Abathur - P1 - Essense Hoarder

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

People seem to dislike it, and sure at first glance it seems really bad to loose your 6 strongest units for some more biomass on the remaining ones.

But a major aspect of the prestige is that you have an additional 50% chance that the unit drops all of its biomass. Abathurs already gets 50% drop chance at level 7… after that, as long as you pick up all biomass, it will inevitably accumulate, leading to 125 biomass on every single unit.

And that in turn means something like +25% HP, +25% attack speed, +25% energy regen, +25% life leech, etc. Applied to a big enough army, the benefit would outweigh what 6 ultimate evolutions may bring in terms of tankiness and DPS.

I kind of like the prestige… it makes it ok to loose some cheaper units here and there.

I use roaches as a mineral dump and have them tank in front instead of brutalisks. With biomass and upgrades raoches become super tanky too, especiall with the added biomass from the prestige. At 100 biomass they have 580 HP, at 125 biomass they get almost 700 HP. With max upgrades they get 10! armor below 50% HP, meaning they get that for their last 350 HP… that is still a lot.

E.g. they are pretty much immune to stuff that deals less than 15 damage per attack (like zerglings, marines, hydras), pretty much regardless of how many there are.

Fully upgraded marauders with 20+6 damage will take 14 shots to bring them to 50% HP and then another 22 shots to kill one roach… and only if it does not get healed by other units or its own life leech.

Maybe this prestige is weaker than regular abathur with ultimate evolutions, but unless your goal is some sort of speed run, it is not bad at all.

2 Likes
2

Honestly, I really enjoy this prestige. Ravagers were already able to solo clear maps and various mutations, and adding on additional biomass to them just makes it that much easier. Bile spam destroys anything and everything.

3

It definitely is a prestige to promote non-UE gameplay, which is more than obvious. And it works just fine too. I’m also not sure why some people are complaining about it. Abby without UE works just fine and nobody is stuck using P1 either, so win win.

4

Also it would be goto for any black death mutator (125 biomass units get a Bonus from having Black Death…healing faster than they take damage…at a% value on a high hp unit)

5

Why are 4x125 Ravagers better than 5x100 Ravagers?

6

btw, Aba P1 is bugged for some unit, roach can only get 105 biomass instead of 125.

7

Pretty sure they get their cooldown up faster. But P1 is by far his best prestige. Playing around with ravagers was fun, especially since you don’t have to worry about friendly fire.

The 25% isn’t a huge deal IMO. It’s that when units die, they always drop their biomass, which is awesome.

P3 is such a sad life though :pensive:

1 Like
8

Abathur’s P1 is definitely my favorite. I like the style it promotes, and I do hope the little 105 bug gets fixed soon.

9

Having UEs on the frontline significantly helps to not lose units in the first place…

10

It’s just a style difference.

Basically, if you’re tired of UEs or would rather play with army-army, then going P1 gives you exactly what you want. Better overall biomass-buff, no real loss on biomass, and no need to turn off UE transformation.

As for the exact details on why 125 biomass is better than 100, it’s not super by much, but enough that some mutations do get countered straight up (like regen vs Black death for example, if I recall correctly here).

2 Likes
11

I think the real interesting thing about the additional 50% chance to drop biomass, is that with one of his natural level up boosts, he gains a 100% chance for units to drop biomass on death. That means you can actually reallocate biomass from cheap, replaceable roaches by killing them yourself, and having a more valuable unit, say a Devourer or Viper or Swarm Host, pick it up. Roaches are dirt cheap for Abathur, but they’re short range, quick moving units that’ll accidentally soak up biomass all the time. Before, there was this awkward situation of having thousands of minerals banked and tons of available supply, but don’t actually want to make roaches since they’ll eat up biomass.

12

its a pretty good prestige, but I just think its more fun to have ultimate evolution in your army, so I go with p0 or p2.

13

Well, It is all coming down to the fact that the Cooldown reduction of Biomass is
_ a straight reduction in cooldown time and
_ NOT a percentage reduction

Each Biomass reduces 0.05s of cooldown at 100 biomass the Bile ability is reduced to 5s while at 125 biomass it is down to only 3.75s

5 x 100 ravagers only have an firing rate of 1 per second.
But 4 x 125 ravagers have a firing rate of up to 1.06 per second.

It’s not much just 6% higher but considering you can get as many as 12 ravagers or more that added up considerably.

Also as you may know Abathur’s units suffer greatly from their stupidly fat-*ss which mean there is only a few of them that can attack in a given area. Having less units but equal the amount of attack rate means you get more.

Having more Health and better life leech also means they are less likely to be oneshot by enemy focusing so it’s more forgiving. While Resource is a no issue for Abathur, being able to pay less but having the same fire power is a nice touch for me. I can use my mineral to build Crawlers forest to camp or defend on Cradle, Mist, Train…

Can anyone test this? I thought it was multiplicative so it become 75%? If it is 100% then this just maake thing even better.

Though P1 is more Late-game power and his early game without the ultimates are a little rough because you know Brutalisks are very effective AA and AG units which Queens without a lot of biomass (400-500) can’t really help much and Brutalisk also very mobile and can defend multiple location with deep tunnel.

For Abathur lvl 1, i will play as P1 but as Ultimates are unlocked at lvl 2, i switch back to P0.

1 Like
14

Oh i think it is quite the contrary… it’s a massive improvement.

It’s not “just” a 25% buff for his units. When you buff only HP by 25%, your argument could be more true… but it affects attack speed, energy regen, cooldown reduction and life leech… and those all synergize with each other.

