Does anyone else think Fenix P2 is useless?

I get the feeling Fenix P2 is meant to make him feel more like a Protoss/Zerg hybrid, with swarms of weak units that spawn quickly. As a quick recap, here’s the exact prestige and how it currently stands:

  • Tactical Data Web effectiveness increased by 200%.
  • All combat unit costs reduced by 50%.
  • All non-heroic combat unit damage reduced by 50% and vitals reduced by 50%.

Now, going off of the cost and damage/life reduction alone, it seems like they’re going for weaker, more expendable armies. However, the only reason this works for Zerg is because of one key thing: Supply. Zerg units all cost dramatically less supply than their Protoss equivalents. Fenix’s Legionnaires (Zealots) normally cost 160 minerals, 3 supply. With this prestige, they cost 80 minerals and have half damage - but still cost 3 supply! They also have the same cooldowns/build time for warp-in.

Part of the fun of co-op is smashing large armies against large armies. With this prestige, you can’t build a large enough army to actually do damage; your max army size does half as much damage as it should. You can’t even remax instantly, because build times aren’t reduced. The only way to instantly remax (a la Zerg) is to play exclusively warpgate, because unlike Artanis you don’t have warp stargate/robo, and even then you have to build far more production.

Now to address the first part of this prestige - the Tactical Data Web boost. While this is a neat mechanic, I feel like it just doesn’t play off the downsides very well here. The whole point of Tactical Data Web is to boost Champions when you have a large army. If you’re supply capped, you still aren’t going to have a large army, no matter how cheap it was to build. You can’t really take full advantage of Tactical Data Web, because it caps at 20 supply, which means 9 Legionnaires.

There are a number of ways to address this. Here’s a couple of proposals:

Solution 1: Reduce supply/build time, for more spammable armies

  • Tactical Data Web effectiveness increased by 100%.
  • All combat unit costs reduced by 50%, supply costs reduced by 66%, and build time decreased by 40%.
  • All non-heroic combat unit damage and vitals reduced by 50%.

This would mean that armies are cheaper and build faster, but are weaker, a la Zerg. Legionnaires now cost 80 minerals and 1 supply, and have an 18 second cooldown rather than a 30 second one. A “maxed” Tactical Data Web boost is now achieved with 20 Legionnaires, costing 20 supply and 1600 minerals, and giving Kaldalis a 20-unit (40 unit) boost, as opposed to the original prestige’s 20 supply, 560 mineral, 7-unit (21 unit) boost. The maximum boost potential is dramatically higher despite the “effectiveness” reduction, however the investment to reach that potential is higher.

Solution 2: Rearrange Fenix P2 and P3

P2: Network Administrator

  • Avenging Protocol maximum stack increased by 100%.
  • All combat unit costs reduced by 50%, supply costs reduced by 66%, and build time decreased by 40%.
  • All non-heroic combat unit damage and vitals reduced by 50%.

P3: Unconquered Spirit

  • Tactical Data Web effectiveness increased by 200%.
  • Champion AIs that die refund 75% of their base unit cost.
  • Champion AIs do not gain additional life or shields and have reduced attack range.

P3 is now more about exploiting Champion abilities and using a wide assortment of units/champions, while P2 is oriented towards bolstering overall Champion strength with a spammable, weak backing army, and only taking advantage of a smaller number of Champions. Slamming that weak army into the enemy will quickly bolster the Champion, and the effectiveness increase will cap the speed boost at 200%, incrementing by 10% (as opposed to the current Unconquered Spirit incrementing by 20% to a maximum of 200%), inline with the reduction in supply.

Personally, I think Solution 1 is better, but Solution 2 provides a neat way to harness Fenix’s abilities. Either way, something needs to be done about the supply issue; I’m having more fun playing standard Fenix than the current P2.

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Hide untis on the base except heroes, and boom, you have the ultimate army.

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I’ll have to try that, but that seems more like an unintended exploit than a fun playstyle. It could also still be achieved (to even greater effect) with my first solution.

