Alarak's underused units

Hi all, I want to know if people who play the highlord use one or more of the units that are not the common ones, mainly Slayers, Vanguards and War Prisms.

Is there any map or enemy comp that would make them shine? I only used War prisms as defensive “structure” with pylon overcharge at enemy spawn points, but apart from that not giving them any use.

Thanks in advance.

Vanguards and Slayers are both useful if you’re going Mech.

Slayers are your early anti-air. Alarak can do his part, but until you’ve got Wrathwalkers with the appropriate upgrade you need something to help him. They’re also your only reliable mech anti-air on maps with Scourge, since they like targeting Wrathwalkers. They’re also extremely helpful in “Chain of Ascension” against air Terran or Protoss unless your partner happens to have extremely good early game anti-air.

Vanguards work extremely well against mass targets. Zergling, Baneling, Marines, and Infested in particular. The armoured damage bonus goes on to help with taking out anything else that happens to be in the mix.

Can’t help with War Prisms. I build a couple every now and then, and then sacrifice them so I can build something useful.

Are they better than Ascendants? Probably not. But sometimes you just want to play differently.

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Nope, they really don’t shine at all, especially Vanguards. Vanguards are also not “good” against mass smaller units, except the slow infested civilians, but everything is good against them (especially a single D-wave). So that unfortunately makes them the most useless unit in Alarak’s roster.

Stalkers work fine if you are into them but their damage output compared to Wrathwalker, Ascendant, or Destroyers is far far less. They are only better at being less fragile… and better than Vanguard lol.

War Prism is more work than proxy pylon. It has some specific speedrun utility but most players that do use them generally just for the “less efficient OC placement”.

Overall, these 3 are used less for sure.

I don’t bother with Slayers or Vanguards, but always do War Prisms. The extra pushing power and early objective destruction of overcharge along with local warp-ins make them almost essential to good Ala play. I say almost, cos sometimes proxy pylons like Fearr says will do just fine. One other advantage of the Prism over pylon is the high-ground vision since Ala lacks air (non-P3).

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Let’s see. Slayers are far less efficient as anti-air than wrathwalkers. They take a lot of space, they are weak and fragile. Wrathwalkers have huge range, especially with havoc support, and their only “weakness” against scourges is easily covered by Alarak’s D-wave. And nothing is better at clearing bases and killing high hp targets. So no slayers.
Vanguards. Idiotic bonus against armored while designed to give splash against light. Only if this light is fast then it just hits the ground. Not to mention the fact that Alarak counters mass light units alone. So no to vanguards.
War prisms - sometimes useful, though not at spawn points with no support where they can be easily shot down, but as a support of pushes. Though I personally prefer to take a probe to place some pylons. And it matters only in early game when you don’t have mass wrathwalkers.

Maybe there is a reason why those units are rarely used?

Slayers are fine as an early game unit but since they’re based on stalkers they don’t scale well and you’ll end up phasing them out for wrathwalkers.

Vanguards are a contentious unit though, the combination of high splash damage, slow fire rate, and ability to miss targets completely makes for an odd combination but I’ll still make a lot of them myself for the sake of it.

But everyone uses War Prisms since they’re busted as hell and pretty much mandatory because of some mutators.

Slayers are fine, especially with a mech focused Empowered Alarak

But Vanguards definitely need some boosts (restore the 2x missile from campaign might be ok… and boost their move speed)

War prisms… other than as an OC base they aren’t really useful… if they had say 2x damage, attackspeed, hp, sp and carrying capacity, then they could be interesting

With P3 putting a havoc in warp prism will improve range of the destroyers / mamma ship.

A stationary warp prism can be overcharged.

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Unfortunately the havoc in warp prism thing isn’t as useful cuz it doesn’t need the range.

It moves faster than destroyers and MS, so that makes them more vulnerable. Furthermore, the added range doesn’t allow them to put that range to use to avoid their weaknesses (AoE spells).

They do have a use for speed pushing. However, anyone who can reach LilA’s speed timings as P3 would also have no need for them regularly except for setting record.

Their “juggling” trick, I’ve yet to see anyone use at all in coop for WW. And frankly, I’d love to see it as it does have purpose but most people can’t even spare 100APM let alone doing that effectively.

All in all, it’s nice to have if you can spare the APM, but generally not going to add any power/advantage that you don’t already have.

That reminds me, I don’t use that trick for P3 range, but prisms can help bait out spells and sometimes the overcharge takes out the spellcasters.

I’ve not heard that term, do you mean something like the equivalent of ladder prism harass?

Yeah it’s the same as the tank/herc drop really but warp prism is notoriously great/horrible at abusing this.

