I ask you all, if not the ultimate evos, what’s makes abathur such a staple mutation-killer? There’s a “dehaka gud unit” thread where a lot of people mentioned abathur having much more mutation versatility and generally being better than dehaka.
I’m not complaining, I just wanted to see how people would react differently between buffing a known “weak” Commander and nerfing a known “strong” commander. (Evidently, not much).
Also, aren’t you being a little ridiculous? It’s hard to call mules a cheat when raynor runs into a lot of problems without them. When you see a raynor stay on 2 orbitals, you don’t think “oh he’s so damn good, he doesn’t need to cheat and use mules.” You think “oh this guy doesn’t know how to play raynor.”
I suppose I put abathur on the spot over those commanders because he can be entirely a-move lategame. You don’t need to watch your units, you don’t need to replace them. Alarak and zagara rely heavily on enemies being weak enough to vaporize without burning too much money. You try to beat a just die+barrier+evasive maneuvers attack wave (which in theory just makes enemies super beefy) and you run out of fuel.
Fenix is also a-move late game. As is Zeratul. There’s a good number of a-move gg armies. Abathur being at the forefront is mostly due to just how good and consistent he is.
The thing with Abathur is that he has a lot of tools to deal with various things. Ravager bile, Blinding Cloud + Parasitic Bomb, Super Speedy Swarmy Squeezy Swarm Hosts… He’s the most expansive (not expensive) Zerg commander, and well… Commander in general, in the game. I think a lot of his power comes from options and resilience rather than straight up power.
Dehaka’s Mutalisks can A-move, Kerrigan’s Mutalisks can A-move, Vorazun’s corsair-oracle-voidray can A-move, Artanis’s Mech can A-move, Swann’s Goliath-thor can A-move, Karax’s Sentinel-Mirage can A-move, Zeratul’s Mech can A-move, Zagara’s army is basically built to A-move.
You are supposed to be able to A-move in late game. His reason for being able to speed run most mutation is because his Ultimates allows him to access Midgame power while he was still in early game which i expressed how to carefully adjust him if you want to.
And if you think Abathur don’t need to replace units, you are quite incorrect. Reckless assaulting when he has yet to reach critical mass or when he has to split the army can result in the loss of 1-2 max biomass units which are major blow to his power that can not be simply rebuilt with resource. A 100-biomass Muta worth as much as 10 normal mutalisks.
And if you lose 10 mutalisks with minimal biomass, you’ve freed up enough globs to make a 100-biomass muta. Therefore you didn’t need to replace anything. (And let’s be honest, that 100 biomass muta isn’t going to die, unlike Kerrigan mutas and artanis robo and oracle/corsair etc.)
In that sense, he’s very backwards to how sc normally works. “You know what’s better than 10 roaches? ONE ROACH, because biomass feed.” And of course, this is what makes him a good beginner character: you’re REWARDED for not making too many units. (This is different from Mengsk because for him, the high costs force you to not make many RG until they’re powered up)
You’re still going to have to replace units and you’re still going to micro Zeratul/fenix hero, possibly with conservators and avatar and legion calldowns etc.
I mean, yes, coop is generally easy enough so that you don’t have to care about microing and replacing units, but with abathur, you REALLY don’t have to care about what happens. Do some simple shift click a-moves, LITERALLY walk away for a few minutes, and you’ll be perfectly fine most missions
I ask you all, if not the ultimate evos, what’s makes abathur such a staple mutation-killer?
