As far as royal guard power goes, the BCs can get around one of the big weaknesses of Mengsk by being super tanky, the ghosts can probably cheese mutations with their nukes (though not much better than OS in most cases) and the Tanks are amazing. And the marauders are ok to stick into the bioball. So I don’t know, the guard seems ok to me, just really not a priority.
Did I miss something?
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I wish I had that kind of luck find people with that skill. Almost every Mengsk player I’ve found was terrible and didn’t know what they were doing, most of which were a higher level than me. A handful even made me carry them hard because they sat in their base and did nothing but build Battlecruisers.
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With masteries, you are limited by nuke and swar cooldowns, not by mandate. The thing is, that even single rank 3 royal guard is extremly strong. One bc with triple yamato annihilates entire enemy atack wave. One ghost and one marauder can wipe out swarmy atack wave. Level 3 thor with few workers repairing tears enemy air to shreds and gives that awesome +3 armor to squishy troops. I always build healthy core of RG. Fully upgraded maxed out Mengsk army with few maxed royal guards (2BCs, 2 Thors, few marauders and 1-2 ghosts) is super strong.
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To be clear Royal mandate does have it’s uses. Replacing destroyed bunkers in an instant plus the 6 troops they come with isn’t nothing but you can’t summon ultralisks, a nuke, and bunkers at the same time.
Nuke and Swarm have their cooldowns but it’s easy to fill the downtime with Bunker spam when you’re generating that much, and equally easy to mop up at all times with your Troopers and Medivacs. I don’t think the needed investments of time, effort, and skill for Royal Guard match up even if their peak effectiveness might.
The masteries however are definitely imbalanced. It doesn’t inherently need context to point out that there’s 30% bonus vs a 20% bonus, and a 60% bonus vs a 15% bonus. I know someone’s gonna say it isn’t that simple, but it really actually is in most cases. You’re getting more for your points.
Even in context, under your assertion that one Royal Guard is enough to get a given job done, a mastery allowing some extra number of them is useless because they in turn will be useless. And RG XP doesn’t match up to instant free saturation, it’s barely even significant at all.
This all reminds me of Alarak’s old third category, and I’d like to remind the community about what happened to that.
Speaking of mastery, most players wouldn’t even notice if the first set of masteries (+30% mandate from either workers/troopers or RG) didn’t exist. Mandate generation from workers is so high that I don’t even bother deploying a witness over my army when they are idle.
Even when using contaminated strike on DoN several times during night, I always hover around 100 mandate and have one of the big ones ready.
Either the double mandate research should be just removed, or the first set of masteries changed completely.
Well, you can get by without category 1, but I definitely notice it. I think they’re good bonuses and can be a good part of Mengsk’s internal balance. The other categories (and RG in general) are what I think we should focus on in terms of possible changes.
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Well they should probably
- cut indoctrinated mandate in 1/2
- double RG and base mandate
- make mastery 3 (30 starting and max mandate v. ~22.5% exp)
Karmakaze I think you need to play with his units more. I’m glad you enjoy army massing. You can army mass on any commander and be fine. I recently did my Stetmann achievements and most of the time I only built lings and banelings and eventually stopped on banes. T1 armies are very very strong unless they have a counter although banelings can still demolish reavers/psi storms, they just die more frequently. That said, the real meat comes into mutations, not brutal, when it comes to guard. Guards share exp and their lvl 3s are huge. I recently tried the train map because so many people talked about how good Aegis Guards (marauders) are at annihilating the trains. The problem is, they don’t get stim, 200% attack speed, until rank 3. RG all share exp in one pool so if you recruit to many, they don’t level up fast enough and they all sit at rank 1 or 2. I tried massing BCs one game and it was silly. Their yamato is a 2 minute cd and if they aren’t hitting 2 or 3 preferred it’s a big waste to have 8 when 3 is better. Guards also have exp based on cost so BCs require at least double where as Aegis Guard are at least half that. I’m sure you can mass RG and it definitely feels good. Vikings vs air comes to mind. I believe Mengsk was designed to strike a balance between the two with the proest players maximizing his rank 3s without losing exp.
An indoctrinated worker/trooper generates per supply equal to a 1 star royal guard, and equivalent to a 2 star royal guard with airwaves upgrade, and royal guards become more efficient than them at 3 stars
Problem is you have a lot more supply invested in workers/troopers than in royal guard and when they’re not leveled they’re not as efficient to boot
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What are the amounts for RG imperial support?
