No, it isn’t. I do not have to have a solution of my own in order to point out that your “solution” doesn’t work. A bad metric is worse than no metric at all–it gives you false confidence in wrong results.
If you really wanted to evaluate commander power, the way to do that would be to measure success rates across games. Create a giant database of all coop games, and observe which commanders are associated with more wins. Ideally you could also estimate player skill (perhaps by giving each player a score based on their performance across all commanders) and control for that, so Karax is not dragged down by all the “idef” incompetents on Dead of Night.
But to do this requires data that only Blizzard has. We, random forum posters, are not in a position to do it. The numbers available to us (kill count, objective damage, etc.) are useful for analyzing individual games. They are not valid for statistical analysis across many games.
Starcraft2coop has a part with statistics.
They made their statistics with over 72000 games
the win rate varies from 93% (Dehaka) to 83% (Karax) with closeby Tychus and Raynor (84%).
The most played commanders are Dehaka, Nova and Tychus.
Now I don’t know how were selected the 70k games or when and therefore I can’t say if it is truly representative. I wish I had more info on these stats but that’s the best I could find.
I imagine it’s people using the overlay or an account linked on his site, which is going to be people serious enough to explore and download third party stuff and would skew stats as compared to general public games.
Yeah you can submit them in. Or just use overlay to get some stats on yourself. I’ve got something like 6500 games on this laptop alone.
The stats dausuul is referring to makes very little useful difference anyway. Skills vary widely even among m90 players (heck a1000’s). Frankly, if you take my own 6500 as an example (as I play random all the time), the difference is insignificant. This would then mean, in this case, Swann is in a perfectly fine spot.
Oh, also, on measurable stats. I can tell you as a fact, you’ll end up with “more APM” as Swann than you would as Tychus, Zeratul, or even Nova. This is not because of anything else but the fact you generally make more units (thus more actions issued per time). So keep in mind many of these are not valuable at all. The same player with 150 APM on Zagara can have 30 on Tychus (and that’s due to design). So you can make an argument saying Tychus has low skill floor, but not necessarily the opposite that Zagara has a high skill floor (if any of that made sense).
Generally speaking, if someone says something is bad and not offer a suggestion to make things better, to me that’s not a good argument. Because you didn’t try to make things better. It’s AN argument but not a good one. To me it’s more like a whine.
Regarding the statistics, kill counts and objective damage is all we have to measure how well you did in a game. You can also look at units produce versus your supply cap. That could tell you how well you micro your units, how you prevent them from dieing. Of course it varies from CO to CO. Raynor May get higher production than like nova or Zeratul. Other than those there are nothing else.
Not really, he’s a pretty meh commander in general, even if your macro/micro is decent.
Early game is probably one of the weakest out of all the commanders, aside from maybe karax. Better have good warbot timing.
Mid game is very meh; you’re army is expensive, slow and not particularly durable until you start making multiple science vessels.
Late game is also meh. Your mech composition is still very slow and difficult to reinforce. His lategame is weak compared to other heros with long ramp times like abathur or vorazun.
I never say “i def” - i just do it. If my ally wants to build static defenses too, he is welcome to… if he does not, i will. Often enough, i end up defending alone.
That does not mean i don’t go out with 10 colossus and kill stuff alongside my ally at daytime.
It’s not the part that an ally solo defends that makes them a bad player… it is the fact that they sit in base doing nothing at day time that does. Without supporting units no karax cannon wall is good. And those units should be out doing something useful at daytime.
Same goes for swann. You can defend all sides alone… but if you stay at home with your tanks at daytime, then you are playing swann much worse than what is possible.
To perform well with Swann on any map you need to know the map and enemy comp well. When does the enemy spawn and where it spawn. Early game you could use top bar or static defense to handle objective. Getting that eight tanks or 16 Goliaths out is most important. They can handle mid game pretty well. And don’t idle in unit production, try to remember to keep making units.
You need to practice a lot to see him performing as well as other easier COs.
