ... it's pretty obvious late game in TvZ ghosts are pretty fucking good. It's in the same way that i suck at PvZ, and i loose almost all the time, but all i see is zergs complaining that Protoss is impossible to beat. My biased opinion on a matchup or the state of balance is irrelevant because i'm to shit to play the matchup / race well. The TvT ramifications do suck a fair bit though.
Why is what I am saying "untrue"? Just because you disagree with my opinion? I was merely pointing out the fact that patches have very different effects on pro level compared to the rest of the community.
Take for example getting an early banshee in TvT. That may be a viable option for pros because they can micro the banshee well enough. But not for casual players like me (mid-diamond) because marines repel my banshee too easily and I end up not doing enough damage. I'm just not good enough to take advantage of the banshee's +1 range vis-a-vis marines.
At the same time, ghosts may be "awesome" at pro level, but they are very hard to use below that especially since the EMP radius nerf because they require so much micro to be used effectively.
So my main point remains: The ramifications of patches are quite different depending on the level you are at. Having said that, I agree with qxc's original argument, though at my level the consequences will be far worse from a terran point of view.
On February 15 2012 13:41 rS.eZrA wrote: What you need to understand is what the unit is designed for.
I'm not making Zerglings to counter air right?
I'm not making Infestors to counter let's say Ghosts right?
Your entire complaint is completely based around that Ghosts no longer counter EVERYTHING which is not what they were disigned for in the first place. They are a utiliy unit, you already have the marine.
Vikings counter broodlords, Ghost counter corrupter and Infestor. You can;t have double hard counters.
Marauders counter ultralisks, not marauder ghost counter ultralisk. Terrran is the only race that had a unit that could literally counter EVERY unit that the Zerg had effectively.
This change is fine, Sbipe/EMP infestors, HT, etc, that's what ghosts do, not snipe everything.
What a terrible game this would be if every unit had a direct counter. Snipe can be a soft counter to zealots. Or you could literally snipe banelings with snipe.
What a terrible game this would be if every race had a universally useful unit they could fall back on...
Hey, let's list the situations where high templar and infestors aren't useful!
On February 15 2012 11:32 Katsura wrote: I like blizzards change way more than urs
Why would u even buff snipe to 50 dmg? Oo
You missed his main point bro. 50 damage is just a number. His main point is that the nerf to 25 + 25 psonic is pointless. qxc could very well mean 45 damage + 5 to psonic + 45 - (10 to 20) to massive
50 just a number? Make it weaker against massive and buff vs rest? I didnt miss the main point but i still dont like it
On February 15 2012 13:41 rS.eZrA wrote: What you need to understand is what the unit is designed for.
I'm not making Zerglings to counter air right?
I'm not making Infestors to counter let's say Ghosts right?
Your entire complaint is completely based around that Ghosts no longer counter EVERYTHING which is not what they were disigned for in the first place. They are a utiliy unit, you already have the marine.
Vikings counter broodlords, Ghost counter corrupter and Infestor. You can;t have double hard counters.
Marauders counter ultralisks, not marauder ghost counter ultralisk. Terrran is the only race that had a unit that could literally counter EVERY unit that the Zerg had effectively.
This change is fine, Sbipe/EMP infestors, HT, etc, that's what ghosts do, not snipe everything.
What a terrible game this would be if every unit had a direct counter. Snipe can be a soft counter to zealots. Or you could literally snipe banelings with snipe.
What a terrible game this would be if every race had a universally useful unit they could fall back on...
Hey, let's list the situations where high templar and infestors aren't useful!
templar: PvP.
Are there any others?
Mmmm High Temp Archon Zealot can surprise people in PvP pretty well.
On February 15 2012 12:00 qxc wrote: Be sure to check out this game casted by Husky for more examples of what we will lose through the ghost nerf.
sweet game, nice job there, but to me it just proves that snipe is too strong. You held the first attack at the 10:00 mark ingame time very easily. That's fine with me, armies were about equal, you had the bunker and the ghosts, so Puma shouldn't have won that engagement. But your ghosts had enough energy for about 8 more snipes left. So even if Puma had brought 8-10 additional marines, you probably would have held anyway, making snipe a very strong ability in the early game.