Lets for the sake of argument and simplicity only regard unit self healing…

Giving his units +25% HP already means they survive 25% longer in battle. This already also means that they heal 25% more (assuming they are attacking) since they live 25% longer. Then adding +25% life leech on top of that, will make them heal 56% more in total until they die, because both 25% values synergize multiplicatively.

Likewise 25% attack speed, further increases self healing by an additional, multiplicative 25%.

So in total 125 biomass units will self heal about +95% more than 100 biomass units, if the unit fights until death. If it does not die, then the +HP bonus does not make a difference and they heal only +56% more (which already is a lot more than 25%).

And we have not regarded inter unit synergies like external healing from other sources (like queens) where the cooldown reduction and energy regen also increase healing, leading to even tankier units - though i would say, now with this big of an increase in self healing, it be that queens are obsolete late game.

Btw: biomass also has some special bonuses to certain units… i think it also increase roach armor by 0.05 (or 5% of base armor 1) per biomass and locust spawn rate. Maxed roaches therefore should have:

@100 biomass: 580 HP, 15 armor (1 base, +3 upgrades, +6 adaptive plating, +5 from biomass)
@125 biomass: 688 HP, 16.25 armor (+6.25 from biomass)

15

I played a lot of P1 Abathur these days and its fun.
However its A LOT weaker than regular Abathur, especially in the early game.

Abathur when well played can get first Brutalisk extremely early - and that first Brutalisk very quickly secures more biomass for 2 more Brutalisks and dominates any early game threat.

As p1 Abathur you can use that same early game biomass to get a fat roach or a fat queen…
Both are MUCH weaker than Brutalisk - actually even several roaches/queens at 125 biomass each are still weaker than even one Brutalisk.

So as P1 Abathur by the time you get a few fat roaches/queens or whatever the default Abathur would have at least 3 Brutalisks and half the map cleared for more Biomass for Leviathans and other units.

Also the quick slaughter Brutalisks/Leviathans can inflict makes it so that you obtain more biomass quicker and feed it to your army.
So even the “army” part of default Abathur ends up being stronger than P1 Abathur because Brutalisks/Leviathans kill quickly and quickly farm biomass for other units.

Another big problem is the missing Simbiote - that very powerful parasite that helps ultimate evolutions.
P1 Abathur completely lacks Simbiotes which are actually a big big power spike.

Abathur P1 needs to increase all biomass dropped by at least 50% so that his army can obtain biomass a lot faster.
Biomass is the limiting factor and how much/how fast you can obtain it matters the most.

P1 abathur is really slow and bad at gathering biomass compared to default abathur - so bad that the default Abathur gets even his army fed with biomass faster than P1 abathur.
P1 abathur is also really ineffective at using biomass - for 600 biomass default Abathur gets 3 brutas and 3 leviathans that murder everything while P1 abathur gets 6 fat roaches/queens/mutas which cant match even two ultimate evolutions…

2 Likes
16

Yes early game is weaker, but late game should be quite stronger than even with 6 ultimate evolutions.

And let’s be honest… on regular brutal, P1 early game is plents strong… if you don’t accumulate your biomass on roaches or queens but ravagers instead, you will have the DPS as well as the tankiness.

There was even a youtube vid where someone soloed mist opportunities with 5 ravagers and nothing else. That was 5 ravagers @ 100 biomass.

Now have a look at my previous post and tell me that those 5 ravagers are not at least twice as powerful playing with P1 at 125 biomass…

17

Default abathur already has the strongest mid and late game army.
He does not need a prestige that greatly sacrifices his early game power and biomass farming speed for a slower but theoretically stronger late game army.

By the time P1 abathur gathers enough biomass army to be stronger that default abathurs 3 bruta+3 leviathans+regular army the map is LONG LONG over.

P1 abathur also loses access to the deep tunnel global teleport that Brutalisks have meaning you gotta rely on the slow and somewhat expensive Nydus that require vision to deploy.

P1 abathur needs to be changed to actually focus on even more early/mid game power at the expense of late game power.
For example biomass drops 150% more so your army gets bloated quickly - but no ultimate evolutions.

Right now P1 abathur does not make any sense because it takes away something very valuable (early and mid game power) to give you something rather useless (theoretical late game power that Abathur does not need more of).

2 Likes
18

This. I had fun leveling Abby p1 too and I love ravagers, but your early game without that UEs is so much weaker than vanilla Abby. Just considering simple fact, that any map can be beaten with only UEs means something.

1 Like
19

You keep talking about that great P1 Ravagers and they are indeed super strong, but its not P0 that makes it so, it’s buffs to corrosive biles which made them to this point. And also what stops you from going Ravagers at P0?
Early game? 6 UEs > 6 Ravagers
Mid game? 6 UEs + 9x100 Ravagers > 12x125 Ravagers
Late game? 6 UEs + 44x100 Ravagers ? 40x125 Ravagers but who cares at this point?
And its not like at P0 money or supply is stopping factor for collecting biomass, you just won’t have enough biomass to max all your army. Ravagers are pretty cheap anyways.

2 Likes
20

I mean I think this not helping you prove your point lol. P1 125 biomass has its used but comparing to P0 or P2 it really just isn’t “better”. Basically, if someone can solo mission with normal 5 x 100biomass Ravager, then why would they bother with 125 biomass? Especially when the obvious point here that they can always make a 6th or 7th or so on.

P1 is more for mutations and boredom. It isn’t for people looking to replace P0 at all. That said, there is nothing wrong with P1 either.

1 Like