Today, we’re going to have a look at Vorazun’s Spear of Adun, and all of its benefits and usage in different prestiges.
So, what is Spear of Adun? Okay, too simple? Well, let’s list them anyway.
- Generates 16 energy/min or 0.27 energy/sec
- Dark Pylon, 25 energy/60 sec cooldown, P1 - 13 energy/30 sec cooldown
- Black Hole, 25 energy/(edited)8 sec duration, Mastery - 60%, 8 x 1.6 = 12.8 sec duration.
- Shadow Guard, 50 energy/180 sec cooldown/60 sec duration, P3 - 36 sec duration, Mastery - 120 sec duration, Mastery + P3 = 72 sec duration.
- Time Stop, 240 sec cool-up, 240 sec cooldown, 20 sec duration.
Okay, so what can we do with all that benefit?
- Dark Pylon
-
Any prestige, you should always cast Dark Pylon in place of 1st Pylon. Not only does this save you 100mineral, it saves you time and propels you forward in tech.
- Gauging supply via Dark Pylon or Pylon is entirely economy dependent. Generally, if you’re not using that energy for something else, it’s better to use Dark Pylon than wasting your current resources on Pylons over units.
- P1 Dark Pylons, at 13energy/30sec and 16energy/min SoA regen, you can effectively live on these. Assuming you save 50 of 90 initial energy here:
- 40 initial + 16 x 10min = 200energy in first 10min
- 200 / 13 = 15.4 Dark Pylons
- 15 x 8 Psi = 120 Supply
- You can further apply this to beyond 10min, but the result is
P1 Dark Pylon quite literally can support your entire game for the Dark Pylon enthusiasts 
- Black Hole
- The added difference with Mastery is 12.8sec - 8sec = 4.8sec but what does that matter anyway… seems long enough either way?
- Let’s use an example of Void Launch Wave 2 SkyTossCarrier, which has Tech 2 (Zealot + Scout), and Strength 2 (1200 resource max), which spawns at 9min and arrives about 10min mark. Reason being, this is a very standard difficulty composition.
- Distribution of Strength: 1200 resources (6 x zealot + 4 x scout = 6 x 100 + 4 x 150) This is a rough estimate, exact number not crucial.
- No Mastery 1 x Black Hole + 4 Voidrays:
4 x { [6+4] + [6+7] } + 4 x { [6+10] } x 6sec = 476 dmg over 8sec
- Mastery 1 x Black Hole + 4 Voidrays:
4 x { [6+4] + [6+7] } + 4 x { [6+10] } x 10.8sec = 783 dmg over 10.8sec
- Okay, how are those numbers relevant?
Scouts have 60SP/100HP, 4 x scout = 640 SP+HP
-
So with Mastery Black Hole, you'd killed all scouts after it expired. Comparatively, at least 1 scout left alive for no Mastery. This equates to your fragile Voidray taking additional damage. That's how most newer players lose their ramping-up-army, limping throughout the game. Keep in mind, this is a general idea of each engagement, with each wave, as you progress through the mission.
- Compared to Mastery into Dark Pylon, the utility continues throughout the game. While that massive range with mastery is cool, there are only so many structures needed. Offensive Dark Pylon (ie. cloaking non-cloaked units) is extremely difficult and impractical. That’s all I’ll say about that one :P.
- Shadow Guard
- 60sec standard duration is almost non-existent, most operate with Mastery invested (+60sec) into this for a total of 120sec.
You should absolutely clear expansion with Shadow Guard regardless of mastery/prestige choices.
- Here’s a very well done table, credit to Ely:
| Prestige |
Mastery? |
Duration |
First Use |
Free Use |
Uptime 3–6 |
| Base |
No |
60 |
3:00–4:00 |
N/A |
33% |
| P3 |
No |
36 |
3:00–3:36 |
4:00–4:36 |
40% |
| Base |
Yes |
120 |
3:00–5:00 |
N/A |
67% |
| P3 |
Yes |
72 |
3:00–4:12 |
4:12–5:24 |
80% |
- Time Stop
- Time Stop has a cool-up of 240sec, duration of 20sec, and a cooldown of 20sec. I want to highlight the maximal benefit if you cast on every cooldown.
- Essentially every 4min you get an extra 20sec. This benefit becomes an extra 1min20sec in a 16min quick game for free. In longer maps, you get upwards of 2+min.
- Why is that a big deal?
It's not a "big" deal per se. However, it is a free benefit to take advantage of. As the game progresses, your army strength differ dramatically from minute to minute. Taking full advantage of it is simply one more skill set in your road to a better Vorazun player.
