The old Firebat is not broken. It can be countered pretty easily by building an absolute shit ton of cannons, which no one who's any good at the game enjoys.
The thing is useless, read the disclaimer, this will only work vs morons and noobs. Your whole scenario talking about if the gate is capped, what if it isnt? Then what? Double lane feed, no thanks I will pass for the dead giveaway and pumping a potential power hero on the other team. Your whole scenario is based off guys being complete morons and completely situational scenarios. A ghost on foot is a no go, the whole scenario you just painted so outlandish and involves giving the other team some sort if advantage (Base feed, double lane feed, ghost feed e.t.c). Is it REALLY worth base feeding the whole team just for a really bad chance at nuking. Base feeding a the guy sittting at base for two minutes, and then him potentially killing my ghost, yea hes get the better end of the deal. The whole point is with CB/Ghost your foot is already in the door to nuke, and doesnt give the team any huge advantages, and offers the ghost protection.
If the gate isn't capped, then you have all 3 gates. Assim and win, easily. How in the fucking world is assuming the opposing team to have captured at least one warp gate "outlandish?" That happens in at least 95% of games. You still seem to think that spawns are somehow getting to the guy playing base defense, so you're clearly not understanding the strategy. Whichever lane they have capped, you break in behind it. This also has the added bonus that they teleport right by you and won't see your assault.
Your whole nuking scenario is so situational to be solid and reliable, rendering the L4 near useless. Plus it all centers around potentially base feeding another team which ,which again, has such serious negative effects. You also recommended taking shots with the firebat and dweb which is totally risky and not worth it, and will usually result in death. Admittedly, Yes taking shots would be better than busting in but then you cannot support your ghost from spawn and such because you have to run back. These scenarios are outlandish. You also seemed to forget that I mentioned that i said this is In a game with good people, not morons, base feeding in a slight attempt to nuke is nowhere close to worth it I'm sorry.
No it isn't, see above.
No it doesn't, see above.
If you're a newb, you might die to cannons. I think part of your stipulations were that we were going to assume that players aren't terrible.
I do it with Vulture all the time, and he has like half the life of a Firebat and no stun spells if he gets caught heading back to base. You don't need to support your ghosts, that's the whole idea. You can force the enemy to defend by attacking, not by whoring mana and just flying around everything and everyone. It takes time to break in, so the enemy can defend. That's not the same as "defending" a nuke with 20 seconds of warning, which essentially means waiting in your base.
Also given what you just said, since you seem to think that whole above scenario is plausible, you would need to re-build/build defenses to stop the ghost from walking through right? Well, Let's think about this for a second, if your whole suggestion is plausible, as you seem to suggest, check this scenario out:
As a good player with the assault I would want to destroy the enemy pylon and cannons, so i would always have access to the enemy base without the annoyance of of them always rebuilding pylon, because always having to re-nuke for access wastes times and alerts enemies. Time for a quick role reversal: Now as good player(s) on the opposing team of that good assault, that means I would have to rebuild defenses accordingly, since with two ghosts the enemy assault is always a threat and can always take out the cannons pretty much anytime he wishes and can take out my temple in one go with two ghosts. Okay now....
....The question i propose to you is why can't you build defenses for ONE ghost in carpet bomber, if you would have to build defenses for TWO ghosts on foot who can take out your temple in one go. You claim "Nobody wants to do that in a fast paced PvP game!", but you have to if you dont want to lose, and when you win its all the more satisfying. Teams have to build spawn to win, teams have to build cannons to win, you need defenses. Why can you not build defenses for a ghost in carpet bomber?
The point is you don't have to build defenses everywhere if the Assault doesn't have a dropship, you just maintain security of your choke points. Just like in any melee game, you hold your positions while he threatens to break though. If he threatens another side, you react there. If he does break through, then you defend for a bit until you can resecure your defensive choke. The point is that you know about this ahead of time because he can't just
fly around your initial defenses. You KNOW when he gets through them because he's nuked, and THEN you defend. Thus you aren't required to wait at your base all night every night, and you aren't building
preventative defenses, you're rebuilding already assaulted defenses and have a legitimate chance to kill the Firebat if he joins the assault. If he doesn't, he's going to be using a lot of mana trying to break in.
To Further put things into persepctive here:
Archer Temple = 2 and 4/5 of an Archietect
Golem Tribunal = 3 cannons
Mystic Temple = 4 cannons
War Factory = 5 Cannons
-These spawn all help you win don't they? They are all employed for strategic purposes, and cost two cannons and up. Defending your own temple while assaulting the enemies temple/heros. Same concept with cannons, you build cannons to defend temple from enemy Assault/Nuke while you attack their temple/heros. Do spawn defend the temple? Yes. Is building spawn boring sometimes? Yes. Do you need to guard the spawn sometimes in order to win? Yes. Do you need to build spawn in a fast paced PvP game? Yes.
