What is the cheat code to make the worker wall reliable? Props always derp in front of the worker but they often don’t stay derped. One will eventually slurp a building in the wall, walk past the hero worker, and gg.
Not sure, but I think you need to continuously aggro the poops. Units with faster attack speeds might be more likely to keep the poops aggro’d to them instead of the workers. Also later on you’ll need splash damage to kill the poops faster once there are more of them.
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I would highly, highly suggest partnering with a Spidermine Raynor. No need for flimsy worker walls, and mines reliably handle poop trains that your partner is highly likely to make. 6 Vultures with a few tanks are more than enough.
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Best combo for random imo is Abathur/Zagara. I beat it with a random partner after 3 tries together, neither of us was very good. I lost my whole army once between the 2nd and 3rd terminal (16 Roaches, 2 Vipers, 4 Queens, 3 Brutalisks) and still made it.
-TLDR:
2:00 Put nests + banelings on your starting ramp. Kill 1st propogator.
4:00 Use Zagara + Roaches to clear both expos and bonus areas, feed Abathur a Brutalisk. Do not put/lure Toxic nests on other enemies, put them ALL to the top-right right of your expo.
5:00 Both of you expand. build minefield outside of top right expo with nests + banelings. Rally Baneling nest to that area. Put Toxic Nests behind banelings. Do NOT build any other static defenses at your expos. Zagara defends left Expo with her hero. Deploy Overseer on dead space to right of ridge. As long as you keep putting Nests/Banelings there, ALL propogators on the map will run there and die. No more micro/thinking!
7:00+: Normal Brutal +0 difficulty game for Abathur! Just make sure you let Propogators spawn, hide/avoid them (Propogators ignore units unless they get within 5 range or attack a nearby unit), let them die to the minefield, and then push. Rinse and repeat.
14:00+: Put down a Spire and start transitioning into Mutas. Keep planting nests. Zagara should keep replenishing Banelings.
Longpost:
Best defense is Toxic Nests + Banelings on the choke point to the top right of the right expansion, with a deployed Overseer on the air space. Propogators are attracted to buildings and nests count as a building, so there’s no micro after it’s set up. Much more consistent than blocking with workers + building a turret, and Zagara has a bunch of emergency banelings available if either of you mess up.
Once you get your defense set (a ton of Banelings + Toxic nests outside the top right expo), there’s a “rhythm” that turns it into an almost normal Brutal map. Propogators Spawn -> Hide your army on the side of the map -> Propogators rush into Banelings/nests and die -> Play normal Malwarfare map for 1 minute -> Macro + wait for next wave of propogators to spawn.
Zagara is main defender early. Rush baneling nest/Lair + Overseer before 1st prop spawns. Kill it with Banelings, then deploy your Overseer on the empty ridge to the top/right of the right expo. Keep making/rallying Banelings to that area, and clear the early expo with Zagara once she spawns. Have a few banelings hanging around outside of each expo to intercept stray propogators. Use hero unit to help clear initial 2 expo areas, then 1st bonus to stop propogators from spawning on left expo. Once you have ~40 supply of Banelings defending the right expo and ~10 supply of banelings defending the left expo, you can start microing your hero and helping Abathur clear areas. Don’t forget to replenish Banelings after propogator waves. Zagara by herself is enough to clear a bunch of areas and many ground waves. Don’t Roach Drop unless Propogators have all just spawned/died. Make extra Overseers.
Abathur is your pusher. Put a bunch of Toxic Nests on your main ramp to help out Zagara initially, then place all subsequent nests onto the area to the upper-right of the right expo, behind Zagara’s banelings. Push as fast as you can into the bonus area and kill those buildings (4-5 Roaches, 2 Queens is usually enough). Rush up to Infestation Pit and add 2-3 Vipers for Disabling Cloud. Get your expo up ASAP. Play normal Macro game as Abathur. As the game goes on (after 3rd terminal), transition into pure flying army.
Tips:
- Expand as soon as you can after Zagara spawns and you clear out the 1st bonus area. Brutalisk rush is nice but not needed.
- Propogators are attracted to TOXIC NESTS AND NON-HATCHERY STRUCTURES ONLY, THEY IGNORE YOUR EXPO AND EVEN YOUR UNITS IF YOU DON’T BUILD ANY DEFENSES AND STAY 5 RANGE AWAY. If you clear out the bonus objective area quickly and keep planting toxic nests on the upper-right ridge, all of the propogators will run into that area and die to the nests/Banelings.
- Propogators will IGNORE YOUR ARMY if you don’t go near them. They direct-path to the spot where there are the most toxic nests (structures) planted.
- There is no need to fight propogators with your army, unless you messed something up. Let them die on Banelings/Nests. If you do mess up, use Zagara’s Baneling Barrage + Viper’s Blinding Cloud.
- Do NOT push forwards if there are no propogators on the map. You wipe when you’re fighting and a new propogator wave appears underneath your guys.
- After you get to the 3rd terminal, do NOT reinforce/rally with ground troops to your main army any more, go into flying units that move over dead space to get to your army. We lost a bunch of times because a surprise propogator spawn killed 10 rallied roaches/banelings that spiraled out of control.
