LotV and the Ghosts - Page 2

Never have I enjoyed spamming EMPs over the protoss army and whenever I offraced I never actually thought "hey that's so fun with the Ghosts draining all of my HTs energy".
My logic is that when there is nothing even remotely fun about an ability, scrap it and replace it with something else. I know we have had an EMP in Sc2 for 5 years and in BW for even longer, but right now, it's just a really boring ability and it only really works vs one race. So get rid of it and find other ways to balance terran.

Pew Pew Pew... Yeh it sounds cool, but unfortunately that's the only cool thing about Snipe. It's a spamable ability with no countermicro and therefore it simply cannot be properly balanced. Keep the snipe sound, but reuse it in a different way, because this snipe-ability needs to be removed.

Unlike EMP and Snipe, there is potential here. Running around with cloaked Ghosts and nuking enemy bases or armies.... it's a kinda cool thing, and there definitely is alot of countermicro here. Perhaps even a bit, but luckily this is more of a numbers-issue than a general concept flaw.

Okay, so what is the role of the Ghost gonna be if it doesn't have Snipe and EMP?
First of all, I wanna promote the nuke-role further. I wanna see more ghosts cloaking around the map and nuking enemy bases or zoning out the enemy army.
Secondly, it does ofc need utility with the army, but rather than thinking in terms of offensive abilities, I believe the Ghost could function better if it had defensive abilities.

The ghost can activate Spellresist and a large bubble around the Ghost appears (like Guardian Shield) and all enemy spell- and splash damage is reduced by 20-30%. Yes, this isn't a super microintensive thing, but it's not really needed here. Rather, this is a way of giving bio a way to be less glass-cannon'ish against Fungal, Ultras, Storm, Disruptors and Colossus.... without being a hardcounter/anti-micro thing. It's the kind of ability that is supposed to feel "not frustrating" while at the same time give the Ghost a clear role in the game.

Target a friendly unit and temporarily increase its HP by XXX. While Spellresist will synergize better w/ bio, Defensive Matrix works better with mech. E.g. you can make that Thor in the front slightly more tanky. If the enemy continues to focus fire it, they are in for a rough time.

So I actually spent some hours in the editor previously, and I discovered that the following changes feels the nicest:
- Time it takes for Nuke to land = roughly 10-12 seconds.
- Damage reduced from 300 to 175
- Splash damage changed so it oneshots workers in a much lower radius
- Nuke research time reduced to 15-20 seconds (from 60 I believe)
- Nuke cost reduced to 50/50 from 100/100

The effect of these changes is to make the Nuke somewhat more reliable and cost-efficient... as a zoning tool ofc. The enemy should still be able to spot it the majority of the time, but if he doesn't spot it (which is more likely to occur w/ these changes), he is not gonna lose his whole army. It's a big deal but not something that automatically is gonna result in a win.

Yeh this is the most controversial suggestion probably. Some may initally say "nonono you can't do that, it's not intended to be like a Marine or Maurauder". And they are right in that its not intended to be llike that. But there are two reasons I want to see it added:

(1) Ghost needs a mobility ability to further promote cloacked harass play
(2) I just hate having Ghosts w/ my army. It messes up control grups. Adding in stim makes it more simple to control bio + ghost as you can have Ghosts with your MMM in one control group.

With regards to the latter, I also know a lot of people will say that it's good to have different control groups because it (a) rewards you for splitting up your army or (b) because it increases the skillcap.

The former complaint is straight up wrong. Ghosts in Sc2 are typically really deathball'ish and pure bio is one of the most multitaskbased compositions in the game.

The second complaint is correct, however, I don't think its a fun way of increasing the skillcap. I want the game to feel easy to play while having endless micro opportunites. Micro means stuff like splitting, focus firing, pulling back injured units, casting abilites well and dropship pick-up interactions. 1a2a3a isn't micro for me, but just an annoyance.

But, don't overfocus on the stim-part here. There are other types of possilbiites. For instance it could also just be straight up faster when cloaked (instead of getting stim).

This Ghost will overall promote longer battles, it will work vs all races and it's not a "prevent stuff from happening" spellcaster. The intention is that you have maybe with your army for defensive matrix and spellresist, and then maybe 2-3 that you send around the map and nuke your army or perhaps use the stimmed Ghosts to snipe off workers or other isolated enemy units.

In regards to having a more damagefocussed spellcaster, I reserved that role for the Raven. Imo PDD needs a real replacement and Seeker Missile needs to be tuned as well, but that's an essay for a different day.

Tactically it also has more utility in the Nuke being more reliable at zoning out the enemy army.