Abathur (Air) and Gas

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

This is a topic I brought up in another thread. The thesis is simple: I tend to run out of gas as Abathur whenever I attempt to go air.

Specifically, a versatile flying army I want to acquire (depending on enemy composition) needs: At least 18 units of Muta + Guardian (some) + Devourer (Some), two Spires (one being Greater), and frequent upgrade while building a land army (size depends on enemy composition).

The reason I go air, if not because of enemy composition, is to get Leviathan; I’m regularly encouraged by fellow Abathur player to get all six ults. At the same time, one reason I’m attracted to P1 is because I’m NOT required to get air units at all. Yes, I know Muta is awesome, but one shouldn’t be required to build any specific unit in coop.

If there’s a way to remedy my difficulty, I’d love to hear it. Abathur is one of my favorite COs.

2

Could you share some vids to demonstrate the issue? I’m wondering if some adjustments to build order could help.

3

Hmm… air & gas… I feel like there’s a pun in there somewhere…

4

You could play P2, that is if you’re not only just massing swarm hosts. But I do like making a mass Ravager and Swarm Host Army and all you really need are 3 mutalisks to morph to Leviathans then you can just roll with them or upgrade their armor to make them tank air better.

5

As others have mentioned, Abathur is one of the few commanders where a lean and mean concentrated biomass machine can benefit from a funneling biomass in to a few targets in order to maximize the biomass benefits in a few, but powerful 70-100 biomass units.

Vs a plentiful but thinly spread out 25-50 biomass army.

  • (At 100 Biomass, A unit’s gets 300% health, attack speed +100%, energy regeneration +500%, and 100% life leech. Ravagers and Swarm Hosts additionally have their cooldowns reduced by up to 50%, and Roaches receive up to 5 additional armor.)

As others have noted, mutalisks tend to be a common bread and butter air unit.
They’re fragile, they die easily, they die to plague easily. But they move fast, hit hard, and considering the zerg commanders that have access to hydralisks are often limited (While nearly every coop commander gets access to some form of muta upgrades, Glaive bounces, DehakaLisks self reviving, AbaLisks biomass leeching + healing), Etc.

Having one 300% health mutalisk with 200% dps and 100% life leach basically means you get 200% dmg and effectively 200% normal dps’s worth of life leech over a normal mutalisk.

While having a high hp pool might make it easier for them to survive plague aoes as well as self sustain or fight against mutators. Another side note is that it’s often easier to keep a single tanky 300% hp unit than 2x squishy units. (Though playstyles often vary).

I think if you’re the kind of person who loses squishy units constantly, Thinks Psionic storms sound like a nice sort of Sauna, or just wants really good life leech, both approaches can both achieve pretty decent results. (Small yet Tall Abby vs Wide with swarm queen healswarms and dmged unit micro)

If you ever lose a unit though, or you play wide strats losing 20-50 biomass units like confetti bombs being thrown into the wind, that’s biomass you’re only getting 50% back and going small and tall can make it easier to hold.

However, maxed out on abathur, the Symboities 200-400 hp shell also can act as a pseudo taunt as well, often drawing fire. And you can often shuffle them around with minimal micro to shuffle the shields around to dmg split. (Just like one of the most basic Tychus Rattlesnake vs Nikara play differences is to just rotate the dmg around).

You have up to 3-6x 400 hp shields, and while they can’t block all damage, it can significantly help keep your 100-125 hp squishes alive a little easier while also adding lots of dramatic sustain power. After all, 1200-2400 hp beats 400.

(This is another reason why i’ve never really been convinced on P3 +45% biomass vs +100% symbiotes mastery either.

  • Sure, you can mass a lot of ults on paper, but each is pretty much half as strong for 2x more. Almost 60% of a ult’s single target dps comes from symbiotes (20 dps ult, 20-40 dps symbiotes).

And pretty much all your shields comes from Symbiotes as well. Sure, that can make for 9-12+ ult P3 plays on +45% biomass instead of +100% symbiote abilities.

