Blizz devs really did H&H dirty on their prestige options

P3 should allow them to damage air units.

For P3 rework, the broad categories are…
A) cheaper
B) less supply
C) can also hit air
D) more charges
E) less cd

I would go with usage cd goes from 60s to 30s. Time to repair them (if destroyed) goes from 120s to 45-60s.

If needed also reduce cost from +100% to +50%

IMO baseline should be Strike Fighter air unit damage and immunity to damage/death, so that they are always reliably useful.

P3 rework:
Since blizzard has no more devs on SC2 this has to be very simplistic to implement.
Strike Fighter platform cooldown reduced by 66%, but max population reduced to (lets say) 160.

P2 buff:
Horner costs and cooldowns reduced by a further 20%. (this prestige builds up too slowly compared to P0/P1)

Problem with all these is that they compete with P1 which buffs up Hellion attack speed death buff, which buffs both commander armies…
So P0 P2 P3 biggest drawback is that you are not picking P1 with their insane Hellion buff combined with stronger death mastery.

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I think Strike Fighter Air unit damage should stick to a P3 bonus. (since that makes “strike fighter only” viable)

To improve their baseline, make it 40 seconds cooldown (still 120 if destroyed so there is reason to think about where they attack)

Actually the penalty for H&H P2 should be changed.
Currently it limits Galleons to 2 (from 5) but that cripples early game combat so much due to lacking galleons in fights.

Change the penalty to Galleon unit production speed reduced TO 40%.
That way you will still have the same overall 2/5 Mira unit production speed, but the player will have access to 5 Galleons to help him in early game fights.

Right now P2 early game feels horribly weak until you get a few Horner units out, especially since Wraiths and Vikings require unique upgrades to actually become viable.

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I don’t think having 5 Galleons is better (functionally) than 2 Galleons for “early game”. I am assuming your implied line of thought on strategy here is 5 x Galleon Carriers works better than 2. The investment required for 5 is heavy both in cost and time, so that alone already pushes you to mid-game.

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Those 5 galleons are available really early, cost no pop/gas and have 10 range.
They are great units for early into mid game, especially if you choose to also give them the carrier hangar upgrade for some gas cost.

Having only 2 galleons really hurts the early game, since both their production is lower and their combat capability is limited.
Having 5 galleons (that produce as slow as 2 regular galleons) would bring a lot smoother early game as you go for that very expensive Horner P2 air.

To elaborate, reason why i suggest P2 should have 5 galleons just like other H&H is because atm it is straight up inferior to P1 at all stages of the game - and imho notably worse than P0.
P1 & P0 have a good early and mid game thanks to those 5 galleons that can be upgraded with carrier, plus they got full 5 galleon production and they got resources to spare for Strike Fighter platforms.
P1 has that insane bonus to death effects which for Hellion buff means that P1 units always outperform P0/P2 units (and buffs teammate).
And even the Mines buff P1 has is phenomenal.

P2 has 2 galleons (weak in combat, slow mira unit production) so very weak early game, then P2 is incredibly resource starved the whole game because Horners units are SO god damn expensive that even without losing any it takes forever to get rolling, let alone max out.
For some reason P2 only lowers the GAS cost of Horner units and leaves the colossal mineral cost unaffected…

Horners units cost so much minerals that you can barely afford a few Hellions for the death buffs - and when you lack Mira units you not only lack their DPS/effects, but you also lack on the “Significant Other” health bonus to Horner units which puts your expensive units to risk from high burst.

Overall the H&H P2 feels like Raynor P3 but without Mules.
You are supposed to use these extremely expensive Horner units, but you are so weak/useless in early/mid game and so resource starved that its perhaps the weakest ramp up out of any commander (that i can recall).

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How are you even supporting 5 galleon production “in early game”? HH saturate 2-base at like 7min I think, which is the transition from early game to midgame.

5 x galleon production meant 5 x 100min every 10-15sec. So that amounts to 500min every 10-15sec or almost 2000-3000min per minute. You’re telling us that on top of the 750min you spent getting 5 galleons, you also have that much mineral to spare every minute?

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P3 Abathur would like to say “hi!”.

Really though, P2 H&H is okay just as long as you build your Galleons early and keep up production (usually producing hellion/hellbat to complement Horner units) and don’t take heavy losses.

Maybe it feels slow if you insist on building BCs every game…

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I meant that 5 galleon full production is available (instead of 2/5 like P2), not that its always fully utilized.

But all 5 galleon combat presence is available from early on and is so damn nice compared to just 2 galleons.

I mean, buffing already very strong out of box defaults like abathur/zeratul/tychus/dehaka etc, that’s fair, but for p2 horner and some of vorazun’s prestieges, i don’t think it’d hurt. p1 seems pretty nice though. Do you reckon something like 3/5 galleons as a compromise or maybe just cheaper horner units with much souped up cds work? Every build that uses capital ships kinda has a hurdle and tbh. Even a lot of baseline capital ships aren’t the hail mary i want to expect.

Something like a battlecruiser is like 400-600 minerals for raynor + gas for like, 45 dps, when 3 stimmed marines are the same raw dps. I did always really want strong flashy fleet armies and love the cruisers from sc1. But i feel like im throwing or trolling if i pick a weak army comp, so i like to usually mc them.

