I haven’t seen anyone made a thread on this. Since Raynor is my favorite commander, I will make one with my opinions.
Prestige Level 1: Biological combat units gain 100% additional life, but MULES are unavailable.
You don’t need to build many CCs for mules. You just need two CCs upgraded to orbitals for scans. Your bios will be almost as strong as Nova’s elite bio units and you can create up to 200 supply. Most Raynors I played with (up to now) doesn’t build many CCs anyway, so this is a good build for them.
Prestige Level 2: Afterburners increase attack speed by 100% and its cooldown is reduced by 50%, but units no longer cost less, and the speed bonus is reduced by 50%.
I think this is the best prestige for mechs or bio / mech combo. The downside I can deal with (mech’s gas cost back to original cost and reduce in speed bonus). I normally use bio / mech build for protoss / terran composition and bio only with zerg composition. Spam stim on bios and mechs would be epic
Prestige Level 3: The Starport no longer requires gas to build, and its units cost 30% less gas. Vikings, Banshees and Battlecruisers increase top bar ability cooldown rates by 1% per supply used, but all combat units cost 50% more minerals.
This requires multiple CCs to compensate of mineral costs. Most people (that I have played with) can get decent amount of BCs half way through a game and will need cover for first few waves. Second half of the game, this build will be over-powering. In my opinion, I think the second prestige is better this prestige for BCs builds. Raynor’s mech DPS > short call downs
Every Raynor prestige is a buff. Kit 2 is simply Raynor+ where you get exactly the same bio with a much stronger mech. Kit 3 is a more situational buff where your late game power level is significantly higher with the hyperion CD reduction and if you are fighting something BC’s are good against (hint: almost everything except things like Kill Bots). Kit 1 is a massive buff because bio is already viable as a macro-heavy glass cannon. Kit 1 takes out the macro and the glass part.
No they didn’t. Prestige was never meant to make vanilla completely obsolete. Right now there’s no reason to play vanilla Raynor when Kit 2 is always superior, kit 1 is almost always significantly superior, and kit 3 is usually significantly superior.
Sure they did. Raynor is a free to play commander. So it makes a ton of sense to give him good prestige kits as advertisement.
I’m not sure why you have an absurdly hatred against power creep. From day 1 of coop, this was the case. Frankly speaking, prestige approaches power creep far more intelligently than all the balance patches ever did.
As for Raynor’s prestige’s, all 3 are done well.
Tier1 allows Raynor to counter high splash while still using bio (for the average player).
Tier2 gives rise to both using afterburner continuously and constantly and tactically, as well as boosting mech play for a bio-defined commander.
Tier3 is almost brokenly good for those apt enough to use BC (or air in general). It makes mass BC build far more effective than previously. The one issue I still see is more of a lack of build order issue. Most (as OP mentioned) still poorly managed their economy, with next to no units to engage until past 10-15min mark. This doesn’t have to be the case, fyi.
Because power creep is a double edged sword at best and lazy game design at worst.
Because blizzard doesn’t know how to increase the difficulty reliably past brutal. I am not the best Raynor player by any means but I can solo brutal with kit 1 against enemy compositions that are suppose to hard counter bio (archon, HT, immortal, colossus). According to the people on the coop discord, once I reach this level of ‘skill’, I should just start playing solo. What kinda solution is that?
Negatively criticize everything definitely made things better without real and feasible solutions to existing problems.
And therefore all game mechanics and difficulty gauge should be measured against me, for I am the standard.
I think rather than being this critical, maybe try to see the silver lining, even just for a little.
Prestige brings in refreshed content and continued enjoyment. After all, I’m sure it is your love for coop that pushed you to such view. Many players are very stuck in one type of build as Raynor, so his 3 prestige levels help towards expanding these player’s horizon.
While being as critical as you have been isn’t entirely without merit (as in your reasoning but not your tone lol), providing a solution might be more useful. On that note, I think the expansion of these players’ view can help them see new limitations (that perhaps you see as well). So isn’t that just part of the solution?