With the reduced damage you still would have been fine, but you'd actually have to use up all the energy on your ghosts, and you most likely couldn't hold off another 8 marines.
Same goes for the battle at around 14 minute mark ingame time, EMP makes medivacs useless, and snipe turns the battle completely one-sided with plenty of energy left on at least one of your ghosts. Enough to fight the next wave of Puma's reinforcements, until the energy is finally depleted on your ghosts, but you pretty much had the game won at that point.
I don't want to take any credit away from you, you chose the micro intensive option, you micro'ed well, much better than i could, and you won. I'm just saying that the patch won't have as much of an effect as you make it out in this thread. Assuming your micro is top notch as always, I'd say with a fourth ghost for extra energy/sniping rate this game would have gone quite similar even after the patch. (Battle at 14:00 might not have been as one-sided and you'd actually have to transition into a mid/late game army instead of just massing marines)
But if you care about the damage numbers and how often you have to snipe a single target, would it be ok to double the energy cost of snipe? That would lead to the same result, without the added micro. And since ghosts are rarely low on energy right now I don't see the change making ghosts useless.
On February 15 2012 13:31 Carras wrote: i agree, i think a lot of people think the same.. yet to be consistent blizzard has to do it this way, its just the way they designed the game , they use bonus damage, they dont have damage reduction
This is a good point. I wonder how hard it would be to in cooperate damage reduction to massive instead of bonus damage to massive. Can someone who does map editing tell us if you can make customs like that? If so then it should be an easy fix.
To everybody saying ghosts shouldn't be a universal... they aren't. They are so fucking expensive. Plus snipe isn't even that good vs mass units like bane zealot marine (it can do well but considering the cost of the ghost it's effectiveness is average). it's only good vs targets of small number like hts, broods, ultras (you wont have 30 of these.) For the investment, ghosts should be able to have a sort of swiss army knife type function.
The cost of a unit doesn't make the unit less useful/universal, besides which there are plenty of other units that have huge investment costs that aren't anywhere near as versatile.
On February 15 2012 13:41 rS.eZrA wrote: What you need to understand is what the unit is designed for.
I'm not making Zerglings to counter air right?
I'm not making Infestors to counter let's say Ghosts right?
Your entire complaint is completely based around that Ghosts no longer counter EVERYTHING which is not what they were disigned for in the first place. They are a utiliy unit, you already have the marine.
Vikings counter broodlords, Ghost counter corrupter and Infestor. You can;t have double hard counters.
Marauders counter ultralisks, not marauder ghost counter ultralisk. Terrran is the only race that had a unit that could literally counter EVERY unit that the Zerg had effectively.
This change is fine, Sbipe/EMP infestors, HT, etc, that's what ghosts do, not snipe everything.
What a terrible game this would be if every unit had a direct counter. Snipe can be a soft counter to zealots. Or you could literally snipe banelings with snipe.
What a terrible game this would be if every race had a universally useful unit they could fall back on...
Hey, let's list the situations where high templar and infestors aren't useful!
templar: PvP.
Are there any others?
HTs: All PvP, siege tanks, ultras, even roaches to some extent. Even lings are usually too quick to get good storms on.
Besides which, it's not just the unit counters for ghosts. With cloak, emp, and nukes, there are plenty of things you can use them for without even being in a battle.
On February 15 2012 13:41 rS.eZrA wrote: What you need to understand is what the unit is designed for.
I'm not making Zerglings to counter air right?
I'm not making Infestors to counter let's say Ghosts right?
Your entire complaint is completely based around that Ghosts no longer counter EVERYTHING which is not what they were disigned for in the first place. They are a utiliy unit, you already have the marine.
Vikings counter broodlords, Ghost counter corrupter and Infestor. You can;t have double hard counters.
