Karax units are so useless

Karax is my favorite commander hands down but lately i’ve been really bothered by his unit selection. It took me a while to realize that it wasnt the units that i hated, its that somewhere along the way, the hero commander’s design has broken down.

In a nut shell the only effective unit he has is Carriers. Now when i say this I strictly mean on difficulties that are somewhat high and weekly mutations.

Well anyways there are so many upgrades on Karax that it is obvious the intention was to choose which pathways you are going down, you simply can’t afford to fully upgrade all your units and, your spear of adun and your cannon’s. You actually can only realistically do 1.5 of those things and i do like this design aspect of the hero. However in design philosophy when you force me to specialize, you need to reward me and that’s where it all breaks down. If i fully upgrade my ground forces i really get nothing in return when i could have put that money into carriers, air upgrades and canon/spear of adun upgrades.

Which leads to the main issue. As i typed this I realized this is a multi layer design issue, his cannons are so good, honestly, anything not a carrier is so not worth it compared to a cannon. It only costs 150 and is instantly deployed into battle with 8 range, detection, and 320 effective hitpoints. Meanwhile to make his midtier units, of which he only has 3, zeolot, mirage, and immortal (very borderline tier 3 cost), you need considerable upgrades, takes lots of production buildings, and have extremely poor value per cost and they are susceptible to dieing in battle. You can build 3 canons for the cost of some his mid tier units at no gas cost, meaning you can deploy aggressive canon positions 3 times. I did have fantasies early in my co-op day’s of using zeolots as a cool immortal mineral dump to lead my army but then quickly realize cannons are just better. Setting up a small station of 4 canons and 4 batteries under carrier push is by far the better mineral dump.

Another thing is his carriers aren’t even particularly good, the only reason they are usable is because you can keep them at the edge of battle and slowly build up a fleet that won’t die but in terms of power, are just mediocre.

I think to attack this problem, simply changing stats here and there wont really solve the fact that cannons are just better than most of his own unit’s, so to fundamentally solve this issue, it needs to be attacked in a design perspective.

My first idea is that they should increase the cost of his mid tier units even more, and really sell their specialty niche for very specific set of circumstances. Keep the stats relatively the same but really improve their abilities. Karax does not need early game units or midtier units frankly, he has canons to survive and take early objectives with.

zeolot: initial gateway cost the same, revival can happen every 15 seconds but now costs half the price of the zeolot when it revives. The price cost on revival will keep this mechanism balanced but open whole new ways to use this unit. It’s possible to effectively keep 10 in your mobile army and only need 1 gateway to upkeep this small contingent. Before if i wanted to be serious with my carrier zeolot combo, id have to also invest heavily into 4-5 gateways and tech trees, well I just gave up and said canons/shield batteries are just so much better for so much less work.

Immortal: changed to a premium unit with a primium t3 pricetag, shadow cannon now has a 15 second cooldown with an autocast against air units. Kharax anti air is tricky, but strait up giving him some might go against the design of the character, i thought it would be cool to have 7 immortals in your mobile army, that for the most part, can handle air units reliably if you are not against an all air composition.

Mirage: increase cost by 100% more minerals and the same gas. phase now lasts 3.5 seconds with a 5 second cd. They go into phase mode when they deplete their shields and when in phase mode, attack speed is increased by an additional 100%, Attacks in phase mode will restore shield. They currently suffer from many thing’s, they are ridiculously fragile. send this into a mutator wave and it blows up so fast. Because they relatively have low total hp and against large waves you’ll still take heavy casualties, but against more sustain fighting and medium fights, you have some sustainability. Otherwise, id rather just buy carriers and not deal with this canon strapped to a paper airplane.

The rest of his units: aren’t very interesting, but it’s fine, I have alot of ideas for them, but mostly it’s karax’s low tier units that needed a change to compete with cannon’s.

Let me know your thoughts. Will this make him op of a hero?

2 Likes

This is where I stop reading the OP post :smiley:

16 Likes

His units are so expensive, because they are so powerful :slight_smile:

I mean, i never found anything powerful in his units but blizzard told me. Soooo… it must be there somewhere.
Until i find it, ill just build zeratuls stalkers. Because they are heavy in price too but i already found the button to make this unit incredibly strong and worth the price.

Monk isnt around anyways. And Karax never brought much money/was already “reworked”. I dont think that they will make Karax fun any time soon or ever.
Why would they? Just throw out Selendis with standart priced carriers and a selfcasted yamato cannon for a few bucks and nerf it 4 weeks after release. Thats way better for Act ähhh Blizzard

3 Likes

*energizer noises

20c

1 Like

energizer moves forward and sees creep on the ground.

100% backwards, carriers are, even on high difficulty, his second worst unit after sentinels, and arguably worse than those due to costing gas. The problem is that his other units are some combination of niche and requiring more micro than a nova hero solo.