Well, it seems pretty fun (watch Carbot’s episode of Starcrafts about Fenix Commander).
Still, i didn’t like any of Prestigies from Fenix, so i didn’t start them.

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Huh, you are right. I didn’t see any disadvantages to the prestige intially - just make double units. But you are 100% correct about the supply.
So… also halve the supply cost?

The trouble with simply halving the supply cost has to do with integers - Legionnaires cost 3 supply, so halving it would mean they cost 1.5, but that would likely round up to 2. If they could actually cost 1.5 (like Zerglings) then I’d be all for that, although in the UI they would show as 1 and it would be confusing.

I like the idea of prestige 2 being the AI Champion prestige instead of the Zerg Fenix prestige

Instead of reducing vitals/damage by 50%, just make hostshells exist as charges instead of actual units. This way, no useless micro is necessary to keep them away from fights. All you would need to do is micro your small army of Champions and sentries/observers/Fenix

Yes, a good way to use P2 is to rush out Kaldalis and 7 legionnaires, and to keep your weak units somewhere safe. With this method Fenix can do brutal + so he is not weak

Okay, the problem here is it’s too easy to misunderstand what this prestige is about. SeriousWolf is right, and Oxstar’s suggestion is off because you want to hit maximum TDW (20 supply per unit type) quickly.

Network Administrator is not about playing like Zerg. It’s about playing like Tychus. When you read "Cost reduced by 50%, non-heroic damage and life reduced by 50% you need to read it like this: “Champion units cost half as much at no disadvantage. Combat units are half as effective overall.” This is a prestige that’s about using Champions. And when you read: “TDW effectiveness increased”, you should conclude: “Non-Champion units’ purpose is to be a cheerleader squad that don’t fight.

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Played correctly, P2 Fenix can crush entire maps underfoot with Kaldalis alone. He scales insanely well with P2. The other champions are no slouches either, but when Kaldalis gets more kills than all of them combined…

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P2 is like Jojo. Am I doing this right?

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Since Tactical Data Web is based on supply counts this would actually be a crippling nerf to p2.

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Well shet. I don’t know then.

At risk of over self-promoting,

I really don’t think we need to be buffing p2 Fenix.

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A lot of people are saying you should leave your non-heroic units behind to maximize TDW. This means, whenever a hero dies, avenging protocol activates on a unit that is back at base, expiring before it joins the battle.

I personally bring all units. Conservators allow me to replace adepts and legionnaires pretty quickly on the battlefield (those are the units that will die frequently, besides scouts. Carriers, immortals, colossus tend to be safe in the back unless scourge). This means I can activate avenging protocol while keeping TWD in check.

You have the minerals to make 10+ Warpgates and pump supply the missing units on the battlefied if needed.

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C’mon people, don’t leave your army back at your base, just leave it at the base of the ramp with a conservator power field and THEN dive in with the AIs, duh.

Put all of the AIs alone into a control group and whenever an AI dies, just tap the control group again and it will grab the re-summoned AI automatically wherever it spawns (pro-tip, it spawns on the unit closest to the death spot).

Fenix P2 is awesome

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Hm, people like me are saying to leave them behind, but we’re not saying to leave them all the way across the map. Though you probably will need to do that if you’re playing P2 Fenix against environmental mutators.

Also, I do focus on the “only fight with Champions and Fenix” message as a simplification to try to get people to realise the basic concept of P2, because there’s a lot of misunderstanding. It’s fine to adapt further and use your Shells for clean-up jobs, but you’ve got to remember that they are weak, inefficient units and if they’re fighting and getting hit much at all you’re making a bad trade.

Imo you want your shells to die to keep avangeing protocol up. And if you dont get your shells to the battlefield you float minerals in no time

This, 100%. Leave the army slightly behind but not all the way back in the base.

If you are going to leave the army in your base, then I recommend going for Champion Life and Shields mastery (there’s actually some merit to doing this for this prestige anyway), but it’s better to leave your army close but out of the fight.

You know we are bored when we revive 5 month old posts XD But If I remember the entire point of P2 is to win the game with Kaldalis and a little bit of anti air support.

P3 on the other hand… ehhh… cannot figure that one out.