Swann late game peak power is awesome if you are able to keep most of your units alive.
Honestly Swann isn’t that bad to get as a ally, great support, extra gas and I’ve seen some pretty good performance from some doing all the herc tank or mass goliath work. I tend to play on commanders who can handle the early game well though so they can feel free to turret or expand. But yeah i could see how it might take more work to get a Swann going than another if you have to worry about all the early game As a swann with a lvl 3 brutal kerrigan to afraid to risk their free respawning hero to help a push until the scvs/ sci vessels come at low level. He def seems pretty good with mastery though. Imo for the time i see a commander start to do push stuff i see like Karax taking 14-17 minutes for immo /carrier on a vt, 13-17 minutes for a Vora and 12-16 minutes for a Swann. Lots of commanders can easily benefit from the extra gas too or shift some early gas into mineral mining and ive seen p0 and p1 drills do more damage than some hero commanders alone before. Even when someone was afk and did 100k still damage afking a 13 minute vt game with p1 drill and never even expanded or left their base just from vision. I mean sure i was the ally clearing but that’s pretty solid if you’re gonna afk and make popcorn, at least afk a p1 swann on vt instead of 160 DoNs straight afking a p0 karax with no aoe or top bar use on a hunterling spotter wave getting overran and disabled.
I’ve said a while ago that I think one change they could do for Swann would be to double the supply you get for supply depots.
It would help speed up his early game macro, and just generally make building supply depots less of a pain later on.
Give Swann one orbital command at the start of the game with mules, insta call downs for 10 extra supply (only 1 call down can be used on each depot), and of course you’d still have his vespine drones.
Unlike Raynor you can’t make more OCs (just the one you start with).
This would help Swann’s macro.
I think Swann should be able to upgrade new CCs into planetary fortresses but that is another topic.
Second this. Even with Karax getting a notable boost with 3 strong prestiges (and Swann getting jack diddly), I still think when it comes to defense, Swann is king. His overall kit may be showing it’s age a bit, but his turrets + tanks + free repair is the OG static defense.
Everything must be compared relative to other commanders.
Swanns mass tank army pales in comparison to most other “late game” commanders. It’s not even close. Compare it Vorazun mass DT Corsair, or abathur impervious deathball, or alarak’s ascendant army. It’s not even close.
It’s not about really knowing the enemy comp, because at the end of the day your units relative to other commanders are squishier, less mobile and overall do less damage. You could try to customize your composition to the enemy, and position well, or just run vorazun and literally A-move your entire army over the enemy.
I wouldn’t say that Swanns units are squishier. The ability to shell enemy bases and waves at range with shots that outright kill enemy units while also causing splash means most things die before they even get a chance to retaliate. And if they get close, load up in a Herc and move. Or move your wraiths away. Or kite your cyclones. Or do barrages with thors. All while covering multiple fronts with powerful cheap turrets and providing excellent support with extra gas.
Seriously, there’s some replays posted in this thread. There’s YouTube videos you can watch. There’s some damn good gameplay showing Swann using every facet of his kit to do things other CO’s can’t. Swanns not the best a-move Commander, but that’s okay since his strength lies elsewhere.
At the end of the day, people enjoy playing him, and do so effectively.
OK this thread has been going on for roughly 35 years and 250 comments, but I must protest.
Tanks are not a late game army. I have never once in the history of playing Swann massed tanks. And yes, they’d be a terrible late game army. Can’t hit air, large unit size so they get in each other’s way; tanks are artillery support, whether that’s behind turrets or in a herc to back up your ally or your larger army.
The armies you are comparing are also the most wave-deleting, impervious armies in co-op. Most commanders can’t bring something that matches a maxed out Abathur either, so I don’t really see why that’s a knock against Swann. In the overall scope of late game co-op, Swann’s forces are perfectly competitive, and he also has a laser drill (which will routinely do more damage than most heroes with no input from the player), a good top bar, excellent ally support, and lest we forget, S-tier defense.
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