Hi all, my problem with her surely is that I don’t handle macro and micro at the same time very well, and in maps where I face mass air or AoE burst (mainly reavers) they wipe me, can you tell me some tips about her that I may (surely) haven’t considered, I’m at lvl 14 and on normal is not an issue, but whenever I play on hard it’s a nightmare, and I feel like I’m not a good partner in coop.
My main build is ground with hydralisks, 5 ultralisks and the exceeded mineral on zerglings, usually have 3-4 overseers associated to Kerri.
Wanna level up her through prestiges so once I get her to 15 I’ll restart her
Check out CtG’s guides on Youtube and starcraft2coop.com.
Hydralisks are going to be a lot better once you unlock Omega worms and get better at using them. Omegas are awesome and you should get them before an army. Omegas spread your malignant creep, give awesome mobility, provide detection, and allow quick escape when Kerri gets low on health.
Your composition sounds fine, aside from the Omega Network mentioned there really isn’t much more.
Be sure to practice your build order and Kerrigan micro. The former will allow you to have a better set up even without a strong macro. The latter is really just micro practice.
It sounds a bit generic but definitely worth looking at your own replay and identify a few things at a time. It really doesn’t take long.
You can often go just pure hydralisks (you can afford more of those when you don’t spend gas on research and upgrades for ultralisks and zerglings).
Composition with reavers is the worst and you probably have to attack with hydras (unload them from Omega worm) only after using Immobilization wave, otherwise you likely lose all the hydralisks.
Also you can hide Kerrigan in the worm if she is low and more scarabs are chasing her.
Alternatively:
Vs Disruptive Artillery (Immortal, Disruptor, Reaver) mass mutas should work well
Vs Vanguard of Aiur (High Templars,Reavers) it’s harder, you could use some (like 4) Ultralisks to tank and kill templars while dealing damage with hydras
Not handling macro and micro at the same time sounds like me . You will get used to it more over time. Once you play the maps enough you will become familiar with wave timing and compositions too. You probably noticed that the game speed on hard is faster, which can be jarring at first, but once you play hard enough normal ends up feeling too slow.
Against those evil reaver comps, you will want mutalisks. You also want make use of worms since they help both you and your ally quite a bit.
Kerrigan is a chore to level. She has one of the biggest gaps between level 1 and full mastery in my experience . All commanders have this gap but her gap is significant in my opinion .
According to my stats I haven’t lost a game with mastery Kerrigan (a lot of it is luck, not insta leaving when my ally insta leaves too a map I don’t like). But Kerrigan was my worst win rate levels 1-15 of any commander. I lost quite I few games while leveling so much so I never prestige her even though she is my most played zerg commander as of late.
Granted I’ve improved as a player since back when I originally leveled Kerrigan but I’m still traumatized by the experience, even though it,probably wouldn’t be so bad if I re-leveled her.
I don’t play enough Kerri to give detailed advice and I only leveled her once just so I could mess around with her P1.
All I can say is that all you need to do to win as her is to abuse her ult and omega worms and you can’t ever lose, also don’t make any combat units (besides zerglings) until your expo is up and running otherwise you can’t afford it.
Honestly? Take breaks where you can, otherwise you might burn out like I did. Kerrigan, in my opinion, is one of the worst commanders to level. (Right up there with Stukov and Raynor.) Her army is just complete crap until they get their good abilities, which are normally late into the tree, and they have next to no survivability. A gust of wind can blow them up.
I usually go omega worms (nydus before 8) in big maps like MO, yet I use them also for creep generation far away, so I don’t know if I should create creep tumors.
I just leveled her from 14 to 15 and It’s been really easy for me doing it in hard, yet I haven’t faced the scary templar/reaver comp there. Her late levels are really good compared to the first ones
One of my problems seem to be that my zerglings (raptors), move way faster than the rest of my army and they’re vanished before the rest arrives at the wave, so I’m thinking about sending first kerri + ultralisks and then the rest.
On Void launch I mainly go Mutalisks + zerglings (these last ones for the armor decrease upgrade), but haven’t considered using muta + hydra comp as it would cost too much to upgrade (muta upgrading alone seems cost heavy TBH).
I’m going to see the replays and find out if in those games I struggled there was something I could have done better.
Other of my problems is that Im a Hots player as well (the moba one), and usually type “R” to use immobilization wave when the key is the “D”, so kerri buries and doesn’t attack, so she dies xD
That’s one benefit of using Omega Worms, the Raptorlings won’t run ahead if they’re in the network as well. Just spawn 2-3 ends to unload your units out around the enemy and they’ll overwhelm them nice and easy.
