Alarak has been a fan-favorite Starcraft II character, and a co-op commander since 2016. He looked quite strong in mutations like Growing Threat when it first came out, and his powered-up Ascendants were the consensus pick for the strongest non-heroic unit in all of co-op.
However, other commanders like Stukov, Dehaka, Han and Horner, Tychus, and Zeratul were released later and were powered up considerably to make them more attractive options. Alarak had a revamp , but it was to make other units competitive with Ascendants, rather than raising his overall power level. Simply put, he is the victim of power creep.
To address this, I’ve listed down several changes that I believe will help our favorite Highlord once again be competitive with the best co-op commanders without introducing new units or requiring a massive revamp:
Ascendants no longer allowed to be sacrificed to Alarak.
- Alarak’s whole early-game is building up an army of stacked Ascendants. It makes no sense to permanently sacrifice them, along with all their supplicant stacks. It’s just too expensive!
- Alarak will respawn if he gets killed anyway. Something so expensive should never be sacrificed to extend the life of an expendable unit.
- In fact, we could extend the exclusion to his Wrathwalkers, since they are likewise an expensive source of firepower.
Reduce Ascendant sacrifice cooldown to 30 seconds
- Current cooldown is 60 seconds.The time it takes to fully stack an Ascendant is 10 minutes.
- The fastest rush takes has your first Ascendant being warped in at 4:20. By the time you theoretically have that Ascendant fully stacked at 13:20, Abathur has already ended the game.
- Reducing the cooldown to 30 seconds would get the first fully stacked Ascendant at 8:50, which rewards high level players without making it too easy for low level players.
Make overcharge targetable
- It adds skill into the ability.
- Can circumvent the still-somehow-not-fixed issue of overcharge targeting polarity-shielded units and wasting the entire top bar ability.
- Maybe make it similar to the Purifier Beam where you can right click on stuff, except right-clicking orders an attack, instead of a move.
Increase Overcharged War Prisms move speed to 4, and increase carrying capacity to 32
- Mobility is still an issue for Alarak, splitting Ascendants works, but often Ascendants are not strong enough to withstand being split until the lategame.
- Despite the change, very few people use War Prisms. The reason is not because they are weak, but because there is no benefit to using them as transport. They are almost just as slow as the units they are carrying.
- Allowing them to be a basically faster Hercules will incentivize more usage, and solve Alarak’s mobility problem.
- Once the overcharge lapses, the units will remain inside, but the War Prism cannot load more units inside until there are 7 cargo units consumed, or if the War Prism is overcharged again.
- Locking these abilities behind overcharge will limit its use, and give Overcharge more of a strategic decsion.
Show highlighted unit more clearly on Alarak console
- Right now, it is very difficult to notice which unit is being controlled in this group [can you guess which unit is active?]:
https://i.imgur.com/C5bKYxe.png
- Zerg also actually has this problem but it is not as noticeable because each Zerg commander that uses that console usually only has one unit type to micro all game, and all production structures share the same hotkeys.
- Alarak meanwhile has three separate unit types to micro [if you include the motheship to Mass Recall], so he definitely needs to know which unit is active in the group selected.
- I suggest making the other wireframes darker, and the active unit a brighter shade of red.
Revert Alarak ability cooldown reset "fix"; make it map-wide
- There was actually no point in doing that in the first place; it was a skill-based move that neither made the game too easy, nor gave Alarak too much of an unfair advantage.
- It helps new Ascendants to survive longer on dangerous mutators like Going Nuclear, Lava Burst, and Power Overwhelming until they are strong enough to tank a few hits.
- It’s actually an exciting way to play, and gives Alarak a better option for hero soloing.
- Current cooldown is 60 seconds.The time it takes to fully stack an Ascendant is 10 minutes.
- The fastest rush takes has your first Ascendant being warped in at 4:20. By the time you theoretically have that Ascendant fully stacked at 13:20, Abathur has already ended the game.
- Reducing the cooldown to 30 seconds would get the first fully stacked Ascendant at 8:50, which rewards high level players without making it too easy for low level players.
Make overcharge targetable
- It adds skill into the ability.
