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I've learned new things today:
Snipe has higher damage than feedback, yamato, strike cannos. I cant think of any spell that has lower single enemy attack than snipe BTW, strong point.
Ghost are tanks with their 100hp for 200/100 cost
DPS lower per cost than scv is high dps

They are so broken that from this point forwar will be used in one of three T matchups. Almost like infestors, they barely usable in any matchup.

Hats off to you sir.

I've learned new things today:
Snipe has higher damage than feedback, yamato, strike cannos. I cant think of any spell that has lower single enemy attack than snipe BTW, strong point.
Ghost are tanks with their 100hp for 200/100 cost
DPS lower per cost than scv is high dps

They are so broken that from this point forwar will be used in one of three T matchups. Almost like infestors, they barely usable in any matchup.

try 1 ghost with medivac vs 4 ultralisks, if you almost die you can cloak

Be that as it may, the cost of the unit and the build time still means that there are plenty of other units that will do more damage. Actually, every other unit you can build from the barracks will do more damage cost for cost, regardless of armor type.

Can we please compare ghost auto attack damage to infestors and high templars auto attack damage?

- Vs Toss ghost have the highest burst damage spell in the game
- Vs Single bio units they have the highest single target damage spell in the game and you can stack it by just sniping again
- They are invisible and can attack - they are ranged dark templars
- They have the nuke which does the highest aoe damage in the game to both units and buildings - it can oneshot 500000000000000 broodlords
- They are an awesome tank unit because no unit does +damage to it (they always take the lowest possible damage - except vs snipe....)
- They have high dps against light aaaaaand they cost less gas than their counterparts

They are broken

You have chosen to make a completely onesided comparison. You have listed everything that is good about ghosts and none of what is bad.

- Emp does high damage to shields, but it has a ceiling. Once the shields are gone, it does nothing. Any terran player will be quick to tell you that you cant kill a toss with emp alone.
- Apart from broodlords and ultralisks, bio units are very cheap and often times expendable. Sniping marines or roaches makes no sense and the only reason you would ever do that is because you built too many ghosts against the wrong kind of unit.
- They are invisible but they cant be invisible while using snipe and emp. You cant have both.
- Nukes cost time and money and does a very slow damage to a specific area. They are powerful yes, but you wont be caught in one unless you screw up badly. Nuking is not something ghosts can just do for free.
- 100 hp is not an awesome tank unit. Zealots cost 100 minerals and they have 100 hp and 60 shields. Thats an awesome tank unit. Zerglings have 35 hp and you get 8 of them from the mineral only cost of a ghost. This point is invalid.
- Their dps vs light actually isnt high, it is medium and the gas cost of ghost is actually not very important since in most cases you go bio with ghosts and then you are limited by minerals, not gas.

You can argue good vs bad points about any unit. However, only looking at it from one side is not a good thing to do.

I've learned new things today:
Snipe has higher damage than feedback, yamato, strike cannos. I cant think of any spell that has lower single enemy attack than snipe BTW, strong point.
Ghost are tanks with their 100hp for 200/100 cost
DPS lower per cost than scv is high dps

They are so broken that from this point forwar will be used in one of three T matchups. Almost like infestors, they barely usable in any matchup.

try 1 ghost with medivac vs 4 ultralisks, if you almost die you can cloak

Try 1 DT vs. 50 ultralisks, you don't even have to cloak.
Try 1 mutalisk vs. 50 ultralisks, you don't have to micro.

Your point?

Be that as it may, the cost of the unit and the build time still means that there are plenty of other units that will do more damage. Actually, every other unit you can build from the barracks will do more damage cost for cost, regardless of armor type.

Can we please compare ghost auto attack damage to infestors and high templars auto attack damage?

- Vs Toss ghost have the highest burst damage spell in the game
- Vs Single bio units they have the highest single target damage spell in the game and you can stack it by just sniping again
- They are invisible and can attack - they are ranged dark templars
- They have the nuke which does the highest aoe damage in the game to both units and buildings - it can oneshot 500000000000000 broodlords
- They are an awesome tank unit because no unit does +damage to it (they always take the lowest possible damage - except vs snipe....)
- They have high dps against light aaaaaand they cost less gas than their counterparts

They are broken

1. While I do agree that they do high burst damage AOE to shields against protoss, but it should be considered that it can't kill any units though (then again archons...) so it should be considered bad in a longer battle (like any battle lasts more than 5sec in TvP lol, but maybe someday) since it cannot finish units off unlike storm, HSM or fungal.

