I can’t be the only one who thinks that Alarak’s forge upgrades are rather limited in utility. They’re expensive and provide very little benefit, and oftentimes Telekinesis can hurt you depending on your strategy. Maybe they could be better, and in fact I have a few ideas.
Telekinesis should double the damage that Destruction Wave does to air units. This is a mechanic that was in LotV during the mission you use Alarak’s hero; he did bonus damage vs air units. It’d fit nicely into Co-op, and give pure mech Alarak a good option for dealing with clumped air waves.
Imposing Presence… Not sure what to do with this one. I have two ideas for it. The first is that it also causes units hit by Deadly Charge (and Lightning Surge should Alarak have a charge of it) to get stunned for a significant amount of time. The second is that it affects Empower Me, causing enemies within range of Alarak to have reduced move and attack speed.
I’m saying this because Alarak’s hero upgrades generally don’t have a purpose in standard play. Mutations can be a different story, and even then it’s just using telekinesis to throw away problematic units. For standard play, Alarak usually wants to spend his time and money elsewhere, like on Ascendants.
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Nah telekinesis is fine. In the supplicant/ascendant build, helps the orbs dealing double damage if timed properly.
Mmm… Dehakaburger brought up the additional damage vs Air units, but I’m still not sure how I’d feel about it. 100 damage vs Air is pretty brutal, but does give utility.
Honestly, Alarak doesn’t need a stun or a slow, so I’d rather have Imposing Presence increase Alarak’s ability damage, even if only a little bit. Fenix gets a raw +25 to all of his armor suits from one upgrade, why shouldn’t Alarak get something similar, but for his abilities?
Also, Telekinesis is core in almost every situation. The only times it isn’t is during Brutations or probably against Tempests/Cyclones/Tanks.
Playing P3, I get the forge for his ability upgrades only. While playing any other prestige and strategy, I don’t get it at all. And only get upgrades for if I go for Robo.
This is because it makes a difference for Robo and that resource and time is better spent on 3/3 than his already plenty good abilities. P3 though, his abilities can help save his destroyers so this is more key to get. And for Ascendant, this is entirely pointless as bulk of their damage is spell.
Getting Telekinesis is good in every standard build though. Being able to toss things back further keeps them off of your Ascendants, and force them to walk through the disco balls of death even longer.
The problem is that typically telekinesis will force them OUT of your psi orbs, because it pushes too far. They generally spend more time getting shredded by ascendants if you DON’T get telekinesis.
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This is what I found as well.
It’s a mix of placing your Psi Orbs properly and using Alarak properly.
As nice as that extra oof is, it is entirely unnecessary. Researching it takes away from your upgrades time (more so than resources), and the net result is about the same for Ascendant or Robo (a bit better for Robo). For Destroyers, I find this much more useful mostly because the nature of their attack to split connect, as well as MS very long range. It allows a lot of tagged on damage while they are thrown. Again, allowing a better balance between Soul Absorption, taking damage, dealing damage, and micro overall I guess.
It would probably be better for telekinesis to give either +50% damage to air (like campaign) or maybe cooldown reduction.
Or, it could give +50% flat damage so he could 1 shot marines again, like he used to. …what?
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You only get the ability upgrades in P3?
But the forge upgrades affect the Death Fleet + Destroyers, the difference in power and defense is huge (3/3)?!? Especially the Armor upgrades on the Destroyers.
I always rush out two forges in P3 for double research. Resources are not an issue if you go P3 + air army.
That is more for Alarak’s abilities I meant. As in on Robo or Ascendants I don’t get those abilities researched (on top of getting upgrades lol), my phrasing was bad.
I still say it’s incorrect to not get Telekinesis. But what do I know? I’m just some random guy on the internet that mains the dude and has countless hours on him. 
Seems like a strong word lol, nothing wrong with getting it.
Out of all that gas, it’s not a big investment. I just don’t is all. The benefit isn’t that huge either (considering you can solo-Alarak). So really it’s preference and not essential, such as Havoc cloaking or Mind Blast or Power Overwhelming.
Mmm… Once again, incorrect.
Havoc Cloaking might be a preference thing, but they are your only detectors. Keeping them alive is critical, so having them on a lower priority due to cloak is very important.
Mind Blast is mostly optional on P1 Alarak, as most of your hard-hitting damage comes from your mech units. Power Overwhelming though… If you aren’t taking that, and you’re playing with Ascendants at all, you’re playing them 100% wrong (or haven’t unlocked it yet.) Its 100% a mistake to not take Power Overwhelming when using Ascendants, period.