I mostly agree with this. I did some more thinking about the third prestige, it requires someone who is to be able manage marco CCs and micro combat units until calldown CDs become effective. If you want less headache just go with 1st prestige.
I wonder how this will against p storms / colossus / siege tanks. Also firebats / medic build on zerg ground comp
I’m a gold/low-platinum level player at best. That effectively puts me in the 50-60% percentile of players. So yes, I am a pretty safe benchmark if you want to design ‘for the masses’. I’m not playing the game any better than I was pre-prestige, and yet I’m soloing the most consistently difficult setting. That’s not making the game better, that’s making the game worse.
“We’ve improved our coop experience so much that you don’t even need a partner anymore.”
The concept of prestige is smart. Its basically generals from zero hour. Its a great way to add content without making much new content. But people are complaining prestige X is ‘not as good’ as prestige Y because look how good prestige Y is. Basically people just want their thing buffed. When blizzard cant figure out how to make the game harder, buffing all the players effectively makes the gameplay worse. Power creep for the players without power creep for the enemy.
Re: The Departed:
Vehicle stim pack with increased attack speed and movement speed. If you spec for vehicle attack speed, you get +80% attack speed with it on IIRC. If you are allied with Kerrigan super creep, tanks basically shoot like machine guns. Even sieged tanks can activate it even though they obviously dont benefit from the movement speed increase. On net, it is vanilla raynor - but better.
Raynor’s first prestige reminds of the no-macro mechanics testing on ladder. I was pretty amazed as to how far away from 200 supply I was for a lot of the game compared to when I had MULES. I wouldn’t use this prestige myself but I can see the intent of it and I can see it being fun for people that would prefer to spend more time microing the army than macroing at home.
I slightly agree with cheese but not because of the power creep, but because there’s no advantage to picking default raynor.
Rough rider especially is just a flat buff. The extra gas cost is neglible and it’s not like the 50% move speed from after burners will be missed. More importantly, this does not affect “regular” raynor play. If you make pure barracks units + vultures (which is something players do anyway) you receive none of the drawbacks from this prestige. So it’s a buff to mech and a “neutral” to bio. Why wouldn’t you pick it?
I think rough rider should have a slight nerf to bio in some way. Maybe something like “infantry units no longer train faster”, or “+2 and +3 weapon upgrades at the engineering bay are locked”. Either of these would allow early game bio to still work fine, but for the mid/late game, you really want to transition partially or entirely to mech-based play. This would also preserve the option to rush factory that we have.
Which I don’t think would be hurt by having to really think about costs/benefits for each prestige. This is a great chance for players to say “this prestige really fits my playstyle, while it’s costs I don’t really care about”, which adds another layer of strategy.
The other 2 masteries seem decent enough. With backwater sheriff, you REALLY suffer from fighting reavers or disruptor or other huge AoE that still 1 shots you (going nuclear and minesweeper come to mind as well). Rebel raider makes pure marine spam much worse, which is a pretty fair drawback imo.
Absolutely, I agree there are definitely some tuning needed. So I think that’s why we all need to keep in mind it’s PTR.
I don’t quite agree with regards to the standard play shouldn’t be outstripped by prestige. If we look at it from a different perspective: "Prestige levels are how a commander should be played or excel in. As such, they should all shine in that particular element, where standard/vanilla style should not out-shine it.
So if we view it this way, then we can weed out some prestiges that clearly needs adjustment. And instead, not adjust the ones that simply boosts standard.
Regardless, I’m having a fun time, as was our game earlier today. So it’s nice to see you in action lol.
I don’t mind power creep as much if it was higher potential power but requires higher skill. Brohaka is a good example as if you play sloppy, you die a lot and its worse. But if you micro well, its stronger than vanilla. Kit 1 Raynor gives you higher power and you have to work much less. The macro is a big part of Raynor’s challenge and they made it much less important to master.
I also expect every prestige to be superior in the specific way they force you to play. They are basically specialist sub-classes. Kit 3 raynor is suppose to be stronger than vanilla raynor when going air fleet which is why its the kit that bothers me least. Kit 1 isn’t really any worse for mech (just worse for pure mine spam) and is arguably better since you hardly lose medics anymore, which cuts into gas that can be used for tanks/BCs. Kit 2 doesn’t nerf bio one bit so you have exactly the same bio army as vanilla with mech stim packs.
