I think you can do without them, if need be. Haha Wrathwalker machine guns go brrr. >:3
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
OE is a minimum 25 minute mission so seems well suited to getting out WW’s?
Though Slayers and Vanguards both get bonus damage to Armoured so I suppose make a fine alternative if it works for you depending on the enemy composition?
i totally understand the need of getting the “Big Gun” (aka WW/Vanguard) with p1 but the build doesnt get near a solid state. also on OE you will be able to get first stacks on WW/Van when stalker already got a solid amount of stacks.
the initial question was
Does Alarak P1 work well if you skip Ascendants?
my answer is: yes, you even need to go without ascendants because mech tech tree + ascendants tech tree is to expensive for almost any map. WW/Van can be fun, mass stalker is defenity more effective. now do what floats your boat 
Mod Edit: Removed inappropriate language.
What I realised is:
- Wrathwalker should hit the field about ~2:30 after first Slayer (though I might check this when I can)
- DPS and cost wise 1 Wrathwalker ~= 4-5 Slayer (Or roughly ~3 Slayers gives the same DPS as 1 WW against Armoured)
- 4-5 Slayer cost 20-25 Supplicant deaths to max stacks and give x4 DPS
- 1 WW costs 10 Supplicant to max stacks and give x4 DPS
- WW suit hit-and-run Ascendant style of play better as give DPS even when pulling away from enemy while Slayers do not.
The final point is the one that matters as there is no need to even engage an enemy once Ascendant Deathballs are rolling in and the benefit of the WW’s is that you can keep Sacrifice on cooldown and be confident that the WW’s will ping anything down that survives the initial barrage.
As far as buildings go (RtK, SoA) you’d need 6 fully stacked Slayers at the cost of 30 Supplicants to equal the building DPS of 1 fully stacked WW.
Mind you I’m definitely going to experiment with some Slayer builds to see how I like it especially on a map like Void Thrashing or other maps with Armoured enemies but I imagine I’m more likely to lean towards making a choice between Vanguards and WW’s or even mixing 2 or 3 together.
thanks for poiting that out. wasnt aware of this huge dps difference. ill try a few games going hard asc/ww/vang/supl.
just played a pretty well rounded asc/ww/vang/supl on OE. i mixed in one early stalker to catch some early stacks. what i noticed is that the stalker had 8 stacks when the first vanguard joined the army. the stalker kept 8 stacks till the end of the game. obvsl p1 stacks prioritize expensive units. didnt know that
h.ttps://easyupload.io/p2xfrk
Sadly vanguards suck in most cases due to their slow non-tracking attack. Making them will also steal stacks that can go to your WW instead.
I was wondering if the Vanguards splash would actually hit 2 carriages per attack which would push there DPS past even WW’s by a significant margin. Perhaps if attacking from maximum range?
Edit: nevermind, I reread the description of Vanguard projectile on the wiki and it wouldn’t be possible (except perhaps for some very minor overlap of a few of the individual projectiles).
Okay so I haven’t been able to play for a few days but I’ve finally been able to get on to try to refine the build order a little bit on some Brutal Void Thrashing.
On my first play through trying to build everything as quick as possible I realised I didn’t have enough resources to build Robotics Bay so I ended up with a single Vanguard which was fine but not my desired outcome.
On my second go I delayed Twilight Council in favour of Robotics Facility/Bay and managed to have 1 Wrathwalker, 4 Ascendants and (I think) 6 Supplicants out for the 8 minute wave. After that it was a very quick snowball.
While P3 is undoubtedly quicker I actually had the Deathfleet for the 1st and 3rd fight along with its compliment of Destroyers making it a stronger army for those 2 fights and a much stronger Empower Me.
I made some errors though getting supply blocked and I could have built a Forge earlier as weapon upgrades help Wrathwalkers immensely and I did lose a WW carelessly to a viking.
The 5 or 6 WW’s I built were responsible for about 1/3 of the kills with Alarak getting a few at the beginning of the game and the Ascendants responsible for the rest.
Void Thrashing is essentially the worst map for this build as its the fastest amongst coop maps and while slower than what a P3 build would do (I was not constantly pushing and waited for Deathfleet before the final push).
I also never play regular Brutal and prefer to queue for B+ but it was useful to practise the build order without mutation distractions.
h.ttps://easyupload.io/7mz9by
well played. this 8min WW is super fast and might be a very good approach. the downside is having no forge upgrades (alarak/units) and also no warp prism and sentries.
but maybe it is also good to get the warpprism later since it steals the first stacks (otherwise it steals it later anyways, so i dont know haha). also im not sure how strong ur build is impacted by the mineral advantage due to ur allie
i noticed that you dont use the 2nd ability of your ascendants which i highly recommond. its awesome to snipe dangerous units
Ps. i dont like your engagement style (hit & run-ish). just put alarak and supps in front and a-move. this way your are a) faster and b) more supps will die and buff ur army
Hey these are some good thoughts but I’d encourage you to try it for yourself!
- Mind Blast gets less use with WW around as a fully stacked WW does 200 to 260 damage per shot but I do snipe targets in the final set of Void Thrashers
- Hit-and-Run just suits the WW+Asc so much, if you notice with the 2nd set of Thrashers the Orbs kill essentially all of the low HP units and then the Thor’s etcs get kited and die to the WW’s
- All of the WW end up at 100% stacks by the end. The continuous stream of sacrifices by Ascendants builds stacks very fast making it unnecessary to create any risk. Hit-and-Run may be unnecessary in Brutal but I’m more used to B+ with various other risk factors involved. I’d prefer my Supplicants being sacrificed for Power Overwhelming Stacks rather than just fed to heal Alarak.
- yes I need to retry without a “support” ally buffing my economy in any way but i think it would be a marginal difference
- the lack of early buffs, prism, havoc is intentional, all that matters is getting the core force out and everything else can fill in behind
I really love the build but it is punishing to any slip ups, the game that I played this evening got a bit to get rolling because it was so hard to macro behind a ling flood swamping the harvesters, not to mention the reanimators and tornados.
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If you are going pure mech, P2 is actually the best prestige. The empower me bonus is greater for mech units.