To be fair, a LOT of the prestiges don’t offer anything and aren’t fun, but to everyone expecting Alarak with a death fleet for the whole game…
You can’t summon the death fleet due to the extended cooldown until about halfway through a normal length game, and without mastery you will NOT be able to summon it again just about.
Add to that how everything is halved, and the mothership is the only thing remotely useful about it. I mentioned this in co-op chat and some one said it’s how you use them and… no. 100% wrong. The destroyers deal only 3 damage and will just about die from a psi storm or any skill that does damage really. Normally they are weaker than REGULAR void rays, but these? these are weaker than marines and supplicants without being tanky or easily replaced (supplicants and marines both deal more damage). The worst part after all that is that when for the first time you use this prestige after all the grinding, you realize that you can’t even really get to summon an expected second set of ships on shorter missions so you do a longer one and- oh it just warped out the super weak ships i’ve been microing my butt off to keep alive just to warp them back in (immediately after because I was in shock they were stormed and died. I could not resummon them because the 600 second cooldown does not take mastery into account after the first cooldown is shortened)
How to fix? do it the same way the second prestige is done but in reverse. Remove Alarak/empower me and get a mothership alone at the start. With each summon you get more destroyers, simple. Everyone wins!
All of the Alarak-centric levels/upgrades are more than enough to justify this! please please please somebody see this that can make a change and help me not regret grinding up to something so disappointing…
On another note, p1 and especially p2 were great. p1 might need to add more stacks per supplicant to make maxing stacks on a mech army more doable though.
10 Likes
Alarak Prestige 3 is actually really good. You just don’t understand the utility behind it.
The coolup for the Death Fleet remains the same. 600 seconds (10 minutes.) It’s the cooldown that gets extended by the prestige. If you need to resummon the Death Fleet (The only one that truly matters is the Mothership anyway), then you aren’t doing a good enough job of keeping them alive.
The Destroyers are very weak, I will give you that. But more than anything else, they give good Empower Me bonus damage, and the added spread 8 dps (when all 8 are firing) is actually useful in some situations.
I posted about this in my guide, if you had actually seen it before. I’ve known since PTR that resummoning the Death Fleet just refreshes your units. This isn’t much of a problem because once again, the Mothership is the only important thing you need.
The Shadow of Death prestige doesn’t need any changing. You just don’t understand the role that it plays. We’ve been asking for a way to address Alarak’s mobility issue – and now we have it. Permanent Mothership with a 60s Mass Teleport completely fixes the issue. It also has a Thermal Lance ability to help deal even more damage.
tl;dr - OP doesn’t understand how the prestige works and how it’s meant to affect Alarak, so they’re complaining about it.
1 Like
I agree, it sucks. You just get a single movable vorazuns dark pylon with recall.
Although, since death fleet sucks to begin with that prestige has some use on big maps.
6 Likes
So aside from the permanent taxi function, which is already incredible. Empower Me gains 10% damage for Alarak per supply up to 100 supply (favouring mech over bio).
Death Fleet gives you Mothership (10) + 6 Destroyers (4 x 6), totalling 34 mech supply worth for free - 340% damage buff with 0 investment. That doesn’t sound like a bad deal to me. That comes out to be Deadly Charge 200 x 3.4 = 680 damage & Destruction Wave 50 x 3.4 = 170 damage.
Granted you are not a micro god (not that you need to be), so losing a few Destroyers is pretty easy and understandable. That still leaves you with a very empowered Alarak with 0 investment at all.
Is it a fantastical buff that out strips every other option? Nope, but it certainly isn’t bad by any means. Again, that’s only from buffing Alarak’s Empower Me perspective, the far better utility is in the Mass Recall.
Okay sure. The taxi service is great. The prestige is still disapointing, because a lot of people wanted a better Death Fleet, and this actually just a worse Death Fleet. The utility is very good, and it does address mobility issues, but it doesn’t give us the Air based Alarak army that many in the community wanted.
3 Likes
It is very reasonable instead of weakening the mothership to replace it with a weak structure overcharge, as a result, Alarak will have a weak protection role, but still he can rely on the fleet.
If Overcharge gets weakened, unless it is the shielding, your method of fast expand goes out the window, so no.