Easiest comps are ground-heavy (Roach/Hydra, GatewayToss, BioTerran). Impossible for me vs. flier comps (especially Viking/Battlecruiser/Liberator) as they shoot down your overseers/vipers and ignore banelings/nests.
I tried the solo-strat of cannon-blocking with a choke using Swann/Karax, but it never worked for me. Also took forever to get something offensive to help my partner with. 1 propogator would always derp out eventually and kill the whole thing and end the game 30 seconds later.
Raynor with Vulture Mines is just as good as Zagara on defense, a little bit worse on offense since he doesn’t have a mobile detector and his units need to hit critical mass to not die.
Tychus is just as strong as Abathur for pushing, but I feel that he’s harder/more “attention” intensive since you can’t swap to Mutas halfway through when things get hectic. If you lose 1 Devil and don’t use a Medivac pickup to bring them back, there’s like a 50/50 chance they die to a stray propogator as they’re walking back to the main group. However, you can Medivac pickup your squad as soon as Propogators spawn to guarantee that they ignore you and run into the defense line and die.
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Beat as Abathur with a good Tychus. Vorazun and Zara are good partners too.
Max both toxic nest masteries, and put 8-10 nests at all of these locations, refilling as necessary:
imgur.c0m/CVoaNWe
(fix the url with a “o” – I don’t understand why they have a button to include links and then tell you “sorry, you can’t include links in your post”)
Gold stars are your main defensive nests that draw most of the props, so you’ll need to refill them several times and keep a close eye on them. Red stars are ones that you’ll want to get up as soon as you’re battling near that location, as a wall to hide behind when they spawn. Run to those nests when spawns pop and try to keep them between you and props. You don’t really need to refill these once you’re past that location. Orange stars are permanent defense like gold stars, but you shouldn’t need them more than once or twice. You can also drop three nests directly on suppression tower locations to kill props instantly if they spawn there, useful when you’re fighting nearby them or if you have an excess of nests.
Stars with squares should hug the corners along the wall, cause that’s where the props will path. The star with the oval should fully block the chokepoint, three spaces wide, three nests deep. The others can float in the middle of the path.
Props will still get through and attack your army directly. You want a lot of vipers, and start getting them early. Ideally have several by the time you’re purifying the second terminal at the top of map. Turn off leviathan autocast and feed them biomass ASAP. Disabling cloud stops props from using their ability, so just spam it all around your army when they get close. Cover your entire army with it if they successfully penetrate you. Spam ravager bile all around the props. Refill viper energy asap, and keep your vipers away from props at all times, it really sucks to lose them.
For the Abathurs out there: You don’t need full toxic nest damage mastery. You need 10 points minimum to reach the 3-shot breakpoint, anything beyond that won’t save you any nests. Generally you should be running 22 points to account for Protoss breakpoints, going beyond that is some minor, free healing you’re missing out on.
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Thanks, will give Aba and Zagara a try. Approach makes sense.
Spent an hour trying to do this as Aba, it’s harder than winning a lottery.
Even with nests in chocke points allies keep moving ahead and feed propagators, within 6 minutes of the game an army of poops is all over.
They should introduce a new mutation, not allowed to play with a friend, only in the random queue.
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True.
characters yady yada
Finally beat this week mutation after a countless attempts.
I am using Zagara and my ally is Tychus. My role is pretty much killing Propagators while my ally is pushing and protecting the ship. Only until the very end, I was able to assist my ally to destroy the towers that spawn far from the ship and at the same time destroying a lot lot lot of propagators.
Brutal+Bonus. Nova+Tychus
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Took many, many, many tries (I lost count at around the 32 mark…) but with a good pairing of Nova + Abathur, we got the win.
By far one of the most difficult and frustrating mutations in recent memory. It took me about ~3 hours of trying before finally winning as Abathur (mass roach/bruta/leviath/viper w/ maxed out toxic nest mastery) w/ a Vorazun (DTs/Oracle/Corsair w/ disruptor web) friend ally.
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Zag nova did the trick, after too many tries swann zag. Need a mobile force for last part.
On a side note , why the tychus in the video pick Vega as his choice vs ZERG ??? 
PSA for those wanting to play Nova this week: Poops want to go after the most recently spawned “Structure”. This includes things like Toxic Nests and Defensive Drone. Don’t use Defensive Drone if you can avoid it, or it will draw the attention of the poops.
Bio-Mechanical Repair Drones (the ones dropped from the Ravens) are fine to use as they don’t count as structures. Auto Turrets are also structures that will draw the attention of the poops.
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After losing in just about every way possible 65 times in the pub queue with Zagara, Abathur, and Tychus, I finally managed to win as Abathur with a Zagara partner.
BurnD: 1
Amon: 65
f
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Was able to beat it after 20 tries with Abathur and Vorazun. Toxic mines and stasis wards for defense and Vortex = helpless prop.
if you have enough DT’s you can just insta kill a prop with Shadow Fury.
Also for Dehaka players; Devouring the first few props at the start is also great and allows your Abathur ally to save and stack up on more Toxic Nest’s for defense in case you screw up later into the game.
Is this still manageable on Hard or Normal?
I called Lumisery daddy to get carried. I felt no shame.
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Do props require buildings to spawn?