Co-op Mission Update – December 16th, 2019

Co-op Missions Discussion
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Hello all! We hope you’ve been enjoying Mengsk, his endless Troopers, powerful Royal Guard, and overall questionable war tactics. Whether Mengsk is your commander or choice or not, we have another surprise for you: the final Co-op commander revamp consisting of changes to Tychus, Zeratul, Stetmann, and even Mengsk. Because we wanted to get this update out before the holidays and very soon after Mengsk, we’ll be forgoing our traditional multi-week update format in favor of a more concise summary of planned changes. Here’s what you can expect soon in an upcoming patch:

Tychus

Tychus’ changes will focus on improving some of his lesser used outlaws: Blaze, Lt. Nikara, and Vega. We’ll also be taking a look at Medivac Pickup as we believe it provides too much instantaneous free healing, allow Tychus to be a bit more responsive than we liked and crowding out options like Lt. Nikara.

Zeratul

For Zeratul, we believe his Legendary Legions and Tesseract Cannons are too powerful for their respective costs. At the same time, we’d like to take stock of all the Artifact powers to ensure that they’re more competitive with each other across each tier.

Stetmann

One piece of feedback we’ve received about Stetmann is how overly transformative Super Gary is as an upgrade. As such, we’d like to improve Gary relative to Super Gary such that players will be incentivized to spend more of their time as Gary. We’ll also be taking further steps to lower the potency of Mecha Roaches while increasing the power and usability of Mecha Battlecarrier Lords.

Mengsk

For Mengsk, we’re going to be looking to tweak both his starting economy and the Imperial Support he gains when his Troopers are Indoctrinated as both trend higher than intended. We’ll also continue to implement bug fixes and tweaks to his more underused units and abilities.

Brutal+

After reviewing feedback, we’ll be lowering the difficulty of Brutal+ across the board with the exception of Brutal+6. In addition, Brutal+1 through +4 will now be capped at 3 mutators each, and you’ll generally be more likely to get fewer mutators overall.

And with that, we want to wish everyone happy holidays and especially happy Co-oping!

Kevin Dong
Lead Co-op Designer

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Noice got, Blizzard.

I think Legendary legions will now become 99 cent legions, sadly.

I think this will be a good idea.

This is gonna be a good update.

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I think Mengsk fast early expand nerf is kinda rushed.

Its true though, his mandate generation in late game is nuts because you literally can’t spend that much even if you spam everything on cool down.

His early economy on the other hand, I feel like that’s what really makes him unique and competitive compared to commanders who start the game with an all-powerful hero unit or get a hyperion/murvar/Griffin airstrike for the first objective. It’s exactly what was missing so far and you would destroy too many good things if you remove it.

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Hey team, any chance you’d look at Cannonball and Nux as well? Generally the Muscle and Fixer lineup seems to be less useful and necessary than the Guns. If you change (or nerf) the Medi Platforms you might just buff the only non-Gun outlaw that don’t need help, Kev.

Also, are there any plans for Karax in the future y’all are willing to talk about?

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I agree, Mengsk should not be touched this update, there was not enough time since release. His only options early game are the troopers, his royal guard is way to expensive. And you can’t get out many troopers early because an additional cc cost 400. Mengsk will not be able to defend or contribute to first objective if his early game gets nerfed. If he uses troopers from his mineral line it will hurt his economy.
This sounds like “Fun detected! Better nerf quickly!”

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Perhaps Abby will become mutation king again with Zera’s cannon nerf. Because he has to be #1 on everything.

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rip zera, you will be missed

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Cannonball and Nux are fine…although Kev is a bit too op

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Oohhh, maybe now people will talk about the strengths and weaknesses to Zera’s units instead of just throwing out that he’s OP all the time. (cause the cannons really do get OP at times…)

Hopefully the nerf to the Medivacs is carefully done, even with Nikara I find they’re needed to actually survive a fight at times late game. Especially when mutators get involved…

Though I am interested in what a better version of Blaze brings to the table.

All in all, looking forward to seeing what gets come up with!

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I hope we will not get locked into a build where the first (or any) outlaw needs to be a healer. I never get medic or marauder.

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Yeah, that’s the other thing too. I’d rather it not turn into a choice of just three mercs, alongside either Kev or Nikara.

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Kev is not OP. He’s the only non-Gun character who doesn’t struggle at all.

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Eh straight-up nerfs as opposed to creative solutions always make a commander less fun to play. Read: Stukov.

I often gg out whenever my randomiser picks him. Not because he’s hard to play, but because I find his buffed style boring to play as compared to the style they nerfed, which is now not viable on most mutations.

For reference, I liked the changes to Abathur, Kerrigan, and Fenix. It introduced new variations and made playing as them more fun.

I don’t think Stettman’s infestor style needs any more nerfs, it is already a subpar option until you hit critical mass. Just make his broodlords better.

Mengsk needs the early game econ advantage so that he can push towards/defend the first objective with a non-paper-thin army. You should hold off on nerfs or whatever until you can think of a more creative way to rebalance him. I personally find his gameplay right now very unique and fun.

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With the lowering of difficulty of Brutal+, would you please consider allowing public queue for Brutal+2?

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You mean waltzing around with Infested Bunkers was more fun than making actual units?

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Except I never played him like that and I haven’t seen any players on the korean play like that? And even if there are other players who did play like that, I don’t see the issue. Is there a particular reason you hate tower defense styles?

At any rate, nerfing a playstyle to a point where it becomes one of the weakest in co-op because some players dislike it doesn’t sound like the brightest idea in my opinion.

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Sounds great Kevin. But please give some attention to Alarak, Karax, and Stukov, they desperately need some more tweaks. Other CO’s could use some tweaks as well, please consider our feedback.

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I think as long as super gary upgrade is immediately available after spawning people will generally pool for it because its near instant and easy to have ready as soon as he comes out, if the upgrade started on cooldown (in addition to buffs to base gary) you would see less stringent builds revolving around opening with him

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Good luck with the Nikara changes! It seems really tricky to balance her, and I’ve no idea how you’re going to do it. Blaze by comparison seems a lot easier. I’m excited for Vega – I’ve got into using her lately and she’s already really good. I stand by the suggestion I made long ago, that all she could do with is a slightly better auto-attack. Lastly, the Medivac has always been too strong with mastery, but I hope us players don’t miss its current power level too much.

Am interested to see what you do here. Stasis Beam seems tricky to improve enough, but some of the others there are a few obvious options. I hope Tesseract Cannons continue to have a place, but maybe more as an adjunct.

Again very much agreed. Was just discussing in Discord though… when you bug fix the missing Deconstructive Roachnites, maybe consider if it really deserves to be victim to any nerf targeted at Roaches Away? It’s rarely used right now and it might be interesting to explore it going back to summoning 4 Roaches instead of 2.

Mix of excited and fearful. His starting economy is weird and hectic, but while it’s strong it seems necessary to make up for how he has to pay his way through the early game while other commanders just stomp about with heroes. It’s a good balance.

My vote was initially for halving Initial Mandate mastery, but increasing his base Mandate generation so he accrues 25/30 Mandate by around 2:00 to 3:00. Then nerf Labourer generation by… well, more than that, to an overall nerf, probably. I hope you don’t reduce his starting economy too much.

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