Marauders counter ultralisks, not marauder ghost counter ultralisk. Terrran is the only race that had a unit that could literally counter EVERY unit that the Zerg had effectively.
This change is fine, Sbipe/EMP infestors, HT, etc, that's what ghosts do, not snipe everything.
What a terrible game this would be if every unit had a direct counter. Snipe can be a soft counter to zealots. Or you could literally snipe banelings with snipe.
What a terrible game this would be if every race had a universally useful unit they could fall back on...
Hey, let's list the situations where high templar and infestors aren't useful!
templar: PvP.
Are there any others?
HTs: All PvP, siege tanks, ultras, even roaches to some extent. Even lings are usually too quick to get good storms on.
Besides which, it's not just the unit counters for ghosts. With cloak, emp, and nukes, there are plenty of things you can use them for without even being in a battle.
You said situations, not specific units. I guess if you see an army of pure HTs you don't build infestors, but does that ever happen?
(also using siege tanks as an example for when templar are bad is vaguely amusing since you can just make them into archons against tanks anyway).
On February 15 2012 05:30 Elyvilon wrote: So, how about 45 damage (+5 vs psionic) (-20 vs massive) ?
45 Base Damage - 20 vs. Massive + 5 vs Psionic
The main point of the 50 damage buff is for Infestors, so I really don't think the Ghost needs more Snipe damage against other Biological units. HTs, DTs, and Queens will also take the full 50, but this is pretty negligible compared to everything taking the 50 such as Mutas, and Corruptors.
Speaking of Corruptors, that's the main problem I see with your change. Blizzard probably also doesn't want Ghosts owning Corruptors. At least with 45 + 5 vs Psionic instead of 50 base damage, they do a bit less damage to Corruptors than with your proposition.
And, no, it's not needlessly complicated as there are already units with two different damage modifiers, such as Voidrays against both Armored and Massive.
"i agree, i think a lot of people think the same.. yet to be consistent blizzard has to do it this way, its just the way they designed the game , they use bonus damage, they dont have damage reduction"
This is a good point. I wonder how hard it would be to in cooperate damage reduction to massive instead of bonus damage to massive. Can someone who does map editing tell us if you can make customs like that? If so then it should be an easy fix.
To everybody saying ghosts shouldn't be a universal... they aren't. They are so fucking expensive. Plus snipe isn't even that good vs mass units like bane zealot marine (it can do well but considering the cost of the ghost it's effectiveness is average). it's only good vs targets of small number like hts, broods, ultras (you wont have 30 of these.) For the investment, ghosts should be able to have a sort of swiss army knife type function.[/QUOTE]
On February 15 2012 15:00 CarbonTwelve wrote: The cost of a unit doesn't make the unit less useful/universal, besides which there are plenty of other units that have huge investment costs that aren't anywhere near as versatile.
I'm not proposing that a high cost unit should be good against everything. But they should have uses in many situations. It's not like ghosts were that good all the time before the patch anyways. They are used late game in tvz and mid to late game tvp, rarely in tvt.
I'm not saying nerfing snipe vs broodlord and ultra is too extreme, I dont think qxc is making that point either. What i'm trying to say is that blizzard, by nerfing snipe vs broodlord and ultra in the way that they are currently doing it, is preventing the innovation of other matchups in areas that ghosts were already rarely used.
On February 15 2012 15:17 fighter2_40 wrote: This is a good point. I wonder how hard it would be to in cooperate damage reduction to massive instead of bonus damage to massive. Can someone who does map editing tell us if you can make customs like that? If so then it should be an easy fix.
It was confirmed several pages ago that this is quite an easy thing to do in the map editor.
On February 15 2012 13:41 rS.eZrA wrote: What you need to understand is what the unit is designed for.
I'm not making Zerglings to counter air right?
I'm not making Infestors to counter let's say Ghosts right?
Your entire complaint is completely based around that Ghosts no longer counter EVERYTHING which is not what they were disigned for in the first place. They are a utiliy unit, you already have the marine.
Vikings counter broodlords, Ghost counter corrupter and Infestor. You can;t have double hard counters.
