Another 'Buff Karax' Thread

I don’t think they would. Alarak has no air units, Zeratul mostly uses ground units or turrets and Fenix has both ground and air forms.

True enough I guess. But still, it would be unfair to deny Zerg and Terran heroes the ability to benefit from upgrades when Protoss heroes can. Plus we’re not guaranteed to never have a protoss commander with air units and a ground based hero or vice versa.

Better to make the rule universal than to change it up for the few niche commanders who don’t benefit as clearly.

I don’t think Swann is better than Karax at all. In DoN Swann is better but Karax caught up when he gets colossi only cuz of perdition turret, but that will take a while since his units are expensive. In temple, I find Karax’s monoliths against high HP units more effective. Get out of DoN and suddenly Swann requires a decent amount of micro to play with his army properly.

I think Karax needs a buff but I think Blizzard is also afraid to over buff him. If they reduce unit cost and massively buff static defense, then they essentially remove Karax’s weaknesses. If Blizzard makes one commander Jack-of-all-Trade, then might as well start giving someone like HH (statistically the LEAST played commander) static defense since their defense is so horrific, even their offense isn’t top tier. Or should we give Kerrigan anti-armor AA to eliminate her weakness?

“Zeratul only has ground army.” What does that mean? Are you saying Zeratul is on the weaker side? None of Zeratul’s units are weak and his AA is the best among the commanders. Zeratul’s ground army is on the stronger side. Zeratul and Tychus are the examples that you don’t need air units to thrive. Maybe Alarak needs a buff, but Zeratul definitely isn’t a victim.

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On defense maps they are both good, but on offense Swann pulls ahead.

The main reason why Swann is better is because of his Hercules-tank micro build, which can start clearing bases much more effectively than Karax before Karax even rolls out his first Immortal.

Swann also has his very powerful bots calldown at 4 minutes, which can clear an attack wave plus any contested expansions or the first base on a map with less effort than Karax using his entire starting energy stock with a probe spotter or offensive cannons. They last for a long time, so you can use them at multiple locations.
For example on Chain of Ascension, you can kill the first attack wave, clear your contested expansion and then clear most of the first enemy encampment with a single calldown, which is more than what Karax can do with his starting energy.

Also, HH is least played commander because they are one dimensional and can get boring after a few games, but they don’t suffer at all because of lack of static defense. Mag mines, strike fighters, or top bar big calldowns take care of any attack waves. They also have a weak early game and many things counter reapers.

Swann just has better units accross the board. Goliaths can outperform most things in his own kit and certainly in Karax’s kit, are easy to mass (after you get your economy booming), can attack everything, etc. Swann is one of the strongest late game commanders for a reason.

Really not sure why Karax needs a buff. He has hands down one of the strongest armies. Carriers and range, with repair bots, ontop of mechanical repairs. Not only are his defensives amazing, but he synergizes stupidly well with other Defensive/Offensive Commanders. He has hands down one of the best Defensive setups if you use his calldowns and tech them correctly.

I’m not sure the problem is Karax needs a buff, as much as people need to learn how to actually play him.

Swann has in my opinion the better defensive setup, not only because of his turret options but also because he has great support units for it that aren’t overpriced to hell.

As for strongest army, disagree his carriers aren’t better then the ones fenix gets and with interceptors tanking the damage you don’t rely need repair beam. Not to mention fenix gets graviton catapult for increased carrier effectiveness.

The only thing where karax can beat out most other commanders is with his top bar but that takes quiet a bit of resources to tech into resources which are lacking elsewhere.

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I don’t disagree with Swann > Karax overall, as I said Swann is better than Karax if you can micro him. Outside of DoN, Swann doesn’t have a good time if you can’t micro. I am kind of not a fan of zero supply static defense, it discourages players from try hard to win. We already have Zeratul for that, if Karax turns out to be another micro-less and macro-less static defense drone then I am sad. Well, at least in Zeratul’s case he’s gated at 100 psi so he needs those cannon projections. Karax has 200 psi, it will be a waste of potential if Karax doesn’t produce any units to aid his static defense. I think his static defense is alright, I would like to see improve in other aspects.

Karax can use his army for defense as well, so he can maybe improve on that front. No more unit tax and make units pump out faster. Getting colossi and carrier out early helps a lot. Put two colossi behind cannons and suddenly no ground units can pass by. Reduce cooldown and energy cost of top bar abilities. At least reduce the cooldown of Solar Bombardment, it doesn’t deserve a 7.5 minutes cooldown when other commanders’ best calldowns are at 5 minutes at best.

