[D] A Mathematical Look at 1.4.3 Ghosts - Page 2

On February 12 2012 22:50 Big J wrote:


What are you talking about? Unattackable?
Siege tanks have 13range, which gives your 9range vikings a micro range of 4 to attack 9.5range broodlords, while being safe against 9range fungals.
Even if a zerg wastes half of his fungal energy to fungal 1-2 vikings by using the 2radius of fungal to have 11 range, you can always have tank protected vikings against Broodlords. (tanks 2shoot infestors)

Tank/Viking + whatever terran composition (usually: hellion/thor, marine/medivac) against broodlord/infestor/corruptor + whatever zerg composition (usually: roach/baneling, zergling/baneling, roach/zergling) can hold against each other pretty well.
I agree that for P it's a bit more difficult, but storms and Vortex are pretty great vs clumped broods/corruptors, Voidrays and Blink stalkers vs unclumped broods/corruptors. Also PvZ as it is being played right now usually doesn't reach this stage anyways. It's won/lost by the huge 2base Protoss allin, everything after that is just one player fighting to survive a bit longer and hoping for the opponent to screw extremly.

On February 12 2012 23:05 FeyFey wrote:
well its really nice that you can easier 2 shot infestors after the patch, but transfuse has a range of 7, which means to emp or snipe, you are in the range of broodlords and infestors, so a good zerg can prevent the ghosts from killing their queens unless the terran risks a side attack with their ghosts. Before a queen could negate a single ghost pretty easily, sure there were broodlord losses but all in all you used 150 minerals and 2 supply to negate 200 minerals 100 gas and 2 supply. Sounds good to me already. (queens also provide anti air, but they are at risk when fending of vikings)
Now a transfuse will block 5 snipes. So when it comes to energy regeneration a queen has 50 less at the start, but when a ghost has 2 new snipes, the queen can block 5 snipes. So now 2 supply 150 minerals, block 500/250 and 5 supply after the change.
So i guess its easy to say, that snipe was only a soft conter to both t3 units, that provided alot of durability compared to the weak marines, that also act as a soft conter, but die fairly easy to splash damage. After the nerf, its more a transfuse hard conters snipe, making it hard to snipe even a single broodlord (you need to land 11 snipes on a broodlord before 1 transfuse hits). And snipe never was effective against ultras even before (the zerg simply ran over a ghost using terran).

So with the queen as a direct snipe conter, the skill is not meant to be rebalanced, since it was perfectly balanced before in tvz. But to be repurposed and i don't like that at the end terran has lost another stable composition that doesn't need hardcore micro against a simple a click.
I mean a zerg not getting queens against ghosts, is like a terran not getting vikings or marines against broodlords. Why defend them by patching something out ? I mean mass ghosts didn't worked in the first place, but why not let people find that out by themself.

With that aside, i guess blizzard wants to see more marine micro, because macroing like crazy and pressuring a zerg player the whole time, so marines work against broodlord infestor looks really impressive. But this role change is really funny to see. The terran sending wave after wave against the zerg deathball.
Anyway you can still macro against a zerg without having to attack all the time, you just have to do the same thing as you did with the ghosts, replace your bio with higher tech.
Another thing i could imagine, that blizzard wants to force mass raven with the seeker missile, but for that the seeker missile cost has to be changed, as it has the cost of the heat seeker missile still. (the speed buff only removed some utility)

And before you complain about transfuse ... I use queens with my t3 units, simply because one queen a 2 supply unit, can heal up big units with 500 hp and has 150 hp themself, making them better then ultras against non focused damage. And if you can't put creep on the whole map lategame, you did something wrong, so mobility is no issue.
I don't mind about snipe really, my problem is that zergs don't use their race to the fullest, making it really painful to see a zerg lose to mass ghosts, or still attack with their ultras after the next wave of lings already died.

