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Ok so we have all seen those rare games in tourneys where the Terran might get the odd ghost or 2 against the toss, but what im dying to see is some good ghost action against other races.
Ghosts are very underused units imo, and surley they do have a place in our TVT and TVZ and not just for the cheesy nukes,, TVT would be great to see multiple location ghost cloak harassment or to see them use that range to their advantage against other compositions,,, Also against zerg could we not find a way to use the ghost??? snipe's on mutas and queens ect..
I would appreciate if any1 could link a decent recently played game that involves ghosts as part of their main build, and would also like to hear what people think is the most useful of the ghosts abilitys and why.. Be aware although it is easy to get a ghost out fairly quick like alot of other units they depend so much on that energy...
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I'm not terran, but I am sure there are better ways to spend 150 gas v Z
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a good way to use ghosts in tvt when u get into those half map vs half map siegetank/marine(marauder)/viking situations is to actually nuke to get the opponent to unsiege and move, ive seen it used well in some situations, its pretty badass, u dont even need cloak since the nuke can hit tanks and the tank is out of range, and if he tries to pick ur ghost off with marine u got ur own tanks to take em out ^_^
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Think about the special abilities they have. EMP is amazing vs toss, but otherwise not useful, unless they go for something stupid like mass infestors where the EMP will knock out all their infestors' energy. But still, even with mass infestor there's just the option of straight killing them.
Snipe I think could be good, but it wasn't well implemented. Everything snipe works to hard-counter or deal with is already countered by either the ghost's other abilities, or other T units, making ghosts not cost-efficient. Immortals are best suited to be taken out with EMP, as is any other high-priority snipe-able toss unit; Ultralisks are already hard-countered by MMM when in good ratio/position. Other snipe-able targets are handily taken care of with marauders or tanks. The only real use I see for snipe is against high-priority air targets like broodlords. But again: vikings; if you're going MMM, you already have access to vikings, so you can just pop out a few of those.
Only real big use I see from the ghost in any non TvP match up (at least in terms of cost-efficiency from ghosts) is cloak and nukes. Mainly vs Z, because of the general lack of detection if you open with BIO, as opposed to banshee rush. (you early banshees, most Z's get detection by default, not so much if you open bio or early mech until later, when they expect shees)
It's a surprise tactic like the nydus worm; not necessarily cost-efficient unless it lands.
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back when I played terran, I used a rush strat in TvT that involved an extremely fast 1 ghost and a handful of marines and scvs. I'd use the ghost's sniper round ability to pick off the other terran's marines/scvs, and from there it was a pretty easy win.
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I remember lzgamer had this strategy on lost temple against zerg, where, if you are close by ground, after the first rax, he would proxy a second rax in the gold, and then liftoff and make a techlab on the zergs cliff, while building a ghost academy at home, he would get about 3-4 ghosts and use that to deny some mining and one gas to the zerg.
Also, if the zerg tries to counter, he will need overlords for spotting, and might try to use his queen to hit the ledge or maybe transfuse spine crawlers, however, with snipe you can punish a zerg, by taking down the queen and also the overlords, which severely stall their production.
However, you have to be careful as to how the zerg will react, because getting ghosts does leave your main a bit vulnerable for a while if you aren't careful. Its a fun strategy to try out and much more interesting to execute, as opposed to thor/siege tank drops.
It is not the most solid build as you aren't completely denying mining, and a smart zerg will just ignore you :/
However, if they are careless with overlords, you can easily roll over the zerg either with a one base timing push or two base.
Edit: Found the link to the replay if you are interested.
http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft2/replays/40055
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in tvz 1 ghost means u r spending the gas of 6 marauders ....
non-doable ....
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Exactly. And infestors die if you sneeze on them.
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TLO vs Hyperdub (TvT): Game 1 on Xelnaga Caverns
http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/vod/1114
Not sure if you need a premium ticket to watch it.
TLO uses nukes to make Hyperdub unsiege and move out of the highground, when Hyperdub moves out TLO cancels the nuke, moevs his own siege tanks in and takes the position. Lots of ghost play by TLO to make Hyperdub have to unsiege his tanks many times and lose the good positioning.
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If you go ghosts against Zerg, you're just furthering the bio ball, something Zerg just eat up.
Better go thors or a bit of mech and save the gas. :3
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Ghosts are too expensive to be considered viable in TvZ and TvT unless we're talking nukes in extreme lategame stalemates.
Ghosts are expensive, fragile and they need to be babysitted and microed to even make the slightest difference in a TvZ or TvT. In contrary to TvP where EMP is almost certain damage to shields and needed to drain templar energy, snipe isn't even close to being as useful. Basically a ghost costs more than a siege tank while the siege tank is pretty much superior in all aspects; more damage, more range, less micro, more HP.
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I'm surprised that noone has mentioned Snipe in late game situations when Z begins to re-max on ultras. Thors with 250mm and ghosts can take out an army of ultras very quickly.
Hashe uses ghosts more than any T player I've seen...
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The big problem in my mind is that while Ghosts can pull off some great plays (mostly with EMP, since snipe is so situational), such as EMPing planetary fortresses, queens, protoss deathballs, etc, they generally only work a few times, and after that the Ghost Academy is a wasted building. A building like the Roach Warren or Robobay will keep doing work the whole game, but there are a lot of situations wherein you really can't afford to have ghosts.
