Feedback on Kerrigan's Prestige Talents

Co-op Missions Discussion
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After playing many games, here’s my feedback.

Talent 1: Malignant creep

It’s bad. It’s extremely difficult to spread creep such that you always fight on creep. The best map for this is probably Malwarfare. Even with 3 queens devoted to creep spreading, you’re often moving ahead of the creep, so not fighting on creep. One of the main problems is the creep tumor cooldown. The loss of omega worms for creep spread, mobility and detection is huge, as it is the only form of mobility for Kerrigan. The 100% creep bonus is barely noticeable.

Suggestion: Lower the creep tumor cooldown, increase the bonus to like 300%, or change the disadvantage completely (Omega Worm is just too good).

Talent 2: The stun thing

This is also very bad. Having played like 4 games with it, I still can’t really tell how it even works. Is 1 stack of Fury, i.e. 1 attack, enough to trigger it? Sometimes it seems to, other times not. Is the 50 damage affected by the number of stacks? This talent is janky, what will happen doesn’t feel predictable, managing stacks feels like playing D3 not SC2. The 50% loss in damage of abilities is huge, the additional damage feels weak, and definitely doesn’t compensate. The loss in 50% shields is also extremely painful and makes Kerrigan super squishy.

Suggestion: Remove this talent, and make a completely new and different talent. This is so unfun it’s unsalvageable.

Talent 3: Ghost Kerrigan

This talent is extremely good. The stun is great, and it’s low energy cost makes it very spammable. Kinetic blast, especially with maxed out mastery talent for damage fixes Kerrigan’s biggest weakness: air. You can do massive damage to air units from range. The weakness is negligible, you’re replacing 2 spells with 2 arguably better spells. Replacing Primal Queen Kerrigan with Ghost Kerrigan is also super cool, but the portrait isn’t updated.

Suggestion: Maybe add another disadvantage? This is the most powerful talent by far. It’s pretty much all advantage, no disadvantage.

Feedback on Unlocking the Talents

Doing the leveling 4 times (not 3), to unlock all prestige talents and get back to level 15, while playing a gimped version of the commander is not fun. Starting over is not fun. It’s already painful enough on PTR where 1 win takes you to level 15, I can’t imagine the monotony of doing this 4 times on live.

Also, you can equip prestige talents at level 1, which doesn’t make sense. For example, it’s possible to equip Prestige Talent 2, which requires Fury, even though Fury is locked until level 10.

Suggestion: Either tie Prestige Talents to ascension level or make it level 16, 17, 18 of the commander. Regrinding from level 1 multiple times is unbearable.

7 Likes
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Only 4 times if you haven’t purchased the commander and starting fresh. And that would be right because you don’t want to not know how to play standard (aka without prestige).

And remember, not everyone wants every prestige, so grinding is entirely optional. If reaching a specifically favored prestige is such a chore, that player probably shouldn’t play in the first place.

It’s the same as everything in my opinion. If you personally feel something isn’t worth it, that’s totally cool cuz it’s your choice. So don’t then turn around and choose to do it because that’s then on you. Somethings in life are unfortunately like that (so you get a pass), but this is a game and nobody needs to grind if they don’t like it :slight_smile: .

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Kinetic blast does 150 damage and leaping strike does 300 damage, but the range and ability to hit air is a nice trade. Thought this was worth mentioning.

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It does? In the campaign, these values are swapped, and I had a Kerrigan ally say kinetic dealt 300. Leaping is even 150 until you get her level 3 that doubles the damage. Maybe kinetic does 150 until that level too?

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Talent 2 is affected by the stacks of fury. Seems that the 50 damage targets enemy units and not buildings, and that it’s per tick it seems to be from the start to the end.

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That could be it. I was lvl 1 at the time.

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I’m not sure how much this forum is being parsed for feedback, so be sure to drop any in the PTR Feedback forum!

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Yeah Malignant creep doesn’t work on air units so I don’t see a point in taking malevolent matriarch. Creep tumors timings are hella slow, literally just a filler talent.