1 prism + immortals is probably the most notable free damage and damage avoidance. Same concept can be applied and should be applied to WW in coop.

Yet, nobody does it because it is fairly micro intensive compare to most other things. And partially it is the situation coop throws the players in. Engagements are not relatively equal in coop, as it is in ladder between equally skilled players.

Amon’s I-care-not-to-trade waves/bases either overwhelms you or get overwhelmed by you. So as such, this trick while useful definitely has less value. Nonetheless, it is still a valuable way to maximize WW. In fact, I imagine with P1’s buffed WWs, this trick would be ridiculously amazing (and APM consuming given how much faster they attack).

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Mass Slayers - solid comp for quick maps, when it’s faster to clear the map then to go for high tech.
Vanguards - not really good. Their shots fly too slow and hit the empty ground too much.
War Prism - good for offensive overcharges and warp ins. Also Mass Prism funny meme comp.

Lock&Load.
This map like units that can “deploy”, to provide continuous vision for teleporters to come back quickly to a lock to defend it.
Additionally, they provide a psi-field for protoss to warp-in (whether Alarak or his ally), to make protoss defenses, and the spinning energy cherry on the cake: the overcharge that can be cast on them, and it’s the cake (war prism) that will eat the enemies with that.

As an Alarak main, I make plenty of use of the War Prisms. Mobile power field and Overcharge target is too good to pass up.
To a lesser degree do I use Slayers or Vanguards. Those are mostly for Mech styled play, or rapid damage pushing (in the case of Slayers.)

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Thanks all for the answers, I’ll have a go with war prism and slayer comp for the lolz :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

These units are used regularly. War prisms are one thing Alarak’s use for mobility (even though it’s not the best). Slayers used as your standard all purpose unit against any comps. Good for everything but not best as anything just like Artanis’s Dragoons. Vanguards are your version of moving “siege tank” for Protoss.

I wish! Sadly their range totally sucks in that comparison and they miss too much. The real protoss siege tanks are reavers, though even then they often lose in comparison to tanks.

Highlord is his P0. Lazy is me… I just mass Supplicants and Slayers, with Havocs for detection.

Hi Claskarman.

I’m playing Alarak now for last month and use all features but depends on mission. I have not activated Prestige on my account.

  1. Vanguards take a long time to arrive and I have to use chronoboost. Also, these units you have to manually control which I just hate. I can pump 10 and they’ll be destroyed in a enemy rush engagement. If I control them myself they fair better.

  2. Slayers I use too but only for anti-air. They can blink and stuff but I never use those features in the game. I just don’t have time for all the micromanagement of those units.

  3. Warp Prism I have used only a few times. I know they can create a field for drops in but I don’t see the other value because they take so long to active in the tech tree. I would like to use them with Alarak in the field but again they take so much time to materialize.

Dead of the Night is the map I’ve primarily used Alarak on for fast accumulation of achievements. Also, I’m constantly reconfiguring Alarak’s stats to find the best combination.

You have a lot to learn about Alarak, my good sir. Or madam.

  1. Vanguards are situationally useful. The best case scenario for them is against swarm-based compositions (a lot of weak ground units) and even then, Alarak cleans them up better than Vanguards ever could.
  2. Slayers are okay, but if you aren’t making use of their double damage on Blink effect, you aren’t playing them well at all. It’s not hard to set them to their own hot key and Blink them all at once.
  3. War Prism is always worth it. There is the eternal debate of forward Pylons vs War Prism, but I will always be a fan of mobile Structure Overcharge. It’s an insanely useful tool.
  4. Mastery allocation depends upon the build.
  • Alarak Damage vs Combat Unit Attack Speed: If you’re playing with mostly Ascendants, or P3’s (Shadow of Death) mass Destroyer build, Alarak Damage is the optimal choice. If you’re playing with Slayers and Wrathwalkers, Combat Unit Attack Speed is equally as valuable as Alarak Attack Damage.
  • Empower Me Duration vs Death Fleet Cooldown: This one is entirely on personal choice AND Prestige of choice. If you’re playing P2 (Tyrant Ascendant) or P3 (Shadow of Death), then take Empower Me Duration, as the cooldown for the Death Fleet is either too long, or Death Fleet is locked. On P0 (base Alarak), and P1 (Artificer of Souls) either option works.
  • Structure Overcharge Shield + Speed vs Chrono Boost: This one heavily favors Structure Overcharge. If I remember correctly, if you want more production speed, the best split is 22 into Overcharge and 8 into Chrono Boost. This will allow you to break your rocks at the start of the game with a single Overcharge. I personally go all in on Overcharge, just due to how powerful the ability is. The damage and shields Overcharge provides also scales with Attack + Shield upgrades respectively.
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