Hi guys, I am posting this here to alert the community and blizzard developers of HOTS that they are nerfing Terran again in HOTS in the form of a ghost, cloaking, and nuking nerf (perhaps unintentionally).
edit: 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.
Last edit: 2012-07-29 02:30:08
Sup
LittleAtari Jordan. July 28 2012 05:01. Posts 1071
Are we seriously complaining about balance in a game that isnt even out yet? You cant say that something is being nerfed in a different game, when you dont even know the state of the other races.
nyaru267 United States. July 28 2012 05:02. Posts 117
Nerfs/ changes to units don't always make it into the game. Please don't complain about changes or at least complain about them when beta comes out. If its a big enough deal for players during the beta then blizzard will probably change it.
Leyra United States. July 28 2012 05:03. Posts 704
I don't understand the purpose of whining about balance for HotS, when we have no idea what balance is going to look like in HotS. Not to mention who knows if this will even end up in the game at launch. Seems like a lot of useless speculation.
The moment that cloaking will take less energy, you just activate ability again and again (8 cloacking periods and eqch lasts 30 seconds. It's huge, isn't it?)
Even though this post is unnecessary and premature, I tend to agree, this is a nerf to high level play and completely unnecessary, its not that hard to uncloak ghosts, I think this needs to be discussed more because it is such a terrible change.
If it stays like this then yes it will be a nerf in some areas but also a buff in some.
Vs Protoss, if you cloak just before running into emp and snipe then you will have more energy left to use on those spells than if you would have the energy draining constantly
The new QQ metagame. Whining about nerfs that havent even reached beta stage. You truly are a whining innovator Avilo. Seriously, how bout we wait a couple of months before we start complaining about HOTS. These threads are really getting ridiculous.
"let your freak flag fly"
Kieofire United States. July 28 2012 05:06. Posts 1786
Let the beta come out first before starting something like this to see if the changes even affect anything greatly. Especially since there will be a new meta because of a whole bunch of new units, you really need to learn to wait and test things out before trying to jump to conclusions this fast. For all we know is that this won't even make it into the beta or into the game itself comes out after the beta. But I will agree with you that it is a bad change if it does make it through because it gives less control of the ghosts as you will have to commit to using them right away when cloaking unless you want to wait awhile (depending on how long the cooldown will be after cloaking.)
Last edit: 2012-07-28 05:27:36
Roxor9999 Netherlands. July 28 2012 05:06. Posts 725
dragonborn July 28 2012 05:03. Posts 3757
