Karax Architect of War vs Swann Grease Monkey

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

I personally don’t find Swann’s Grease Monkey that appealing as much as Karax’s Architect, I don’t know why.

They are practically the same Defence focused prestige but AoW is just more rewarding and comfortable for me, while Grease Monkey is kind of… unfinished and ‘difficult to use?’

For me AoW is better because…

  1. The result (Tower building) is Explosive when reached certain Threshold (Chrono Wave time makes it so beautiful)
  2. Have lots of means to improve the tower which stacks (Energizer/Chrono Boost/ Chrono Wave/Regen Beam)
  3. Are versatile to any threats due to SoA abilities.
  4. Instant build makes it all the more convenient (it would be better if probe can short jump or have build range of 3).
  5. It’s a defense prestige but it feels so rewarding and empowering.

Grease Monkey on the other hand.

  1. Have limited support (Drill abilities take too long and Laser is kind of unreliable to aim or get the right timing).
  2. Takes too long to build (Multiple SCV can make it happen but if towers are clustered together then SCV will messily disperse after building).
  3. Not as good Explosive potential. This is just me, there is little difference from Vanilla and P2 when the tank is involved.
  4. It’s just feels strangely bland as if there is no huge difference or fun value. As if it makes no difference even if the prestige exists.

Maybe I’m not giving it enough chance, what are your opinions?

1 Like
2

Greese Monkey should’ve just had a lesser disadvantage I feel. There are other prestige with a more minor change both plus and minus, but are generally a bit better than P0 overall (for example like Alarak’s P2 or, in my opinion, Raynor’s P2)

3

All 3 of Swann’s prestiges have a similar issue, they all play the sameish, P1 forces you to have better awareness of the attack waves, but rewards better mat control. P2 the gas Price increase only makes your early game worse as drones mean your swimming in gas come late game. And P3 gives you better ability to reinforce and helps with the tank drop play style (although something I do that is entirely just for my own fun is include SCV in my 2nd or 1st herc for repair and forward towers in the late game.) but has a similar down side to P1 where your knowledge of the attack waves is important.

As far as it goes Swann P2 isn’t bad but also isn’t really good, I mean the Turret range just be ones ridiculous, 11 range for devastate turret, 6 range flame throwers and 9 range missile turrets, with the last two doing good AOE dmg. The 4 additional armor isn’t to sneeze at And a 50% atk speed is helps the AoE quite a bit. It’s a shame that fire suppression only heals at its standard rate (15 hps till 50% hp) if either numbers was doubled for the turrets they would be really tanky. Although Karax did get the better deal, Swanns P2 turrets are still pretty good, just not absurd like the numbers karax gets. honnestly it feels like swann’s prestiges were all only half finished.

1 Like
4

Both prestiges are actually strong, however P1 Karax is better than Swann P2 by a good ammount, chrono boost on monoliths are great.

Both need to abuse static range and vision, Karax has observers with monoliths, Swann has hercs with cannons, monoliths just wins in that regard.

What Swann has it going is the flaming betties, they’re super cheap for what they do

1 Like
5

I think someone has pointed it out that most of the damage is done by Swann’s Tank. The turrets are only there to distract the damage from the tank and cover some of the visible weakness of the tank such as (1) not being able to attack enemies within 2 range in siege mode and (2) can’t target air.

Also as others have said and i quoted them “the prestige didn’t change how you defend”. You still need that 14-range 100-damage siege tank to deal with most of the ground force. Missile turrets are slightly better against air units now but they still can’t attack Siege air units such as Tempest and Brood lord… Basically you still need normal units to cover the weakness of the turrets the same as when you play other prestige.

The +4 armor may sound big but i don’t see it has any impact when Amon’s units mostly deal 15+ damage.

The attack speed bonus is not that great. it’s 125% vs 150% roughly 1/5 better but that’s it.