Marauders counter ultralisks, not marauder ghost counter ultralisk. Terrran is the only race that had a unit that could literally counter EVERY unit that the Zerg had effectively.
This change is fine, Sbipe/EMP infestors, HT, etc, that's what ghosts do, not snipe everything.
What a terrible game this would be if every unit had a direct counter. Snipe can be a soft counter to zealots. Or you could literally snipe banelings with snipe.
What a terrible game this would be if every race had a universally useful unit they could fall back on...
Hey, let's list the situations where high templar and infestors aren't useful!
templar: PvP.
Are there any others?
HTs: All PvP, siege tanks, ultras, even roaches to some extent. Even lings are usually too quick to get good storms on.
Besides which, it's not just the unit counters for ghosts. With cloak, emp, and nukes, there are plenty of things you can use them for without even being in a battle.
You said situations, not specific units. I guess if you see an army of pure HTs you don't build infestors, but does that ever happen?
(also using siege tanks as an example for when templar are bad is vaguely amusing since you can just make them into archons against tanks anyway).
You're right, I am talking about specific units, but in reference to situations involving those units. If your opponent has an army based around HTs, you're not going to want infestors. Same thing for mech, or lategame zerg. Similarly HTs you're not going to want against armies built around the units I mentioned. And morphing into archons isn't the same given they can't morph back when you need storm again. Atm, ghosts are pretty universally useful. There is no situation that having ghosts in your army is going to be useless due to the composition you're up against.
On February 15 2012 08:50 Thraundil wrote: While I do like most of your argumentation, I disagree on your conclusion, qxc. Now, I may just be a lowly master, but. Alot of what you are saying seems to be based around the idea that "ghosts should be useable and valuable in every situation in every matchup". Now I know this i a gross understatement, but let me offer you a few questions, or statements if you will, to your post.
- Using snipe to help deal with overwhelming number of zealots after the main army has been EMP'd You can still do this after the patch. The damage reduction is 20 - yes, a big number. But lets not forget the ghosts autoattack itself also does 20 damage to light. In addition. This will force terrans to actually consider how many ghosts to make. Do I make 5, and rely on money EMPs, or do I wildly mass 15 ghosts well knowing that its really kinda hard for me to make too many ghosts? The 'damage' that EMP does to a protoss army is already fairly insane, so for the ghosts to now be "less useful" after the EMPs have been launched, I consider this completely fine. Now ghosts will take 4 snipes to kill a zealot instead of 3. (Zealot = 100 hp, 3x45 or 4x25). Its an increase of one snipe. This was similar to the infestor nerf - one more fungal needed to kill certain units - and the infestor is still wildly used.
Similar argument to anti mutalisk. Well. You already have marines that are pretty good vs mutalisks, not to mention turrets. Call me ignorant, but I fail to see the problem here.
What you seem to say is; "Its a problem that with this change, ghost become a unit that has a specialised function, and are not just automatically good vs every bio unit". Well thats the case with pretty much every starcraft II unit. Banelings are utter balls against marauders, mutalisks dont do very well against marines, so on so forth. The ghost will clearly still have a place in both PvT and ZvT matchups - and for these "niche" roles they fullfil to perfection against the very popular units of HT, sentry and infestor. Ghosts in TvT? Maybe not so much - but maybe for the same reason you dont often see storm in PvP. Or ultralisks in ZvZ. Sometimes a unit is just that. Useful for one thing, that it does super super well. In addition, your post loses just a tiny bit of validation in my eyes, due to the following (I re-write what you say that way I read it). "Rather than overall ghost nerf, I think you should only nerf ghosts vs massive, but buff it vs everything else". To exactly your above point; Lets make ghosts 2-shot EMP'ed zealots rather than 3-shot. And to another point; your proposed change would make ghosts 4-shot a corruptor, rather than 5-shot as its current form. A roach would be 3-shot rather than 4-shot. (Maybe less of a point but an overlord would also be 4-shot, rather than 5-shot).