Again, not here to suggest any particular mastery choices but to highlight the benefit of them. Some, in my opinion, are definitely a ‘better choice’ but that’s my opinion. This commander doesn’t have much controversial/myth-like discussion point.
2 Likes
I’ve gotten up to P2 with Vora and she was my first “favourite commander” as I discovered the strength of DT/Corsair armies.
Overall I’ve found that the 8/22 split as suggested on the TL commander guide works for energy/chrono as getting crucial research out even seconds earlier really matters for her (often I am holding DTs back waiting for research to finish). Also for the other reasons listed (single starport, weapon upgrades etc).
Playing P2 Im working on a strategy of keeping non-cloaked units (centurions and dark archons) inside cloaking fields to keep them alive and recalling them between pylons and for this the expanded dark pylon range is crucial. A second force of Data, Corsairs and Oracle’s pushes and locks down positions to place the Dark Pylon.
Shadow Guard really loses its lustre after the very early game so I’ve always gone for Time Stop increase as the damage you can do in this time is truly obscene. For P3 it’s a little trickier as you want the Shadow Guard to stick around a little longer on the other hand the damage they can do during time stop is even more (do the spawned shadow guard get the buff??).
Mmmm, basically Shadow Guard will definitely out do the damage you can do with Time Stop speed increase.
The reason being is that Time Stop damage is dealt regardless if you had the buff from mastery. There is no doubt with mastery, you’ll do more damage than without. And that’s why, generally it is only used during Mutations for sniping objectives. For regular plays, a well controlled set of Shadow Guard will wreak havoc on bases. Their utility from 1min to 2min is quite a bit.
Of course in P3, you’ll end up with like 20+ Shadow Guard as you dive past mid-game. And basically nothing on the ground survives a non-mastery-boosted Time Stop + 20 SGs + your army. Cuz for simple math reasons, 36sec x 20SGs do less damage than 72sec x 20SGs. Your window of Time Stop is 20sec, so those 20SGs would have to 100% more damage during that frame to make up for the total damage dealt, if that makes sense.
Hold up, do the summoned shadow guard get the 30% speed boost from timestop mastery because that’s quite a different equation (though I’d certainly put all mastery points into SG duration for P3 to make up for the short duration).
Outside of P3 though energy is best used for the occasional Pylons and many Black Holes making SG duration a bit lack lustre imo.
I believe it does affect all units, include Shadow Guard. The issue is Time Stop functions separately from SG, outside of P3.
So in order to boost SG via TS, you’re looking at very brief windows. Or the alternative is that you compromise not casting off cooldown (which is terrible).
For example:
- 1st SG at 3min-4min without duration mastery. 1st TS at 4min.
- So here you can choose to delay expansion so you can cast SG at 4min… bad choice.
- Or you can wait even later on both… even worse choice.
- 2nd TS occurs at 8min, while presumably you haven’t casted your 2nd SG. So now you have a 1min window to maximize your SG with boosted TS.
- The issue here is your SG isn’t super useful (as you mentioned) at midgame.
The biggest problem is SG is their travel time and their attack speed. While not slow by any means, they aren’t fast. Frankly, 1min is very short to deal significant damage with only 4SG 
.
Sorry I wasn’t referring to regular SG but rather the SG who are spawned by P3’s Time Stop. Does the Time Stop mastery buff apply before or after the SG are spawned?
Seems to me that giving +30% move/attack speed etc to the dozen or more SG you get with Time Stop could be an effective strategy for maximising the destruction caused by Time Stop.
How long do the SG that spawn with Time Stop last? Normal duration? Affected by Shadow Guard duration mastery?
At the same time SG is spawned.
The SG spawned with Time Stop correspond to SG Duration (+ mastery.)
Yup for 20 seconds.
So do the spawned SG get the Time Stop mastery buff???
Something interesting to note is that, assuming you start with 90 energy (you should) and use 25 on a pylon and 50 on a shadow guard, in a 21 minutes game you have 365 energy, enough for 14 black holes, that is enough for every attack wave in many maps. Old outdated guides like the tl guide recommend the 22/8 split on chrono mastery cause chrono used to be able to speed up construction speed, making the dark shrine come up sooner, today chrono is simply useless on vorazun.
Also while the general advice is to just use cooldown based top bars on cooldown, ts in this case, it’s better to know when you want to use them, I’ll give some examples. On temple, you should have save the 2nd ts for the 1st double attack wave, this at 9 or 10 mins depending on the pattern you got, 1st ts is used at 4mins with the shadow guard to clear the central lane, there is also the double thrasher at 22:30 where a ts is good too. On OE you need at ts at 14 mins for the double train wave and on lnl you shouldn’t use it at all unless it’s to capture the last lock cause ts makes the ai more aggressive on that map.