2. I would consider yamato and (brace for it) 250mm strike cannons (does anyone even use that anymore?) to do a lot more damage than snipe in terms of energy cost and they can hit other unit beside bio. Then again actually getting those units could be a problem.

3. Banshees are more closer to a ranged DT than ghost imo.

4. While I agree nukes are powerful, but I don't believe them to be reliable enough to actually kill zergs whole army, but then again you never know.

5. True, but for their cost and build time they are not considered to be better tanking units like say marauder. Also they are slow with 2.25, but I guess that is in terran terms a very mobile unit though.

6. 13,4 against light units is not very much in terms of supply and cost compared to marine or a marauder with stim, at very least it deals moderate damage. Terrans tend to be more mineral heavy than gas heavy in both TvP and slightly less in TvZ due to need of having a nice big group of marines in mid game.

They are still 100HP units with 10+10Light range of 6 attacks with relatively fast attack speed (1.5). To not go too much into a detailed discussion, I will bring an example. One argument we've seen brought up is the ability to perform a rare Ghost anti-Marine rush in TvT, where you would use Snipe on them. Why is that one made irrelevant? Now after using Snipe you just have to shoot a Marine once without taking damage, because your attack range is higher.

One thing I feel is being overlooked is the fact that Ghosts actually have quite good DPS, which hasn't come into play yet, because Snipe is strong enough in itself to dispose of most biological units already.

Even if the strategy would still be somewhat viable there is no sense in making 200/100 unit to combat 50 mineral unit with regular attack.

You don't build ghost for a regular attack. You build it for snipe and emp, sometimes nukes.
2 out of 3 were severely nerfed so far, and the reasoning behind it (at least the snipe nerf) is really weak.

There is no need to fix ghost in a complicated way that affects all possible usages and scenarios, when by blizzard's own situation report, the issue is only against zerg t3. You simply substract damage to massive units and leave ghost as is in all other situations. Problem solved.

This also doesn't correspond to blizzard's own statements that any new changes will be minor tweaks.

It almost seems to me that you guys jumped the gun with this change and now you are actually unwilling to admit the mistake like some immature children when there was much more obvious and better solution which you failed to recognize. Remember what you did to reapers, now you're doing it to ghosts. And you're justifying it with bronze level comments.

20/02/2012 08:31Posted by Accelerator

Yes because you won't have any other units dealing any extra damage to ultralisks so you need always 21 snipes! This nerf is needed because its ridiculous how terrans can mass ghosts without any viking support to kill brood lords already

When? Some replays please ...

20/02/2012 21:13Posted by Cigar

try 1 ghost with medivac vs 4 ultralisks, if you almost die you can cloak

You mean you can show us a replay where 1 ghost with a medivac could take 4 ultralisks down. Right?

Can we see it?

I think there're some more "accurate" problems in the match-ups than the spines of the ghosts.

However I do agree that the way ghosts countered zerg tier3 was beyond belief and practically forced zerg to rely on units like banelings/lings that were hardcountered by the remaining tanks. I also like the idea of supporting the use of ghosts in their intended tasks, i don't think ghosts are supposed to be a straight line counter to everything.

However i feel like there're some "problems" with the idea that the ghost is a pure anticaster and cannot add anything else to the terran army. Because by the same standards should the infestors only be "support" and "casters" and hts should be only "support" and "casters".

infestors with chain fungals are able to kill off pure units and we don't talk about some random units, they can pretty much kill every single unit in this game when used right. However I feel like this is a cool idea, overall. I think the snipe nerf should come in handy but whether it should just be 50 damage and -20/25 on massive/armored units or should it be an overall nerf that makes them perform worse vs. everything else, that's questionable.

However I am not entirely sure if this is a hot topic to call in but I'd like to hear Blizzard's insights on the early game of ZvT. I feel like there's still one big design-problem in the match-up: zerg cannot scout terran in the early game. Basically terran is able to deny every single scout zerg is able to pull off, with hellions they're able to take such an early mapcontrol and force the zerg to make a lot of lings just to get some of them passed or try to hide lings on the map (that will eventually be found if terran looks for them) to scout for important timings. Practically at this point most of terrans are always able to deny any kind of overlord scout - and able to deny it to such level, that i don't even see professional players using overlord scout anymore because it just won't see a thing. Terran players also have started using their "unnecessary" buildings such as barracks to scout for overlords at different locations and just shut them down quickly with marines.

The question in my mind is, is this alright for blizzard and does this work as intended?

