Agreed?
Oh BTW if I were hired to manage a team of professional players and I have 3 top performing players and the rest are underperforming, I would not jeopardize my star players. I would instead work hard to make sure that all my players are up to par by putting in the work required and not rushing them to the game before their training is done. That’s just my work ethics.
Not everyone equates fun to steamroll.
Some of us want to play the game, without having a Zeratul or mengsk roll over everything with 0 care in the world, even on brutal+, even on brutation.
Imagine you’re playing an RPG for the first time, and some max level guy is killing everything around you so that you can’t do anything. It’s cool the first few times but you aren’t really having fun, are you? Now how about every time a new event comes out, that max level guy just beats everything for you.
Is that not kinda infuriating? To not be able to play because someone’s doing all things you find fun?
What you are describing sounds like power leveling to me. And to address your point of steam rolling, well the point of most games’ when played vs AI is to be as efficient as possible in anything you do. So, if your ally is not allowing you do play a certain style of strategy, take a look at your gameplay and see what you do can do differently. See if there are other areas of the map you can start clearing. Each commander has strengths that will allow them to perform better than other commanders in different scenarios. I personally like to watch other better players play my commander and see how they play. So in conclusion Fun is the most important factor to upkeep. If a commander is versatile and can be efficient in many situations than that is good balance for a game that is played against AI.
Seem like you need to git gud. Zeratul pre-nerf is strong but he can’t clear the entire map alone before the cannon mass up to a critical numbers.
Not if you have a slow commander. Yeah, zagara or Kerrigan or dehaka can get a lot of damage done in the cannon ramp up time, but not all commanders are zagara or Kerrigan or dehaka.
When Zeratul hits critical mass with cannons, he hits it HARD. Like, harder than swann critical mass hard.
How exactly is Zeratul not fun now?
If you are complaining your partner steamrolling everything, the most possible reason is you suck rather than commanders they use are strong. Admit it, some people are just better than you and you can’t accept the fact. I’m sure even if they switched to weaker commanders they still can get more kill counts.
Many people find challenge fun, and hate the gimmicky, frustrating difficulty of mutators.
If easy wins are fun for you, you can always step down to Hard mode.
Those people don’t have a difficulty beyond Brutal without mutations.
My favorite moments in Coop are where, from both of us having poor planning or goofing off, everything is falling apart and we have to make an actual effort to salvage the game.
Those games - even if we lose - are vastly more enjoyable than when I que with a top-tier ally who would speed run the map even if I AFK’d.
Only one commander actually consider as “slow” and he is Karax. Everyone else are fast when it come to ramping up their power. You just need to git gud.
He said as though Mengsk was a steamroller. (More than other commanders that is).
I out-kill 99% of my non-Zeratul allies, even when doing dumb strats or testing new ones. With many commanders.
I wasn’t aware holding down Z and waving the mouse around constituted as
Zera is just the ez mode button. Doesn’t really matter how good you play if you can play Zeratul and get 2x the results with the same amount of skill
Because this is not a solo game mode, there’s a fundamental concept of game design that gets added to the fun vs balance equation: not only does it need to be fun for you, it also needs to be fun for other people. Co-op or competitive, the same holds true: it’s not fun to queue into a partner who is able to steamroll through the scenario solo faster than you can keep up purely because the character they chose is so much stronger than yours.
And your pro player analogy is flawed because in this instance, the 3 top performers aren’t there because of better skills or training, it’s because they’re on steroids. All that happened is they took the steroids away. If you’re so proud of your work ethic, you should have no problem putting in a little more effort to stay on par.
I can steamroll Amon with just about ANY commanders. If you can’t, it just mean you are bad and need to git gud.
The only commander that Steamroll take some work is Karax.
Watch out guys, we’ve got a badass over here.
A) Missing the point of the game mode: co-op, as in, you should need to work with another person. That’s where the fun of the mode comes from. If you want to steamroll the AI by yourself, campaign and custom games are right over there.
B) Also missing the point of my argument, which is what you get for jumping to up to flex so quickly while I was going back and making an edit for some words I left out: “who is able to steamroll through the scenario solo faster than you can keep up” When one commander has to build up economy, research upgrades, climb the tech tree and make an army and the other gets most of that for free, it’s not a fun time for the former.
Also, I find it hilarious how you’re telling people who liked the nerfs to git gud where it’s the Zera/Mengsk players throwing tantrums and demanding refunds because they have to work a little harder now.
And yea, you also missing my point. The point is any commander can steamroll/solo Amon by themselves and not just Zeratul. If Zeratul steamroll hurt coop and need a nerf, then that same reason can be apply to just ANY commander.
As for who steamroll faster than who, then obviously, it has to do with skill. Zeratul cannon build is too slow for fast steamroll. Most of Zeratul speedrun are done through selected ground enemy comp and DT. What Zeratul cannon excel at is the flexibility, not the speed at clearing out the whole map.
As for the concept of “Coop is about working with another person”, that do not exist when Brutal is too easy. On Brutal+ or Brutation, maybe but it seem like you aren’t the type to balance a commander around that, do you?
Today Alarak had more kills and skills than my Tychus.
I request nerfs to Alarak; what’s the hotline number please?
What I find most funny of all that you can so easily filter out the casuals by the “Zeratul OP” argument.
The fact that Zeratul did better on average just means the average player is bad, plain and simple.
I consider my Kerrigan, Nova, Abathur, Zagara, Dehaka, Fenix, H&H and sometimes even Alarak better then my Zeratul…
And yes cannons where broken in mutators, but Have never been and now certainly never will be his strongest build for regular brutal.
However Zeratul did allow casuals to have a chance on brutal, something I considered a good thing. If you where outperformed you just have a lot to learn about other commanders.
Looks like he was one of those that sucked with zeratul cannons so he shame cried for the nerfs instead.
It certainly could. 
Yeah, definitely has nothing to do with that fact that some commanders have to build up economy, research upgrades, make units, all of which takes build time as well as resources, while some others get most or all of that instantly or free. Skill’s got nothing on basic math.
Nope, and neither are the Blizzard devs on pretty much any game. In a game with a wide variety of skill levels and playstyles, you cannot balance purely around the most bleeding edge of play. Ask the Heroes of the Storm team how well it worked out when they tried to balance primarily around HGC performance.
They get compensation in some other aspect. Raynor who have slow eco until Orbital, got a pretty strong build for speed running in any situation compare to Zeratul, whose Eco is faster but his speed build is limited to Ground comp.
With the same effort (Raynor is just spam A key to win while Zeratul spam E key to win), Raynor also clean the map faster than Zeratul can with his cannon.