Ghost is the most cost efficient lategame unit of terran in TvZ. And it seems like there is no real answer to that from Zerg, when played correctly, especially when the midgame wasnt ling-bane-hydra/lurker. See Dark vs Maru.
So does the Ghost need a slight nerf for its Snipe ability? The snipe interruption or energy loss reverted?
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That depends. Infestors can prevent Ghosts from casting Snipe with Fungal, and Brood Lords can also do it if they have vision. NP into EMP is another option that can sometimes be used to drain Ghost energy.
Snipe tends to have this all or nothing effect where either the Ghosts can snipe, or they get denied and become useless paperweights.
To be blunt. I don’t like Snipe or Steady-Targeting for one simple reason: They can be stacked without penalty, and that encourages the player to mass Ghosts.
Most spells come in the form of dots or specific AOE effects that can only be applied by one source. If you reapply the spell before the prior one is over, some of that effect is lost; and so there is a soft cap on the number of casters that the player can reasonably benefit from.
If a spell stacks without penalty or limit, then it creates a scenario where any caster that is “good enough” as a caster is something you want to mass to destroy armies. Ravens with Seeker Missiles used to have that problem, and so did Infestors with Infested Terran. When either spell was worth using, mass caster armies could delete other armies.
The only instant-damage spell that doesn’t share the mass-caster problem is EMP. That is because there is a soft-cap imposed by shields and energy, rendering casts beyond the first or second meaningless in most cases.
Anyway, I think there are problems with Steady-Targeting, but I don’t really have an idea what could/should replace it.
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Ghost is simply bad design in TvZ, because ghost is overloaded.
caster are taken out by emp.
everything that is 2 sup or more will be snip.
against the rest ghost can trade effciently with auto attack.
Ghost is fast and tanky.
but this has been known for a long time, not just since GSL.
dark himself says in an interview that he feels T late game is stronger. That’s why he plays more strategies for mid game in TvZ.
myself i think dark had more problems with the 3 reaper start.
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It is easier to EMP/Snipe infestor than to hit a fungal with them on Ghost though.
Maybe Ghosts should have a light tag? I always wondered why a sniper/ghost type of unit isnt light. This would make them not so tanky vs banelings. And therefore deny a lot of the tanking they can take atm.
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IMO the problem with late-game ZvT can be reduced to one word: Ghosts. Ghosts are a bit OP, IMO. Sniping is EXTREMELY powerful against every late-game unit of Zerg. It’s strong against Ultras, Vipers and Lurkers. On top of that Ghosts aren’t Light, aren’t Armored, can get Cloak, can get Nukes, do decent base damage AND they come from Barracks which Ts always have plenty. In the hands of a skilled T who knows how to micro them they become the centerpiece of T’s army. In some ways a group of Ghosts becomes something like a Queen in chess in the end-game. They are EXTREMELY powerful and their power grows with micro skills, so in the hands of the likes of Maru they become truly devastating. Snipe does massive damage, has great range, low energy cost and an can be stacked ad infinitum. I would nerf Ghosts in some way a bit, but I’m not sure how. Maybe Steady Targeting should cost 75 energy instead of 50?
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Ghost is fine Dark was just outplayed by the sc2 GOAT
Zerg players whining
Where were you guys when Serral and reynor was dominating ? To this day, only ZERG has been able to compete with koreans on a main event stage. No other races are able to beat koreans. Understand that
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Remember the time zerg late game was insanely broken (infested terran and broodlord) it forced terran and protoss to end the game before zerg expand enough gas to mass infestors?
I think it is only fair for terran to have the strongest late game simply due to the fact that terran expand slowest and have the weakest reinforcement options. It is not easy for terran to reactively defend a base compared to protoss or zerg who can just warp-in, cast spells, run on creep or move via nydus.
This is reasonable. Bcs ghosts and a marine/marauder ball is probably far better late game than anything p or z has.
I am a Terran player on Masters, and watch more sc2 nowadays than playing. Obvious imbalance is nothing to shy away from for the own good.
Late game? Literally any late game CRUSHES MMM. Fungal Bane. Triple Splash Protoss. Sky Protoss. Lurker. Infestor Brood.