It’s always more fun to see more unit variety in coop though.

For comparisons:
5 galleons is 750 minerals for 83 dps (5*16.66) at 10 range (no carrier upgrade).
1 Horner BCruiser with P2 gas discount is 1000 minerals and 640 gas and 10 pop (not counting Armory and Fusion core) for 80 dps at range 6 (or 100 dps with yamato upgrade but overkills often in early).

So for early-game presence its soooo much better (and cheaper and faster) to have 5 basic Galleons than 1 BCruiser, especially due to their 10 range which is longer than any Amon static defense.
Wraiths and Vikings are a bit cheaper (not much due to them coming in pairs) but are a lot more fragile and more reliant on their unique upgrades.

Considering P1 is outperforming P2 so much at all stages of the game i really see no reason that P2 should be shackled with an awful early game, weak mid game and an okay late game (almost never reaching max pop with Horner units unless game lasts longer than needed).
Frankly even P0 i find a lot more viable than P2, unless you explicitly know you will have someone to babysit you for the first 10 minutes of the match… but that is a sign of a poorly balanced prestige.

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I think you’re mistaking early game, that’s usually consider before 6-7min. Nobody can get a BC out by then, so this comparison is not even possible. Not that anyone is getting a Sov BC out to push early as P2, if so they (you) are doing it wrong entirely.

Perhaps you can post a P2 replay and a P1 replay because it seems almost certain (to me) that you’re opening both the same way, then approaching each game the same way, and therefore concluding why P1 is out-performing P2.

While I do agree P1 out-performs P2, it is certainly not for the reasons you’re listing.

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P0 and P1 i build order the same (like the starcraft2coop website suggests).

I tried many early game variations of builds for P2:
Some with more Mira units and some with less/none Mira units (trying to get Horners units faster).
Sometimes i try skipping Carrier upgrades for the two Galleons to reach Horner units faster.
Sometimes i try skipping Strike Fighter platforms entirely just to try getting those Horner units faster.

Either way in all cases the P2 ramp up is miserably slow, feels slower than any other commander i played with.
If i delay Horner units the 2 Galleon mira unit production is hideously slow, and if i “rush” Horner units the 2 Galleons are too weak for early combat.

I happened across HH (my standard is P2) while random matched with a level 13 P3 Artanis who’s build order is um… not great. I, as usual, went 12-workers only. Here’s the replay:

https://file.io/QGf4kITxXbX4

You’ll note that since I went essentially Wraith only, the gameplay is a bit stagnant and longer than usual. Part of that is definitely because my ally’s skill is clearly not quite there, but he went with Tempests anyway. Part of that is also due to difficulty pushing against Terran and on P&P. (This isn’t about his skills, just to clarify but the factors involved on why the map progressed as it did.)

In the end though, the result for me vs ally was 317 to 390 kill count, and 144 parts to 69 respectively. They are not an exact measure of performance (but I wanted to show that the work done was at least even, if honestly not mostly hard work done by me :stuck_out_tongue: ). Of course, all of that can be seen in more details in the replay.

Going 2-base would make this far easier, or even choosing to opt for a mixture of Han and Horner’s, rather than my chosen route of going straight up Wraiths. The earliest set of Wraiths came about ~7min, the end of early game. In my case, you can sacrifice the upgrades a bit for about 2min earlier 1st set, but really there was no need or point to it.


I don’t disagree that P2 probably could use a buff in the direction of perhaps further reducing the cost of Horner’s units. That would be better suited to keep focus on P2’s prestige value while improving its gameplay to be more comparable to P1. That said, the only difficulty P2 has is the “oh crap I just lost all of my Horner’s units to [insert ability] issue”. The re-maxing becomes a bit of a chore in mid-game if you’re pushing aggressively (and if your’e like me, your mac mouse gives you the middle finger :stuck_out_tongue: often). However, the actual maxing is not a problem at all. On 2-galleons, if you actually maintained your production, even your 2-base full saturation will find it hard to keep up {prior to late game}, with all the other expenditures.

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Thanks for your reply & replay but i am so confused by what i just saw.
Why are you at 12 workers (in total) the whole twenty minute game?
Most total population you had was about 60 near the end of map?
Was this some kind of a special timing tactic for P&P map?
I have never seen anyone do that kind of a playstyle before.

I play 12-w as a challenge.

The point is that on a normal 2-base Econ, your follow up would be a lot better. The important thing is that early game is fine despite the self-imposed handicap.

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Is H&H mass hellions actually any good? Or do you just make like 1 hellion for every 3 reapers for death effect, if you’re going heavy on Mira units OR go heavy Horner units with hellions?

It’s good to always have some. You can definitely mass them provided you have some AA beside the galleons.

I feel like anytime you’d want to mass Hellions you can do better just by getting SFPs out ASAP to clear attack waves leaving your deathball to deal with static units/defenses which a mixed Reaper/Hellion ball will do better. Incidentally, this is a primary reason that P1 is better.

Disclaimer: I tried some P2 games to see how it felt after the mastery fix but it just feels so lethargic compared to P1. The nail in the coffin for me is losing MAG Mines as an offensive tool especially when playing against some mutators.