But 6 normal p0/p2 ults are as strong as those 9. Both are (kinda) all functional. There’s no commander that is completely useless or unable to win a mission. But i think i’d rather have a abathur ready at 100 bio if his partner is a karax than 200.

You will pretty much always be more limited by gas on Abathur than Minerals if you want to flood a non Roach/swarm Queen army for sure though. And mutalisks for sure are always gas constrained.

I think the main point usually isn’t that abathur will float less gas, but p2’s downside will just end up funneling people towards those tight but fed armies.

Honestly if you protect your units and either heal them on a wide comp, or life leech ± symbotite shield tanks, both are pretty viable for base brutal without losses.

If you see a mutation like black death or a mutator where leech is far more beneficial, it’s probably very fair to consider tall biomass comps vs Thin but wide spreads. It’s also probably fair to note that Swarm hosts are one of the units that DOUBLE DIP on biomass most..

As not only do they receive all the benefits basically twice, but 300% hp + 200% dps + 100% life leech + 2x cds also makes each locust more tanky/live longer, and probably one of the biggest exponential rewards to biomass you can see in Abathur’s army.

Viper’s are a pretty beast unit but consumption already leaves them at nigh unlimited energy, so they’re worth saving but not really (intentionally feeding for energy regen).

6

For P1 air Abathur

  1. you don’t need 2 spires (fast upgrades and fast buildings means 1 is fine)
  2. your “ground army” should be almost all unupgraded roaches because they are a throw away mineral sink (if they die, it doesn’t matter because any biomass they picked up is recycled, and they only cost you minerals)

Gas will be your limit and you want to manage your air army carefully until it deathballs with biomass.

As for leviathans…
P2 I’d say ignore leviathans and just get the brutalisks…you have the rapid teleport with all ground (except queens)

P0. you probably won’t have a Large air army until late game (as opposed to just microing some mutas to get leviathans)…and if you want that…1 spire and stick to roach queen to for ground…low gas cost.

P3….biomass is the only real limit and it is hard.

As for “Tall” v “Thin”…P1 ensures that adding units only helps (with the exception of Swarm Hosts). Because if your low biomass units die, then they become Tall (and except for Swarm Hosts,

2 units with 0 biomass the same dps as 1 unit with 100 biomass
and
2 units sharing 100 biomass is going to take about as much damage as 1 with 100 biomass (because after the first one dies the other gets its biomass)

7

So I do a pretty standard opening with Abathur which is 3 Roaches, 3 muta, 6 queen (though while the Queens are being built I’m developing other tech). This gives me all my ults and carries the early game.

At this point I have 2 basic armies I build:
Vs Ground:

  • 8-16+ Swarm Hosts
  • 3 Vipers
  • Optional: 8 Guardians or 16 Muta

Vs Air:

  • 12-16 Ravager (make sure you use Rapid Fire)
  • 16 Muta
  • Optional: 6 Devourer
  • Optional expert level: 3 Vipers

Either way the Mutas are added quite late and I usually build 8 at a time and then path them around the map to pick up biomass to bulk them up (you can path them individually but it’s either too much APM or too dangerous with mutators). I only build 1 spire (get Weapon upgrades I and II and then muta upgrades, then Guardian/Devourer upgrades, then weapons III. Never get Armour upgrades).

Ravagers compliment mutas perfectly (especially as P1) as they have low gas cost, massive bulk (which crowds out other ground units) and ability to snipe threats. I recommend building Ravagers first if you intend to go into Mutas (and make sure you have rapid fire setup and keyboard refresh rate increased).