Weird that people are complaining about Terran late game when any pro I’ve ever asked on stream (including Zerg and Protoss players) tell me to avoid it like the plague (though they say TVZ is winnable).
The only thing Terran really has in late game is Mass Orbitals, which are pretty damned crazy.
mmm does not include ghost
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but you understand the difference?
T- has several options in the early,mid to mid-late game.
until zerg had his bl/ infestor.
These options zerg does not have so.
then give zerg a larger time window in which z can make pressure.
you have already mentioned two possibilities:
- Make light
- Change snip cost
alternatively:
- slow down speed
- sup increase 2->3/4
- Reduce HP
- Change cost more gas
- change auto attack: remove/ water balloon/ don’t hit air
there are many possibilities which have only little effect but work over a long time.
Eh, this is a bit of an oversimplification, because Infestors and Vipers shut down most other Terran options HARD with Neural, Blinding Cloud, and parasitic bomb. Ghosts become essentially the only usable tech unit at that stage. Yeah, Ghosts are a problem, but Terran is also completely forced into them because nothing else is usable.
Late game ZvT is basically just a spellcaster war, and Ghosts are relatively easy to use because they have a basic attack and can cloak. Zerg needs to land fungals to deal with them, but Ghosts can EMP the infestors; without fungal, Zerg can’t kill the ghosts with anything other than banelings or ally-targeted lurkers, because the overseers will simply get sniped off, and neither unit is particularly good vs ghosts.
Parasitic bomb, Steady targeting, and Neural all have serious issues, and it’d probably be best to remove them outright.
If Pbomb was gone at least, vikings would become a reasonable response vs Brood Lords, which would make more sense than relying on thors/ghosts against them (which is sort of awkward and feels weird on both sides.) because Vikings unusable/too easily countered. If neural was removed, units like thors wouldn’t be a potentially massive liability.
If Steady Targeting was removed (or replaced with something that didn’t deal instant burst damage or that didn’t stack, like an irradiation grenade or something that applied a DoT effect), then Zerg could actually get some use out of units like Ultras.
Lurkers might be an issue in that situation, but if air units for Terran become viable, they could go for liberators or BCs to deal with them, or they could use tanks while zoning out vipers with vikings.
The problem is that EVERYTHING in the match up is practically hard-countered by Ghosts, Infestors, and/or Vipers. It’s just a matter of getting access to enough gas to make ghosts/infestors in large numbers and maintaining those units.
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IMO, instead of “removing” abilities/units they should be tweaked a bit numerically. Removing something is a HUGE balance change with rippling consequences. It’s more sensible to make some little numerical changes: for ex. Steady Targeting 75 energy. There are some “breakpoints” in this game which shouldn’t be changed, for ex. a single Parasitic Bomb + Fungal Growth combo deals exactly 150 damage which is EXACTLY enough to destroy a Medivac. For this reason PB or FG shouldn’t have their damage reduced. You basically reduce their damage by ONE point and it could have a MAJOR balance effect at the pro level.
One tell that something is wrong with Ghosts is that it’s the only “caster” which is massed. Another way to balance Ghosts would be this: each snipe within 5 seconds from the previous one costs +25 energy.
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Should compare players that are more equally matched, i.e. Serral vs Maru.
Should we nerf Zerg into oblivion since Serral and Reynor win everything in Europe? No, because Korean Terrans exist.
Dark is an amazing player (and if I was making SC3 I would try my best to hire him as a consultant) but he is not Serral. He is not Rogue either.
here we go again… 
Snipe in general is a toned down version of SC1 Lockdown.
Ultralisk, Viper and Broodlord exist.
If you don’t kill these units immediately you are dead.
Ultralisk in particular is a damage sponge that due to its hp pool, armour and size pretty much ignores damage from tank-marine army (and even marauder-WM trades poorly with Ultra).
To deal with Ultra you need a source of burst damage, fast and mobile one, and out of Terran arsenal only Ghost with its Snipe fits this description.
You need 3 Ghosts per Ultra because your army won’t live long enough to see the Ghost doin second snipeshot. Not to mention that to have energy for multiple snipeshots your Ghosts need to chill around for quite significant amount of time.
