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Let me start by saying I am a protoss player. I am near the top of my platinum division at around 1800 rating if I remember correctly. At its current state, I find myself in PvT doing everything I can to avoid harass/damage early game and trying to just make it to the late game as I have a very high win rate when I get to the late game in PvT without using a single colossus or immortal.
In its current state at a high level, PvT will always include ghost usage once the game transitions into the midgame. In the past I had a huge amount of trouble dealing with EMP as I'd have no energy or shields and my army would get decimated. The ability on its own still stands in my mind (if you let the terran get it off) as the single most overpowered ability in the game. It does not travel towards its opponent nor does it happen over time; it is instantaneous.
I am not here to complain about EMP, however. I always tech quickly to templars in PvT and while I am biased for my strategy I can confidently say that if the game stays the way it is (relatively speaking), at the top level many protosses will end up using this strategy to counter EMP.
What I do is I mass templar and speedlots (stalkers as well if my opponent gets hellions). I feedback everything in sight, most importantly the ghosts in the terran army, but also medivacs, banshees, thors, and ravens. I then proceed to blanket storm the entire enemy army.
The problem in the current balance that I forsee is that there is little the terran can do to avoid getting his ghosts feedbacked assuming the protoss has the mechanical skill to feedback them all (not an easy feat when they are mashed in with an MM ball). Feedback has a longer range than EMP, and when I tested it with a friend I found that even when you try to EMP in front of the templars to land the edge of the EMP on them before they can feedback the range is not enough. I am not, however, asking for a range buff on EMP. In my personal opinion this would make EMP uncounterable for protoss.
The problem here lies with the fact that the ghosts similar ability, the sniper shot, does not kill a templar in one shot. I have tested this and both sniper shot and feedback have the exact same range so that when they are told to do this to each other from range the templar will lose all of its shields and a small amount of health from the sniper shot and the ghost will be rendered energy-less from the feedback at the same time. In my opinion in order for this same-range skill shot to be well balanced at the highest levels of PvT they need to both be able to kill (or render each other useless even if the templar doesn't kill the ghost with feedback) each other in one use of the ability. This will essentially make it so that whoever uses their ability sooner (or if the opponent isn't paying attention and doesn't use it soon enough) will kill the opposing unit and gain the advantage through skill.
Currently, the only way to avoid getting ghosts feedbacked is by hiding them under Medivacs (which I would like a "fix" for but can't think of a way to fix... perhaps the protoss can zoom the camera in to change the angle and target them?). Maybe this is enough and the terran just needs to do this all the time and my idea for buffing sniper shot's damage is unneeded. This is why I've made this a discussion thread as opposed to a suggestion thread.
tl;dr: Feedback/Sniper Shot has the same range, yet feedback will remove all energy or kill the ghost in one cast while sniper shot takes 2 casts to kill a templar. My suggestion is to buff sniper shot's damage, but maybe this isn't needed and maybe this would mess up TvZ balance (although I have heard it is in zerg's favor anyways).
Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks.
Edit: here is a replay relatively showing my strategy (although usually it is harder because usually terrans have more than one ghost and he only had one). Basically fast forward to a couple minutes before the end where he pushes and gets his army killed:
http://www.mediafire.com/?d4nzzmzzvqd
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I've been thinking of using Ghosts to snipe Obs and stay cloaked so they can't be hit with Feedback . . . probably too micro/gas-intensive, though. Anyway Sniper Shot is only 25 mana, how much does Feedback cost? Just curious.
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I thought sniper shots could be queued up using shift making enough to kill a HT pretty much instant?
I've never done it though so might be that I'm wrong.
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You cannot snipe observers sadly. Only allowed on biological targets.
However you can shift-queue a bunch of sniper shots on templar which kills them fast enough. It doesn't stop feedback from asploding your ghosts instantly though.
I guess my main beef with feedback is just how many terran units have energy! I tried some hellion drops vs orb the other day, and he just feedbacked the dropships and they asploded instantly. Quite disappointing.
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The sniper-shot vs feedback dynamic though doesn't have to be balanced ceteris paribus. If the Terran went for a push tanks bunkered marauders, against your tech all the ghosts would be needed for would be to EMP the onslaught before tanks blew your slowed zealots up. The ghost has tons of uses in the matchup other than neutralizing HT, having HT have a small advantage in Ghost killing is fair on paper to me.
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On March 16 2010 04:34 Gigaudas wrote:
I thought sniper shots could be queued up using shift making enough to kill a HT pretty much instant?