I see 4 main uses for my APM playing Abathur:

  • Brutalisk micro: keep these guys alive by pulling them back when they take hits even deep tunnelling away if you have to and using Deep Tunnel to respond to threats.
  • Ravager micro: smash all threats and groups of clumped up units with massive Bile waves.
  • Viper micro: Blinding Cloud and Abduct are some of the most powerful CC available in Coop. Use aggressively.
  • Muta micro: before they get biomass these guys are paper plane levels of flimsy, invest micro to collect biomass and then hold them back from fights for a second or two so they don’t draw all the aggro (even bulked up with biomass a few Parasitic Bombs, Irradiates, Seeker Missiles or Psistorms can soften up/kill large amounts of your flock).

However, I don’t think it’s possible for most players to do all 4 of these perfectly together so in particular I can recommend avoiding building Vipers and Ravagers together until you get super comfortable with both.

8

Yeah of all the cc units available in coop, Sam’s 5 sec c4 (which usually requires a 600/200 or 1600/600 investment) as well as Abathur’s viper’s abducts (Which i think might be upgradable to 1-> 5 or 6 sec stuns), are pretty powerful.

Karax’s chain stuns too can also be extremely powerful. (But often are energy conserved or lock the karax player’s attention as well. )

Often times, past 3-5 seconds of cd, most things outside of 10,000 hp objectives tend to die. Ravagers can have really good potential for the cost too and rapidfire is really good for them. Honestly i feel like Abathur’s Ults and Vipers are just too good to pass up.

You can basically abduct and shut down a lot of comps with the clouds which is why i always felt like p3 was overkill for a problem he already had few issues with. (But doubled down on his early game or weaknesses)

It is true that in sc2, in theory perfect play would be theoretically a near infinite skill cap. Even if one could reach like 5 units 250 apm, a bot or human could *technically improve (if it was possible), up to like 400-500 apm, control 8 perfect micro groups, assault a base and perfectly micro all spellcasters.

I think you can kinda do a lazy nova style lazytab, shuffle symbotites, clear the nasty enemy spellcasters with vipers, and then tab to ravagers for fun and let hell run lose.

But it is very true that there can be huge diminishing (as well as mental) returns on focus. A lot of people will want to say they tryhard 250 jesus apm and micro 20 groups.

But honestly outside of replays, a lot of players seem to be playing at a casual 20-60 apm range for brutal or weeklies. They build a army, f2a to a location, Etc. Honestly outside of like a few vets or the few unicorns here and there, most general pugs seem to play pretty lax.

Pretty much every Abathur luring worth his salt and using vipers/abilities at least hits 40-80 apm just doing their toxic nest lures and moving a spine lurker or spore colony. I’ve seen a couple Novas give a lecture about the skill cap of the commander and then play with a apm lower than the 17 apm you can get just building workers.

I think people have done like ai tests just for fun and pretty much there’s like results for bots to see improvements all the way up to 400-800 apm, to do stuff like have 20 marines split and 20 control group split away from a baneling kiting ball with perfect stims.

But obviously of course, most people will say they want to do it all apm jesusing all over the fourms, but relax and have a often comfortably human game for them. Even a couple of the speedruns where potential for like 5 squad minimap lone wolf controlling is shown, even the speedrunners will seem to only feel like actively microing 2-3 of them.

Impactful apm is indeed a number that’s unlimited on paper, restricted by practicality in practice. Especially in coop where you fight a bot. It is good to know all the fun things you can do with it, and def agree.

  • Vipers are extremely powerful,
  • Ults/ Symboite shield shuffling and saving your ults is very powerful.
  • Avoiding losing biomass so you can hit a unstoppable lategame is also extremely powerful.
  • Micro can benefit almost any commander with units you want to care about. Even Stukov, a commander known to be able to rally point afk legions, is still technically able to micro his marine groups to split groups or dodge aoes. (He just often doesn’t find his disposable Zom Men worth the effort lol)

You will pretty much always be short on gas if you try to Mass any Zerg air unit, (or any terran/ carrier unit as well) tbh. As mentioned, Roaches/Ravagers and Swarm Queens can always be a useful mineral dump.