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Thanks for the responces, shame to see that there generally is not much ghost play about in TVT and TVZ although it is understandable why, i think as the game moves foward people may start using them more as part of just trying something new and fresh and hopfully some good strat's come out of this i have an idea of maybe how to use ghost in TVZ but have yet had it go to lategame to try yet.
Just like in lategame for protoss they may send random DT's off in every direction to try and harass queens and mineral lines could a terran not do the same to try and stop zergs production a bit??? pairs of ghosts lategame cloaked walking round sniping overlords and queens???
Let me know what ya think :p and also any other links feat good ghost play would be great :p
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if ghost snipe in TvT wasnt made almost useless by getting marines combat shields ide use them, occasionally you can nuke a terran it wont cause much damage most of the time as a scan will be inc on the ghosts face. sadly snipe kills marines till they get shield and then wtf whats the point... i myswell get a marine with shields and stim then to get a ghost that reqs 2 snipes to kill a marine. emp vs terran..? works great assuming they have ravens banshees or BC's. have you ever seen 2 ghosts emp each other?
TvZ hmm emp infestors snipe muta/infestor ... lost temple cliff nukeing ... hmm yea i think that sums it up for TvZ ghosts. next person that says .. snipes ok, vs ultras but the expense of a ghost is crazy, 2 of them is 100 more gas than a single ultra and the same mineral cost.
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On January 12 2011 13:32 DeCiBle wrote:
Think about the special abilities they have. EMP is amazing vs toss, but otherwise not useful, unless they go for something stupid like mass infestors where the EMP will knock out all their infestors' energy. But still, even with mass infestor there's just the option of straight killing them.
Snipe I think could be good, but it wasn't well implemented. Everything snipe works to hard-counter or deal with is already countered by either the ghost's other abilities, or other T units, making ghosts not cost-efficient. Immortals are best suited to be taken out with EMP, as is any other high-priority snipe-able toss unit; Ultralisks are already hard-countered by MMM when in good ratio/position. Other snipe-able targets are handily taken care of with marauders or tanks. The only real use I see for snipe is against high-priority air targets like broodlords. But again: vikings; if you're going MMM, you already have access to vikings, so you can just pop out a few of those.
Only real big use I see from the ghost in any non TvP match up (at least in terms of cost-efficiency from ghosts) is cloak and nukes. Mainly vs Z, because of the general lack of detection if you open with BIO, as opposed to banshee rush. (you early banshees, most Z's get detection by default, not so much if you open bio or early mech until later, when they expect shees)
It's a surprise tactic like the nydus worm; not necessarily cost-efficient unless it lands.
nukes don't need to be cost effective they only need to tilt your opponent, have you ever been in a game where you hear those words... and then you begin to frantically search for the red dot? well that's enough time for me to maybe sneak in a drop or hit your main army out of position etc etc..
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The only thing that makes ghosts worthwhile to me is EMP. It has a niche in TvZ if your opponent responds to your bio with Infestors. However that's pretty rare because mutabling is so strong.
Snipe, while certainly interesting, is micro-intensive. Perhaps with pro level APM it can become worthwhile, but I can't get it to work well vs Mutas and Ultras myself. Keep in mind that the Snipe animation has a substantial delay attached to it; whenever you Snipe you lose one auto-attack shot from the Ghost. So by sniper you're actually getting less than 45 damage. Plus there is little motivation to make Snipe work when marines are so strong vs Muta and marauders are so strong vs Ultra.
It's tough to Nuke in TvZ. The Zerg always seems to know exactly where my Ghost is due to creep, and they can hatch an overseer before the nuke lands. And Zerg units are so fast on creep I almost always lose the Ghost even if the nuke lands. Even dropnukes won't work because mutas are so fast and always present in TvZ. The only way I can think of the nuke being worth it is if you can catch your opponent with 10+ larvae hatching at once, as it will insta-kill the hatching units. Not many zergs realize this, and some forget to cancel their eggs.
In TvT I've tried using nuke to bust tank lines with mixed success. It has worked, but it is tricky to pull off because the high gas cost means that either going to fall behind in either the tank count or the viking count. And if you make the tiniest mistake with your positioning, one scan later and you're toast. Again, with pro-level micro and APM I think it can be done, but for noobs such as myself it is much easier to bust the line with a single battlecrusier. Yes, it can be done, as evidenced by the TLO vs Hyperdub game. But it was clear that TLO's intent was just to kill a single missile turret blocking the ghost from reaching the 3 oclock expo, and he just got lucky that Hyperdub retreated his Vikings into the attack path. At 20sec predictive nukes are still too difficult to position properly; perhaps a year or two down the road when the game is more figured out they will become more useful, but not so much right now.
I've used Snipe once in a TvT as a response to a 5 rax reaper, as it will instakill them. But reapers are so bad beyond the early game that really anything works well against them.
I can't think of ever using EMP in a TvT. Scan is so much better vs cloaked units. And its rare that you'll need to worry about Terran spellcasters. They hurt the tank/viking count too much, and its so easy to respond with just a few more rax of marines and tear them to shreds cost-for-cost.
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I've seen them used to EMP medivacs, that's about it. Of course that's pretty late, so calling it part of the build as opposed to a reaction to opponents' play is iffy. Trying to find a replay to share...
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actually the snipe ability of a few full energy ghosts against ultras in TvZ works wonders and can totally change the battle and in TvT you can use them to emp medivacs and destroy the other army, i LOVE using ghosts in all match ups but they arent too terribly useful until late game when you realize you have way more gas then you know what to do with
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EPT