On February 12 2012 23:05 FeyFey wrote:
you forget that 9.5 is the broodling launch range of a broodlord, like carriers have a range of 13, but a launchrange of 8. And broodlings merely have to reach the tanks to let other tanks kill em. You could for example send a few changelings near the terran tanks and attack them with your broodlords, so the broodlings will just move the missing range of 5 to attack the tanks, you could also land multiple waves of broodlings under your broodlords and send those in. But i agree the terran has the range advantage, but not with siege tanks(they just kill themself), but with nukes. Nukes allow the terran to advance (though its 100/100 that costs you a huge lot to move forward by just a half screen). Before its a real stalemate position, where neither zerg nor terran can advance. But the zerg is in the advantage, because their composition is more cost efficient.

On February 12 2012 23:05 Josh_rakoons wrote:
Terrans now have to play better to win, it's a good thing.

On February 13 2012 00:04 xTrim wrote:
please, i did not understand OP.... can you be clearer?

On February 14 2012 01:23 dotDash wrote:
Interesting analysis! I think that ghosts will still be used but we will also most probably see some more maras and vikings in play. Also, I think that people seem to forget that nukes exists... ghosts arent only about snipe. There was a game between Morrow and.. cant remember the Z.. the basically killed him with only nukes

EDIT: It seems that the raven might come into play a bit more now aswell. Either way, I am not affraid of not being able to adapt to this patch!

Peace
Dan

On February 14 2012 01:57 boxturtle wrote:
I'm not 100% sure Leenock had his sound/nuke warnings on. He just sat in nukes. I don't think he thought Morrow had a realisitc chance of taking the series.

On February 12 2012 23:26 Big J wrote:

Yeah, and you could just drop mules on Zerg bases to mine them out and don't fear Zerg macro or use HSM on cloaked banshees and fly them into broodlords... Come back when you have a serious suggestion.

On February 12 2012 16:28 roam wrote:


I think the first thing that is clear is that snipe was probably too good against BL. With approximately 90s (approximate build+travel time for one Z wave) before any 2 fights, ghosts could almost negate 4/5 of a BL for free! Against ultras, snipe was not so good, except during the first burst of damage. Ultras, of course, have plenty of other weaknesses.

The conclusion I think we can make is that, if there is no composition to cost effectively destroy the ghosts, then they are too good against BL. If the only option is a Z ground attack, with a high tank count, on certain maps, would T be impenetrable*?


I think it should be clear, after the patch, that ghosts are no longer by default as efficient against Hive units.

After the patch, for 90s idle, ghosts will do less than 1/2 of a BL in damage. It takes 100 energy for the ghost to be cost effective (1:1) against BL. That means ghosts will only be cost effective 45s after they are created (so 90s in total), and 180s (3 MINUTES!) after running out of energy. I suppose the fact that ghosts will be only worth half as much as before should be obvious by the 1/2 cut in snipe damage.

But the real point, I think, is that ghosts can still be cost efficient with enough time. The question is if the extra time to accumulate energy is something that can be worked around. Will it be worthwhile to have 40 of your food be worth only 20 food in the next fight? Would you be able to survive the fight?

My suspicion is that the buff against infestors will play a role. As long as infestors are needed against viking/raven, ghosts can be efficient against that component of the Z army, though inefficient against BL. Ultimately, the difficulty of army composition and control is increased, and ghosts, regardless of map, cannot deal with BL alone.

On February 12 2012 23:32 BushidoSnipr wrote:


Yea, and now they actually have to commit just as much as Zerg players do to BL's and Ultras.

On February 14 2012 04:30 ToastieNL wrote:
I hate it how Blizzard seems to still have this attitude of Terran being OP. Terran micro's the crap out of his pants during fights and has by far the most demanding macro mid- battle (W + Shift + Z + clickclickclick, or worse, Select Hatches + S + Z + hold vs. 5aaaaaaaaaaaadddddgg6ss7vvvvvv, just try which one takes most time to do precise). Terran is not the EZ race, Terran is the hardest of all currently!