The problem is that each unit you upgrade is almost as expensive as upgrading the cannons. So if you have a very narrow army, you can upgrade spear, units, and cannons, and then you are stuck with cannons + your 1 chosen unit. (And maybe some energizers).

Seriously? Uh, no.

Actually, his carriers are the ONLY thing less worth it than a cannon.

Massively not a fan of paying more for zealots. They are supposed to be a place for leftover minerals when cannons won’t suffice, not a constant mineral drain.

What tech trees? The twilight you need for any spear upgrades at all? Or the forge you need if you want cannons, which are probably your detection when making star gate units?

While I agree Karax’s army is below average, you are obviously Karaxing very wrong.

6 Likes

personally other than cannon, the strat i use with karax are sentinel/energizer/immortal, on map like voidlaunch or heavy air presence i tend to make cannon and mirage. Karax mirage can move while attack and not a target for yamato cannon, meanwhile energizer is good vs sky terran and sky toss.

Changing karax unit upgrade by reducing all of it resource by 50/50 and combine the air-ground upgrade into 1 upgrade each (air-ground weapon, air-ground armor, shield) somehow like han&horner armory upgrade to all unit can also work. In the end karax unit they work good but still unimpressive with their price tag and the number of upgrade they have.

I find Karax’s unit composition to be mostly fine, though I’d probably give him Scouts instead of Mirages.

His mirages are very good, far preferable to scouts with their actual mobility (goes well with global presence of orbital strike). As well as their significantly higher life expectancy.

2 Likes

Lucky for everybody stats can be changed. Think like a box, man.

All of his units have their usages (yes, “usages” plural):

Sentinel
mineral dump. Basic unit that’s still sturdy (helpful in Part & Parcel). Best unit early game that provides vision. Does decent damage. Like with most of his units, it’s sustained damage so you don’t need to unload half your SoA just to take out one objective. Much more tanky when you get to his “revive” upgrade

Energizer
Support unit with limited AA capability. If you’re going to use them as AA, put them behind tankier units. Enemy AG units typically attack those tankier units instead (since they’re in front), but if not, prepare to lose some Energizers.
They can also go into phasing mode to reduce aggro and provide power field, but I don’t bother with this since Karax’ Pylons are instantly built, and I typically need more supply anyways.

Make these and have them follow your ally’s units for that boost in attack speed. Nice on your own units too. I was initially unaware that they can also boost your towers’ attack speed as well!

Observer
I don’t really bother with detection as Karax since his Orbital Strikes and Solar Lance are able to hit cloaked and burrowed units (although without detection, you’ll need to be able to triangulate their positions). However, could be helpful for your ally. Nicer to provide vision for SoA abilities (since they fly and are cloaked). They’re also a decent gas dump.

Immortal
Sustained, high DPS unit. These are excellent when you need to down high hp (ground) targets quickly (e.g. trains, Void Shards/Slivers/Thrashers, Malwarfare towers, Hybrids, Stanks). I try not to rely on their Shadow Cannon upgrade for AA since they’re on a 1 min. cd. Instead, I combine this with SoA Strikes… using SC to weaken higher hp targets, and SoA Strikes to finish them off

Colossus
Sustained AoE (ground) damage. Put these behind your tower-lines to be effective against infested and swarmy comps, and save your SoA for something else

Mirage
I haven’t used these in ages, but I have heard one person use this to lift ground units as a means for disabling them

Carrier
The interceptors provide nice distraction. I find using this with SoA strikes works well. Expensive and end of the tech line. I only bother with these if the mission is going to last more than 22 minutes. I have built 1 or 2 by the 15-minute mark one time. DEFINITELY use Chrono Wave to get these out quickly (the duration of CW will be equal to the full, quicker bt for carriers)

==== as for towers and beyond…
TL;DR… towers set up in the right place can be as useful as any army, if not more so.

Pylons
The special thing about his is his are insta-built. The 4 other Protoss COs who make use of power fields would appreciate this.
-Artanis starts off with max supply, so he’s not inclined to build his own. He has his Deploy Power Field CD, but it can only be at one place at a time with a 30s cd, so Karax setting up more of them gives him flexibility
-Vorazun can deploy a Dark Pylon instantly at 0-resource cost, and they cloak! But they use up SoA energy and are on 1 minute cd. Enemies often go after these since they have no detection and that’s the only thing they can see in that case
-Fenix… nothing special here, other than better logistics of deploying closer to where Gate units are needed
-Alarak can phase his War Prisms, but they do eat up the Robotics queue, along with their resources to build them

Shield Battery
Something all Protoss COs appreciate. Even if Zeratul has his own version of Energizers that restore shields. These do keep Karax’ towers alive longer, and are cheaper to use as barriers to melee units

Cannon
His are better in having +25% attack and +2 range upgrades. Not to mention insta-built, and more hp+shield if you put some into that Mastery. Zeratul’s cannons are more of a sidegrade, and not as great for defending now that they’ve been jacked up to a cost of 400 (vs. previously 250)

Monoliths
These are pricy at 300/100/0, but they’re bloody strong. A few of them can take down hybrids swiftly. At 15 range, they can thin out or even eliminate enemy waves before they get into range of your other defenses.