- Can circumvent the still-somehow-not-fixed issue of overcharge targeting polarity-shielded units and wasting the entire top bar ability.
- Maybe make it similar to the Purifier Beam where you can right click on stuff, except right-clicking orders an attack, instead of a move.
Increase Overcharged War Prisms move speed to 4, and increase carrying capacity to 32
- Mobility is still an issue for Alarak, splitting Ascendants works, but often Ascendants are not strong enough to withstand being split until the lategame.
- Despite the change, very few people use War Prisms. The reason is not because they are weak, but because there is no benefit to using them as transport. They are almost just as slow as the units they are carrying.
- Allowing them to be a basically faster Hercules will incentivize more usage, and solve Alarak’s mobility problem.
- Once the overcharge lapses, the units will remain inside, but the War Prism cannot load more units inside until there are 7 cargo units consumed, or if the War Prism is overcharged again.
- Locking these abilities behind overcharge will limit its use, and give Overcharge more of a strategic decsion.
Show highlighted unit more clearly on Alarak console
- Right now, it is very difficult to notice which unit is being controlled in this group [can you guess which unit is active?]:
https://i.imgur.com/C5bKYxe.png
- Zerg also actually has this problem but it is not as noticeable because each Zerg commander that uses that console usually only has one unit type to micro all game, and all production structures share the same hotkeys.
- Alarak meanwhile has three separate unit types to micro [if you include the motheship to Mass Recall], so he definitely needs to know which unit is active in the group selected.
- I suggest making the other wireframes darker, and the active unit a brighter shade of red.
Revert Alarak ability cooldown reset "fix"; make it map-wide
- There was actually no point in doing that in the first place; it was a skill-based move that neither made the game too easy, nor gave Alarak too much of an unfair advantage.
- It helps new Ascendants to survive longer on dangerous mutators like Going Nuclear, Lava Burst, and Power Overwhelming until they are strong enough to tank a few hits.
- It’s actually an exciting way to play, and gives Alarak a better option for hero soloing.
- Mobility is still an issue for Alarak, splitting Ascendants works, but often Ascendants are not strong enough to withstand being split until the lategame.
- Despite the change, very few people use War Prisms. The reason is not because they are weak, but because there is no benefit to using them as transport. They are almost just as slow as the units they are carrying.
- Allowing them to be a basically faster Hercules will incentivize more usage, and solve Alarak’s mobility problem.
- Once the overcharge lapses, the units will remain inside, but the War Prism cannot load more units inside until there are 7 cargo units consumed, or if the War Prism is overcharged again.
- Locking these abilities behind overcharge will limit its use, and give Overcharge more of a strategic decsion.
Show highlighted unit more clearly on Alarak console
- Right now, it is very difficult to notice which unit is being controlled in this group [can you guess which unit is active?]:
https://i.imgur.com/C5bKYxe.png
- Zerg also actually has this problem but it is not as noticeable because each Zerg commander that uses that console usually only has one unit type to micro all game, and all production structures share the same hotkeys.
- Alarak meanwhile has three separate unit types to micro [if you include the motheship to Mass Recall], so he definitely needs to know which unit is active in the group selected.
- I suggest making the other wireframes darker, and the active unit a brighter shade of red.
Revert Alarak ability cooldown reset "fix"; make it map-wide
- There was actually no point in doing that in the first place; it was a skill-based move that neither made the game too easy, nor gave Alarak too much of an unfair advantage.
- It helps new Ascendants to survive longer on dangerous mutators like Going Nuclear, Lava Burst, and Power Overwhelming until they are strong enough to tank a few hits.
- It’s actually an exciting way to play, and gives Alarak a better option for hero soloing.
https://i.imgur.com/C5bKYxe.png
- There was actually no point in doing that in the first place; it was a skill-based move that neither made the game too easy, nor gave Alarak too much of an unfair advantage.
- It helps new Ascendants to survive longer on dangerous mutators like Going Nuclear, Lava Burst, and Power Overwhelming until they are strong enough to tank a few hits.
- It’s actually an exciting way to play, and gives Alarak a better option for hero soloing.
Let me know if you have other suggestions to improve Alarak.