At least to some extent the change reflects that Blizzard are trying to maintain a uniform system for spell effects. However, as they already departed from that with the change to fungal growth, I don't see why Snipe can't work like that as well, i.e. X damage (Z damage to UnitType).
edit: Oh crap, I just realized: The first change to Fungal was the added damage by a percentage, and then they reverted to static damages depending on type. Currently there's no spell that does bonus damage to certain unittypes (description-wise, as fungal doesn't do bonus damage to armored, it just does more damage if that makes any sense), so with this change the way snipe works is unique and doesn't conform to the rest of the system, it's more like a normal attack than a spell. So qxc's suggestion is actually more in line with how spells work overall. But I'm sure all of that is secondary to actual balance.
ghost nerf was kneejerk reaction, a poor balance decision, and the first of what i'm sure will become a string of questionable balance changes.
I base what i've just said off the how much time and effort goes into making a balance change. For this ghost change to have gotten through the testing, that means pretty much anything can go through. Pretty much every unit in starcraft does too much damage and as a result, one battle determines much of starcraft 2. In broodwar, 200/200 armies were a rarity. In sc2, people turtle to 200 extremely often, and skill is more about remaxing your army in a short amount of time.
This ghost nerf fits right in then, doesn't it? One less thing to micro because it doesn't matter anymore, 25 damage is equivalent to ghost's auto attack. Why would you snipe when you can just auto attack
On February 15 2012 03:21 Balgrog wrote: Awesome blog, hopefully blizzard will read this and take it into consideration.
They would have taken it into consideration before they announced the changes. Now to admit the changes suck and switch to a more effective method of resolving the problem would be embarassing for them.
Listen blizzard is a company full of nerds, but they wear suits. The nerd realizes he's wrong but the suit makes decisions, and the suit isn't going to look stupid just because the nerd is right.
As far as I am concerned ghost have needed a nerf for a while. Saying "oh blizzard dont balance them yet, we have barely had a chance to exploit them" isnt a viable response. Ghost are not meant to be an easy counter to everything, marines, hydras, roaches, banelings, mutas, zealots, marauders, etc... Really? you essentially named entire unit compositions.
Ghost should not be used that way, they werent intended to be used that way and I am glad blizzard say this before it had a chance to go any further.
On February 20 2012 08:53 Doso wrote: Ghosts will go the way of the reaper. When was the last time you've seen more than 2 Reapers in a game?
On that note I really like reapers' building attack for taking down rocks later, and I hope Blizzard doesn't change that as they talked about with the HotS stuff last Blizzcon. Otherwise, cue the Turian councilor, "Ah yes, 'reapers.'"
On February 15 2012 03:21 Balgrog wrote: Awesome blog, hopefully blizzard will read this and take it into consideration.
They would have taken it into consideration before they announced the changes. Now to admit the changes suck and switch to a more effective method of resolving the problem would be embarassing for them.
Listen blizzard is a company full of nerds, but they wear suits. The nerd realizes he's wrong but the suit makes decisions, and the suit isn't going to look stupid just because the nerd is right.
Are you new to SC2? Almost every patch has had changes reverted between PTR and live after community feedback.
I think the change is fine imo. Ghosts should be able to act as a caster because that's essentially what they are. I think snipes are good because they're instant damage vs infestors still, however, infestors have utility which is not immediately damaging. Ghosts would still be useful for EMPing infestors that act as a defensive unit for broodlord support against vikings. And really, when have ultralisks really been a problem that a regular bio army with tanks can't handle.
I don't think the change is bad. Maybe the numbers need tweaking, but from what I can tell the apparent issue is that ghosts arent cost effective against every biological unit anymore.
I think people are forgetting that ghosts still do damage with snipe! No they don't kill units as effectively as before, but you can still get several hundred damage out of snipe that combined with the rest of your army, can still tear through a lot of Zerg compositions.
In their current state, ghosts are literally never a bad choice against Zerg, which is just silly. They should fail against roach heavy or ultra heavy compositions, but snipe just does so much damage that ghosts can pretty much handle anything.
