Out of all the commanders i can definitely say that Swann feels the weakest. His army is made of paper, expensive and all of his stuff feels like it’s from ancient times. Normal supply depots? what? XD
His prestiges feel very weak and pointless, ramp-up way too slow…
I haven’t seen a swann in ages while playing co-op…is anyone seriously playing this commander? it’s kind of sad 
I’m level 11 with Swann, leveling his P3. He has tough time leveling early on, that’s for sure.
You should play to his strength and support your ally. Siege tank + hercules + vessel are definitely his power house, since you get the +40 damage upgrade for tanks right from the start. Upgrade it asap (after around the time you build your first tanks and hercules), next upgrade his laser, so you get his second calldown asap as well. Try to keep one calldown available at any time for emergencies. Warbots are preferable, as they also tank for your tanks 
Depending on the map you can often get away with pure tank + hercules + vessel. Occasionally you have to mass goliaths / missile turrets as well, when you are dealing with air.
P1 is weird. Loosing his 2 major calldowns hurts. Though the lasers AoE slow is great when juggling your tanks with hercules around.
P2 is very powerful on defense type maps, even before you get auto repair for structures. You could just level playing temple of the past or dead of night and defend with tanks + turrets. At daytime just take a hercules and support your ally 10+ siege tanks. Probably the easiest maps for Swann.
P3 is very powerful and mobile overall. One full hercules with at least 10 tanks can do a lot.
I never built any cyclones, wraiths or thors while leveling his P1, P2 or P3. Although thors would be nice if you face scourges…
Speaking of… IF you face zerg baneling, scourge, viper, then my main defense was having 5 hercules at all times. I’m not kidding… just suicide 3 empty hercules to absorb any scourges and parasitic bombs. Loosing 2 empty hercules is not a big deal… both cost 200 mins and 100 gas. It is much MUCH preferable to loosing all your vessels.
As cheap as they are, you can also suicide a hercules, to drop a pulse cannon / concentrated beam on an attack wave on the other side of the map. You can also try to time this well, to hit the wave and parts of enemy base defenses with one calldown. And often the hercules even gets out alive, if you don’t teleport exactly on top of a wave.
Swann is my second main and I agree with many of your points.
I was really expecting some supply reduction change by means of P or mastery.
I did his first P but ended as vanilla as I didn’t like any of the others either.
He definitely is kinda slow at the start but can have a deadly late game ball.
Whenever I log in the game my first games are always as Swann and normally on SoA.
And when I am not Swann he is a rare ally, I mainly get Tychus and Zeratuls…
You should try his P3. Hercules with 16 tanks inside and instant drop are borderline OP already. That’s >1600 instant burst damage, when you drop your tanks.
Much more so, with teleport for vessels and 50% cooldown reduction on teleport.
And the downside is bearable… sure 50% more cooldown on all calldowns hurts. But unlike P1 you still have ALL your calldowns.
It is the prestige i see myself playing a lot in the future.
I hoped with the prestiges and tweaking his mastery regarding the immortal protocol would be changed into something like Fenix has for free supply. All in favor to speed up his early game a bit because I think this can/need some more attention by the devs.
Have p1 and 2 unlocked and based on what I read p3 now seems much better then before. I will level it after I complete Mengsk p3. Tank Hercules drop was alrdy fun and teleporting science vessels open up more options.
All I ask is immortality protocol for goliath and may be cyclone.
Swann is one of my favorite commanders. He was my fav, until I started playing Mengsk a lot.
I disagree about his army, I think it’s very powerful. Definitely on the slow side, but powerful. If you feel underwhelmed (as I did, when I was learning Swann)… Make Goliaths more often. They are seriously one of the best all-purpose units in co-op. The downside is its expensive and thus one of his slowest builds, but if you can hang on until you have ~20 and a few upgraded vessels, it becomes nearly untouchable. Even swarmy comps get shredded once they hit critical mass, which are Goliath’s worst matchup.
I know a lot of people default to herc/tank, but I think that is more of a niche build than people treat it as. I use it when 1) I’m playing ME or MO and it’s really useful to have mobile “static” defense, or 2) I have an ally I know will be the vanguard. Zagara, Kerrigan, Stukov, Stetmann; these commanders will pretty reliably give cover for you to tank juggle. Or on a fast map like VT, because herc tank is actually Swann’s fastest build.
The problem with herc tank is your limiting your army. Unless you have insane micro and can juggle 4-5 at a time (I most certainly cannot), you’re effectively throwing away a lot of your supply cap by focusing so much attention on a handful of tanks. And while tanks hit really hard, they don’t hit 140 supply hard.
Goliaths should be your basic build. Tanks and wraiths are more niche (wraiths are excellent on DoN to clear the map after securing the base, my primary use of them). Put at least 20 points in the ARES bot mastery so they last a long time, and they can do a lot of work until your Goliaths come out - even on maps you need to push quickly on, like SoA or P&P. Bots are the glue that holds Swann together. And once the Goliaths are out, you’re laughing.
Me, somtimes. Also, his army is NOT made out of paper. Get science vessels as fast as you can, use them both to heal and tank. Goliaths are fairly durable if you got a lot of them, and you’re supposed to. Either save his laser calldowns for waves you don’t think you can handle or go with heavy weapons specialist and just let whatever survives the onslaught of siege tank fire and multi-lock goliaths come to you, slowly. My problem with Swann is how slow he is to ramp up and his supply. I really feel he should have better supply depots.