I don't use spawns, they are also boring as shit and require absolutely zero skill to use. I win a good deal more than I lose, so evidently no, you don't need to build spawns. Also: heroes has an e in it.
-Lings and LM's, and Old Assaults have to guard base from summoners if there partner(s) cannot handle it effectively, is this boring? Yes. Is it needed to survive and win? Yes. Would you need to build defenses to stop the summoner from completely annihilating your base? Yes. The question here is why can you not build defenses or guard from nuke, if you have to do it vs summoner. Is guarding vs summoner boring as hell? Yes. Do you need to build defenses in order to stop him? Yes. Are defenses needed to win vs summoner in a fast paced PvP game? Yes.
A summoner doesn't kill your temple in 20 seconds unless he has about 80 upgrades. Nukes do. A summoner's units without a Summoner are almost useless in base assault. A Firebat's nuker in a Dropship without a Firebat is still ridiculously powerful.
-People have to build defenses against a DT base rushing your temple to death, and Ling/rine/hydra/Dm and in desperate scenarios old Assault are usually given guard duty because as we all know a Sin left roaming around in your base is bad news. If you have no solid detection, the you REALLY need to build defenses around temple and entrance, in an attempt to drain his mana (Using L3 to enter, and L3 to keep attacking the temple because you rebuilt cannons on both) and discourage him from his temple assault. Why can you not do the same vs Assault with carpet bomber with ghost? Same thing with sin, if you have to guard and build defenses with Sin, why can you not do it with Assault and CB? Is guarding against an assassin boring? Yes. Are defenses needed vs Assassin? Yes. Is it needed to win in a fast paced PvP game? Yes.
Have you ever actually tried this strategy? It's my favorite for the Assassin, the first TS "build" that I made, and it simply doesn't work well since the 10,000 HP change. I usually have L3 and 80 mana by the first night, but it takes forever before you can start hurting the temple. In any case, you have about 10 minutes of him pounding on the temple before it goes down, and that's assuming that he can cast L3 infinitely, which is definitely not even close to the case. So you have a huge amount of time to tech to defensible spells and then send the Assassin away without any need for building defenses.
-To a lesser extent the same applies for Hydra in the above scenarios. Archers hydra summon busting into your base, do you need to defend? Yes. Guarding temple vs Hydra spawn boring as heck? Yes. Will u eventually need to make defenses? Yes. Do you need to guard and defend in a fast paced PvP game? Yes.
Unless the Archer pulled a really fucking fancy proxy hatchery-->Nydus canal warp to bypass your initial cannons, you have plenty of time to deal with him before he gets anywhere near your temple. On top of that, you should know he's going L3 within the first 3 minutes of the game, and set yourself up to deal with mass hydralisks if you can. Then you get EXP like crazy when he tries to attack.
-Is guarding against nuke boring as hell? Yes. Do you need to build defenses in order to stop nuke? Yes. Do you need to build defenses in a fast paced PvP game sometimes? Yes.
Now, let's compare this to the other scenarios.
Summoner: "He's sending lings in suicidally to die without dark swarm, lol."
---- "What a retard."
Or..........
Summoner: "Summoner is out of base, plus tons of lings."
---- "Okay I'll take out the lings, you go for the defiler when he tries to run."
DT: "Oh, he's going for the temple, we'll need to do something about that."
---- "oh, i'll get L3 for detection long before he can kill it, no problem"
Hydra: "Hydra went L3"
----- "okay, let's flank his attack on our front cannons and kill him before he can break in"
Assault: "Assault is going nukes"
----- "Well, unlike all of these other scenarios we won't have time to react, so let's just build 6 cannons each."
Or, if you don't build defenses...
Assault: "Nuclear Launch Detected"
----- Well fuck, let's make sure another one doesn't hit too by building a shitload of cannons.
Or if you basesit all game:
----- "Damn we just got 3v2'ed and i died, why are you sitting in the base?
----- "Okay they assimed everywhere, you're still in our base?"
----- "gg, at least we didn't lose to nukes!"
These scenarios are not even remotely close to the power of a dropship+nuke. Can you counter them by building defenses? Obviously, you can turtle against anything, but in the case of Nuke+Dropship, it is the ONLY viable defense if you want to keep the game remotely close to even, and doing that slows down the game immensely. That is boring, and that is why the Nuke+Dropship should not be together in a fun competitive game.
Apologies on the length of this, there were a lot of really asinine points to reply to and I wanted to address them all.
None.