Same. Thinking that carriers are Karax’s only viable unit is a noob trap. Immortals are pretty good and you use orbital strike for anti air.

6 Likes

At level 730 and 441 bounties I still have yet to get pair with a karax ally that wasn’t completely useless. He’s literally never gotten even half as many kills as me and like 90% of the time he doesn’t even help push the objectives at all and usually get near to no objective damage done. People will say “ohh its because he’s a support commander so he’s not suppose to do that stuff” pshhh that is a load of baloney Swann, Stetmann, Dehaka, Abathur, and really even ever single other commander the more I think about it “supports” in more better and useful ways than karax does and all of which actually help with kills and objectives and even manage to do more than me sometims.

Karax’s 15% faster building time and his pathetic healing that can only repair 3-5 units at a time IF they are mech is basically useless. Abathur has burst healing top bar abilities that heals everything, Kerrigan has assimilation aura and passive healing on creep that heals everything, Swann has extra gas, instant wave clearing abilities, and science vessel healing, Vorazun is the CC god, Nova can offer point defense drones, Dehaka has a passive aura HP regen that can heal everything, Tychus has two medics that can heal your army amazingly, and Stetmann is a godlike amazing healer when he has the green field on and can heal ever unit at a time. When it comes to support commanders Karax is at the bottom of the list and offers some of the worst support abilities. Also I’d much rather have an ally with units helping push/defend objectives than half a dozen immobile and practically useless cannons.

6 Likes

Think of it as a higher difficulty.

Yea I do honestly, when I get paired with Karax I see it as an extra mutator I have to deal with.

4 Likes

Seems like you never have played Karax yourself. He defnitely is on the weak side viewing all commanders abroad, but he is in no way useless.

Biggest problem i see, which i mentioned in various topics before, is not Karax himself. He has weaknesses and strenghts like any other commander.
The main problem is, people gotta adapt and utilize Karax’ strenghts, more so kinda abuse them to a point.

Vice versa, Karax has to check with which partner he is matched on the particular mission and gotta adapt likewise.

Both gotta ask themselves: What can i do to compensate my partners weaknesses.

And here we are on the meltdown of all issues with Karax, imo. People are, and that is only an assumption, too narrowminded (don’t wanna say dumb, cause that’s rude), unable or unwillingly to play around the possibilities, they get offered.

Neither want to defend Karax-players in general, but most simply don’t know what they do. Which doesn’t help any further.

With pretty much any other commander u can start rolling right from the get go, but with Karax you need to plan ahead and plan where and when u want to do what.

And stop throwing Karax/Swann and Stettmann/Dehaka/Abathur in one place. You could say Swann is similar to Karax, but the other three commander have few to none in common with these ones. Swann has the luxury to provide super strong cheap gas drones, that’s the main difference. If he hadn’t these he would be in a similar desperate state like Karax.

That’s why i keep telling people staying away from Karax/Swann, if they’re totally new to them, or give them advices regarding on where and what they can improve.

You underestimate the 15% production/research speed from chrono field, in the same time completely forgetting to mention chrono wave which is 500% production/reasearch speed.

Summed up, don’t blanketly villify Karax players, even though majority is trash.

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As long as my Karax ally do alert me before Chrono, I am fine with everything.

I’ve never been fine

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But what about Fenix? What about the synergy of phasing armour with repair beam? What about the advantage of an air unit that isn’t armoured?

Prior to their cost nerf, Zeratul’s cannons were stronger per cost than Karax’s cannons even when fully juiced up by mastery. As is, Zeratul’s cannons are when ignoring their barrier ability AND the ability to shade AND their density, when ignoring all that they have roughly the same power per cost as standard photon cannons now. Meaning, Zeratul’s cannons are probably still better than Karax’s overall, even post nerf.

1 Like

Karax’s ground army is very nice, high DPS and high survivability is a rare combo, as most other high DPS comps are very squishy, much less highly survivable

It’s just not A movable with having to also use top bar, shadow cannons, deploying energizers and mineral dumping shield batteries without getting your probe killed all at the same time

His air is just a complete trap, with still having to build a robo bay for observers, and although nigh invincible does utter crap DPS

The only time ya can get carriers is at the very end, and only 1 or 2 for repairs and interceptors soaking damage but the games generally aren’t long enough