I like playing Karax, But I feel forced to play around Carries. I’d love to play around some heavy mechs, the problem is that they don’t have anti-air. There’s those silly Energizers, which are very weak on dealing damage and very costly. If I’m going Mirage, than I’d rather go fully air with Carriers anyway.
What if he get an upgrade that make Imortals able to shot air?
On the same issue, I feel the same problem on Vorazun, it lacks a ground detector, if we are going for the oracle + Fleet bacon for the upgrade, than I’d rather go full Void Ray. Since the Strength of Vorazun is supposed to be on stealth, she either lack good detection or simple go fully Void Ray with no stealth at all.
My suggetion is an upgrade the makes either Dark Templars, sentinels, stalkers or Dark Archon a detector
Huh? I am not sure if this is a serious thread but I guess I’ll bite.
Karax inmortals have shadow cannon for anti-air and you also have spear of adun for that. Granted I wish the cooldown on shadow cannon was a bit shorter but it is still good enough I guess.
Also for Vorazun you don’t need any upgrade that you are not already getting for corsairs so I don’t see the problem with getting a couple of oracles to follow your corsairs for detection and thus don’t see the need for any ground detection.
Tecnically Karax can use Orbital Strike, Shadow Cannon and Mirages as options for anti-air, assuming you don’t wanna use Carrier + Static Defense, and is fighting against zerg, because Energizers can use reclamation on any Terran and Protoss air unit, which counts as an instant kill.
But none of these options is ideal.
Mirages are surprisingly fragile despite 2 seconds of invulnerability every 5 seconds, as repeated waves of scourge + parasitic bomb in short time can nuke your Mirages immediately.
Shadow Cannon is a laughable anti-air tool against waves of enemies, since individually targeting every air unit can be your death at times, for how much time it takes. Shadow Cannon excels at eliminating high hp targets, objectives, defenses, and raiding bases. Not ideal for waves of zerg, which comes the next thing:
Orbital Strike is your anti-wave answer, regardless of unit type. Unfortunately it can be drained very often and be made very innefective against zerg, given all the light units only take 50 damage from an Orbital Strike. For example, a mutalisk requires 3 Orbital Strike shots to die, which is nonsense for a zerg unit. Vikings take only 2 shots in comparison.
Personally I don’t know how to fix this difficulty Karax has against these types of units, and I don’t think making Immortals shoot air would help Karax, as the mass immortal comp would become mandatory in the place of Carriers.
I can only think of 4 things that could potentially help:
Make Sentinels ranged units just like marines.
Make Energizers deal double damage against biological units (fitting for an unit that has a weapon called Sanitization Beam).
Reduce Mirage’s gas cost with Phase Armor’s upgrade.
Make Orbital Strike deal 100 damage regardless of armor type.
Of these options I recommend the second, as the consequences of the others could buff Karax way too much.
Edit: (The consequences of buffing orbital strike to 100 damage no matter the armor type would make you kill zealots with two shots. Aside from the 2nd suggestion, all of the others would make Karax significantly more powerful).
I’ve wondered about this too. FWIW, I’ve seen some “aggressive Karax” who will have Carriers around the 10 minute mark. Granted, I take a long time to get there since I go crazy with towers and SoA upgrades. I’ve also seen Karax players fare quite well with Sentinels, Energizers, and OS (Orbital Strikes). And BTW, at least Karax, you get to use SoA abilities while pursing a Carrier build (although AFAIK, it’s less painful to go Carriers with Fenix).
“Ground detector” is a ground unit detector right? FWIW, most COs don’t have that.
I feel making her DTs, Darch’s, or Stalkers detectors would be OP.
I’d rather not have to divert time and resources to making Oracles, but some of the COs are required to do so for mobile detection anyways, like Swann, Stukov, Artanis, Abathur, Zagara, and HH to name a few.
His Immortals do have an upgrade to shoot air. It’s called Shadow Cannon
Karax does have that glaring hole in his army, but it is meant to be remedied by the synergy his powers have with his army; part of his flair
Now Immortals can make very good anti air, but with potentially having mass enemy air go to town on your army while you click away spamming Shadow Cannon (perhaps can setup Obs for vision first to preselect targets), and having to babysit against random banshees etc., the playstyle can seem a bit burdensome.
Therefore, make some Mirages. Their job, is not to kill all the air - as you know, Karax army outside of Shadow Cannon is not really setup to do so - their job is to helpYOU kill all the air - with Mirages’ Phasing Armor, they can tank and hold enemy air in place like a speedbump, while we rain down death from above with EZ orbital strikes
It’s not really a problem to deal with air units, for me real problem is that if I use mech army composition Energizers are always getting focused by enemy air units because they are my only “ground-to-air” (immortals with shadow cannon are not considered a threat to air). And since they are weak and few they die to even just a couple of mutalisks if you look away for several seconds. Against terran and protoss you at least have an option to make many of them and control enemy air units, but against zerg that doesn’t make sense.
They don’t suck against scourge unless you a-move them in. Phoenixes (not Mirages) suck against Vipers tho.
They are not useless because with graviton beam they can easily clear most of ground units.
They are mostly useless if you build them to fight hordes of BCs of something. So don’t do that. Well, you can actually try with Mirages, if there are enough of them their survivability increases.
Just make some Mirages. I already gave you guys the answer
Energizers
Mirages will screen for them
Colossus
Mirages will screen for them
Mutalisks
Mirages will kill them
They suck!
That’s ok, they are there to hold the enemy for Spear to nuke
The secret is to upgrade Spear at the same time. Yes, it will delay army slightly, which can be a problem on lower difficulties if your teammate has essentially finished the game already, but such is Karax
Oh that light air is going to be a threat when Karax has no way to take them out whatsoever. Hehehehe
You can choose to babysit army all game and spend all energy chasing fast light air, maybe having some survive to wreak havoc, a problem compounded by the tendency among some players not to upgrade Spear - or, Mirages can hold them up to be nuked
Mirages are also actually one of the most resilient against Scourge
If you use Colossi versus swarmy zerg (which i generally avoid doing) then you will have to send Mirages forward to kite-kill all scourges (and preferrably vipers if you don’t want them to abduct Collosi into banes and aberrations) before wave gets to your main army. Since Mirages are fast and that comp doesn’t have single ground-to-air unit it’s not that hard.
Only vs Zerg air I’d see a problem. But that’s only concerning the waves then. Answer: make some cannons where the waves hit, not rocket science. They instantbuild and Karax swims in minerals anyway
They needing micro is a positive thing if you ask me, I’d really dislike it if it was auto cast specially considering that they can overkill and the cooldown is quite significant.
I think shadow cannon functions perfectly as it is now the only problem is that it can’t properly deal with high amounts of air units which is why I think the cooldown should be reduced a little bit. Not enough that you would only ever need inmortals against all air comps but make it more reliable against compositions with some air units.
Of course that is not mentioning the fact that you have spear of adun to deal with air units as well.
Agreed, it would be a simple fix if Shadow Cannon would simply do a small AoE. Many air units stack together so this would help mitigate having to cast too many already. Meanwhile, not having it auto-cast both save overkill and upkeep micro satisfaction.