It just so happens that Raynor is one of the harder commanders to play, so a lot of people feel hes weak. But if Blizzard thought he was inherently weak, they would have just given him a straight buff like they did with Karax.
You have a point here. What would be that straight buff be? More more HP on upgrades? 20 or 30% rather than only 10% on bio?
Blizzard probably found out a lot of people do not take advantage of Raynor’s mules so that’s why they design prestige 1. The design of prestige 1 tells u that blizzard was paying attention. Also Blizzard doesn’t want to penalize prestige 2 and 3 that much because most people think Raynor is too “weak.”
These three Prestige designs were to encourage more people to play Raynor.
Marine spam isn’t that effective now (vanilla Raynor), maybe effective against Zerg air comp. The way I would play third prestige is spam bio in the first half (use my call downs too) and slowly bring BCs. I’ll probably end up with 7+ BCs at the end with my bio / mech combo.
Please leave my rough rider alone. This is the only prestige I’m looking forward to because it is really good at KSing ur partner .
Joking a side this seem super overpowering. I watched CTG preview on this and his siege tanks were shooting like marine machine guns in siege mode. Maybe increase attack speed to like 50-70% not 100%? But leave my bios alone please
Raynor’s got 3 main category of builds: Bio, Ground Mech, Air Mech. Each of his prestige literally focuses on these 3. The draw back (as you mentioned) of prestige 1, removes MULE entirely, which is the foundation of spamming Spider Mines. Without it, you simply can’t make it work well enough. That’s plenty of trades.
You do have a point here but I think again you failed to take into other people’s skills into consideration. Raynor has been a bio-oriented commander. From the very start of Coop Mode, I’ve hardly seen any players using GroundMech (and far rarer still for making it work)… this is over literally thousands of games. So while I get that you’re right “there’s no bio downside”, I think this is more of a safety net. Making Raynor’s pure-mech work is far more difficult (especially when the price is paid in full now).
I think of all the commander’s prestige overpowered-ness and underpowered-ness, Raynor isn’t remotely up there. And Glen hits a really important point that people on the forum often ignore:
And that would be the ultimate goal. The more people who are better versed in a multitude of builds, the more people will feel inclined in the future for more precise tuning.
P1 - Backwater Sheriff - “the bio path”
If the double hp really makes up for it, then I think I’d really like this. I found making lots of OC, then spamming MULES to be a chore. Too bad Raynor doesn’t have a unit as a detector, although it does mean you can get away with less OC since you only need them for scans now. Should make certain maps that are more cramped for space, like OE and DoN easier for him to deal with
P2 - Rough Rider - “the mech path”
Stim pack for mech sounds fun! Losing 50% of the speed boost sounds like we’re still coming out ahead!
P3 - Rebel Raider - “the SkyTerr + CD path”
I’ve enjoyed spamming BCs, but don’t bother if the mission won’t last past 20 minutes. I’ve made a scant few otherwise. This will make that “a dream come true”. Also enjoy spamming his CDs!
It’d be neat if the devs could give us the feedback they’ve been receiving (as a post, or designer diary type thing). AFAIK, it can also be because too much of Raynor’s core was around MULES. Enabling a style of play otherwise would really shake things up.
I’m sure they do, but they just have far bigger fish to fry. I’ve only played a few Versus games so I have no horse in that race. Still, every time they post a balance update, it makes my head hurt, as it looks like a lot of work to have to keep going to maintain balance, and keep retweaking things.
When you see others who don’t agree with you, you can denounce them for self standard regardless of what they really say. You don’t need to strive to refute their logic, if you can poison fountainhead.
Apparently you have plenty of money for mines when you aren’t losing infantry by droves. Im not even a big mine user so I didnt even put them in the right places a lot of the time. The only composition I had a hard time with was reaver/disruptor so I guess you can hold that against me.
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