That should be possible, yes. I don't know how long it will take between shots
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On March 16 2010 04:34 Gigaudas wrote:
I thought sniper shots could be queued up using shift making enough to kill a HT pretty much instant?
I've never done it though so might be that I'm wrong.
More apm that way though.
Honestly though, I don't think ghosts are the way to fix terran late game. There is something inherently weak about late game terran army and buffing one ghost skill is not the way to fix it.
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On March 16 2010 04:39 theqat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2010 04:34 Gigaudas wrote:
I thought sniper shots could be queued up using shift making enough to kill a HT pretty much instant? That should be possible, yes. I don't know how long it will take between shots
We tested this the other day and while it is fairly quick, it's not quick enough to get off two before the feedback neutralizes your ghost (since the feedback is going to be happening around the same time as your first sniper shot).
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Blizzard has talked too about looking into giving a small boost to mech for Terran so that may be where the balance is heading.
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Yeah that's what I would expect. I dunno why they made Sniper Shot not work vs. mechanical 
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On March 16 2010 04:40 DragonDefonce wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2010 04:34 Gigaudas wrote:
I thought sniper shots could be queued up using shift making enough to kill a HT pretty much instant?
I've never done it though so might be that I'm wrong. More apm that way though. Honestly though, I don't think ghosts are the way to fix terran late game. There is something inherently weak about late game terran army and buffing one ghost skill is not the way to fix it.
it's because MMM is "weak" vs storms and collosi. blizz said they are considering buffing mech (yes!!!) so let's see what we get with the next patch.
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imo (protoss player) sniper shot needs to be able to target any unit, and needs to be able to kill low health units like HTs instantaneously. This would bring about more snipe usage and be somewhat like mutas in BW zvp.
would be pretty boss
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The issue I see here with balancing the two is that ghost have the ability to attack normally, HTs do no, so even without energy a ghost can still add to an army, an HT without energy is worthless unless made into an archon which takes time and isn't that great either.
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if u make it to do 85dmg, it will have to take lot of mana, or have cd like too much... otherwise it will be too powerfull against like everythink
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On March 16 2010 04:42 theqat wrote:Yeah that's what I would expect. I dunno why they made Sniper Shot not work vs. mechanical
Well if you think about it try using a sniper rifle and shooting at a tank... I don't think you'll accomplish much. The ghost is using a sniper rifle for every attack but I think the purpose behind sniper shot is that (as stated in the tooltip the ghost take a careful shot) the ghost uses careful aim to hit a weak point (like headshotting someone) and do more damage. This kind of thing isn't likely to happen with mechanical units.
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On March 16 2010 04:44 Irrelevant wrote:
The issue I see here with balancing the two is that ghost have the ability to attack normally, HTs do no, so even without energy a ghost can still add to an army, an HT without energy is worthless unless made into an archon which takes time and isn't that great either.
This is true but I think we can all agree no one gets ghosts for their normal damage; they get them for their spells.
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On March 16 2010 04:45 uhlyk wrote:
if u make it to do 85dmg, it will have to take lot of mana, or have cd like too much... otherwise it will be too powerfull against like everythink
I think the idea would be to make it one-shot units under 90 HP or something. With other units it would deal its current damage.
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i agree with OP 100% he really knows what hes talking about
my personal angle i would go into to balance this would be to have the sentry switch his hallu in trade for the ht feedback which would lead to the ht having its good old hallu back which i think fits its character more. i dont think many ppl would disagree with me at this trade :p
then the second thing i would do is to make the hallu better in terms of its upgrade, its too expensive, nobody is making hallu :/
and for last i would give the snipe ability of the ghost a slight longer range and make the emp cost 100 instead of 75 and for compensation change the dmg to shield to 150 instead of 100
remember none of these things would strike tvz nor pvz as "more imba" because the ghost was already not used in tvz and the hallu wasnt used at all and ive never seen the feedback or spellcaster to be the main stream issue of pvz match up
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On March 16 2010 04:47 theqat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2010 04:45 uhlyk wrote:
if u make it to do 85dmg, it will have to take lot of mana, or have cd like too much... otherwise it will be too powerfull against like everythink I think the idea would be to make it one-shot units under 90 HP or something. With other units it would deal its current damage.
The point though isn't "it would be cool if it did that," its that in its current state it's fairly decently balanced and Blizz has already stated they're looking at other avenues to balance the matchup
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How bout with the buff of sniper shot make it cost more energy too to balance things out.
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EPT
