I mean, Zeratul being too easy is probably why he’s so popular, the average player is always going to gravitate towards the path of least resistance, the meta, so why bother with complicated mechanics when you can play someone whose macro and some micro is essentially automated? Or someone who has very little macro and basically no units except a couple of heroes? You’ll notice that Nova is also pretty high in the popularity and it’s because she’s very similar to Tychus: very little macro concerns, a small but powerful army. While I’m not saying this kind of playstyle is bad in and of itself, the stats do show that Zeratul/Tychus (and to a lesser degree Nova) are a little overtuned.
As for the other standouts on the list, H&H and Alarak, it’s honestly not too surprising. H&H aren’t bad, but they’re weird, with a very complicated playstyle that I could see people having a hard time wrapping their heads around in a “I want to main this” kind of way. They could probably stand to have some small tweaks to streamline their performance. Alarak is in a similar boat, he could really use some buffs to Ascendant build (getting it online sooner, maybe allowing stacks to benefit their autoattack as well) and removing some of the gas cost of Mech build, but I’m sure he gets some extra points because Sith Lord Q is a hell of a fan favorite.
I only really play them now to screw around with Strike Fighters. Aside from them (which are a cool mechanic when you can actually USE THEM) the hero is just the same deathball every game as you said.
Just updated the list for the last time and the total amount of picks i got went from 1075 to 1519, i won’t do another list for 2020. after 9 years of sc2, my interested is a bit decreased at the moment, plus i got bored of mutations, on solo queue are super boring and RNG based
Yeah it’s really a shame. All the possibilities with Matt Horner as the Post-Arcturus Dominion Admiral, and they made him into a dual commander with Mira Han.
The unit comp is pitiful. They should’ve separated the Mercenaries and the Matt/Valerian Dominion into two stand-alone commanders.
I would take a bit of exception to calling Nova “easy”. Having automated gas and fixed supply definitely doesnt automatically make a commander easy to play. Relative to other commanders, playing Nova is a lot less forgiving when the difficulty is jacked up- you lose your army with her because you looked away for two seconds and that’s it. Her rebuild ability is non-existent relative to other commanders what with the impossibly long build cooldowns. You compare her to Tychus- that guy can get wiped and rebuild his army in just a couple seconds.
She’s certainly not as difficult to play as say, H&H or Fenix, but she’s got a good bit of micro intensity and build complexity.
As I’ve said before, Nova is the perfect coop commander, the paradigm that Devs should use when designing a balanced, well constructed commander. Her setup allows for a variety of different builds and she’s got weaknesses that make her a non-starter for some mutations while still giving you that “I’m a destroyer of worlds” feel when you play well and against the right mutations. If all commanders were balanced in line with her, coop would be perfect.
The “braindead yet overpowered” playstyle of zeratul and tychus is definitely the most popular.
Its like playing brutal but on easy difficulty with nothing but your mouse xD
Hopefully the least popular commanders get some quality of life upgrades and buffs.
Partially, Stetmann was released during the year so he gets a huge behind start, being at 0 when every other commander had amassed several games. That said, Stetlagg REALLY killed the commander.
You’re looking at it a bit too narrowly; of course there are going to be slight differences in their strengths and weaknesses (for example, you could argue that Tychus is more micro-intensive because most of his units’ abilities are manual use instead of autocast), but their overall playstyle remains very similar- focusing entirely on microing a very small army of very strong units with little to no macro. They also remain similar in that getting wiped as either of them meant you made some serious mistakes, either in comp or positioning or simply overestimating your army strength. Hell, I would even argue that Nova can recover better than Tychus because, as long as she has a lot of resources banked, she can immediately rebuild her army with units not on cooldown (which might be better for her if her current army got hard-countered) and pay for an immediate revive, whereas Tychus has to wait for each hero to come back one at a time, is locked into his army comp once he’s picked all 5 hero slots, and can only get an immediate revive with the Odin cooldown.
However, I do note that the popularity for Tychus and Zeratul has gone up while Nova’s has not, so it’s certainly true that Tychus is easier while Nova has a learning curve. It’s also true that they’re not as blatantly overpowered as Zeratul is, hell, they’re much closer to balanced than Karax or Alarak is.
His previous Medivac Platform was crazy effective. Every time Tychus and company teleported into an enemy mob, I can practically see the Terminator-style shades on Tychus, with the iconic theme to back that up!