I say x4 the bonus would may be making some differences. So that will mean
+4 attack range instead of +2
+8 armour instead of +4
+100% attack speed instead of +50%

What would those mean?
Well, Missile turret will have 11 attack range, 8 armor and 0.43s attack cooldown (the splash attack still take 0.89s)
Flaming betty will have 8 attack range, 9 armor and 0.5s attack cooldown
Devastator will have 13 attack range, 8 armor, 0.75s attack cooldown

and if possible allow the turret to benefit from attack upgrade, not armor upgrade just attack upgrade.
I am still mad that the BC take only 10 damage from missile turret attack because the BC’s armor block 14 damage from the missile.

If the missile turret even benefit by +1 attack per upgrade they can at least even out the armor upgrade of enemies.

It’s not much of a big deal because turrets still suffer from short sight range which Karax can deploy Observer in surveillance mode to counter but Swann doesn’t have.

2 Likes
6

At least the Fire Suppression upgrade heals faster… Oh wait, no, no it doesn’t. Oh, the upgrade makes it heal to 100%! No… that’s not it… Ah, right! It’s not changed at all in this prestige. Well damn.

Then there’s the fact that none of these upgrades apply until you use that precious early game gas to upgrade them. And seeing as how your main damage dealers, tanks, are fighting for that early gas as well, I feel this prestige slows his start even more. And in most maps and mutations, early aggression is far more preferred.

As far as defensive prestiges go, I actually prefer to go P1 Swann instead. The laser slowing units, faster targeting and splash pairs really well when you got a small group of turrets forcing the enemies to clump together.

Overall though, I agree that Karax P1 is both better at defending, and more importantly, FEELS better at defending since you have some cool stuff at your disposal. Healing beam from space, shield batteries, chrono boosted turrets, and of course super turrets when you do chrono wave boost thing.

I feel the strength of Swanns turrets are how versatile they are. Buying time for your army to get back to them while also absorbing damage, serving as a blocking line for your tanks, and camping enemy spawns that your army has cleared. As you can see, most of these things are to supplement his army, while P2… Doesn’t really add much to that, and indeed, detracts from that due to limiting his army.

A fortified defense from Karax can defeat a group of immortals, but then can’t move. Swanns defenses alone can never really do this. But his tanks can certainly win in conjunction with his defense, then can load up and fly into the sunset… Until a damn viper yeets them into a group of scourge and banelings.

7

Swann all day long. :100:

8

The issue is solved if the build time is halved. And it’s really that simple.

The expensive units aside, the player doesn’t really need them that quickly when you have static to allow economic build up.

What makes this difficult to use aggressively is the lack of “quick build”. The player can’t easily pull off 16SCVs to just make static. And the time reduced proportionally has high diminished returns. So if the build times is simply reduced by 1/2, then the set up would be much quicker (similar to Karax P1).

It doesn’t sound much but when each static costing you 10-15sec longer than comparatively to the probe-counterpart, that’s a lot of time and effort per wave/objective.

9

Grease Monkey should amplify its advantages & disadvantages

ALL building upgrades should be increased by +300% (so +4 range, +8 armor, +100% attack speed, heal 60 hps up to 50%)

Units should have a +50% gas cost, and NO Vespene Drones

That way Swann wouldn’t need tanks (billys will out range everything) … just spotters for his wall of defense… that can get recycled when it is the back. It would be hard to push with just that, but thats what units are for.

And that way its not a speed built defense ala Karax, but more of an Abathur, build defense rapidly and lure them in.

10

Because while awesome, Swann’s turrets aren’t even the best part of his defense. It’s the tanks. The upside from Swann P2 in the defense department isn’t all that much relative to P0 because P2 nerfs tanks.

One exception is Void Launch or against a full on air comp because tanks can’t hit air. P2 is more viable playing oblivion express against say Terran air than P0 against a majority ground comp.

DoN P2 will also be inferior because you can’t move out with turrets but tank serves multiple purposes.

11

I agree that 50% increased gas cost for Swann P2 is too much of a disadvantage. 25% or 30% would have been more reasonable, as is the case with other commanders prestiges.

That being said, i don’t regard Karax P1 to be significatnly better than Swann P2 in terms of static defense capabilities… karax needs to spend a ton of gas on his turrets to get the most of them (monoliths and energizers) and aside during chrono wave there is not much difference to karax P0 cannon walls. Also karax static defenses have no AoE, while swann has it against air and ground.