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Desolate Queen is by far the best Prestige for regular games.

Once you get back to 15, Kinetic Blast does 300, and is affected by Mastery. You can use it on structures, and it has almost no animation to speak of; you can literally run and gun with it virtually seamlessly. And you can hit air units with it.

Crushing Grip does 100 (again, get back to 15), and is also affected by Mastery. It can pick up undetected burrowed units and Thors, but doesn’t lift Hybrids. Air units simply get stunned. Because why not?

This Prestige removes Kerri’s personal mobility and gives her ridiculous anti air capabilities. Generally speaking, a pure upgrade, since she retains Omega Worms.

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Talent 1 is very good for defensive maps, what are you raking about.

Maps where you can creep up and the enemy comes to you

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Yeah, that first Talent is basically a straight upgrade for a great many casual players who don’t even bother with Omega worms. I kind of like it, as well, since I don’t always need worms and spreading creep is something every Zerg should know how to do (it’s a core game mechanic).

Similar case for Vorazun’s first Talent and the Dark Pylon Recall, since I rarely ever have seen other players I’ve been with ever make use of them.

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#1 may be good for players who don’t make Omegas, but otherwise it’s just a debuff - Omega worms are good not only for transportation, but also detection, tanking and also to spread creep into enemy bases (I use it to ensure Kerri and her army always fight on creep … you can’t really spread creep into enemy bases otherwise, unless it’s zerg or you partner with Stukov)

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Supposedly, Creep Tumors also spread twice as fast and far.

Abathar can also put creep anywhere he likes. Turn off the auto-detonate to have the creep be permanent.

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the thiccc ghost kerrigan prestige is super powerful, kerrigan is on a whole new tier with this mastery, so many CCs especially with energy regen mastery, I dont even know why they throw in double assimilation for this one lol, but sure I’ll take it.

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OK, I need to test that. Normal creep tumor has 10 range (both spread and the ability to spawn new tumor) and 11 vision. With malignant creep the range should be 13 (not sure about the vision).
What would the range with prestige be? 26? Probably not :upside_down_face: Maybe 15-16? Not sure if it’s enough to justify the loss of omegas (I think it’s not)

Abathur can put creep anywhere, but the tumors can be killed (and don’t spread creep) before they finish, so you won’t put them inside enemy bases.

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Omegas also rapidly heal while hiding your units from harm, which buffed creep doesn’t do.

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Omega worms can be used defensively too, if you have enough to burn. They’re huge damage sponges/walls on-demand.

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A core ladder mechanic, sure.

You can’t really spread creep too far into enemy bases, since they’ve got detection all over the place. Might be ok if the enemy is Zerg, but then, the enemy will also benefit from the creep boost.

Might as well just vomit my army into the middle of the base via Worm.

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Yeah defensively it’s quite a marvel with a team boost of 30% atk speed to 60%, but I imagine the intention of this prestige is to assist people playing a creep-spread style. For that, cooldown of creep needs to be boosted or they need to be able to spread further (I imagine keeping creep timing might help ladder creep timing, so it does train people up for zerg macro).

I do still agree that this is greatly less than what omega worm provides in most scenario. So maybe rather than getting rid of omega worm completely, make the omega worms return back to nydus worms (costs min/gas per spawn), increased cooldown on spawn ability. At least this gives the ability to spot spawn some creep and get a queen there (as opposed to tumor, and queen crawl all the way over).

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I’d just like to remind everyone that (much like many other aspects, mastery, units, builds, etc.), it is very likely they won’t balance all 3 prestige to be competitive to each other, as well as the old standard.

I think it makes more sense to view them as additional tools (more akin to masteries). There are plenty of examples of masteries being option 1 of set x better than option 2, while option 2 is more so a mutation niche choice.

Similarly, we can see for Kerrigan, her tier 3 prestige is basically an overall upgrade of her standard in terms of CC while not losing out on damage. While the much debated tier 1 gives a more defensive oriented creep-dependent approach. (I need to test tier 2 more to give a more accurate use).

2 Likes