EPTedit: PLEASE READ THROUGH THE THREAD BEFORE SPEWING OUT "QQ" OR FORMING AN OPINION!
Please take this as feedback, I have analyzed why the way blizzard have said they are going to change the ghost is indeed not a change, but another unnecessary nerf to Terran lategame.
I have made a video to go along with this thread and highlight the issue, which blizzard hopefully will get word of and take as feedback to not nerf the ghost again.
To elaborate here, what I am speaking of is Browder/Blizzard's current balance design intent to make the ghost's cloak ability work with a cool down which is a nerf to Terran lategame nuke harrassment as well as to the cloak ability directly.
Blizzard/Browder have said:
"Ghost’s Cloak is now changed so that it is no longer able to be turned off and on within a moments notice. It instead can be used for a specified amount of time and if used strategically can help save Energy."
Let's first look at the current ghost cloak, and the proposed change:
Current ghost cloak:
-Initial one time energy cost of 25 energy, and then the ghost stays cloaked for the remainder of it's energy pool, uncloaking once all energy has been depleted.
Proposed HOTS ghost change:
-Initial one time energy chost of 25 energy. Ghost begins to regain energy immediately after the initial cost. The ghost now is on a cool down and will uncloak at the end of that cool down, and will be prevented from re-cloaking for certain amount of time.
The reason the HOTS change is a nerf to Terran lategame and nuke harrassment and the cloak ability in general is because of how nuke harrassment works.
First off, when you send out a ghost onto the map, you do not want the ghost to be visible to your opponent. We all know at high level multi-tasking is so key, and if your opponent can visibly spot your ghost walking across the map there is a less chance that your ghost is going to get there.
Secondly, with the proposed cool down changes on the cloak ability, this means that you can only launch 1 nuke during the period of cloak before your ghost will uncloak for the "specified amount of time" which allows your ghost to easily be spotted again and killed.
So not only does nuke harrassment become much less likely to ever work but when it does work, you will only be able to use 1 ghost to effectively launch 1 nuke at an opponent's infrastructure before they can easily spot and find your ghost.
Ghosts are expensive units, and a Terran player cannot dedicate 3-4 ghosts in one location, walking exposed across the map just for a chance to kill an opponent's infrastructure.
The other nerf here is you would no longer be able to load an already cloaked ghost in a medivac and drop it off still cloaked into an opponent's base. The cloak will run out and the ghost will be easily visible + have the remaining cooldown period to wait to re-cloak.
Against Zerg in lategame this will hurt in particular when the creep spread has covered Zerg's half of the map and reached the half way mark on the map, meaning you will never be able to sneak a ghost in and do much of anything with a nuke.
We all know how Terran has been doing lately. Terran does not need another nerf on top of every other nerf that the race has been hit with. Once again, I'll state that this all may be an oversight on Browder/Blizzard/Kim's part, and they may have not considered that their change to the ghost cloaking would be a huge nerf to Terran lategame...
But it is what it is. It's not a change, it's objectively a nerf, and unnecessary, and I would urge the developers to not change ghost cloak in this manner for HOTS, let alone any future WOL patch.
I hope by posting this that the community can see more in depth the implications of the ghost change and that this feedback can be directly useful to blizzard, so they do not further weaken Terran in late game scenarios.
edit: And if you don't want to call this a "nerf" then you can call it a terrible design change.
A lot of people may even be unaware of what blizzard was planning to do. I myself was just as unaware until the past day.