In case of Viper and BL, you need 2 Ghosts per Viper and BL because if you don’t kill them immediately they will kill your army: Viper Abduct is instant and cancels snipe so in Viper vs Ghost Viper always win, and BL have the same range as Ghost (its projectile however is not instant and it lands at about the same time that snipeshot connects; furthermore its projectile turns into broodling and it will prevent ghost from firing again).
Thus the NEED for MASS Ghost. Zerg can pop out plenty of heavy hitters I mentioned anytime and they are ready to attack immediately. Terran don’t have the luxury of building units when he needs them: Terran need to have counter-units pre-emptively. And in case of Ghosts even more so because Ghost need time to accumulate energy and unlike certain other caster they don’t have Consume spell.
Pff, if it was Raven who had EMP you would be whining about it just as much as you do now.
Dark regularly makes 20 or so infestors in late game vs Terran.
Ghosts are not the only massed spellcaster. Infestors are also massed - it’s just a lot more difficult to control them because they’re fat and don’t have an attack.
The late game ZvT is kind of on a knife’s edge right now due to that spellcaster balance. The spellcasters counter everything - ghosts just happen to do it a bit better/more easily in the current state of the game, so Terran has a slight edge at that top level of play, but the moment ghosts are nerfed, it likely flips entirely the other direction, because ghosts are basically the only viable unit Terran has vs infestors.
I don’t think removing the reliability of killing medivacs with these spells would particularly hurt the balance of the match up. Zerg has other effective anti-air options, like corruptors (and ling/bane/corruptor has been a meta for Zerg in the past vs Terran for exactly that), and medivacs regularly take chip damage from spores and queens.
Pbomb is so powerful that it makes any lower HP air units in reasonable numbers vs Zerg completely non-viable. Sure, they could do other nerfs, like make it not attach to the unit and reduce the radius significantly (because why does it have double the radius of storm when units can’t easily move out of it?), but ultimately it’s likely to end up with the same problem of either just being too powerful vs lower HP air units, especially in combination with fungal, or being so weak that it’s not even worth using, and there’s not a good way to get something in-between without replacing the spell or completely reworking it.
And these units should have other counters. Ultras do - Thors, Libs, and Marauders (with a little bit of micro) are all quite strong against them. Ghosts are just so much better at it that other units are kind of a joke. Why make anything else when Ghosts can 3 shot ultras with an easily spammable ability?
Similarly, Brood Lords wouldn’t be so bad to deal with without ghosts if Vikings were usable vs Zerg, but Pbomb does 120 damage with a radius of 3 (double the radius of storm), and vikings have 135hp, so that’s clearly not an option; Thors trade well into small-moderate numbers of brood lords, but critical mass brood lords still end up advantaged against them, neural makes Thors a bit of a liability, and Thors are slow ground units.
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lol did you even tried using Thors and/or Marauders against Ultras?
Well I actually did and it didn’t work. I would even say - fails pathetically.
Liberators - in Gold league they will work against Ultras. Outside of it however Zerg will just don’t walk into very visible circle.
Or build units that will kill them for free, e.g. Corruptors or Vipers.
Liberators simply don’t work without healthy number of Ghosts under them, and a meatshield in front of Ghosts (either PFs or mass Marauders).
Zerg can even throw away Ultras and then remax on Hydra-Lurker-Viper and kill you because this is Zerg - it can do instant tech switches.
Terran can’t do that.
Thus BY DESIGN Teran units are supposed to be universal.
Even without Pbomb existing, vikings are useless in this match up against anything that is not a BL and thus if T invest significant amount of supply into Viking that Zerg would just straight win the game.
Ghosts have SO MANY abilities, offer SO MUCH utility and require LOTS of solid micro. This makes them feel like… a hero unit. Thus with Ghosts you can get 20+ “hero units” as a T in your game. Something is wrong here. No other unit compares with Ghosts in terms of flexibility and utility. They also practically have no weaknesses. In many ways Ghosts look like some kind of Ultimate Unit and that often is a sign of a bad design or balance problems.
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