My point here being. Yes, maybe the ghost change will "radically influence those one in a hundred games", and "limit innovation". But have you considered that Blizzard might just intent for the ghost to be the specialised anti caster unit? I mean, we dont see protoss complain that high templar are not particularly cost efficient against siege tanks, or see zergs complaining how poor hydralisks are in ZvT (limit to innovation, anyone?).
In no way does this change actually destroy ghosts. Yes, it could be done smoother - in that regard I agree with you. But maybe blizzard have thought of the points you bring up, and feel it is satisfactory that ghosts are slightly less strong overall? (Infact, a blizzard employee has said that they have thought of it and does not feel the ghosts rare appearance in other roles than their 'most common' as mentioned above: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/4044464943?page=2#26 )
My thoughts exactly; I don't believe it was ever the intention of blizzard that ghosts be this massed, "backbone" unit that dominates anything bio. They will still retain utility and other uses. Great post.
Well written qxc hard to disagree. Killing the innovation from the game kills the game in the long run. I have seen enough MMM and tank marine. Well.. there's still raven. Let's hope it doesn't work too well or blizz will nerf it.
On February 15 2012 15:17 fighter2_40 wrote: What i'm trying to say is that blizzard, by nerfing snipe vs broodlord and ultra in the way that they are currently doing it, is preventing the innovation of other matchups in areas that ghosts were already rarely used.
Just because a unit isn't used in other areas doesn't mean the unit is bad (and note, I'm not saying that is always the case). See the replay from qxc of him using ghosts in early to mid game TvT. And there are plenty of examples of ghosts being used in early all the way through to late game TvP. And also qxc is talking about using ghosts in mid game TvZ for banes/infestors. This is what I mean when I say that ghosts are fairly universal as far as matchups/opposing builds are concerned.
As far as preventing innovation is concerned, I don't see any validity to the argument that innovation should be possible for the unit in these other matchups. What reason is there to say that Terran needs/deserves to have a unit that they can make useful in any scenario?
On February 15 2012 15:23 Jarree wrote: Well written qxc hard to disagree. Killing the innovation from the game kills the game in the long run. I have seen enough MMM and tank marine. Well.. there's still raven. Let's hope it doesn't work too well or blizz will nerf it.
There's raven, reaper, and even BCs that have potential for innovation for Terran IMO.
On February 15 2012 13:41 rS.eZrA wrote: What you need to understand is what the unit is designed for.
I'm not making Zerglings to counter air right?
I'm not making Infestors to counter let's say Ghosts right?
Your entire complaint is completely based around that Ghosts no longer counter EVERYTHING which is not what they were disigned for in the first place. They are a utiliy unit, you already have the marine.
Vikings counter broodlords, Ghost counter corrupter and Infestor. You can;t have double hard counters.
Marauders counter ultralisks, not marauder ghost counter ultralisk. Terrran is the only race that had a unit that could literally counter EVERY unit that the Zerg had effectively.
This change is fine, Sbipe/EMP infestors, HT, etc, that's what ghosts do, not snipe everything.
What a terrible game this would be if every unit had a direct counter. Snipe can be a soft counter to zealots. Or you could literally snipe banelings with snipe.
What a terrible game this would be if every race had a universally useful unit they could fall back on...
Hey, let's list the situations where high templar and infestors aren't useful!
templar: PvP.
Are there any others?
HTs: All PvP, siege tanks, ultras, even roaches to some extent. Even lings are usually too quick to get good storms on.
Besides which, it's not just the unit counters for ghosts. With cloak, emp, and nukes, there are plenty of things you can use them for without even being in a battle.
You said situations, not specific units. I guess if you see an army of pure HTs you don't build infestors, but does that ever happen?
(also using siege tanks as an example for when templar are bad is vaguely amusing since you can just make them into archons against tanks anyway).
You're right, I am talking about specific units, but in reference to situations involving those units. If your opponent has an army based around HTs, you're not going to want infestors. Same thing for mech, or lategame zerg. Similarly HTs you're not going to want against armies built around the units I mentioned. And morphing into archons isn't the same given they can't morph back when you need storm again. Atm, ghosts are pretty universally useful. There is no situation that having ghosts in your army is going to be useless due to the composition you're up against.
