Idea enderpearls.

i legitimately have discussed a nerf 100+ times of a perfect ghost capping nerf. Make it so ninja cant grab flag if enderpearls out of inven

 

A decent nerf for this would be a defense that actually pays attention. If a ninja can get in and out without any of the defense seeing them, that ninja deserves that cap. Think of ghosting as a reminder that the defense actually has to play defense. It's not like a ninja grabs the flag instantly, they have to stand there for an almost comical amount of time, and, somehow, nobody notices???

Your idea looks good, going over 4 seconds feels excessive. I feel like we should leave a class like ninja alone, seeing how its mobility is the class's only real advantage, and focus on more broken classes like necro and dwarf.

 

Well, even if the defense is paying attention, the defense would probably only get like 3-4 hits off of the ninja if pearl is timed well.
While this may seem like a lot of damage, a ninja can block, so a medic hitting a ninja 3 times in a row while it's blocking would only deal 3 hearts of damage in total, which on small maps like blackout and harvest, is enough health left for a ninja to either cap or die near their spawn. But I hear you say, medic is the weakest hitting class in the game! Well, if this were a heavy instead of a medic, then it'd be about 5 hearts lost, which is still enough to at least make it back to spawn. And this is assuming that someone was camping the flag, spam clicking on it. Most of the time, with a well timed pearl, the defense would only get like 0-2 hits off.
So ninja capping is still pretty op, and at least needs a quick tweak. (Nom said it took about an hour to implement all of the quick fix thread ideas, so this should take like 10 minutes)

 

"play defence" is an invalid argument when the class has the ability to

a) go "invisible" with the side benefit of being completely invulnerable to melee damage
b) teleport across half the map within a second of grabbing the flag

i can't "play defence" against a class that can both become both invisible and invincible, and can teleport past me if i'm anything but another ninja. with those abilities, a ninja that gets in and out without being spotted is nothing special, if you do get spotted you either messed up or you're bad.

if you want to fully guard against ninja caps you need a heavy or something literally staring at the flag the entire game. that isn't "playing defence", that's just poorly designed gameplay and a broken class.

 

The idea sounds good, but the time is kinda meh:
The time in between throwing the pearl and the pearl landing across the map is 4+ seconds. That means that once the pearl lands, the cooldown will already have ended.
Although there is one way the time could not be meh, and that's if I misunderstood your post and that you actually meant that the cooldown would start after the pearl lands, so after the pearl lands you would have to wait 2-4 seconds before you can throw another pearl.