On February 12 2012 21:54 Bommes wrote:
Are you serious? Even if they are cost efficient in theory, you would have to spam the snipe like a madman and its not like snipe has 30 range, so before you can snipe >60 times against 6 BLs some of your ghosts will die to broodlings/fungal/banelings for sure, which makes them NOT cost effective in any number above 3 or 4. Also you will not always have time to build up 200/200 energy for high amounts of ghosts and if the Zerg decides to push at an unexpected time you are really vulnerable. Late Game TvZ is really back and forth if the terran manages to stay in the game, you can't afford to build up energy for a couple of minutes to be able to fight.

If the patch goes through all ghosts will be good for is sniping infestors and EMP, they will be a onedimensional anti-spellcaster unit for every matchup/needed in TvP against shields.
I don't know how Blizzard wants terran to fight Broodlord/Infestor in theory, as both Broodlords and Infestors have more range than Vikings and the ghosts cant even come close to the Infestors without dieing to Broodlings, and consider that terran has to get every single infestor before he can allow his vikings to come close to the broodlords if he wants to fight with a lot of vikings instead of a lot of ghosts, because 1 infestor with full energy takes down like 4-10 vikings to half hp and they can't even flee from Corruptors anymore. The goal against Broodlords should be that you kill them asap in every matchup, because thats how Broodlords work for Zerg, they are a very positional and slow unit, but they make up for that by just being extremely strong if they stay in the fight unharmed. Having to kill the spellcasters behind the Broodlords first is bullshit and I can't see any way that it can work for a late game terran without sloppiness of the Zerg, in a straight up battle.

Being forced to play with a lot of vikings against Broodlords/Infestors is like playing Mutalisks in ZvZ against Infestors, it just doesn't work... And even if you barely hold because you overextend on Vikings, once you have like 6-10 leftover vikings the zerg just lols and runs you over with 8 Ultralisks + mass Zergling/Baneling.

I think mixing in few numbers of thors is quite nice, because they are very bulky and tank a lot of broodlings so the marines get very strong if the zerg can't get a lot of Banelings, but thors alone can't fight anything against a good opponent and they don't really solve the problem of getting near the Broodlords they just buy you some time and make sure that the Zerg can't clump his air units too much, also they take a lot of time to build.

The problem remains that Terran doesn't have a single strong mid- or lategame unit like the broodlord/colossus/archon that is just plain good in an army battle. They are all easily countered if your opponent knows what to do. Every standard matchup for Terran is based around the marine (and partially the marauder), because they are the only units in the terran arsenal that are just plain good if you know how to use them without a "but" involved once your enemy starts to build unit X (which especially zerg can do very fast, but its also funny how gateway units for Protoss counter every single high tech unit of terran. Feedback alone counters ALL of the 4 highest tech units for terran (ghosts not included) up to a point where they are useless in an army vs. army clash if the Feedbacks connect). The problem is not that they can be countered, the problem is that it doesn't take a lot of effort for the enemy to counter them. I mean the marine is countered by Fungals, Storm, Colossi etc., but the difference to the other terran units is that the amount of effort and ressources spent into the marine counter is enough that you yourself can react to that. If you want to react to a zerg that is countering your BCs for example, you will not have the chance to do so, because the plain Infestor/Corruptor will do just fine against BCs and there is nothing to exploit after that. edit: Tanks of course are decent in TvZ midgame because they are extremely strong against Ling/Baneling and Infestors without BLs, but once Broodlords enter the field they get a lot trickier to use and usually just waste a lot of supply if you got too many tanks earlier.

So I think it should be reasonable to understand even if you are a Zerg player that the snipe nerf is a realization for a lot of terran players that like to play late games without all in timing pushes that Blizzard doesn't want that to happen, so it makes them sad and angry. I personally can understand that very well, even if the snipe nerf is justified. Thats not what I think about when playing terran when I know how exciting and diverse the BW terran matchups are, with strong late game armies in every matchup and exciting battles where the winner is NOT 99% obvious in most games before the armies clash.