Swarm queens can somewhat heal your armies and somewhat protect squishies. Roaches can be surprisingly tanky for a common unit and can add a -75% attack speed debuff on a common attack i think. (Pretty much everything after a lured abathur can be absurd, yeah).

I think Abathur’s roaches can also hit a (WHOPPING), up to 10-16 armor with their under 50% hp bonus / +5 biomass bonus. Pretty much making them take tickle dmg to a lot. (However they don’t bring a lot of dps and don’t hit air, and Ult’s Symboite’s shields might do a hidden auto taunt). Kinda making their tankiness kinda redundant.

I still reckon it’s often nice to always keep a couple roaches around, even just for the attack speed slow though.

They’re not that rewarding to mass though. It’s like the joke about a army of WoW Ret pallies. “You need a army to kill ONE, but it takes a army of THEM to kill anything!!!”

I’d just play around, never feel bad about making a personal playstyle or what works for you. I was often fond of aiming for no human death runs on Terran commanders like Raynor/nova back from no death runs on Sc1.

Just as long as you aren’t ending the run or doing something COOP stupid like killing a ally trying to snipe a l4d2 smoker with a shotgun as they die to death by climbing a 20 foot high tower. You should be good.

( I had a pug wipe the party in coop with a team incap doing that the other day lmao. )

1 Like
9

For cases of Mutas dying, remember to use his Mend top bar ability! It’s not that many, but there were still some Abathur players who either didn’t use it, or very rarely.

10

This will almost always REDUCE the strength of your army and should be avoided as they will soak up valuable Biomass from units that need it much more.

Please please please try to reduce the length of your posts by say 2/3rds :pray:. I want to figure out what your point is but your posts are so long I have to flick through them and look for key words that might be relevant.

11

If you just want Leviathans, and are not especially interested by an actual air army, just get 3 Vipers that go leech off stuff left by ground army :smiley:
You probably make its only prerequisite, the infestation pit, for swarm hosts or hive or lvl3 upgrade anyway.

12

Uhh no 3 Vipers is more gas than 1 spire and 3 muta and you absolutely want Weapon upgrades for your Leviathan.

13

Abathur’s roaches come with a 75% slow to speed and attack speed on a common attack. To say a 75% slow is worthless and and should never be considered seems perhaps a bit short.

You might not always want to mass them but having a few like 1-3 for the slow pretty much means once a enemy gets 1 attack in, their second comes significantly slower.

You can also often use small micro to pick a single unit to eat up 86 biomass drops as well post encounter and still focus on tall units. Though generally outside of black death mutators its always nearly abathurs ults and vipers that shine to me.

14

3 Roaches will take 300 Biomass away from units that need it much more significantly reducing the damage output of your early game army. If you could prevent them from gathering Biomass or you are playing P1 and can kill them to collect their Biomass there might be an argument but otherwise they are almost always a bad idea.

Abathur doesn’t need more survivability he already has that in spades what he needs is more damage output.

Only circumstance I can think of that might warrant building Roaches would be to have them hold position in front of Spine Crawlers to tank for them in a defensive situation or to provide a similar tanking role for an allies units. However, I usually still wouldn’t build more than the 3 required to get 3 Brutas (for instance I’d build 3 Roaches to defend the first ship on ME if I couldn’t get a Bruta out in time due to mutations but they would all hopefully get converted to Bruta).

15

I mean… It’s really not all that hard to just select the unit you want to feed and fly over the biomass.

And most of the benefits from a p0 biomass are just 300% hp, 200% attack speed and 100% life leech.

A abathur roach does base 8-12 ground dps. A mutalisk does base 6-12 single target dps and about 14.5-27 dps with all bounces and vs armored bonuses. (Ignoring armor)

It is true you wouldn’t want to mass biomass on them or build a army that swamped it out.

But i suppose if it was a mutator like black death or where guarenteed f2a biomass concentration was important i could see.

But i really think you might be overreacting a bit to roaches on a non black death setting. You can usually spread plague clouds to minimalize muta aoe.

