Does Alarak P1 work well if you skip Ascendants?

Co-op Missions Discussion
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I’m generally averse to making them. They’re fun and powerful, but just not my playstyle. I’ve seen a Alarak P1 ally with mech around, just focus fire down his own Supplicants to trigger the P1 (+). Seems wasteful, but I guess similar to Ascendants sacrificing them with their ability, it’s something that Alarak does anyways (for the “greater good”).

Also, it seems with his P1, you’d want to avoid making getting the ability upgrades for Supplicants? (shields get +2 armor, and +25 shields)

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P1 Alarak is super fun, triggering the ability is easier actually if you just focus Fire Alarak himself.

As P1 you can mix and match Slayers, Vanguards and Wratherwalkers depending on map/composition.

Ascendants get easier to use if Rapid Fire is set up. This helped me so much and can still be mixed into a P1 build.

P3 gives the added benefit of Destroyers as an option while helping massively with mobility which is a big Alarak issue especially for the super slow Ascendants.

Edit: Supplicant upgrades are always important as they help the supplicants tank.

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the synergy of p1->ascendants/suplicants/mech is really awesome. sadly the ramp up time is just to long for most maps

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Our very own Alarak main @Sprite would say not using ascendants with P1 is sac religious. To a degree he’s correct if we are talking maximum synergy and effectiveness.

But in terms of beating brutal without needing a carry, no it’s not absolutely not necessary .

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While not AS optimal as using ascendants, having Alarak dive face first into enemy bases and waves accomplishes the same goal more or less. Keep an army of supplicants and mech nearby and be aggressive. That way your not throwing away minerals; you’re actually causing damage. No enemy waves? Start pushing the enemy bases. Keep pushing to keep them mech levels going up.

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Ppl who have time to “focus fire down Alarak” in order to “build stacks” clearly aren’t playing P1 well. If you are doing this, I guarantee the games are longer than they need to be. This is classic “I got too much time”.

Like swordier said, Alarak diving in more accomplishes exactly the same thing. In fact, P1 encourages less Alarak micro in favor of aiding in stack building.

And that is also why using Ascendants can help optimize P1. Diving with Alarak has obvious risks. Poor control leads to army annhilation. While Ascendants can help, it also adds another layer that the “player who lacked control will likely also lack control to manual cast off cooldown on sacrifice”.

So it’s just a bit of conundrum in that sense.

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Sidetracking: Is it wiser to use mastery pts on combat unit attack speed with P1? Or does P1 provide enough speed on its own that we should pump up Alarak even further.

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I went with Combat Unit attack speed, I barely use Alarak to attack even early game preferring to build up my force and rely on wave/charge/over charge/empower me to get through until first few tech units are out.

The +25 shields for supplicants pushes them past the HP threshold that makes them targets for Yamato Cannon so anytime you might fight a BC it’s an added priority.

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can some1 provide a good p1 replay? imo is the lack of mobility and ramp up time a neck breaker

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I did one yesterday that I didn’t think was too terrible but you’d have to tell me how to upload it.

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any file uploader. h.ttps://easyupload.io/

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I think you can do without them, if need be. Haha Wrathwalker machine guns go brrr. >:3

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So I rewatched it before posting just to see how flamed I would get and I can say that it shows some of the things to do with P1 Ascendants and also some of the things NOT to do…

  • Don’t push out without a group of Supplicants to shield your Ascendants
  • Wrathwalkers and Ascendants are both great at kiting
  • 1eq2c is fine but I notice that I keep Sacrifice on cool down from spamming abilities so much
  • 1 Wrathwalker is all thats needed along with your first squad of Ascendants (either add second slowly or when you know its got 10 stacks
  • (from another mission) Don’t attack quest objectives with Alarak if Diffusion Mutator is active unless you want to lose your whole army
  • Make sure you have rapid fire set up

Here is the link:
h.ttps://easyupload.io/hs50sv

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The other thing in the replay was some “attacking Alarak to generate stacks” which I stand behind as I had added some Wrathwalkers and at that point the situation wasn’t calling for pushing into the enemy base by my judgement at the time.

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the replay proves my point pretty well. i stopped the replay after 16min because you didnt have a single p1 stack. not one! considering that most maps take ~16min it makes p1 pretty garbage.
ps losing your first four ascendants and two wrathwalker for nothing is hard to watch

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please dont get me wrong because i dont mean to be rude. my claim on a commander/built is not exclusivly that it has to be super strong but this p1 isneither strong or fun, because their is no joy in getting the first p1 stacks when 75% of the map is cleared.
the story would be whole different when the average map duration would be 20+

ps maybe wrathwalker are not the way to go for p1. i imagine that mass stalker are more viable since you get them so much earlier

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I’ve seen Sprite play P1 with Ascendant+Wrathwalker vs some tougher brutations and absolutely destroy the enemy. I can’t find the vids but maybe there’s some in his prestige thread.

BTW, P1 without Ascendants sucks because of things like bane/scourge with blinding cloud, etc. Sprite explains in the guide replies.

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Oh it was hard to live through it, I’ve gone back to playing a few games of Alarak after not playing him for some months as was leveling other prestiges. I tend to set my commander to random for regular B+ and Alarak turned up (as P3) and I did a pretty terrible attempt at an Ascendant build. Hence went back to boot camp and this was a few missions deep where I was happier with my control of the Alarak army but not happy with the early game which is a tough spot for P1 especially.

On a short map (like Void Thrashing) WW’s + Ascendants is obviously too slow a build. Depending on mutator you might do WW’s, Vanguards, Slayers or perhaps one of these + ascendants (as P1). On a longer map or any map that requires structure DPS combined with a threat to your WW’s (anything with scourge) then mixing in Ascendants becomes an option.

I might play some more Alarak games and try P1 Slayer + Ascendant on a shorter map to see how it works.

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here is my approach
h.ttps://easyupload.io/00hbx6

i went stalker only while manually killing supplicants. the dmg on the train seems to be pretty high

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when i comes to brutal i think p1 is also not a good choice due to the increased chance (more dmg inc overall) of losing stacked mech units. in difference to abathur there is no such thing as getting bio mass back. when your 10xstack unit dies, it dies with all its stacks. if you got very good controll and dont lose ur mechs, it might be fine