I tried it for a bit and tried the PTR and some of my thoughts.
It was really fun, every match did feel a lot different, there was more replayability in commanders and more fun to adapt.
The menus show 4 options, but the first is just a default option while the 3 are the special perks.
Tychus’s Prestiege are interesting but weird. One of the first ones, that increases your outlaw costs by 50% and time to research by 50% for 35% reduced cooldowns doesn’t seem worth it at all. You slow down your early game when he floats a lot and most of the time you only use 1 cd a fight. If you want faster cds you could just buy a Nux with the extra 1750 minerals and get more power lategame or a extra outlaw.
___ Tychus’s Lone wolf ___
(+200% MORE damage when a outlaw is out of vision, and -50% damage):
Janky, powerful but janky but needs more balancing. Generally you have a extremely powerful unmatched early game. (Tychus or a single sam can SINGLEhandedly run into bases, clear the rocks in a grenade and mow both expacs, and then deathbomb a train for 3000 x 3 damage on oblivion express, set up a blaze chain and light the entire map on fire and clear DoN in 15 minutes vs 25-35 minutes before (Halleluah) just by setting a 900 damage burn chain and setting Blaze to walk while Tychus clears another zone. It’s a micro nightmare though and you can really only handle 1-2 or maybe 3 outlaws at most at a time. It’s like playing a whole entire team of Dota but having to control each of the 5 players at a time. Tychus + Sam is a strong opener and Nikara can actually be used pretty well just since you can sic her on your ally and use her as a heal zone. While Rattlesnake can charge in and solo tank zones or drop off a revitalizer while you attack a zone. Nux is actually also amazingly powerful with lone wolf as another AoE outlaw. His aoe zones become instant kill zones that can deal 900 aoe damage to objectives, but his base attack still sucks.
- Drawbacks: While offering incredibly unmatched early game, this prestiege falls off lategame. You actually end up weaker than you started before unless it’s a wide map (Like DoN), and often as a common man have to regroup. Things like the vision on Fixers feels like a feel bad detriment since it helps Nux / Nikara spot things quicker, but it makes pushes harder and lategame you take too much damage to use Lone wolf on anything but the Odin or a Revitalized Rattlesnake. Definitely a speedrunning build and extremely good for Tych on DoN / Trains or quick objectives and still a very powerful build. Just extremely disorienting. Missing out on ultimate upgrades with lone wolf feels bad. I feel like they should rework it or something. Maybe remove the vision downgrade but limit you to 2-3 heroes instead and make upgrades 100% more expensive but let you still get ultimate upgrades. Or maybe have the prestiege Rework Change Tych’s Ultimate gear to let outlaws work better with it. It is fun getting the first hero, but it makes tychus’s outlaws feel bad and it’s disorienting to play. Many of them are designed around active abilitys. I think it’s a neat idea but i’d rather change it to a smaller design that maybe caps you to 2-3 outlaws, but still lets you get the ultimate upgrades and lets you use them together lategame (with tweaked numbers as needed).
Dog walker: (Odin has +100% increased duration and reduced cd letting you basically use it all the time and doesn’t remove tychus, but loses Nukes / abilities. )
o Advantages: Kinda neat, basically with mastery you can keep it up 60% of the time. Good Structure dps and a calldown equivilent to maybe Raynor’s banshees. Problem is you don’t get it until the 10 minute mark. Seems like you use the odin for the nuke most of the time to clear a base and it’s too slow to keep up with a army, but you can drop it on a base to defend or drop it a lot. Can’t wipe a wave as quickly in a click, but decent as a defensive cd or spamming it as a 6th outlaw.
Then other outlaws with notes:
Fenix’s 700% damage suit actually seems really good on him and really powerful. He basically becomes 3 calldowns all able to easily wipe waves.
Raynors’s Backwater Sheriff: (+100% Bio life, - Mules) is actually amazing for casual play. You can build 2 supply 420 health firebats [blaze it blizzard?] and 110 health marines, who dodge a lot of the aoe actually. You can use stim packs a lot on marines to open rocks and scans and actually barely lose units you still can float just as much minerals. Basically Raynor goes from being the tissue paper gun commander to having a sturdy new player army. I’d put it around a Zeratul or Mass dragoon artanis army in sturdiness. Only problem is army mobility. Raynor doesn’t have a good way to get his units around. But this should be great for public play and help Raynor with mutations a lot and New players. It basically takes out all the annoying 6-8 required orbitals to play him effectively and lets you do it with 2.
Overall
Overall i think it’s extremely fun and i can’t wait for a polished version to go life. Or a way we could test. The PTR is definitely fun to play and while there can and probably should be some adjustments made it’s pretty fun. There’s more commander diversity, checking the traits your ally commander has is fun. Some prestieges seem like they get more downsides than the strong ones. (Like +50% outlaw costs for +35% more abilities, when Nux exists), Other ones open up great possibilities. While i think others could use a tweak (Like Tychus’s Lone wolf: +200% attack -50% Damage when alone, As it has a promising idea of Powerful standalone outlaws and the most broken early game, but some outlaws like Sirius get gimped, so you’re shoehorned into either grenade / Blaze fishing while the vision on the mastery feels bad. It’s ridicolously powerful where you’re probably at your endgame cap at minute 3-5 able to clear rocks/ bases right off the bat with Tych / Sam. But Vision upgrades feeling like downsides or how disorienting it is to have to manage 2-4 characters with your +40% vision detection research being antisynergetic with your army feels bad. It’s probably the best one but feels extremely disorienting to play and isn’t helped by the fact that if you try to pilot 2-4 individuals outlaws at once and can only look at or target one screen at a time. (You also tend to have no detection on sam, who can dive in and nuke 9000 but can’t keep up with aoe, Rattlesnake can tank indefinitely slowly, but can’t shoot air or detect. Nux / Nikara meanwhile, if you research detection give you a +40% vision zone making it difficult / counterintuitive to combo them. )
Imo Overall the update is great, but the changes i’d want.
Tychus: Rework lone wolf. It’s actually a really neat idea being able to play Tychus as even more Super outlaws. But 375 Damage grenades and the disorientation from trying to play a whole MoBA team at once and having all your power at Minute 3-5 means it’s a extremely powerful pushing power. You thought current tychus pushing was insane? He can clear the map at minute 3:00 and instantly delete Trains in (Literally) 2 seconds. But it’s too disorienting to play and No Ultimate gears feels bad when it’s the one place you’d want to use them. I’d limit it to 1-2 heros and maybe tweak the power to +100%, or turn the +200% damage -50% taken into a Odin CD replacement or limit the lone wolf Buff into a Tychus Ultimate gear replacer.
Raynor’s ones look cool, they add a lot of ways to play, im glad they’re making f2p commanders better and he has a lot of versatile stuff.
Kerrigan’s Nydus ones look weird, if people are too lazy to use nyduses, are they really gonna even bother spreading creep?
Karax’s look good, i like them and the rest look fun.
Tychus’s First Prestige option I would really like to be turned into a well Vega / Fixer support option maybe. With maybe Vega granting a 1-2 second shield and confusion wave could also aoe mind control 5-10 extra units below 100 hp, and Fixers gaining -25% reduced upgrade costs but Gunslinger upgrades cost 35% more or something. Who knows, could be fun though.
Anywho looks really fun and i can’t wait for it to be balanced and go live!
although this still looks to be a better deal.
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