There’s definitely both merits to a tall and large army double dipping on biomass or p2’s downside being less than it would seem. But if a game ends with 900:300 and was never really in any danger.

3 roaches having 20-47 biomass with 9-12 well fed mutas and rotating ults never seemed that terrible vs target feeding to me.

If anything it kind of perhaps felt like the other way around to me.100 biomass on a muta vs a roach is a maybe 3-20 dps worse case scenario. About the dps of a single raynor marine. The life leech and air hitting would definitely be more significant too, as is the survivalbility of 300% hp units.

I do agree roaches are generally a weaker/poor intentional feed. I wonder however perhaps if some points got skimmed past skim past though in your skimming.

For instance where vipers were suggested as a joking subsitute to evolve into leviathans, and perhaps the person gas starved might be making a wide army.

I suppose there’s more than one way to skin a cat though, and sometimes the best way to see what comp works best for a person’s given playstyle is to test what works best for their style.

I generally seemed to notice that tall and wide seemed to benefit more from life leech and sturdier units.

While wide strategies could target feed mutas all the same, f2a feeding was generally whatever unit got there first.

Swarm hosts and mutas indeed are one of the more valuable feeds and roaches near the lower end. And p2 incentives tall strats while not being a ‘downside’ to it.

I guess it’s fair just to try whatever approach a person likes best. On 200/200 supply or 100 biomass fed 100/200 supply, you’re still likely to see 1200-2400 dps on a army. Most of the time sc2 fights are notoriously fast, even a 1k dps vs 2k dps difference on 20k hp trains might be a 10 second difference.

A 3-20 dps difference might be a 0.03-0.2 sec difference perhaps crunching a loose example. But it’s indeed true that any biomass lost or clipped muta/swarm host can indeed be a major blow.

I guess it is kinda fair that with basically unlimited energy for 1-5s stun kidnaps and unit disabling clouds though, roaches don’t really stop the first attack but significantly slow any 2nd attack.

But i mean. To each their own. There’s certainly a lot of value to tall abathur strats, though outside of mutator shennanigans, it seemed to feel like wide strats with tunneled feeds dpsed objectives such as trains down faster with minimal 0-27 biomass roaches. (Mostly melee biomass deaths).

But i suppose whatever works, works. Most of the power comes from the ults symbioites and not the roaches.

The op’s question in particular seems to revolve around gas starvation on air and not liking gas starvation on mutas.

Which seems to indicate perhaps they might be going for a wide muta strat. If going wide, roaches and swarm queens/hosts can be decent to heal and fill a army.

But there’s probably a wide array of approaches from p0/p1/p2 here. A 0.2%-0.03% dps difference for a 75% slow really shouldn’t end the game though. I don’t think it’s that dramatic, but to each their own.

As long as something works, it works, and people testing strats to find which one works for them best personally is far from the worst way to test any strategy game.

A lot of sc1 brood war players have divergent gameplay styles, from micro to macro to tech, to attacking on 8 fronts at once or all excel at one or forgo another to specialize at another. Adds more variety to watch.

16

I really appreciated that you made a couple of posts that were 3-4 paragraphs it was so great but I can’t read all of that!

I think the gist of your post was justification for building Roaches but there isn’t really any as if you are denying even small amount of Biomass either your first 3 Roaches or Mutas you are slowing down your ults which are way too good to brook any delay.

As you ults come online you are building Queens, Ravagers, Swarm Hosts, Vipers and/or Mutas. Delaying any biomass to these units not only drastically lowers their DPS but more importantly their survivability. Mutas especially are so flimsy they shouldn’t even be in combat without good biomass and anything soaked up by Roaches will mean more muta losses unless you have Perfect micro. The bounce and damage vs armoured bonus for Mutas means there is a drastic DPS difference between them and Roaches and a Muta with Biomass is close to unkillable.

If you appreciate the slow of Roaches can I only suggest that you kill enemies faster by not building Roaches and hence not need the slow.