Why is Artanis does not have Sentries in his disposal? The Templar should have Sentries in co-op missions.
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I’d have to guess coz they were relegated to Zeratul and they would make his army very very tanky with all the shield heals especially if they were LotV sentries. Though I don’t think it would’ve made Arty broken though.
Because he would have too many units and it would overlap with his templar as his only spell caster otherwise they were given to Zeratul, meanwhile Karax is not allowed to have Instigators for anti-air.
I’d totally love a Sentry for Artanis and if done right I think it could round him out nicely.
Abilities:
Guardian Shield
- reduces incoming damage by 2
- increases energy regeneration by 20% (requires upgrade)
- reduces ability cooldown by 20% (requires upgrade)
Hallucination
- increases the damage of units of the hallucinated type by 5% per hallucinated unit to a maximum of 20% in a small area (requires upgrade)
Frankly id love if artanis was able to heal units, considering he as a campaign hero unit had an AOE healing ability.
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This, honestly. Artanis is in a pretty bad spot, army-wise. Sure, he has access to some devastating things (namely P3 Archons, Solar Bombardment, P1 Storm/Blender, and Shield Overcharge) but outside of that… His army is just bad. It’s basically only minorly better ladder Protoss units, without most of the actual ladder supporters. Frail as hell, and quickly subjected to Guardian Shell with no way to recover HP.
Shield recovery Sentries would’ve been amazing for him, that way you can save your Templar’s Storms for doing actual damage instead of dropping it on your own army post fight – especially if you get EMP’d.
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Considering he was one of the 3 starters pokemon and this is co-op, so back then Raynor (medics for organic/mechanical, scv for mechanical) and Kerrigan (queens transfusion for organic, creep for ground units) were maybe expected to do the job.
Probably a concept that died quickly 
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I always felt like more of the early sc2 commanders were world with complementary designs with both designed drawbacks and synergies in mind.
No coop commander was designed to have it all. Raynor had calldowns and unlimited minerals, and great healing but a sea of micro dependent toilet paper marines but cds.
Kerrigan had the best hero and provided their ally ultimate mobility while swann gave team gas, vorazun gave teamfight dark holes but slow ramp, and karax gave +15% teamwide chrono and chrono waves for massive research.
While guardian shield itself could easily be nuts for kerrigan zerglings and 50 hp marines.
Artanis’s p0 army never really had some shine out mass mobility move, his p0 topbar exists but is pretty mediocre at finishing much except defending wave 1.
But i think his researchs were actually buffed in history to add twilight council buffs to dragoons with a +1 base range and +1 range upgrade, essentially getting them +25% more range and a 2x shield regen + in combat (which seems to be about 4 shield hp/s up to 80 shields/dragoon. )
However as anyone who plays artanis will know, his dragoons are pretty notorious for having extensive body blocking issues in a 150+ supply army without stutter stepping. (Act of moving units closer between shots to increase 1 line of dragoons per shot to 2-4 rows of dps mass, etc).
Each had a strength the others were missing or early complementary design. Artanis’s 200 supply on a normal army seems to stand out from the 100 supply elite themed commanders like nova and tych/zeratul.
But after fenix and han and horner failed to have the impact they did as what seemed to be the historically least played/unlocked commanders.
People don’t really pay money to unlock “weaker” feeling commanders so even commanders like han and horner have a partial gap in static defense vs mines/cds. People feel it.
I’ve messed around with dragoons a bit to try and rotate their shields in a whirlpool style before. (Engaging row with depleted shields move to top then back, counter clockwise,
Fresh full 80/80 shields are stutter stepped forward. Shields deplete, rotate, rinsing and repeating with constant shield cycling and stutter stepping etc. )
I don’t know if it’s worth the effort, but as everyone says, 150+ supply of dragoons still always just feels too clunky for my taste. He can actually push quite often with rotating shield sustain and do brutal fine on easy entry or f2a move it or just stutter step.