The utility is all it needs. If they wanted us to have air superiority as Alarak, they would have given us a Stargate and Fleet Beacon by now.
2 Likes
Hmm, why did the description said Mass recall will no longer teleport allied units? Did it bug?
It is a bit of a blow to the fantasy of having a super powerful Mothership, unfortunately (which is the appeal of many players who have long wanted a permanent mighty Mothership, regardless of how nice the utility of having an on demand teleport is for Alarak).
Honestly, I am not a fan of the Prestiges that both simultaneously buff and nerf one particular aspect of a Commander at the same time, such as this one and Abathur’s Limitless. I feel like they could have balanced permanent Death Fleet by doing what they did with P2, and removing the opposing ultimate ability, in this case being Empower Me. They could even go so far as removing Ascendant Archives and Ascendants on top of that, giving you the full power of the Death Fleet at the cost of Ascendants and Empower Me.
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No, it acts like Gary/Super Gary’s Teleport. Your units will warp, but allies’ units will not.
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I think the Alarak prestige talents in general are just underwhelming & boring. A mothership for it’s only usefulness is teleporting like come on I was hoping for a better QoL feature on Death Fleet.
…that’s actually a great advantage/disadvantage in my opinion.
The Thermal Lance ability is also a useful utility from it… Having a spam line damage ability is extremely useful.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how any of this works. Maybe if this wasn’t co-op, the teleportation would be a bigger deal but in a game mode where you have an ally watching your back and the chances that one of them has a mobile hero, shared fast travel, a call down, suped up defenses or any number of ways of helping directly or passively, there is no need to be at every single fight.
That’s great for the empower me and the 10 supply that will be left when the ships die but then i’d just use p2. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it was bad since it’s still better than nothing, but that’s a very low bar. Having to look after these fragile ships is more anxiety and disappointment over something that should be strong but isn’t than accomplishment.
That one is fair, the destroys are definitely flimsy and frankly I’d rather they have more bulk than damage.
1 Like
I have an idea, only have Mothership be summoned in Death Fleet Calldown and have Destroyers be built from Robotic Facility? Maintain Destroyer’s stat as they are.
Robotic Bay can have increased damage for Destroyers.
(Actually increase their standard power in general)
I feel so sorry for Destroyers, as if their chain dealing (1 damage) wasn’t bad enough they have to become even worse (This is as bad as Swann prestige treatment).
I’m not sure Produce-able Destroyers are saved for Jinara but Destroyers don’t deserve this treatment.
Makes sense, Alarak’s ultimates are empower me and Death Fleet.
If one the prestige removes Death Fleet Calldown surely it can be same with empowered me.
I think the Devs wanted to make players to experience Alarak with vastly better mobility with prestige 3, I have no problem with this except Destroyers are getting bashed in the process.
1 Like
How about this for prestige 3?
Advantage:
The deathfleet no duration. Mothership mass teleport has a 60 second cooldown. Destroyers bouncing attack no longer lose damage per bounce. Calling the fleet again will warp in an additional 8 destroyers, and replace the mothership if it’s not on the field.
Disadvantage:
-Ascendents can no longer be trained.
Summary: The deathfleet keeps its vanilla coolup and cooldown, as well as its vanilla combat stats, and destroyers are even improved a little bit with a splash attack that doesn’t lose damage (like Kerrigan mutalisks). In exchange, ascedents can longer be trained, allowing the player to focus on a hybrid strategy involving Alarak and a mech army. This should be a good compliment to prestige 1 (mech focus) and prestige 2 (Alarak focus). Ascedent builds are represented well in vanilla Alarak (highlord).
While we are at it, can the mech attack speed mastery also affect destroyers and the mothership? Comparable masteries like Raynor’s mech mastery improve his banshee calldown, so for consistency the deathfleet should be improved?
5 Likes
I think you would need to remove Alarak rather than just Ascendants
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Removing Alarak in addition would work too, the goal is to give a very different playstyle.
Perhaps in that case, the mothership could gain another ability from the campaign. Like vortex, timewarp, black hole, or planet cracker etc.
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Considering the entire “death” fleet is a glorified mass recall pylon it is a very disappointing prestige/calldown.
Perhaps it would be a bit better if they renamed it Dead fleet so it fits their performance.