Earlier this year, I spent a miserable 4 months prestigeing 5-6 Co-op commanders. These are a few tips and tricks I picked up, assuming Brutal difficulty random map.
Pick your matches – this is half the battle. Some allies are better than others. I’m especially cautious around level 1-5 allies. Yes, some of them are godlike, but they tend to be the exception, not the norm.
Pick your maps – less important, but same as above. Level 1 with a sub-mastery Karax ally versus Scythe of Amon is not particularly fun. The only other problematic one is Cradle of Death (CoD). Mist Opportunities is also worth mentioning because the bots can be destroyed surprising quickly, losing you the mission. Void Thrashing is obviously the quickest, but playing on the same map each time gets boring.
Change your strategy – this goes without saying, but if some abilities or units are locked, then you may have to rely on a different army composition. Theoretically, most tier 1 units can do the trick if you spam enough of them. Supplement them with static defense.
Take over your ally’s base – inevitably, an ally will see your sub-mastery profile and quit the game. This is great news if their commander is at mastery level, but it depends on the commander. Top bar reliant ones like Raynor P3 are very weak without calldowns, while army comp ones like Swann are useful. It’s generally better to tech up and max out one commander at a time.
Mutations – great for XP, but it depends on the week. Mineral shields are great for levelling. Speed freak propagators are not.
CoD construct farming – although I’ve never tried it, this is apparently the fastest way to level but you need a complacent level 15 Karax ally.
Lower the difficulty – if you can’t hold your own on Brutal, then please don’t punish the rest of us.
Good luck levelling! Once you finish, you can unlock all the prestiges for a Co-op commander which you can then promptly ignore and never play again.
If nothing else, you can use units, abilities, and towers to complement your own.
If a Tychus ally leaves early enough, then Nikira is nice for mass healing.
If I’m Karax, I can usually get a basic combat unit that can hit both ground and air (e.g. Marines, Hydras, Goons, Stalkers, Goliaths)
If a Karax ally leaves, make mass Energizers, and use towers to boost my defenses.
For Mutations, my rule of thumb is it’s one difficulty level harder than Brutal. So if you can handle Hard, then “NORMtation” is the way to go. However, if the week’s difficulty is Brutal+2 or lower, it should be on parity.
Another thing is you may get lucky and get paired with someone on the next difficulty level. In which case, the actual difficulty will be somewhere in-between, but still on the one that’s the easier of the two. However, you’ll still get the XP bounty for the higher difficulty level.
Those are pretty solid advices here. I’ll add a bit more.
Scout the enemy. You don’t need to control your worker to see all the enemy bases like on the ladder — just let the enemy kill your worker, and you’ll see what enemy units you’ll be fighting. This is pretty useful for some commanders that can opt to different army compositions depending on the enemy — which, in turn, may require different macro builds.
Pick the best prestige. If you’re levelling for prestiges and have some unlocked already, then it may be wise to change prestiges depending on your commander level and the perks available. For example, it’s a bad idea to set Zagara to P1 sub level 7 — without free banelings that would be a straight up handicap without any advantage. Same goes for Stetmann P2 sub level 5.
Be useful to your ally in something. For example, it’s well known how non-P2 Karax is underwhelming in the army department — so do what you can do best, like place cannons to break rocks on your and ally’s expansions, support your ally attacks with SoA and energizers, warn them before using Chrono Surge etc. — all that would be infinitely more helpful then rushing straight to Carrier which comes who knows when.
" 1. Pick the best prestige. If you’re levelling for prestiges and have some unlocked already, then it may be wise to change prestiges depending on your commander level and the perks available. For example, it’s a bad idea to set Zagara to P1 sub level 7 — without free banelings that would be a straight up handicap without any advantage. Same goes for Stetmann P2 sub level 5."
The Zagara part is half right.
She get terror for free, which gives her a push for her weak antiair.
Also she get +1 zergling and terror per egg and increase her supply by 50.
IIRC, the Baneling spawn perk is also a requirement for free Scourge spawn.
But even if Scourges do spawn, that helps Zagara only in several niche scenarios, because her ground/anti-ground forces without free Banelings AND without Zagara herself would still be tremendously weakened — definitely not a good price to pay for random missions with random allies.
I wouldn’t be so sure. There are some good players that can definitely hold their own even at lv1. Some COs like Tychus and Zeratul are OP enough to “safely” tackle regular Brutal.
Besides, regular Brutal is so easy, some players don’t mind picking up some slack. Or even full carries (although ofc., this’ll vary from person to person). We’re not getting any new content for the next “forever”, so despite the variety, these are some ways to breath “new life” into the mode.
Same goes as well for fully leveled COs some can definitely carry but when I’m running say a P2 Swann on Scythe of Amon with a level 1 on all random, then I’m sorry but I’m not gonna burn myself out trying to carry a level 1.