But something like halfing dragoon sizes or doubling each’s attack rates or rebalancing their cost and stats as a 3-4 supply unit would do a lot over their 4 shields/sec recovery.
They still decent/good units. Just the real estate they occupy literally dwarfs the widest ramps to amon’s objectives and is one of the few commanders with major ally bodyblocking issues.
Dragoons definitely feel like their sc1 counterparts who were designed for control groups of 10 units at a time vs 200/200, where 10 dragoons taking up a field was less noticable. It seems quite clear their size and massed range seems quite lacking and it still used to be 25-33% less.
They do work but it really feels like for coop you could give them another +20%-40% range buff and they’d literally start hitting siege tank ranges and still have intensive baseline f2amove bodyblocking issues.
Stutter stepping them is pretty easy, but i always felt like artanis just kinda lacks compelling payoffs for army variety.
Dehaka’s self reviving mutalisks vs swarm hosts vs impalers and zerglings can make for a army with a strong hero and strong army that can either revive itself, throw endless free units /locusts at a objective or blow up a train to have different gameplay options.
Whenever someone in a pug game so far runs mass tempest artanis, i’ve never really been anything less than underwhelmed with the speed of 1-2 base mass tempest artanis ally games ending with the map ending before the starports and economy could mass more than 10-20 units.
But my (personal) games would routinely end up with like 384:54, 784:254, 459:212 gaps to ally capital ship and mass tempest artanis allys.
Other than not auto clotting with unmicroed f2a move and the disintegration beam for maybe shards and trains, i still find them units with incredibly low mobility that take time and 2x more resources /same dps/supply.
But as people always mention, every unit in sc2 can have a use for like flying over and objective cheesing. Even nikara who is seen as hugely redundant to rattlesnake who already keeps 100% hp while dpsing and self healing has uses for mutators that destroy revitalizer or double healer mind control vega comps.
But i’ll have to give a raincheck for the last time i never saw a artanis or karax playing mass phoenixes or mirages with a reason naturally and organically. (There was one in like 2000+ games who massed phoenixes against zerglings on don. The zerglings flew up. Then they just attacked their base instead.
Whatever the thought process was for how they’d finish the ground buildings is beyond me.
But a big part of rts can be knowing what comps your units are good for or weaknesses to take advantage of. but judging a tool by how badly it can be used wrong. Is like judging a screwdriver for being bad at hammering nails.
I do feel like artanis lacking compelling unit variety design and payoffs is there though. i also kind of feel like there always feels like there should have/could have been another coop protoss mineral heavy dump over 100-130 mineral zealots for all of them.
Raynor has marines/marauders/firebats, nova has hellbats/hellion transforms/elite healing stim marines, horner has reapers, zergs have zergling/roaches…
Protoss has… Everyone using zealots except zeratul(???). They just don’t do anything to air and they’re just middling sometimes literal meat shield designs for coop. Stalkers definitely were more interesting design.
Template-wise, Karax got Energizers, Alarak got Havocs (buildable ground unit that can detect!), Fenix got Conservators, and Zeratul got Xel’Naga Shieldguards. So I think we’re well covered in that regard.
As for basic AG + AA unit, it does make Karax unique (dare I say, more so than Zeratul). Artanis has Dragoons, Vorazun got Stalkers, Alarak has Slayers, Fenix has Adepts, and Zeratul X’N Ambushers.
They really do make sure that a given unit isn’t everywhere within a race (and even beyond)
Alarak has Supplicants. They throw blood orbs, so definitely not the “same difference”. Zeratul’s Zealot legions can’t be manually controlled, so that sort of doesn’t count.
Sentries? Those are those blue ball things, right? Artanis has those. He just calls them scarabs instead. And they explode.
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Instigators would have been great, but I think, if it was a choice between Instigators and Energizers, I’d go Energizers 100% of the time, but if he got both… it would have been amazing.