The main reason to taking Telekinesis is to keep stuff off of your expensive units. Anything with long ranges, can hit hard, or hard disable you (Vipers, Tempests, Thors, Cyclones, etc.) need to be shoved back really far to give you more space to kite and break Line of Sight to stop them from attacking or using abilities (Lock-On, Blinding Cloud, etc.) Especially so in the case of Vipers… Their range is absurd.
I feel like at this point you’re just debating for the sake of it. When all is said and done, it’s your preference that you get it every game, it isn’t important to get it at all. And your entire speech on the rest of it seems like you didn’t read what I typed properly.
Telekinesis is just not that important compared to Mind Blast for Ascendant play or Cloak for Havoc or Stalker Invulnerability for mass Stalkers. I know for a fact because I play without it all the time without having any disadvantage.
The opposite is just not true at all, which is why they are more crucial. You can’t play Ascendant well without Mind Blast or Power Overwhelming. You can’t play mass stalkers without its Invulnerability research (well… without losing far more). You’ll never see any Alarak does poorly vs amazingly because they researched Telekinesis. Again, just because you “main” Alarak, it doesn’t mean anything, just means you play less commanders than someone who plays them all. It’s one thing to say LilA mains Raynor cuz he’s put out so much amazing gameplays. It’s another to say you main Alarak while hard debating on how “crucial Telekinesis” is or how “incorrect it is to not get it”.
Preference might be a good point. Personally, I almost always researched it in Ascendant builds. Main reason being the Orbs and the time to reach the Ascendants again.
However, since the release of Prestige, I have become a huge fan of the Death Fleet Prestige. In my build, I don’t research Telekinesis. Even if all other upgrades are done. Now, I don’t exactly know how long it takes for the Destroyer’s Beam Alignment to wear off. But I do know that I feel more comfortable with the regular knockback distance of Destruction Wave.
I like Imposing Presence the way it is. It slows down Hybrid attacks by 100%. That’s not bad. The stun on regular units is nice to have. It’s passive. What’s there to dislike? You can actively charge forward, and target those nasty Vipers or Ravens with Alarak. They’ll get stunned and die shortly afterwards. Mhh… delicious.
Telekinesis is kind of covered in the upper part of my post. The knockback increase is there for a reason. Doesn’t mean you have to get it all the time. As I said, for me it depends on my comp. If it would get changed… well, I wouldn’t mind it, but it depends on what those changes would be. Strangely enough, I believe the Highlord should have some kind of beneficial aura for his own army as well. You know, the Tal’darim certainly get a boost to morale (or maybe fear, heh) when their boss is around. However, Imposing Presence only impacts your enemies. That’s also fitting, though it’s not necessarily an aura. Just some thoughts.
As for Sprite, I’ve come to know him as a reasonable Alarak main, who could explain stuff well and generally not condescending. The tone in this thread seems off, though. Maybe he had a rough week.
Cheers!
Ok I do have to agree on havoc cloak, that’s pretty much one of Alarak’s most important upgrades.
Yeah, I’m having a pretty bad time so far, not just in this thread, but overall. The only time I’m actively or purposefully condescending is when the person is being an idiot (IE: The weekly “X thing about Alarak sucks” with the exception of Vanguards.)
I’m not meaning to come off as a dick, but bad times make for bad brain function. However, it only got worse watching some scrubby Alarak tell me that using Ascendants in P1 is bad and just all around being an idiot.
I genuinely do feel, however, that Telekinesis is a core upgrade to get. I’ve never skipped it (at least on purpose, I’ve skipped it by accident before.) I personally value it a bit too much, especially in the early game when your army isn’t very thick and just one or two bad spells or long-range attacks can cost you a chunk – if not most – of your army.
It’s also insanely good for early game Alarak soloing while you tech and get econ up, as it forcefully resets aggro due to them losing LoS. Against certain things, this can be the difference between Alarak consuming souls and survivng, and Alarak trying to consume souls (since he doesn’t consume them until the animation reaches Alarak) and dying before the animation completes.
Personally I think that in general the correct niche for p1 Alarak is in situations where you need supplicants to be tanking rather than feeding ascendants. Thus, I would be one to strongly advocate against ascendants with p1.
Suit yourself. I still think it’s downgrade more often than upgrade, but I do agree there are use cases. If those use cases are already how you play in general then well I guess it would work out to be a pretty good upgrade.
That’s part of why the Ascendants are there. You make use of Psionic Orb to take care of trash that wants to bother your Wrathwalkers, while your Wrathwalkers take care of high HP targets and objectives that Ascendants will struggle against (assuming you don’t take Mind Blast, or the target is not able to be struck by Mind Blast.) I did a proof of concept video and have been theorycrafting on P1 for some time now, with some help too.