Unity barrier is nice, but since it triggers already at 20 dmg, i feel like it’s too unreliable … i cant imaging it making on the field static defenses against high burst damage mutators like nukes viable… though i never tested.

Btw: How much damage does a dropping nuke (from going nuclear mutator) deal in the center?

I would regard that as a bug. In fact i was under the impression that it benefits from P2 until reading this…

The prestige says “turret upgrades are twice as efficient”… i would read that as +100% bonus to all turret upgrade effects. Self repair being a turret upgrade, with P2 it should heal twice as fast AND heal to 75% (100% does not make much sense, as with this scaling, you could theoretically heal to values beyond 100% HP).

12

Swann’s p2 static is powerful. Swann P2 per static is more stronger than Karax’s P1 per static. Karax relies on a combination of things working together to be great (battery shield, energizers, cannons, chrono). But the way p2 Swann is played might be awkward to some players.

To me playing Karax is easier and you can fall back on his OS to take care to enemy waves. With Swann you need to plan a head. Another thing is, Swann p2 statics are harder to push into base, it is not instance build like Karax.

But I will say that both can do very well (even solos) on defensive maps (miner’s, DoN, Malwarfare, Mist, OE, etc). P2 Swann could even speed run faster at LnL.

I agree with you here. Swann’s P1 and P2 are unfinished.

P1 should be focused on his laser drill, removing its abilities do not make sense to me. They should put the laser abilities back, lower their CD and remove Ares instead.

P2 if you focus on static early to mid game, you will have plenty of gas for your units to push later game. That might not be good for some maps but for defensive maps (listed above) it is great. I proposed that we remove the high gas requirement and just cap his supply at 150 instead. I finish most games under that supply anyways.

1 Like
13

But P2 cannot buffs self-repair on Swann’s static defense.

14

Ok, let me ask you back: why not?

15
  • The result (Tower building) is Explosive when reached certain Threshold (Chrono Wave time makes it so beautiful)
    I’ve played through P1 Karax. You can just make a few cannons and/or Monos, CW, and they’ll kick brass. That’s impressive. However, CW does have a high cd (5 minutes IIRC?), so you can’t always count on that.

You’ll be in trouble if SoA energy runs low though.

.

Swann’s towers do NOT cost any gas, so that’s a nice bonus. They can be salvaged if need be, saving resources and/or providing flexibility.

Swann trades in explosiveness for more consistency

I was in one game where my P2 Swann ally used towers to spawn camp the Void Trashers, and were able to take on much of incoming waves.

16

Swanns turrets are GREAT if you can get them to spawn camp waves or objectives, with or without P2 due to their splash. It’s actually something I do on many missions. However, having an early army allows you to get those areas cleared early enough to make a difference. Swann isn’t swimming in gas yet in the early game, so having to pay that extra 50% is rather painful, on top of having to spend 150-350 gas or more to even take advantage of your turrets.

I guess at the end of the day, Karax got new tools to make his defense FEEL and play better. Swann got… Slightly better turrets after their upgrades, at the expense of a few less units. Yay. If your going for a defense crawl along the map, or have to deal with constant enemies coming from multiple directions it then has its advantages, but that’s still rather limiting.

17

I take the extended bot lifespan passive for that reason. Even though gas costs increase, it doesn’t stop you from building some units since his turrets only cost minerals to build.

Not if you take large group of SCVs to build with. Also pro tip: turn the auto construct OFF, does more harm than good. Also good to toggle auto repair on and off too to keep them from running off and dying trying to repair.

Swann’s turrets are overall better without boosts and can heal themselves, Karax’s towers are beefier in HP, but are all single-target oriented and only outclass Swann’s when boosted with Chrono that has a timer. The real factor is how you approach the situation with said turrets.

It kind of sounds like you aren’t playing him right to get the full effect of what that prestige can do. I’d have to see some replays to know for sure.

18

Lol why bother playing P2 when P0 is superior.

Some prestige is only mutationally useful imo.

19

For me it feels like Swann’s turrets heal faster.

20

It seems so to you, because in fact Swann’s static defense has less HP than the rest of its structures, which is why they self-repairs faster to 50% HP.