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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CzW1j.png)
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*?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/wnWJ6.png)
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.
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*Addendum
1. I DON'T think that there is no composition to beat a ghost/tank massing T. 20 ghosts and 15 tanks is the equivalent of 125+ banelings. A baneling carpet bomb can reliably clear out such an immobile defense, and force a production reset in Z's favor.
2. Regardless, I can understand ghosts killing BL for free is a bit too much, but ghosts are in general fairly inefficient against everything else (lings banes ultras). I personally think it's a map issue; if the map allows T to deal with lings/banes/ultras extremely efficiently without ever being exposed positionally, then that needs to be addressed.
3. It seems Blizzard's solution is that they don't think T can hold a spread out position anyways, so they are simply going to reduce the cost efficiency of holding a single location.
4. People have thrown around the idea that ghosts can be used to shoot non-Hive units. I think you can imagine what an awful idea it is to be shooting lings/drones or even banes with ghosts. Just do the math, it is absolutely inefficient. Ghosts will remain potentially efficient against infestor+BL.
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nice analysis!
i think though in the 1.4.3 chart it should say 150 with 3 ghosts vs ultra for every 90s not 250, right?
Hm so basically now, if a zerg remaxes or makes a new wave asap and attacks in 90 seconds, the terran will definitely be weaker unlike before where they could recharge energy and just snipe a shit ton again and wipe out infestor/BL easily. This will give Zerg a way to fight against this; constant waves of attacks. However if the zerg runs out of res or can't afford another wave (whether it be 2nd or 3rd) then Terran will be able to recharge energy and should be OK against the next wave whenever it comes.
I'll miss the 45 dmg snipe, but like the OP says you can now 2 shot infestors. Now ghosts can't deal with BL AND Infestor and to a lesser extent Ultra. They are way too versatile that way. Now there is more incentive to get vikings vs BLs like you're "supposed" to, while ghosts still do OK vs BL and meh against ultras but now, great vs infestors.
looking back I find it sorta funny -- before we saw ghosts in TvZ (more specifically, the time when byun was doing well in Code S and used ghosts on terminus vs... i forgot the zerg's name), I had kept insisting that Ghosts are a great choice vs BLs, instead of getting Vikings and also tanks for infestors.
Doing the calculations I kept showing why ghosts were good, showing how much energy a ghost would have between possible zerg attack waves, how much "dps" a ghost could do in a battle with snipe + normal attack vs a viking, and also that ghosts could deal with infestors unlike Vikings. But no one seemed to think so until Idra said that ghosts were really good but no one used them and then much later when MVP showed the power of mass ghosts in the GSL.
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OP, you forget that pre-patch they can snipe all of those overlords before they drop anything. ghosts are not inefficient at all at killing banelings, 1 shot 1 kill, just shift click or if you want to use the bug, use your scroll wheel and watch ur full energy ghosts kill 8 banelings each for free without them getting within 5 hexes of your ghosts. post patch it won't work so well, as it shouldn't. terrans don't need yet another cost effective way to kill zerglings and banelings, vikings are great at killing broodlords, marauders are roflmao good at killing ultralisks. and saying that using energy to kill units is inefficient seems...very wrong, dropping ghosts on mineral lines may not be spectacular, but it doesn't seem that bad either, higher dps vs light, able to emp queens to stop transfuse, and you can snipe several drones if they try to run away, obviously you need ghosts to defend big broodlord pushes, but the 5+ minutes it takes a zerg to go from lair to broodlords should be sufficient time to make use of ghost's energy before a big broodlord fight, not to mention no good zerg is going to bank up 2k+ gas and minerals for the chance to build a asinine number of broodlords right as they rush to hive to see them die from a handful of well spread vikings. the point of this whole ghost change is that ghosts can kill every low tech unit with 1-3 shots (except roaches i think) from at least 2x the range of the opposition, if not 10x and as you say they come into play with 3 snipes if you get the energy upgrade (no reason to ever not imo unless 2 snipes/ghost are rly gunna save ur ass.) and in late game compositions it makes it nearly impossible to be remotely close to cost efficient as zerg, tanks out range your infestors so fungaling marines should really never happen against a terran that controls correctly (yes, this means that correct play dictates not moving groups of marines beyond 4 hexes infront of your tanks unless your prepared to lose them, assuming the zerg has infestors), or at least not without sacrificing several infestors to do so, which is bad, losing an infestor without trading at least 20 marines per infestor is just horribly bad for you, and even then its questionable, marines build in what, 20 seconds? and cost little enough for a muling terran to not give a fuck if they can kill a few infestors so long as they aren't saccing bases/large chunks of eco in the process.