He has an answer to all the mutators that usually stop commanders from being viable, to name them:
Void rifts: Brutalisk has a global teleport with no restrictions on a 10s cooldown and you can get them before 2:20, making him by far the best commander vs rifts
Heroes from the storm: this mutator is easiest if you can spawn camp, Abby got the best spawncamp tool in the game (toxic nests) and with fast Brutalisk in some maps he can clear the spawn spot for attack waves before the 1st wave spawns
Propagators: toxic nests provide excellent automatic defense and vipers can disable propagators on the offense
Kill bots: appart from basically needing no money for his army, he gets Evo Chambers to feed the bots, even staying on 1 base if he wants
Black death: This is usually a slight problem cause ultimates die to this, but 100 biomass units can’t die to black death
Void reanimators: He gets yoink in his vipers to easily make a reanimstor zoo and stop the mutator from working
I think this covers all of the problematic mutators, for other mutations he just has enough brute force with his ults to stomp thought everything, personally I like that the commander has options for everything but playing abathur for the aggressive recruitment or the oncoming call of the void mutations seriously feels like cheat mode, he is way too good.
Not really, zeratul, dehaka or pretty much any non zerg have weakness to kill bots, dehaka has serious trouble vs rifts, black death, propagators. Tychus is dumpster fire when it comes to dealing with a lot of these mutators. There is just no one who has an answer to everything, there is a reason only Abby has been able to solo every non polarity mutation ever (zeratul comes close, but no one has been able to do price of progress with him)
the general purpose army that gets exponentially stronger.
Biomass is a hard to balance mechanic because it’s very easily too strong, or too weak. Any nerfs to it could cripple Abathur’s mid game.
The problem is that Abathur has an answer for everything, and he just gets stronger and stronger as the game progresses. Other commanders either lack answers, or they are not as snowbally.
I think maybe making ultimate evolutions require a resource cost.
That uses the fact that Abathur doesn’t need/want to make a lot of units early game, so he has extra resources for an UE start
To not hurt the midgame you could make it an upgrade in the Evolution chamber (enable ultimate evolutions)… so that getting 3 (or 6) is just as expensive as getting 1…
However, charging for each ultimate evolution would give a benefit of allowing control over it (easier to make sure that roaches rather than swarm hosts/queens become brutalisks)
That would be the way I would balance it
either
Charge for each UE (allows control as a byproduct, slows down ramp up)
and/or
Have an upgrade that enables Brutalisk, Leviathan, or a combined upgrade. (slows the early spike)
Give him a research in the Hatchery that will rise the limit of his Ultimate is the least non-destructive change.
Making him having to spend resource for each Ulti is as foolish a design as the Stukov Bunker nerf where his Bunker compete with mech for supply.
Probably something like this is more preferable.
Brutalisk Limitation 1 (100 mineral & gas, 200s) allow you to have 1 Brutalisk
Brutalisk Limitation 2 (250 mineral & gas, 240s) allow you to have 2 Brutalisks
Brutalisk Limitation 3 (300 mineral & gas, 280s) allow you to have 3 Brutalisks
Leviathan Limitation 1 (125 mineral & gas, 200s) allow you to have 1 Leviathan
Leviathan Limitation 2 (150 mineral & gas, 240s) allow you to have 2 Leviathans
Leviathan Limitation 3 (200 mineral & gas, 280s) allow you to have 3 Leviathans
For kill bots, workers can do the job. Dehaka can go SwarmHost/BanelingHost.
For rift? Deeptunnel+Drop down leader or mass worm or Muta. Zeratul is very easy to deal with rift as he is cloaked.
Propagator? Dehaka banelinghost. Zeratul can kill it with high dmg army.
Either you are smoking or you are just being noob.
The problem with sacrificing workers is that you have to build more on top of losing precious mining time. Especially on a Commander like Zera, who needs all the resources he can get.
Rifts are rifts. There’s a bunch of ways to deal with them.
As for poops, well… It really depends upon if they are in combination with any other mutators or not. Base poops are still scary, but there are ways around it. Zeratul also can’t kill them very quickly, as they are unarmored and have 450 health. They can, and will, eat your army.
Just build more probes than the base actually need and use those excessive probes for bots. Switch to Observer when you max out army because you will bank quite a lot of them(gas).
Also, I am not sure but cannon shade projection probably work for kill bot.