One of her mastery choices is a cost decrease for research, at 30 in it it reduces it by 60% so all the research is much easier to manage. Lvl 1 versus lvl 15 is a bit spike for her, but so is lvl 15 versus mastery 90 unfortunately.
Also just to note, generally if you’re going Muta go all in for them. So long as you can keep them alive to splash you’re much better served with just them in the long run. Though like you said Ultra/Hydra/Ling is a better comp in most situations.
Upload a replay so we can see what you do in games. A replay of the game where you struggled.
Keri is no different to any other commander - make workers, make units, kill enemy. There is something you are doing that is stopping you from winning. Only a replay will show what that is.
You can set custom hotkeys in SC2. You can unbind/change Immobilization Wave and Burrow. I did that so that my units’ abilities (sans Burrow) are on QWER controls, minus workers.
If you feel not confident with your macro and micro, i suggest you stay strictly with Hydralisks alone. If you have excess gas then pump them into building Omega Nydus instead of wasting them to Ultralisk, and Zergling’s researches.
Before you gain access to Omega Nydus, leveling Kerrigan is a chore and i share your struggling.
However, Hydralisks are the tools that should be able to help you dealing with Hard difficulty (i am unsure about Brutal).
I will share you what i do when level-ing Kerrigan.
Lvl 1- 7: Stick strictly to Hydralisk and Hydralisks’ research and upgrade. Zerglings and Ultralisks are just a waste of time, they have more than enough counter out there to kill them before they can do anything useful. Ultralisk also lacks healing in low-level unless you have extra micro to Queen’s healing them. Ultralisk is actually competing with Hydralisk’s resource.
Lvl 8+:
Building at least 1 Omega Network (The building that cost resources are the network, the Worms are spawned from the building). Get a hotkey for that network and spam the Worm whenever cooldown is off. Prioritise spamming at least 1 worm at your expo and your partner’s expo. This way you should have a network to teleport your army back and forward for pushing and defending.
Try to get about 3 or 4 Networks after you reach 70+ army supply. Also hotkey them all in the same hotkey and start spamming even more but always save at least 2 charges of Omega Worms to use in emergency.
Your army should only compose of Hydralisks and have all the Hatcheries rally directly to the Omega Network.
Keep only Kerrigan outside. She will be the main attacker and initiator of your pushing. When she met a large wave or a base, spam the Worms from the Networks into their base. (Usually Kerrigan only have enough vision to see the entrance. That’s fine. Spawn the 1st worm, it should give further vision into the base, spawn the next worm and so on. Then select all the worms you just spawned and unload all units). This way it will distribute your Hydras army over 2 or 3 worms and reduce the problem of them being killed by splash damage.
If you saw some left over enemies about a screen away from the place your Hydras and the nydus were, load them all inside the nydus and spawn another nydus in the middle of the left over enemies. You don’t a-move Hydras when you play Kerrigan. You spawn nydus and unload then load and spawn the next one and unload. This is the most effective way to ram up Hydra’s effective dps to the roof. When Hydras are unloaded from Nydus they also space out while still attacking enemies so that 1) reduce splash damage and 2) allow your Hydras to attack them without moving. Practice with it and saw Hydras melt Reavers and Siege Tanks to dust.
If you face against a comp that counter Hydra (reaver, High Templar, Tanks, Hellion, Colossus…), Get at least 2 or 3 Nydus fast and spawn all of them around the attacking wave. Reaver will waste some shot into the nydus. Mean while you select all the recently spawned worms and unload hydras, this will force HT and whatever other enemies to split their attack over multiple place, this is much better than micro-split them.
You can also load hydra back into the nydus to “dodge” Raven’ seeker missile, “hide” from Science Vessel’s Irradiate. Sometimes i even order some of them back into the worm to prevent HT’s storm from killing them. Of course, all of these micro are fancy stuff just load and unload like i told you above is fine. These thing are not that important.
Also my winning tactic. Kerrigan jump into middle of enemy base, use immobilization wave. Network spawns Worms. Unload all worms and see everything melt.
I’m surely redoing what they already told you, but I suggest you learn how to use Kerrigan, who is a powerful heroine, and the Omega worms. I also suggest that you train with 2 or 3 different army comps, 2 ground and one air. Personally, my compositions are zergling-Hidra-Ultra, lurker - hydra and zerglin-muta.
and you probably have to attack with hydras (unload them from Omega worm) only after using Immobilization wave, otherwise you likely lose all the hydralisks.
. You will get used to it more over time. Once you play the maps enough you will become familiar with wave timing and compositions too. You probably noticed that the game speed on hard is faster, which can be jarring at first, but once you play hard enough normal ends up feeling too slow.