|
Hi all, long time reader, first time poster here. Apologies if I am breaking any rules here but I believe that this has not been adequately explored…
This guide refers to a great post made by justicewoot on TeamLiquid back in 2010 and if you would like to read it please follow this link (he also includes a video to demonstrate the mechanics of snipe): http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=155732
Reguardless of whether or not you believe scrollwheel to be ethical, many Terrans experience significant difficulty with using snipe in real-game situations. We have all seen the video of ghosts wiping out multiple Ultralisks in a unit tester however in a real-game situation it simply does not play out the way that many people would have you believe.
There are some mechanical caveats of snipe that make the spell much less useful in real-life situations and this is a guide designed to help out Terrans who would like to use snipe more effectively, with or without using the scrollwheel.
The Problem:
You enter a battle with the Zerg horde and queue up multiple snipes however very few of these snipes actually occur and your ghosts die without draining their mana pool.
The Reason:
When you select your ghosts and shift-queue snipe they will only snipe AFTER they complete their current action. When you are facing a Zerg onslaught (imagine an army of lings, banes, mutas, infestors and ultras attacking from all directions) your ghosts will likely be engaging the zerg and as such, will be on either attack-move, or stationary but attacking anyway. This means that they will only snipe AFTER they have finished killing their current target, or attack-moving to the selected location. If they happen to be stationary and targeting a Zergling it will likely die soon and the snipe will appear to be seamless HOWEVER if they happen to be on attack-move or stationary and targeting an Ultra or a Brood Lord they will not snipe either the unit is dead or they arrive at their attack-move location which is often well after the battle is over or the Ghost is dead.
The Wrong Solution:
Some people have claimed that to avoid this extra-pre-snipe-command the best action is to put your ghosts on "hold-fire". Therefore, when you shift-queue snipe it will be the FIRST action in the chain and the Ghost will prioritise sniping as its FIRST action. The problem with this is that, when on hold fire, if a Ghost receives damage, it will RUN AWAY (like an idle worker being attacked) and will not snipe until it has finished its "run away" command.
The Right Solution:
1) Put your Ghosts in a control group (putting them in a separate control groups also enables you to stim your whole army with ease as ghosts will not be the first selected group)
2) Put your Ghosts on follow command on a central unit such as a Thor or a Medivac (if Ghosts are not in your main army group)
3) When the Zerg attacks, first select STOP (to prevent them from running to the aforementioned unit)
4) Shift-queue snipe (whether or not you use scrollwheel is up to your own sense of fairness)
5) select "hold-fire"
6) queue snipes to your heart's content
7) select "Weapons Free:
Why It Works:
Units that are following other units will still attack enemy units within range. Your ghosts will therefore be engaged in battle when the Zerg horde attacks your from all directions. When you select STOP your Ghosts will not try to run after the central unit and will stand still and only attack units within range. When you shift-queue snipe the Ghosts that are NOT engaged in battle will snipe the targeted unit/s as commanded but those who are attacking will WAIT until their target is dead before they receive the snipe command. Pressing "hold-fire" will force the Ghosts that are currently attacking a target to STOP ATTACKING and BEGIN SNIPING.
REMEMBER to select "weapons free" so that you do not lose your normal attack from your Ghosts.
As you can see, the snipe mechanic is not as simple as many would have your believe and many Terrans find themselves frustrated with the poor damage output they receive after investing so heavily into ghosts. This post is not meant to resurrect the whole "is scrollwheel moral or immoral" debate but to instead instruct Terrans on how to effectively use Snipe, with or without the scrollwheel.
I hope some of you find this information valuable.