Swann’s one of my favorite CO’s. His army is awesome, his Cooldowns are extremely powerful. His only weakness is a bad offensive early game.
He’s not the easiest CO to play, but a decent player can do a lot with the tools he has.
He’s not weakest for sure, but not many wants to play high-macro commanders overall.
Do you see anyone playing decent with Karax? Mengsk outside mass ESOs or PoA? Raynor actually making 4OC early on?
You can indeed find some of them once in a while, but more than likelly you get players who are bad at macro. Which makes those commanders look worse, especially for Swann that is a mineral-starved commander.
The breakpoint on the mastery is 19 for concentrated beam. Kills every non boss enemy including battlecruisers. 19/11 split
I don’t like adding mastery points to things that have a long cool down at the expense of things that have a short cool down. But that’s just my preference.
And in this case, Swann is far more troubled by the first 6m of a game than BC’s.
Similar to Raynor, Karax etc, Swann is one of those commander that you need to learn how to play properly. When you do, he will be one of your strongest commanders. Yes his units will make you feel that he is weak, but he is quite the opposite. Mass siege tanks can melt any ground comp. Mass Goliaths drops any air comp. Thors I don’t know, I feel like it’s between tanks and Goliaths.
Yes this is true too but you have to learn how to contribute early game to mid game. Let’s say you are playing vanilla Swann, use Ares to get first wave and/or clear enemy at expansion. After they are gone you should have some units ready to fight, like 4-5 tanks/Goliaths with one science vessels for healing or bring a few SCVs. Keep pumping out units all through the game.
It’s true that there isn’t a lot of people playing Swann. I was hoping prestige would change that but they did not do a good job on Swann. P1 and P2 need more tweaking.
Edit: He is not a F2 commander. You need to use F2 less and focus on picking units and dropping units with Hercs.
Goliaths are an anything comp. They can hit air and ground at the same time, which is one of the coolest upgrades in the game. The range of their missiles is the dazzle, but their ground attack is good enough that a ball of them is nearly unapproachable.
Otherwise I completely agree. The key to Swann is nailing his early build order. Mess that up and you’ll be behind the 8 ball all game. Do it right and he has one of the best armies.
I love him, finally finished leveling his 3 prestiges. If you don’t have him at full mastery the cost of vespene drones just makes your early game awful. Once at max he is a fairly solid commander, wouldn’t call him weak at all. After several years of patches finally most of his units are actually useful, he has many good army comps.
Of course herc+tank is the best and mass goliaths is the easy to use comp, but if you haven’t tried them recently give mass cyclones (against heavy ground and zerg, add hellbats) a shot, with a few hit and run attacks even 2-4 cyclones can take apart smaller bases early game.
Thors are worth making now too, their special ability does an absolutely massive amount of damage, to the point that having a couple of thors near my static defense is my go-to way of dealing with baneling waves now on maps like Temple. Just target 2-3 barrages in front of your turrets and they melt banelings before they reach your turrets.
Self-repair upgraded Wraiths are also amazing, even if they eat a few ticks of psi storm they regenerate fast enough. Their dps if you micro them to move is huge, they can easily kill trains on Oblivion. Also great for sniping buildings from the edge of bases on Dead of Night and just ignoring the defenders. You can do all the defending on DoN and just make 10-15 wraiths to clear the map if your ally is not being very useful.
I’m still playing Swann and don’t feel need in any of the prestiges. Swann is basically somewhat vulnerable (in terms he needs to sacrifice eco for early defense, even if you use salvageable turrets) at 2-4 and 5-6 minute mark. Later on you just wreck anything and don’t even notice how you get sometimes even more kills than ally (and healing/matrixing + free gas for ally which is not counted in end-game screen).
I’ve only been playing Co-Op for maybe 9 months. I didn’t bother to level Swann till the war chest. Not talking prestige, talking leveling for the first time.
I found him good for some maps, and weak on others. I was fine on L&L, VT, RoK, ToP, VL, and DoN. So so on VP, P&P, and MO. I struggled heavily with him on Malware.
Last game I lost (Not counting 1 disconnect I had since) was Swann with a Karax on Malware . Awful combo. I told my ally if we went for the bonus we’d lose but he tried it anyway and we lost. Very next game, got Malware again, and got totally carried by a very good Kerrigan player. I’m absolutely terrible with Swann on that map.
In short I didn’t find him too bad but was just awful on Malware with him.
Early expo and saturation and timing your warbots is crucial in early game. If you can learn the build order and timings, when to youse your furst and second warbots calldown, you are golden and you can easily snowball into lategame. However, every eral game mistake is punished very hard. Loose your first science vessel and few units and you will feel the consequences for next few minutes. lategame max supply and fully upgraded Swanns army is one of the most tanky in the game tho.
The maps that need you to be mobile I feel is harder for Swann, Malware, Mist, Cradle, etc.
The best thing to do is rely on Hercs, first Herc full load to handle early stages. Pump more units, don’t move them until second herc is fully loaded, then third etc. I’m used to using F2 with other commanders so this process is not easy. You need to Marco and micro (move your science vessels to use matrix shields, irradiate, don’t unload units too early or too late, unload too far or too close). I’m still trying to improve on this area.
Also watch out some air comps that could harm your Hercs, sky terrans and scourges.
On defensive maps like miners, OE, ToP and DoN are obviously easier for Swann.
Yup Swann late game is great.
If you count time from 7 minutes of game time a late game then yes.