Finally, snipe isn't the ghosts only spell. To say they will be shelved alongside reapers is in my opinion an idiotic claim when they are such incredibly versatile units. Snipe, emp and nuke are all still perfectly usable spells, only now no one of them is insanely good.
totally agreed w/ HystericalLaughter. plus if it turns out that the balance is severley (negative) affected i'm sure that blizzard could fix that as well. plus i'm happy that the reaper sort of disapeared (in terms of a viewer) as i remember every tvz was reaper vs. queen in the early game. now there is more variety and the reaper is used to scout or in rare timing attacks.
On February 18 2012 01:42 cari-kira wrote: Terrans crying for better units?
no shame at all.
Are u serious... U dont charge mutas into a marine pack, PERIOD U dont charge zerglings with absolutely no Banelings into a marine pack And I dont think you have seen what late game Mass Zealot warp is capable of,
If your trying to make a arguement, these videos are deffs not it. Cant even believe you made such a comment as this.
look whos talking.. i wonder how terrans would cry, when marines would lose ALL no-micro-unit-tester-wars
As you came here only for trolling, may I ask you if you ever got to know the game "Rock, Paper, Scissors"? If you ever did so, I ask you: are you always arguing why a rock beats a scissors when u lost?
Cause in a simple way, this is all what this is about. You attack with scissors when i roll a stone over you. You shout "IMBA", because you were too lazy to think of other options then the scissors and try it again and again with more and more scissors.
OFC you ignored my post, where you pointed out personal cloaking is IMBA and Toss has not efficient more weapons against Broodlords than Terran and I prove this wrong, cause not accepting things is easier then to learn how to play the "rock-paper-scissors" game
On February 20 2012 18:30 HystericaLaughter wrote: I don't think the change is bad. Maybe the numbers need tweaking, but from what I can tell the apparent issue is that ghosts arent cost effective against every biological unit anymore.
I think people are forgetting that ghosts still do damage with snipe! No they don't kill units as effectively as before, but you can still get several hundred damage out of snipe that combined with the rest of your army, can still tear through a lot of Zerg compositions.
In their current state, ghosts are literally never a bad choice against Zerg, which is just silly. They should fail against roach heavy or ultra heavy compositions, but snipe just does so much damage that ghosts can pretty much handle anything.
Finally, snipe isn't the ghosts only spell. To say they will be shelved alongside reapers is in my opinion an idiotic claim when they are such incredibly versatile units. Snipe, emp and nuke are all still perfectly usable spells, only now no one of them is insanely good.
The issue isn't that Ghosts aren't cost effective against EVERY bio unit anymore, its that the intended goal was to make the Ghost less effective against tier 3 zerg (i.e. Broodlords, Ultralisks) ONLY.
"We felt the Snipe ability was countering zerg broodlords and ultralisks slightly too well."
- David Kim
Therefore the way Blizzard is nerfing Ghosts is not the correct way as the reduction to Snipe affects EVERY bio unit instead of the intended objective of ONLY tier 3 zerg. Secondly, Mass Roach DOES in fact beat Mass Ghost. Third, although you say that the other spells of the Ghost are still good, Snipe is one of the most important skill that a Terran player utilizes. To HALF the damage of a bread and butter skill is a huge nerf at the Ghost's utilization.
Currently, it is a Terran's best way to counter the dreaded Broodlord/Corruptor/Infestor Combo that a late game Zerg typically fields. On the other hand, the units that a Terran player would have late game would be Marine, Siege Tank, Medivac, Ghost and maybe Vikings and Marauders. Among the 6 units stated: 2 are tier one early game units (Marine, Marauder), 3 are tier two units (Siege Tank, Medivac, Viking), and the only High tech unit a terran fields at tier 2.5 is the Ghost. Comparing the unit composition its easy to see that the Zerg player has a huge advantage late game and that there are only 2 ways a Terran can counter late game Zerg is Mass Vikings or Mass Ghosts.