Your opponent is going pure mech in TvT(actually, they're not particularly good if the other side is building tanks period). Also they're not all that good against mass numbers of low tier zerg units, and you only want a couple of them at most against a colossus-based army in my experience.
Also, are you saying infestors are bad against lategame zerg armies? I have not watched a lot of lategame ZvZ, but that surprises me quite a bit; I have to imagine they demolish the support units.
I guess currently ghosts are useful in like 95% of situations and templar/infestors are useful in like 90%. Even if they're not the ideal choice, I doubt that there's a lot of situations where you go, "well, my opponent has composition x, I am not going to warp in any templar at all," as opposed to, "well my opponent has composition x and templar aren't ideal against it, but they're still good enough."
(by the way, I'm not saying ghosts shouldn't be nerfed; I'm saying that I feel that the argument of ghosts being overly general-purpose seems to me to apply also to templar and infestors).
I thought it was too much of a nerf anyway. I think it would be better if it was kept at 45 but nerf the damage to massive units like ultras and broodlord since that was the main problem anyway.
On February 15 2012 15:27 CarbonTwelve wrote: As far as preventing innovation is concerned, I don't see any validity to the argument that innovation should be possible for the unit in these other matchups. What reason is there to say that Terran needs/deserves to have a unit that they can make useful in any scenario?
I hear this argument a lot. Think backwards. Where is terran T3? What reason is there to say Z needs/deserves T3? Unit useful in any scenario.. hmm maybe infestors? These arguments aren't logical in my opinion.
Greate write, we need that more pro´s are talking how the game can be better balanced and more entertaining. Especially in balance or map discussions because then the stupid argument "you play at diamond and you have no idea of the game" is irrevelant.
But there is one little, tiny fault in the blog. You write that "Workers" could be sniped, thats wrong you can snipe scv´s and drones but not probes. This is btw. totally stupid why are probes more mechanical as transformer robots.
On February 15 2012 15:28 Elyvilon wrote: Your opponent is going pure mech in TvT(actually, they're not particularly good if the other side is building tanks period).
Mirror matchups aren't good examples for discussing balance as both sides have the same options available to them, so it's not like the game was unfair to one player or the other because of a certain unit.
Also they're not all that good against mass numbers of low tier zerg units
Generally, yes, but even if you've got them you can use them against banes as qxc describes.
and you only want a couple of them at most against a colossus-based army in my experience.
Perhaps you do only want a couple, but the EMPs on the supporting army of the Protoss from those couple of ghosts will easily make the investment worthwhile.
Also, are you saying infestors are bad against lategame zerg armies? I have not watched a lot of lategame ZvZ, but that surprises me quite a bit; I have to imagine they demolish the support units.
Generally yes, infestors are bad at late game (tier 3) zerg. ZvZ doesn't often get to that late game stage though.
I guess currently ghosts are useful in like 95% of situations and templar/infestors are useful in like 90%. Even if they're not the ideal choice, I doubt that there's a lot of situations where you go, "well, my opponent has composition x, I am not going to warp in any templar at all," as opposed to, "well my opponent has composition x and templar aren't ideal against it, but they're still good enough."
Personally I'd say 95% is about right for ghosts but it's a lot lower than 90% for templar/infestor. And yes, I think there are certainly times when a Protoss is going to decide not to build templar even if they've got the tech, due to having something else they want/need to invest in that'll be more worthwhile.
(by the way, I'm not saying ghosts shouldn't be nerfed; I'm saying that I feel that the argument of ghosts being overly general-purpose seems to me to apply also to templar and infestors).
To me I see it as HTs and infestors being great against low tier units (which I agree is a typical army composition), but limited utility beyond that. In their current form, ghosts are good for low tier (exception being zerglings), mid tier and high tier units, good for harass, great anti-caster, and decent general dps.
EPT
