Co-Op Commanders Difficulty Tier List

Hello SC2 fans, I am looking forward to survey the StarCraft 2 Co-Op Commander’s tier list, depending on their difficulty.

I have posted my own here in any difficulty:
Easy Tier:

  • Raynor - All-purpose commander with different prestiges to affect his Raider combat units.
  • Kerrigan - Comprised of OG SC1 Zerg units, Assimilation Aura and Immobilization Wave are quite effective.
  • Swann - Laser Drill, concealed turrets, mechanized units in his disposal. What could possible go wrong.
  • Vorazun - Nerazim Protoss are masters of stealth and high damage attacks. She has Time Stop and Shadow Guard to match the odds.

Normal Tier:

  • Artanis - Heavy hitting Aiur Protoss units and deployable power field can warp in units instantly. Orbital Strike and Solar Bombardment for softening up enemy formations, while Shield Overcharge and Guardian Shell provides survivability to all units.
  • Dehaka - Primal Zerg units are quite powerful and when he becomes bigger and powerful, he is unstoppable when solo, but combining both of it, they are a deadly force to be reckoned with.
  • Karax - The master of base defenses and using Solarite as main source of energy. He used the Solar Forge as upgrades for his Spear of Adun’s top bar abilities. Not to mention, expensive, yet powerful mechanized warriors to reduce biological losses.
  • Han and Horner - Aerial specialists, Han’s mercenary experience brings mag mines, mercenary units, and deceiving tactics, while Horner’s tactical expertise brings down the thunder by calling the Dominion fleet to bombard the area of enemy presence.

Hard Tier:

  • Alarak - The most popular Protoss commander is way too mainstream, he can solo in early game. But in late game, he sends the Tal’darim units to match their strength. He can restore his health and shields by sacrificing Supplicants or killing enemies. The Death Fleet is also essential (Permanent when using Shadow of Death prestige) and Empower Me (Enhanced when using Tyrant Ascendant prestige) provides enough damage to Alarak when dealing large groups of enemies.
  • Stukov - This Ex-UED Admiral-turned-Infested commander brings both offensive and defensive tactics. Comprised an army of infested soldiers to overwhelm any opposition.
  • Fenix - Fenix sends his unstoppable Purifier warriors and his Champions to challenge Amon’s forces. Thus, he can switch into three modes to ensure survivability.
  • Stetmann - This Terrazine-fueled genius summons an army of Mecha Swarm to match Amon’s armies. Upon death, they become scrap metal as a resource material for his army. More scrap metals to be collected, the more army will be produced faster.
  • Abathur - He evolves his Zerg army into colossal groups of Leviathans, Brutalisks, and Swarm Queens. Collecting biomass and deploying Toxic Spores as an early game defense.

Brutal Tier:

  • Nova - This Ghost has an array of weapons and abilities, deploying an elite Terran units, and drones provide support.
  • Zagara - The swarming tactician, she sends Banelings, Scourges, Zerglings, and Corruptors to overwhelm any races possessed by Amon.
  • Mensgk - Laborers as workers and then become Troopers with different weapons as meat shields. Elite Dominion soldiers are the mains of the day.
  • Tychus - He and the Heaven’s Devils crew are the most brutal of all Terran groups. Using different members for any situations.
  • Zeratul - The OG Dark Templar Prelate with an army of Xel’naga units, searching artifacts, summoning constructs, and dealing high damage.

Feel free to post on your own. GLHF!

Can you elaborate what you’re listing for? I’m a little confused on what makes one of your listed CO ‘normal’ vs ‘brutal’ tier (as an example). And within your listings, each seem to have a very brief description (which again doesn’t seem to explain why it is in that tier).

If you’re talking about how difficult each CO is for a new player to pick up and use, then this list is waaayyyyy off.

6 Likes

Raynor? Easy? He requires a lot of macro. Extra CC’s, lots of Rax/factories/starports…Constantly having make units.

Zagara? Brutal? She only has 5 units. Just mass lings and banes against ground, and scouge/corrupters against air.

2 Likes

Odd. I think the correlation between my answers and yours is actually negative.

Easy Tier

  1. Zeratul — extremely strong hero and army, no weakness to air, excellent mobility, incredibly simple macro.
  2. Stetmann — extremely strong hero and army, no weakness to air, good mobility, fairly simple macro.
  3. Dehaka — can often hero solo, and when he can’t he has a strong, easy to micro and flexible army and simple macro.
  4. Tychus — easy micro, simple macro, excellent mobility.