Mass Vikings get absolutely shredded by Infestors and Corruptors, which brings us to the Mass Ghost strategy. Even then if a Terran goes Mass Ghost and kills all of the Broodlords and Infestors, whats stopping the Zerg maxing out with Zerglings, Banelings, Roaches etc. which eats Mass Ghost for breakfast. The point is that it isn't only that Snipe is overpowered but Terran tier 3 is broken.
Now I'm not saying that the Snipe shouldn't be nerfed because it SHOULD. It is an overpowered ability as of this moment, however what qxc proposes is a change wherein there will be no "collateral damage" on the Snipe's damage output on NON tier 3 zerg.
On February 20 2012 23:45 jdsowa wrote: It's pretty simple. Blizzard doesn't want a T2 caster hard countering an expensive T3 unit. It's the very same logic behind the old infestor nerfs.
I've seen a few terran players finally start to explore seeker missile and yamato cannon vs. zerg T3. Turns out it's quite effective!
Of course, a big group of siege tanks will wipe out an equal cost group of ultras 1:1, and spread thors are better than ultras, too.
I'm not sure folks realize how absurd it is to hear QQing from a race that has had a winrate over 50% for nearly 2 years.
But basicly its no problem that 1 composition (broodlord infestor corruptor) hardcounters basicly everything a terran can make? If you played terran, you would know that without ghosts, lategame tvz is very very hard.
Imagine that you have the same eco as the zerg. He makes infestor broodlord corruptor. What can you make? - Thors? Bug out to broodlings - Vikings? Get fungalled or die vs the corruptors - Ghosts? nerfed - Marines? Broodlings + fungal and they're gone (same for marauders) - Battlecruisers? Hardcountered by corruptors - Tanks? Very bad vs broodlings.
What is left? Ravens? Raven HSM could work, but you could only hold 1 wave. Zerg will remax on mass ultra ling and then what? You will auto turret him?
What no one realises is that we are in the exact same situation as we were before people found out about ghosts. It's the situation where david kim said in an interview that they would look into the broodlord + infestor combination.
Let me be clear, I think QXC's suggestion is probably a fine a one. However, I'm inclined to believe that Terran can win without ghosts. Why? Because I've seen units that were once considered "worthless" suddenly find favor and come into fashion.
Ghosts can still cloak snipe infestors You can drop PDDs against corruptors HSM is *very* effective against clumped zerg air Yamato cannon is effective vs. T3 Ravens also provide detection which defends your tanks against burrowed infestor ITs. A group of tanks is majorly cost effective vs. ultra/ling. While he's remaxing, you need to remax smartly, yourself.
This Terran comp is pretty immobile. I think it would do best camping up around the 3rd/4th/5th, and using drops/nukes/etc to harass against the very immobile broodlord army.
Watch VODs from Idra's stream from this past weekend. He was raging ("this is so broken") against this guy who destroyed him using raven/bc late game against the very composition you're complaining about. And I'm not sure he had very many ghosts, either.
With that out of the way, I really agree that the post-patch snipe is really going to make the ghosts even less used than they are now, and basically force Terran to go MMM for wins all the time. I think that's primarily why they're waiting this long after announcing it to take it out of the Public Test and into the game. Variation is what all the races really need to really flourish, and I really don't want to see ghosts as simply "nuke tech"
But honestly, there are plenty of ways out of this while still dealing with their problem regarding how well snipes work on Zerg tech 3. -As suggested before, snipes could simply go 35+15psyonic, a bit more reasonable -A more effective variation of this would be to have it effect energy-bearing units, rather than just psyonics, similar to how feedback works. In conjunction with the previous I think it'd at least be satisfactory. -If Protoss is getting a new upgrade, why not Terran? An upgrade to improve the snipe back to regularity (or maybe a little lessened) would probably be better, though inevitably this would still present a problem at T3, but at least the greater resource cost is something to consider -Also suggested earlier, just change how it affects massive units. The problem is posed at Ultras and Brood Lords, so (I believe the suggestion was) have the damage remain at 45, with -15 or so against Massive.
There's so many ways to deal with this than the route they're going, and I hope they change their minds by the time the patch hits the servers.
EPT