I'd just like to point out that terran has a lot of options they can do behind a wall-in. They can go into double-reactor-hellion, they can go for blueflame, they can for both marines/hellions and make a stim-timing with em, get a faster third inside their base and pretty much take it without risk.

I just think this is one of the more accurate problems of the match-up (zerg scouting vs. various terran early-game options)

Logically, if the problem was that ghosts countered zerg T3 too well, that implies that zerg did indeed get to T3. Most people would claim 3-4 bases are needed for that.

The problem with ghosts existed in the late game, which means zerg defended just fine in the early game.

However I will agree with you that the current situation where hellions are guarding the ramp up to the zerg natural is not a very well designed gameplay mechanic, I still think it is balanced. In fact, we need to separate "fun" and balance as much as possible, that might be our biggest problem when we talk about these things actually.

Listen to QXC and make the ghosts do less dmg against massive units only with snipe.

But not 50% less, I will settle with 30 - 35 dmg

One argument we've seen brought up is the ability to perform a rare Ghost anti-Marine rush in TvT, where you would use Snipe on them. Why is that one made irrelevant? Now after using Snipe you just have to shoot a Marine once without taking damage, because your attack range is higher.

This is actually a really good point that I regret not having thought of myself. But how about baneling sniping? If snipe could do at least 30 damage, this trick would still be possible. Considering how much APM terran army control can require, this is a really cool tactic i´d still love to see in high level play. I can understand if it´s intended though, since banelings are kind of a counter to ghosts.

As far as my knowledge is, make marine tank medivac, siege the tanks before a fight and don't let banelings get your marines. Then broodlords melt like butter to stim.

Let's compare the awesome standard DPS of ghosts against .... eh SCVs.

Ghost: cost 300, 6.7 DPS , +bonus: 13.3 DPS vs light
SCV: cost 50, 3.3 DPS, no bonus

In terms of DPS/100 cost:
- Ghost... = 2.2, ... 4.4 vs. light
- SCV..... = 6.6

Yes, you read it correctly: even the bonus damage of ghosts is less than that from an equivalent amount of SCVs.

thats why i say terrans are idiot. u compare an SCV to a ghost???????? WTF????

vikings yes ravens maybe bc not if your not goin sky terran because they just cost so much in supply and minerals and gas so its just better to go with viking and you need ghost for emp. no good player will get their corruptors baited away from the broodloards and killed.

Let's compare the awesome standard DPS of ghosts against .... eh SCVs.

Ghost: cost 300, 6.7 DPS , +bonus: 13.3 DPS vs light
SCV: cost 50, 3.3 DPS, no bonus

In terms of DPS/100 cost:
- Ghost... = 2.2, ... 4.4 vs. light
- SCV..... = 6.6

Yes, you read it correctly: even the bonus damage of ghosts is less than that from an equivalent amount of SCVs.

thats why i say terrans are idiot. u compare an SCV to a ghost???????? WTF????

He is comparing DPS per cost of those two units because blue said Ghosts have amazing DPS. That proves him wrong.

21/02/2012 13:53Posted by FrostVVind

thats why i say terrans are idiot. u compare an SCV to a ghost???????? WTF????

Bluepost stated that ghosts have nice dps vs light unit, wich is not true according to cost/efficient. SCV was set as most ridiculous example. I wonder how it can not be understand.

Talking about ghost problem:
1) Late zerg tech switches: ghosts are universal, marauders and vikings are not. That means that you can't blindly make marauders, cuz zerg can just pop out with more lings+broodlords, neither you can make 8 more vikings, cuz zerg can just head on with ultras. It's not that big problem for me personally, cuz I'm an mech player, so I use thor-vikings anyways (but I hardly belive it works on high level).

2) TvP: ffs, blizzard... Even lowbie player like me use snipes against those freakin zealots. What should I do now? It's kinda popular to go zealot-archon-colossi-ht army in late game with lots of zealots, and now because of zerg t3 problem I'll have problem with toss t1?! Is there any logic?

3) TvT: there were some ghosts BO's, they were rare but it's still a different game strategies. With this patch you'll just cut them out.

Why are they going through with such important changes without first testing them on the PTR?
Everytime there are significant unit changes,there is PTR to test things,so what gives this time?

Time to switch to Protoss I suppose.

It's interesting to note that Blizzard recently made the Broodlord-Ultra tech switch more powerful by reducing the build time of Ultras.

The snipe nerf is the second buff to that tactic in consecutive patches. I guess David Kim is trying to tell the zerg players something!

21/02/2012 13:53Posted by FrostVVind

thats why i say terrans are idiot. u compare an SCV to a ghost???????? WTF????

Oh irony.