There are also a few things to consider with the 1st shadow guard, general advice is to simply use it a 3 minutes, but there are some exceptions. On vl there is an attack wave at 3 mins and another at 5 mins, if you use the shadow guard at 3 mins it will time out before the 2nd wave and there will be nothing to stop it, you should delay the shadow guard until the 1st wave reaches the base, kill it, then kill the rocks and then walk to left spawn area to kill the 2nd wave. MO has a similar case where it should be delayed as much as possible to be able to use the 1st shadow guard to def the 1st bot. Of course p3 vora doesn’t have any of these problems as you can have a 2nd shadow guard for free.
- Essentially every 4min you get an extra 20sec. This benefit becomes an extra 1min20sec in a 16min quick game for free. In longer maps, you get upwards of 2+min.
Finally, about this, in most maps ts delays the objective so it’s good to use as much as possible but there isn’t much real use for this other than extra time to make a little bit more of army, on OE it’s actually dangerous to use too much ts cause it delays the trains but not the attack waves, this makes the waves sync with the trains and you can end up fighting attack waves + trains together. And on vp, vl and mw it makes the maps take longer to complete.
2 Likes
Yes, I believe it does. However, like I said, regardless of your choice in prestige, you’re losing out on damage dealt if you choose TS mastery. Its only use is sniping objectives.
30%buff in mob/atk speed doesn’t translate to 30% more DPS or damage dealt. So in terms of the SG, duration doubled means you’re dealing 2x the damage of a non-mastery-buffed SG, assuming you didn’t just summon to lose them instantly.
The 30%buff of TS apply to army too, which is the other factor. However, there is honestly not a single sliver, base, etc. I can think of currently that requires TS mastery to push over a non-mastery TS.
The situational sniping I’m referring to are things like Shards and Sliver (and mutational) that really require quick snipes to minimize loss. Like say if you went mass Oracle on RtK, you can finish the map in about 12-14min depending on ally generally. And that’s without TS buff.
Black Hole has no cooldown.
1 Like
Oh yeah, they removed that. Thanks, I’ll correct it.
This is the important point for me that after the first cast I feel the energy is better spent on black holes for DPS and the occasional Dark Pylon.
DTs already destroy ground comps, 4 more who last a short time or a little longer doesn’t make a meaningful difference compared to the benefit of a Black Hole against, in particular, air units.
Also that TS Mastery applies to friendly units. My experience with Vora is that her mid game is so strong but some final fights can be a struggle against some compositions that DTs don’t fair well against and additional TS DPS can make the difference between finishing some of the last encampments or having a lot of DTs go pop.
Currently I have a 1/3rd, 2/3rd split favouring TS mastery which is what I’ve settled on after quite a few games.
Blackhole mastery is bonkers but i gotta admit i have some silly fun with P1 and Dark Pylon radius mastery.
Whenever there is a big fight just drop a mastery enhanced dark pylon and P1 provides double life for eeeevery unit both armies have - and that bit of damage, shield regen and energy regen bonus is neat to have.
Just a fun thing to play around with as P1, sneaky sneaky.
Just wanted to clarify that my post isn’t advocating to save energy to use on Shadow Guards as P0, 1, or 2. It is more about P3 and the strong ground massacre. The main advantage is that this let you get away with no ground army (or very little). And even then, gauging 12 vs 20 vs 32 SGS is entirely up to the player’s needs.
I think players in general should absolutely use Black Hole as often as they can afford to. 
Also on ME (miner evac). TimeStop pauses the remaining time to shuttle launch. Useful if you’re about to get wiped by the attacking force while defending a shuttle but otherwise just prolongs the mission.
Not sure if it delays the triggering of the panicked launch timer.
If you use TS at 4, 8 and 12, that becomes the 15-min double train wave 
Good time to use 1-3 Black Holes to kill the escort & de-sync’ed attack wave, across both trains. And if you can co-ordinate with ally, either both attack the top train and use TS for bottom train or wait for both trains to be near the main base ramps and then TS and attack separately.
I had one run on OE where I timed my TS’s just right, including wasting one just for the bottom-right lane attack wave. Gives more time to make more army. (Not needed if both players are “pro” but definitely fun.) The attack wave which spawns for the 9th train, with TS, reaches the base before 9th train even starts.
Translates to 50 (or 48) SoA per 3 mins as opposed to the LotV campaign’s 50 SoA per 2 mins (25 energy/min). That would be so sweet for Vorazun, for all P’s but especially P3.
Side note: one of my ally’s used to co-ordinate Karax’s Chrono Wave with my TS so that not only are we getting free build time, we’re also getting it boosted. Did feel like we were getting more done/built over the duration of the mission.