I was thinking exactly that as soon as I posted lol
How the heck did you get to that conclusion? I did not mention ‘hero’ even once.
And artanis high templar are awesome even with P0. P1 just provides more late game awesomeness for a weaker start…
But you are right… swann would actually benefit from having a hero unit, even if it was a pretty weak one like regular gary with only auto attack and maybe regular D-matrix as a spell… like a hero vessel. Would help his early game for sure…
That is just one metric you can use.
With your blessed intelligence, you are welcome to come up with a different, better metric to compare commanders. One that can be expressed and compared quantitatively, and not some BS gut feelings you might have.
I learned a lot by reading comments from other players. You just shut down almost everything others have said.
You need to overcome this first.
Full stacks ascendants are the most powerfull spellcasters in coop. You’re comparing this unit when they beat nearly all commanders in 10 supply value, Swann is like, another one in the line.
Mentioned heroes because well, most of them doesn’t cost supply, so they don’t count.
This debate is so wild lol. I thought everyone had given it a break. What re-sparked it lol 
It might have been the recent thread talking about how weak Swann was until he got his Thors, lol.
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How that one blew up the way it did is also hahaha.
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Train Damages on OE. Shuttle damages on Void Launch. Objectives focus metrics on some maps.
You can higher kill count by destroying enemy structures. Kill count is not a good indicator. You can focus on objectives while your partner goes off to kill buildings bases.
Sometimes you got to use your brain even if it’s not blessed.
I like using my brain. I try to do so on a regular basis.
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You can mindblast a train while your ally spawncamps every single wave in the game and kills them all. You can laser drill shuttles with p1 Swann while literally not making a unit nor a static defense structure and leaving literally everything to your ally. Kill count isn’t an amazing metric. Objective damage is a whole lot worse.
Objectives is what completes the each mission. If you don’t complete them you lose.
Yes there are many ways to delete enemy waves.
Because of how co-op works, there is no single metric that is an absolute measure of a commander’s strength. It’s not a competitive mode, and even if you try to make it competitive by comparing your performance vs your ally’s, how do you even begin to quantify that?
That being said, I think the most comprehensive metric that we have are speedrun times, as speedrunning is the most “competitive” aspect of co-op
Hmmm, You can only speed run some maps. If we use speed runs as a metric then Raynor / abby wins hands down. We see LilArrin speed runs on SoA regularly, 4-6 mins.
I think it’s best to consider all metrics available as a whole.
I used OE and Void Launch examples because the metrics available will indicate whether players / commanders contribute to the success of the mission. Does kill count contribute to the success of the mission? Yes of course. Does damages to shuttles or trains contribute to success of the mission? Yes also.
One way you can measure how good a commander is how well they complete mission’s objective. Like for example, what he said:
P1 Swann is useful on Void Launch accordingly to him.
If you use kill count by it self then it is a bad metric because you or your partner can runs off and kill enemy bases to add up kill count (not contributing to the objectives). But if you combine the metrics together maybe that will tell you how good or useful a commander for a particular mission.
“Swann sux” is just a totally ignorant statement (talking to that DOOM guy).
A long while ago somebody made a thread on the co-op subreddit ranking commanders on the number of brutations they could solo, based on the weekly challenges up to that point. If I recall correctly (Reddit’s search function didn’t help much), Abathur was #1 at the time, while Swann was #4.
I think that could form the basis for another measurement of commander’s strength, that may be just as relevant for people queuing Brutal+. If we measure commanders by “how safe would they be from getting screwed by mutations”, Swann would likely be in the upper half of that list, per that thread I can’t find.
The point is I think there’s a few equally-valid ways to measure commanders’ strength, but their relevance depends on how the player actually plays co-op.
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You also lose if your base dies because you tunnel vision on the objective. You also lose because you couldn’t kill the many units surrounding an objective. Damage to objective alone is an even worse metric than units killed.
It’s more like 7 minutes for Abathur, and Raynor’s speedrunning is easily outclassed by several other commanders. The only commander who’s times are actually close to Abathur is Zeratul.
Go read my previous reply.
Seems like you missed my point or didn’t read my entire post.
Saying something is bad and offering no solution is a bad argument. What is your solution? What metric would you use?
In real life we don’t always have solution. If there’s none, it’s not the excuse for calling good commander garbage. To make good evaluation, the one needs to analyze replays of swann paired with every other commander and number of these replays need to be good, then compare it for example with kerrigan, and how she works paired with other commanders. And no kills or dmg should be counted in that system, only whole team kills/damage/mission completion time and timemarks when they reach objective completed on each stage, then add to that replays with different set of mutators. It’s very long work or long list of replays if it could be done automatically. It is the only way to measure commander effectiveness, but there won’t be people who would be motivated to do such complex evaluation.
This doesn’t mean we should say “random troll on forum right about swann sux because we can’t do proper metric, so we use garbage solo kills and completion time and forget about other factors in coop mode”. For me the most important factor is winrate. If we are talking about regular brutal it’s 100% if commanders play correctly. So that’s why using combinations of mutations is more good of a measure. Second thing is why I suggest comparing only pairs and count them as whole: because gameplay-wise matters only players team and amon’s, no point in reviewing players separately, they are one team, and such things like additional gas from swann, or some other moments like global presence or healing cannot be just calculated, you have to compare two teams with swann and without, to actually see a difference: does this team win mutation set at all, and how stable/fast/mapcontrolable this run was.
Starcraft Coop mode is not real life though. We play this to enjoy our selves and to temporary escape real life responsibilities.
You put a lot of thought into that. But I don’t think most players or Blizzard would go through all that just to measure how good a commander is. I think all of us only have our opinions.
Most people say Swann is great and I agree. It is good having Swann as a partner and also good playing him.