Starcraftwire/incgamer - Lategame Protoss/Terran Gameplay Impressions

[SaharaDrac]

All I'm sayihng is that's not really that powerful.

[Pandonetho]

Exactly how powerful do you want it? The ghost isn't an extremely expensive high tech unit. If people can mass science vessels in SC1, they most certainly can mass ghosts in SC2.

All it takes is 3 snipes to take out a Queen.
2 for the majority of other units that it works on.

[Norfindel]

Snipe will be used to kill spellcasters. I doubt someone would like to use energy (that they need to keep their asses cloaked) to kill a Zergling

[Aldrius]

It's not an AoE ability, and it doesn't do a lot of damage to legitimize the micro involved.

...eh? There's hardly any micro involved, if they're at 11 range away, they'll use it. It's two clicks. How hard is it to click twice? Once to click n (or whatever) then click your targets.

The ghosts are specialists, you cast the spells on the units you want dead or whatever... not... really that much more complicated than any spellcaster. Like Neural Parasite, or anything like that.

[sandwich_bird]

Exactly how powerful do you want it? The ghost isn't an extremely expensive high tech unit. If people can mass science vessels in SC1, they most certainly can mass ghosts in SC2.

All it takes is 3 snipes to take out a Queen.
2 for the majority of other units that it works on.

but that's a lot of click if you can't autocast it. I'm on the side of those believing it's too much micro. I mean if it was that easy to use that kind of spell then tvp in SCI could make infantry build useful against zeal + goon build. Just use your ghost to lockdown all the goons (since it's that easy to use) and then stim to kill zeal and make sure you emp the toss support units with your sci vessel and don't forget to expand/tech/macro and yeah you win! It's that easy.

[Aldrius]

but that's a lot of click if you can't autocast it. I'm on the side of those believing it's too much micro. I mean if it was that easy to use that kind of spell then tvp in SCI could make infantry build useful against zeal + goon build. Just use your ghost to lockdown all the goons (since it's that easy to use) and then stim to kill zeal and make sure you emp the toss support units with your sci vessel and don't forget to expand/tech/macro and yeah you win! It's that easy.

You're forgetting smart cast.

Also, Lockdown isn't as useful as Snipe. There aren't too, too many good targets for lockdown, there are far more for snipe. (Lockdown would also be much more useful in the early game.)

[Pandonetho]

Smartcasts negates everything hard about using snipe.

Honestly.

Assume N was the hotkey for snipe.

Select 12 ghosts

N click N click N click repeat

Wow guys, real hard.

Sounds to me as if it's almost as hard as 1a2a3a4a, oh I forgot to add "click" after each a.

[RamiZ]

I really dont see why are you guys complaining about Snipe being an APM sink... It really is easy to cast it when we have smartcasting now... Also I would EMP few Infestors, but if smart player split them, I wont use EMP on every one of them, I will use snipe.

[Triceron]

We have smartcasting in War3, but there's a difference between having dryads for support, and using them to abolish magic enemy summonables on the field. The good microer who uses abolish magic on skeles vastly neutralizes this threat. One thing to note however is the pacing of War3 makes it so using abolish magic is possible and impactful; as every unit in War3 matters.

Starcraft is fast enough that zerglings with speed upgrade would make Snipe a relatively low impact threat. Snipe becomes more of a threat in the hands of a pro who might be able to use snipe to full effect against speed upgraded lings. I'm not saying pros will use snipe on lings, but they could. It's easy for anyone to click hotkeys and click on units, but APM makes a significant difference against fast moving targets such as this.

I think this is an ability that has the potential of creating a large gap between good micro and omgwtf micro.

As for being a counter for enemy casters, I understand that this ability is great for that, but that is the only priority target meant for snipe. I feel this is a poorly designed ability that could be a LOT better if it had a more specific function rather than being a generally weak Yamato on moderately priced early-mid tier unit.

[SpiderBrigade]

Starcraft is fast enough that zerglings with speed upgrade would make Snipe a relatively low impact threat. Snipe becomes more of a threat in the hands of a pro who might be able to use snipe to full effect against speed upgraded lings. I'm not saying pros will use snipe on lings, but they could. It's easy for anyone to click hotkeys and click on units, but APM makes a significant difference against fast moving targets such as this.

Well that's true that it would be hard to use Snipe on fast targets like zerglings, but that's not what snipe is for, I mean it's been described many times as being anti-caster, or against things like mutas. If your enemy is just going mass lings, ghosts are probably not the right unit to use to counter it.

I mean, is your point that a super-high-skill progamer could use ghosts (not the best unit vs lings) to do good damage against lings by spending copious amounts of APM? Sure, of course that's true, but so what? It's kind of like how you need to be at a certain level of skill to use Vultures effectively against Zealots. Or, any of the Pimpest Plays where you see a pro do something amazing with a suboptimal mix of units. Progamers can do amazing things, that's why they're pros.

I think this is an ability that has the potential of creating a large gap between good micro and omgwtf micro.

Isn't that a good thing, though? I mean...imagine a TvT match where both players do a ghost-heavy build. It would come down to who microed the ghosts better, either for sniping or for EMP to shut down the enemy ghost. In other words the victory comes down to who has more skill...again, isn't that good?