Cheers,
-Vrtigo
|
Its cool that you figured out this really complicated way to do it, but why not just press r and then click rapidly (or scroll) like most people do. Either way nobody is gonna use ghosts for snipe soon  [
|
On February 21 2012 23:24 statikg wrote:Its cool that you figured out this really complicated way to do it, but why not just press r and then click rapidly (or scroll) like most people do. Either way nobody is gonna use ghosts for snipe soon [
Because if you do that while holding shift, your ghost will need to kill any target it's attacking before sniping. I've seen this happen literally hundreds of times, still happens in GSL on a regular basis.
|
Yeah its a shame about the Ghost nerf, however the r and click rapidly method often results in you selecting the unit you are trying to snipe as scroll / mouse spam is often faster than the repeater rate of the "r" button. I think the only other reliable method is the r --> click --> r --> click --> r --> click method however I find this somewhat cumbersome and suboptimal...
|
Why do we care about this now? You won't be casting snipe ever again.
I could be totally wrong, but I'd bet my lunch that 19 snipes per BL is not efficient enough to warrant their use in TvZ anymore, and at 25 damage they have no other role in the game. You will get 3 for emp and that's it.
|
The 45 damage was not what made snipe good.
What made snipe good was that a LARGE number of snipes could land at once.
It was the *speed* at which snipe would fire that made it dangerous.
The nerf simply means that you bring 2-4 extra ghosts in your army and you kill 2-3 less Tier 3 units in the first few seconds of engagement.
|
On February 22 2012 00:30 lorkac wrote:
The 45 damage was not what made snipe good.
What made snipe good was that a LARGE number of snipes could land at once.
It was the *speed* at which snipe would fire that made it dangerous.
The nerf simply means that you bring 2-4 extra ghosts in your army and you kill 2-3 less Tier 3 units in the first few seconds of engagement.
Huh? It's not an extra 2-4, because it's HALF DAMAGE. 50% dps cut makes it less dangerous, because you can do 50% less with the same investment, and even if given the same amount of raw damage, you need to do double the same actions in the same time to match your previous output.
If I want to decimate 12 Broods, I need around 200 snipes. It just isn't happening.
If I needed 8 ghosts before, and I now need 16, that starts to make the style impractical. Vikings may not be a good answer, but they're probably better than trying to charge up 1/4 of your whole supply worth of ghosts and hoping the Z doesn't force an engagement before you're ready.
|
Since you issue the stop command before queuing snipes, why not just hit stop and chain snipe instead of all the other steps you mention. Personally I prefer click spamming instead of shift (far more accurate), what you need to do is move all your ghosts into range first, then spam snipes, otherwise they come one at a time due to smart casting and are easily picked off. Though the nerf seems a bit steep, imo cut out a few thors and add more ghosts, since they deal with mutas equally well.
PS: Snipe isn't meant to decimate brood lord armies, its meant to coat them with high dps, allowing other things to polish them off. It is terran's aoe spell of sorts against zerg.
|
On February 22 2012 00:30 lorkac wrote:
The 45 damage was not what made snipe good.
What made snipe good was that a LARGE number of snipes could land at once.
It was the *speed* at which snipe would fire that made it dangerous.
The nerf simply means that you bring 2-4 extra ghosts in your army and you kill 2-3 less Tier 3 units in the first few seconds of engagement.
This is really the best way to explain how the change is going to impact the game.
Ghost won't be completely useless after the patch at all.
Why ghost is such a good unit:
the ability to nuke in late game as a very efficient way to force positioning and harass (which is why MVP likes ghost for according to an interview)
EMP is still prefered to have against infestors/hts in mid to late game.
Snipe will be more powerful against casters (and we saw boxer starts doing it in GSL today, the thing is that it stops the toss from having archons which is pretty essential) but the key why I think it was nerfed is because how insanely fast it drop tier 3 units, with only energy cost.
And since the Tier 3 units are needed to break a PF split map situation, on some maps, it is extremely strong because there is no other way for the zerg to break the split map situation without broodlords (shakuras, I am looking at you) and the zerg has to hope they have enough broodlords to survive the snipes and then break the contain or they will eventually get dropped and nuked to death (MVP style)
Feel free to correct me but I really don't think the snipe is nerfed that hard, the main uses will still be the same but now the Terran has to balance out the number of ghosts and other core units like marines and tanks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