Trooper worker is easy to see in game
1 indoctrinated no upgrade
2 indoctrinated upgrade
But RG # and level are changing any info on the calculations?
It’s 1 per star per unit of supply
So a 2 supply maurader would generate 2/4/6 while a 4 supply tank would generate 4/8/12
except marauders are 4 and tanks 6?
so unpromoted RG doesn’t give any?
Er yeah adjust for Mengsk’s unit supply numbers, you get the point though
Unfortunately no generation at all with unleveled RG
That’s the problem it should be
Supply of RG + RG supply * stars
not just RG supply * stars
so unpromoted RG = unupgraded troops
lvl 1 RG = upgraded troops
lvl 2, 3 RG > upgraded troops
since your mineral line workers will be ~ the same supply as your mid late game RG
That should be reasonably balanced.
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I don’t find Mengsk to be too strong. The best comparison for Mengsk is not Raynor, Swann, Nova, but is HH. Both have cheap spare units, elite units, powerful call downs, and map-wide range attack. Mengsk is only better than HH in defense, everything else they are comparable.
RG supply count nerf is counter productive. I don’t find 3-star BC stronger than Horner’s BC and they have the same supply. Horner’s BC has 130 DPS when upgraded. The marauder itself is already 4 supply, add 3 more supply, it’s 7. Why would anyone use a 7 supply marauder? 10 3-star Aegis Guards (70 supplies) will leave not enough supply for troopers. Mengsk earns RG experience just like Abathur earns his biomass, there is no reason to increase supply count.
Earthsplitter Ordinance isn’t better than Strike Fighter Platform outside of the train map. Despite lacking defense, HH’s strike figher can mow down buildings faster than Ordinance. The train map is Mengsk’s specialty so you can’t use one map to judge his power. Then again, no one even see an HH in co-op let alone of HH’s strike fighers, since HH are the least played commander statistically. It costs 4 troopers and a bunch of mineral/gas to even make an artillery on strike fighter’s level.
The only nerf should be starting mandate if there is one.
Oh man, fully manned earthsplitters have like no cooldown, fire continuously and you dont have to wait for replacement, like you have with lost fighters. Mass ES clear enemy bases in seconds, while strikers are more support than straight base clear.
3 star PA will erase any atack wave with triple splash yamato. I dont think HH battlecruiser can do it.
I play HH from time to time, but there is no comparison here in those cases.
Theory =/= practice, I lurk at a couple profiles and HH out-kill Mengsk in most of those games and those Mengsk players don’t exactly seem like weak players (high MMR). Isn’t HH supposed to be one of the weaker commanders? How did Mengsk get carry then? In brutal speed run he isn’t even above Raynor, Raynor still holds the record for fastest finish in many maps.
Mengsk have flashier calldowns and units but in practice they aren’t even doing more damage than mass reapers. By the time Mengsk has 5 BCs, HH already rip apart the map with just 5 upgraded galleons and reapers. Mengsk is more versatile, but overall strength wise he isn’t above HH. You need quite a bit of Royal Academies to make ghosts work. If you are going with mass artillery + mass academies + bio ball, then you are not getting mass BC’s, no one has the resource to invest in everything, it’s one build or another.
HH destroys buildings at a faster rate than Mengsk, artillery only Mengsk can’t destroy all infested buildings in DoN within 15 minutes but Strike Fighter only HH can. Earthsplitter Ordinance has low cooldown but also has random coordination, strike fighter is more ideal against specific targets. Mengsk’s artillery is only broken in Oblivion Express because the train is big enough to receive multiple hits from the artilleries. Horner’s BC melts high HP objectives and can self-heal, and his viking wipes swarmy waves on the ground. I would say HH’s elite air is comparable to RGs.
Mengsk probably needs slight nerfs but not big nerfs:
-Disallow supply bunker drop if Mengsk doesn’t have at least 6 more supplies available.
-Reduce starting mandate to enough just for 1 bunker.
Just wanna chime in and say kill count =/= carried. In my experience, one of Mengsk’s strengths is that nuclear annihiliation and dogs of war are very good for pushing objectives. If I’m doing most of the legwork in a match when it comes to killing objectives then having 50 less kills is not important.