That is, I play (usually hard, but I just tried brutal), mostly win, but get told I suck afterwords. Yes some people can just be mean, but I’m inclined to more or less believe them.
How does one get better at co-op? It being co-op, if the other player is some combination of decent or has really high mastery, they’ll just unintentionally carry my haphazard self and I don’t even know what I should be doing, nor do I have a good way to figure it out.
Yes just playing over and over would help, but I need goals. Playing with no idea what good play looks like is a very slow way to improve at something.
Any good ideas? I play Dehaka, if that helps.
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There’s lots of little things you can do with Dehaka if we’re going to look just at him.
How fast do you expand to the other base? And how do you break the rocks?
Do you use control groups? Especially for drone and unit production it’s very helpful.
How active are you with Dehaka himself? Ideally you’d like to be pecking easy stuff off asap, later smashing bases in objective downtime.
Also, try to get the three Pack Leaders up asap. The calldowns for the three of them are so crazy strong that you’re missing a lot of power with Dehaka if you don’t.
The best bit of advice I can give you is play at least the free commanders from time to time. They have different strengths and weaknesses, so you’ll naturally learn different parts of the game better with them as well.
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My best suggestion to get good at co-op would be to play and get good with Raynor. If you play with piss-easy commanders like Tychus, Dehaka, or Zeratul, you won’t learn much to get better.
What are control groups?
I use Dehaka pretty aggressively. Too aggressively, sometimes. And I know to get the commanders up ASAP. Dehaka infrastructure is really light, so base set up is usually quick.
The part I feel like I struggle is the map. I build a base reasonably quickly, get an army, but then I’m just following my ally around the map after that. When a big battle starts I’ll burrow Dehaka in, drop and commander, and let them do their thing. But my “goal awareness” is definitely terrible.
Thanks for the tip about the basic commanders. It’s very possible Dehaka has just been carrying me.
Control groups are the number tabs 1-10 just above the unit frame. You select a group of your units and hit CTRL+1 to assign them to that group or SHIFT + 1 to add to an existing group. So when you press the 1 key, that group will select.
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What server do you play on? I play a lot of Dehaka and I wouldn’t mind playing some games with you for fun / also to hand out some tips. Also who cares what commander you play as long as you are having fun. Get good at the commanders you enjoy the most and then eventually you’ll want to branch out and learn other commanders and get good at those as well.
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It sounds like you’re pretty decent already, honestly just keep playing and have fun.
If you can find some people to party up with you that can help too. People tend to play far less hard when it’s someone they know, so there’d be more time for you to learn the maps and how the attack waves play out.
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If you want to get better, here are some tips
-Ill start with an obvious. If you feel completely lost, then look at a guide. There is no shame in that. If you don’t want to do that, you don’t have too.
-This one is a must have: Have a plan. What are you going for? What do you need to counter the enemy composition? Do you know your arsenal well enough to make these decisions?
-Are you making basic economy mistakes? Taking vespene too late, not building workers, not expanding fast enough, forgetting upgrades, tech, getting supply blocked?
If you lack a plan, then learn you arsenal better. Try to be conscious of your unit decisions. If you are building igniters vs terran mech, I hate to break it to you, but… Also try to keep up economically. If you are one low tech, or one base for too long, that will hurt you.
With dehaka… are you rock slapping (using baby dehaka do clear 2nd expand rocks?) I know this is obvious, but if you are not eating enemy units with dehaka as soon as you come out, then that is a massive problem, and you will get told you suck. Also take and saturate gas fairly early: his good units are pretty gas intensive. (Ravasaur will only get you so far.)
This is going to seem odd but if you can 1vs1 the AI and win without any issues at all, then you can do brutal co-op fairly easily too.
Now, you won’t learn anything about co-op by playing 1vs1 but what 1vs1 does teach you is efficiency and efficiency is what you need to get better at co-op in a general sense.
For Dehaka there is a simple, but important equation for his priorities:
collect essence >= get all 3 dens asap >>> expand.
This and additonally, early gas on your main and expo asap are an absolute priority next to collecting essence.
And last but not least, always keep the pedal to the metal.
Be proactive and (hyper)aggressive and you’ll be getting better with dehaka on your own.
Thanks everyone! This advise actually helped a lot. My post-game stats are way better, and I haven’t been yelled at again 
5 Likes
You need to be aggressive throughout the entire mission. Map knowledge is also key, as you need to know what to do when certain things happen, like falling back to kill off an attack wave. There’s usually plenty of built-in downtime where you can Zergzilla around the map while waiting for things to happen.
Yeah that’s one of the things I changed. Before, I was being way too conservative with Dehaka in the early game so he wasn’t leveling like he should. In the mid to the late game, I was cutting him loose but he wasn’t as strong as he should be so i was struggling to keep him alive in tough fights.
I noticed a huge difference when I started prioritizing Dehaka and using armies as essentially backup, and supplementing with calldowns as needed.
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Read the teamliquid guide for Dehaka or any other commander you want to play. It has a pretty efficient build order and explains all the parts in Dehaka’s toolkits.
Also, it has map specific tips and a replay pack to show how Dehaka can be played well.
It’s slightly out of date, but it’s not anything that invalidates the advice, going air or perhaps swarmhosts are still the best comps. The latter in particular for mutation where you need to keep your distance.
Greater Primal Wurm Cooldown mastery has gotten buffed since then, so I personally prefer that over Pack Leaders Active Duration.
Muta ground damage has been nerfed since the guide was made, but you would perhaps want guardians anyway if there’s a lot of ground.
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This.
I’m not able to post links but you’ll find it easily.
Just use “Preformated text”, like this:
https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/532473-co-op-commander-guide-dehaka
This guides are very useful. Write down or memorise the build order - it will give you additional edge.
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Don’t do that with any commander, supper annoying when ally is up my behind.
Focus on leveling Dehaka from start, the achievement for leveling kind of hints at this.
I would think one is a noob if they stayed at base at 1 min - should be out leveling.
Not consuming spellcaster units for a big explosion - this can clear a wave, so no brainier. Slapping rocks is a big noob trademark.
Annoying category:
If I’m doing bonus - go do main objective, don’t need to go everywhere I go. If I’m fighting a wave, go do another wave, don’t try to prevent ally from getting any kills.
Considering you play Dehaka, I’ll simply stress that rock-slapping is a no go; you’re better off clearing expansions with Zerglings, whilst your hero grinds out levels against the enemy.
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“What are control groups?” :facepalm
“When a big battle starts I’ll burrow Dehaka”
Wtf … so you hid the most powerfull heroe in the game ? (most of the compositions and most of the maps can even be clear using only dahaka )
… confirmed , you most likely are horrible playing .
By burrow I meant tunnel, as in tunnel dehake in to position.
And thank you for that.