Normal Tier

  1. Fenix — easy micro but complex macro, good to excellent mobility.
  2. Nova — strong hero, army requires some set-up/micro but is strong, good mobility, simple macro.

(gap)

  1. Karax — easy micro but macro and decision making a bit more complex.
  2. Stukov — easy micro, though army positioning requires good map understanding in a solo unless you’re playing mass Diamondback, average macro, low mobility.
  3. Kerrigan — extremely strong hero but fragile/less powerful army, average macro, weakness to air, excellent mobility.
  4. Zagara — very easy to play in duo games, but trickier when you have to trade even better in solo, low mobility, average macro, need to balance anti-ground vs anti-air carefully.

Hard Tier

  1. Alarak — complex micro (extremely so at skill cap), average macro, no weakness to air, good to excellent mobility.
  2. Abathur — early game very dependent on map knowledge and understanding of the commander, otherwise extremely strong army, no weakness to air, excellent mobility.
  3. Mengsk — fragile infantry, complex macro, quite a lot of decision making, no mobility, but no weakness to air.
  4. Artanis — micro and macro is quite simple but it’s not easy to eke out enough of an advantage for his weak army, weak to air, simple macro.
  5. Raynor — complex micro, complex macro, low mobility.
  6. Han and Horner — punishing micro, average macro, mediocre mobility, weakness to air, low overall power level.
  7. Swann — dependent on good decision making/map knowledge to excel due to slow early game, fairly complex macro.
  8. Vorazun — dependent on good decision making/map knowledge to excel due to slow early game, very weak to air, average micro, average macro, excellent mobility.

Brutal Tier

(Nobody)

4 Likes

I think you have everything in reversed.

TIER list based on Difficulty of playing a CO:

Play with one hand and one eye opened TIER
Zerarul, Dehaka, Abathur, Tychus and Zagara

Play with two hands and one eye opened TIER
Nova, Artanis, Fenix, HH, Karax, Mensgk, Stetmann, Stukov and Kerrigan

Play with two hands and two eyes opened TIER
Raynor, Swann, Alarak and Vorazun

1 Like

I’ll keep it short and sweet
All commanders: easy to use
All commanders: hard to use to their full potential

My f2a commander with a memorized build order is harder to use than YOUR f2a commander with a memorized build order! :stuck_out_tongue:

Plays 14 apm a move into ally’s hero with friendly fire, kill the objective accidentally pub raynor/Nova/F2A move army of choice.

For brutal, once you find a way to win once and a good army and setup for each commander. You should tend to win each game after that outside of like lacking mobility.

Extra effort only goes towards further killhogging so your ally can complain they never got to kill anything the entire 700K: 63K game lol. XD. I had to stop using high mobility commanders to keep my allies from ever being able to kill anything lmao so they could have fun too. It’s a COOP game! :D.

Haven’t anyone ever messed around with turning it into a coop fight game for the most kills, much more relaxed haha.

Nova, Zagara, Mengsk, Tychus, Zeratul are all the hardest commanders to play

lmao you must be trolling or are just a bad player lol. Raynor, Abathur (to a degree), and Alarak are all harder to pilot than these commanders.

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Alarak takes the cake as hardest for me in B+1+ but it is just so damn satisfying seeing my P1 Ascendant/WW army annihilating everything.

I don’t find Raynor hard as long as I stick to P3 with BCs being a baseline build that can handle most things albeit slowly but the great thing is so many of Raynors units can be added to speed up or deal with comps/mutators.

Abathur doesn’t need a lot of skill unless paired with another very slow commander and/or mutators that make the early game a lot harder (aggressive deployment).

In either case the skill required only sky rockets if doing speed run/solo games right?

Yes, especially against Avenger/Just Die. It’s so satisfying to watch everything just get punched into oblivion.

This OP was clearly written by somebody who uses the “Recommended Skill Level” blurb in the CO descriptions to fill in the gaps of the CO’s that they have no idea how to play, which by the look of it is nearly all of them.

Tychus and Zeratul as “the hard CO’s to play” is particularly laughable.

Elyssaens tier list is so much more accurate if we’re assuming level 15 commanders. I would probably move Stukov to a tier below Easy though since you just make Bunkers then alt tab to social media or whatever every 3 minutes.

I don’t understand what you meant as your list is almost completely reversed.

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