Karax’ lategame army of carriers can a-move down pretty much everything, while goliaths can be vulnerable to area effect or just pure damage if you aren’t fast with matrix. I’d say Karax is at least on par with Swann for late game army.

The real difference is early/mid-game, where Swann can contribute as soon as he has a few tanks and a Hercules (and war bots) much better than Karax can with a couple of Immortals (or carriers which won’t exist for a few more minutes).
If you go pure goliaths, that takes as much time to ramp up as Karax and are basically wasting Swann’s potential. Hercules-tank rush is the only thing that makes Swann useful early/mid-game.

Karax has a pretty hard time pumping out Carriers. Not only are they expensive, slow to build and slow to move, they are not the most damaging units either and they come in pretty late. By the time Karax has enough Carriers a Swann can be well into maxing out his army.

I played a game where I went with Immortals, they are a much better pick than Carriers for a number of reasons.

That’s what I said. Late game Karax is very good, the problem is early-mid game. Both Immortals and especially carriers ramp up slower than tank-Hercules Swann.

Carriers can work well on some maps, though.
Like on Scythe of Amon you can sneak in a probe and take the expansion with a few cannons and Solar Flare. Then use Purification Beam for the first bonus area, and you should have carriers up for the second bonus area.
Similarly on Malwarfare you can use cannons to hold the second lock (the first one you need to actively protect) while you rush out carriers.

Carriers are a very powerful composition, yes, but by the time you gather an impactful amount of them the game will be mostly done. There is a difference between late game and late game, and Carriers are very late game.

You can have carriers out by 9-10 minutes while handling the first part of many maps with cannons only. That’s not super late game.
Obviously not something you want to do on Rifts to Korhal or Void Thrashing.

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I said an impactful amount. It takes a 120 seconds to train a carrier (not factoring in the 15% Chrono Field). They are slow to build and are expensive so you probably have to go light on upgrades. This is such a pointless discussion, we are not going forward.

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You are also not factoring in the nexus’ chrono boost speed boost, and also chrono wave, the second one becoming available at 9 minutes, perfect time to push out several carriers, along with the 15% passive.
You obviously have zero experience going carriers. It’s the meta for maps like Scythe, Malwarfare or Vermillion, where the first 10 minutes can be handled with offensive cannons and Spear abilities, and the second half can be trivialized with carriers.

Of course it’s bad for short maps, but the ramp up time isn’t nearly as slow as you think, and as I said, you can be useful on several maps with cannon+spear in the early game.

I have experience with Carriers, used them before and shall occasionally use them en masse again. However there is a reason most people hate on Carrier Karax on this forum.

A Chrono Wave on its own would turn the 120 seconds into 20 seconds so you get one Carrier per production building plus some extra done (factoring in Chrono Field and a possible Chrono Boost). Carriers however will take a toll on your economy and/or your tech level.

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Nothing ticks me off more than when Im doing Brutal+ and my ally doesn’t start actually helping at all till like 15 minutes into the game when he finally has a somewhat sizable Carrier army. By that time ive already destroyed like 3-4 shards on Sythe of Amon. Seriously please to everypne out there dont do Karax carriers I beg you. If you love Carriers so much just play fenix who could build like a dozen carriers by the 8 minute mark, plus also has a hero unit for additional early game awesomeness.

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They stack with each other multiplicative, you get about 1.5 carriers per wave per stargate, more than a little extra. Gives you 4 carriers by 10 minutes, that’s enough to start clearing with if you support them with Spear.

Carriers have a bad name because it’s a favorite of inexperienced players who are just bad at Karax. There are many videos on YT with Karax soloing maps with carriers, and doing lots of work early game with Spear and Cannon. If you need to carry a Karax early game, then he is using carriers on a map where he shouldn’t, or is bad with Spear and cannons.
Karax can clear every contested expansion early game, and then have carriers out by the time you need to push into fortified bases.

Again, I’m not saying that you should use it for short maps like RTK or VT where you can clear the whole map in 10-15 minutes, but on some maps they are very good and don’t feel like slowing your ally down.

Most maps don’t rely go on for longer then 20 min so you wont rely have a lot of carriers.

As I said earlier, you can have carriers out by 10 minutes. And there are several maps where you can be useful in those first 10 minutes with cannons. Like clearing the expansion, defending an objective like Malwarfare or Miner Evac, etc.
I swear you guys have never seen a competent Karax going carriers.

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