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On February 12 2012 17:14 Dbla08 wrote:
OP, you forget that pre-patch they can snipe all of those overlords before they drop anything. ghosts are not inefficient at all at killing banelings, 1 shot 1 kill, just shift click or if you want to use the bug, use your scroll wheel and watch ur full energy ghosts kill 8 banelings each for free without them getting within 5 hexes of your ghosts. post patch it won't work so well, as it shouldn't. terrans don't need yet another cost effective way to kill zerglings and banelings, vikings are great at killing broodlords, marauders are roflmao good at killing ultralisks. and saying that using energy to kill units is inefficient seems...very wrong, dropping ghosts on mineral lines may not be spectacular, but it doesn't seem that bad either, higher dps vs light, able to emp queens to stop transfuse, and you can snipe several drones if they try to run away, obviously you need ghosts to defend big broodlord pushes, but the 5+ minutes it takes a zerg to go from lair to broodlords should be sufficient time to make use of ghost's energy before a big broodlord fight, not to mention no good zerg is going to bank up 2k+ gas and minerals for the chance to build a asinine number of broodlords right as they rush to hive to see them die from a handful of well spread vikings. the point of this whole ghost change is that ghosts can kill every low tech unit with 1-3 shots (except roaches i think) from at least 2x the range of the opposition, if not 10x and as you say they come into play with 3 snipes if you get the energy upgrade (no reason to ever not imo unless 2 snipes/ghost are rly gunna save ur ass.) and in late game compositions it makes it nearly impossible to be remotely close to cost efficient as zerg, tanks out range your infestors so fungaling marines should really never happen against a terran that controls correctly (yes, this means that correct play dictates not moving groups of marines beyond 4 hexes infront of your tanks unless your prepared to lose them, assuming the zerg has infestors), or at least not without sacrificing several infestors to do so, which is bad, losing an infestor without trading at least 20 marines per infestor is just horribly bad for you, and even then its questionable, marines build in what, 20 seconds? and cost little enough for a muling terran to not give a fuck if they can kill a few infestors so long as they aren't saccing bases/large chunks of eco in the process.
Hahaha so much theory crafting here it made me ROFLMAO.......what do u think snipe is? whack a mole? You think banelings are as big as ultras?
P.S. I dont think even MVP marineking or MMA can accurate snipe 8 banelings per ghost among a sea of ling baneling rolling towards your army
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I think he was talking about using the new scroll-click snipe and just dragging the cursor all over the banes. It wouldn't kill them all but it sure as hell could do a ton of work. However, each ghost has a slight delay between snipes don't they? So I don't think it's actually that powerful even in the current patch. They still are effective against infestors and they'll no be useless against T3 tech. It's just adjusting when you get ghosts and how many.
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thank you op! this is what a lot of terrans dont get. ghosts are still going to be effective against everything they are supposed to be effective against.
with a zerg late game composition of ultra/ broodlord, ling, bling corruptor, which is more or less what you would expect against a marine, tank, viking, medivac army, you would not even need ghosts to hold the push. in fact, you would crush the zerg with a semi decent marine split, good tank positioning and semi decent viking micro.
add infestors to the mix and its more complicated because fungal growth completely removes the ability to micro, making the damage you take from hive units a fuck ton more difficult to deal with.
with the buff to ghost damage vs casters ghosts are now a means to deal with infestors which are singled out quickly and energy efficiently and you still have emp for clumped up infestors. dealing with hive tech units on their own is really not that hard to do. have you seen what marines do to broodlords? ultras are laughable because of the attack glitch. so all you really have to do is take infestors out of the picture and the fight evens out.
the problem with ghosts snipe damage at the moment is that you basically trade energy for a fuck ton of zerg supply and resources with a few simple clicks. although i disagree with the extent of the reduction of snipe damage, i do think blizzard is moving in the right direction. ghosts are becoming a specialist unit for dealing with casters and not a mass a fuck ton of them to make a broodlord ball evaporate in a matter of seconds unit.
what terran players dont realize is that as a zerg, you can't deal with terran late game army without tier 3. hive units are by no means overpowered at all, they are necessary and without infestors they still melt away to marines lol. ghost will still be viable. the difference is that they will be units you go to, to counter infestors and not to counter everything.
still think they should make the base snipe damage 50 to biological -25 to massive though. you can still 2 shot infestors while making them viable vs other small units and overseers, but not too strong against expensive units.
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On February 12 2012 17:14 Dbla08 wrote:
OP, you forget that pre-patch they can snipe all of those overlords before they drop anything. ghosts are not inefficient at all at killing banelings, 1 shot 1 kill, just shift click or if you want to use the bug, use your scroll wheel and watch ur full energy ghosts kill 8 banelings each for free without them getting within 5 hexes of your ghosts. post patch it won't work so well, as it shouldn't. terrans don't need yet another cost effective way to kill zerglings and banelings, vikings are great at killing broodlords, marauders are roflmao good at killing ultralisks. and saying that using energy to kill units is inefficient seems...very wrong, dropping ghosts on mineral lines may not be spectacular, but it doesn't seem that bad either, higher dps vs light, able to emp queens to stop transfuse, and you can snipe several drones if they try to run away, obviously you need ghosts to defend big broodlord pushes, but the 5+ minutes it takes a zerg to go from lair to broodlords should be sufficient time to make use of ghost's energy before a big broodlord fight, not to mention no good zerg is going to bank up 2k+ gas and minerals for the chance to build a asinine number of broodlords right as they rush to hive to see them die from a handful of well spread vikings. the point of this whole ghost change is that ghosts can kill every low tech unit with 1-3 shots (except roaches i think) from at least 2x the range of the opposition, if not 10x and as you say they come into play with 3 snipes if you get the energy upgrade (no reason to ever not imo unless 2 snipes/ghost are rly gunna save ur ass.) and in late game compositions it makes it nearly impossible to be remotely close to cost efficient as zerg, tanks out range your infestors so fungaling marines should really never happen against a terran that controls correctly (yes, this means that correct play dictates not moving groups of marines beyond 4 hexes infront of your tanks unless your prepared to lose them, assuming the zerg has infestors), or at least not without sacrificing several infestors to do so, which is bad, losing an infestor without trading at least 20 marines per infestor is just horribly bad for you, and even then its questionable, marines build in what, 20 seconds? and cost little enough for a muling terran to not give a fuck if they can kill a few infestors so long as they aren't saccing bases/large chunks of eco in the process.
shift clicking snipe is actually bugged and doesnt work, scrolling isnt a bug but remapping keys.
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Not taking into account the APM cost of sniping is a ridiculous and glaring oversight.
APM is a very limited and valuable resource. Trying to snipe at even the top Korean level means that the Terran will not be able to macro or micro anything else during that time.
For illustration of the point: If zealots did 2x the damage they did now, but they needed manual targeting per strike, how useless would that be?
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The nerf seems overly harsh to me though I don't know exactly how terran would do without ghosts against broodlords. Perhaps viking and possibly raven are actually just fine but they were being overshadowed by the superior option of ghosts which was probably too strong.
The change isn't final though, maybe they'll change it to something like 30+20 instead which would seem reasonable. 8 shots for a BL (up from 6 but down from 10) seems alright. They would also still be able to 1-shot banelings.
If they keep it like this I just think ghosts will slowly fade out from TvZ, requiring 40% more shots seems to much. Maybe terrans will just start to play more aggresive against broods or use their immobility agianst them. I'd love it if they just gave the raven a very slight nudge to being more effective though, like giving seeker missile 1 more range or letting it do 10% more damage.
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On February 12 2012 19:50 link0 wrote:
Not taking into account the APM cost of sniping is a ridiculous and glaring oversight.
APM is a very limited and valuable resource. Trying to snipe at even the top Korean level means that the Terran will not be able to macro or micro anything else during that time.
For illustration of the point: If zealots did 2x the damage they did now, but they needed manual targeting per strike, how useless would that be?
2 gate would be OP?
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8Wfcc.png)
I don't understand why nerf snipe when Terran is performing very badly lategame.
First notice a few things TvZ is *balanced* with overall stats, but it is 65% win rate early game for terran and 35% lategame (You have to click on the imgae to enlarge). Meaning snipe will only make the MU worse.
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Can we see the list of games this chart showcases? What level are these players?
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On February 12 2012 16:28 roam wrote:
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.
well high templar are basically useless in the first 45s after building, at least ghost are still useful
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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.
late edit:
By the way I don't think the snipe nerf is completely unjustified, I just think it is either completely over the top (down to 35-40 damage would be fine) or tries to solve the problem from the wrong angle... they could try different approaches to make snipe less strong, for example a longer cooldown or more energy costs, which wouldn't hurt so much in terms of micro required.
I personally am too stupid to use ghosts anyway, I love using them but I don't really get the transition into them right... I'm either too far behind anyway so they can't turn the game around or I fuck up the micro in the huge deciding battles. I had like a handful of games where I'd say that I won because of ghosts, and most of them were not really because snipe was extremely strong against Broodlords and Ultralisks (maybe partly) but more because they are really annoying when harassing expansions while cloaked with nukes & overseer snipe 
In most of my TvZs I don't really get to use ghosts at all though, I'm not really playing enough games for good data and not playing on a high enough level that both me and the Zerg get past the midgame safely without making game deciding mistakes before that in 80% of the games.
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On February 12 2012 21:54 Bommes wrote:
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.
well imho BL/Infestor needs to be looked at.
it the same issue in PvZ, a Zerg who is playing it right will never die (JYP vs. Dimaga at HSC4 comes in mind) , because they get nearly unattackable due to fungals.
Its funny that the only solution is to do a archon toilet...that mothership became even standard gameplay 8X...
gonna be funny, how Protoss or Terran will be dealing with this it in HotS
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On February 12 2012 22:30 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2012 21:54 Bommes wrote:
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.
well imho BL/Infestor needs to be looked at. it the same issue in PvZ, a Zerg who is playing it right will never die , because they get nearly unattackable due to fungals. Its funny that the only solution is da toilet...that mothership became even standard gameplay, because everything else simply does not work.
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.
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Terrans now have to play better to win, it's a good thing.
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EPT
