trying to decide which of those im buying this month. curious to know what ppl think about the comparison.
If you like to roll small but exceptionally powerful deathball and a great hero, Nova is the better choice IMO. But you need skillful micro to play her.
Mengsk is another good choice, he has exceptionally powerful top panel skills and his deathball are very powerful.
But you need a lot of practice to play him, his Mandate resources and troopers requires more understanding.
It really comes down to personal preference. I recommend you play both to level 5, as that will give you a rough idea of their playstyles.
As Dehakaburger said, Mengsk is one of the trickier commanders to play, as he is pretty macro-heavy and unforgiving when it comes to his early game. Nova, on the other hand, has literally 0 macro, but she’s pretty micro-heavy.
I personally like Nova a lot more, but that’s just personal preference
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I’d lean towards Mengsk. I feel like there’s more going on with him. More stuff to manage and thus more gameplay. Go Nova if you want things a little simpler.
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Mengsk’s royal guards are stronger than any counterpart Nova has - per piece.
Nova can get her ball faster than Mengsk going for royal guard over troopers.
With principal proletariat and the right masteries you can knock off almost half the RG’s vespene cost, but you will still need an early meatshield of troopers for them to level up behind. Once they hit that ball of level 3 units with intercessors they bacome pretty much unstoppable. I was doing a chain of ascension mission on brutal, and at the end I was floating almost 15k minerals. They don’t die.
That’s where the comparisions between them ends. Mengsk’s other options is either to make troopers en masse with RG support or heavy artillery to just blast things with.
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Nova if you want a easier commander, though not that easy, you compensate production macro with micro on her units, most of the time you want to use defense drones, micro Nova and a unit type being spellcaster/siege, she excels at killing spellcasters once you get used to Nova, and liberators are seriously good units.
Mengsk is the most fun commander I’ve had, but he’s macro intensive, how much? Fairly close to Karax, Swann levels of macro, where you need key upgrades to snowball the game and constant production. Difference being that his troopers are pretty good on their own for the early game, Royal guards, ESOs, calldowns being the tools to win the map, I’d say tools because you can have many different unit comps and playstyles with him.
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Mengsk is generally very good for Brutal+ as his ESO can cheese many mutators which Nova (until P3) couldn’t.
Though i must warn you that their playstyle might be very different.
In Nova, you minimize your unit lost to the minimal so micro during combat is very important.
For Mengsk, his Troopers are expendable so you can throw them away but you have to micro his Guards during combat else your trooper meat wall will all die while you didn’t kill any significant amount of enemies. There are also problem with re-supply your troopers as they die. Many people not familiar with this technique find Mengsk and Raynor hard to play.
Love Mengsk way more. A lot of macro and some micro in army management however
Good choices. In my very unscientific, off the top of my head “study,” I’d say that Nova and Mengsk are the two best designed commanders. Though for very different reasons.
Nova has no macro to speak of, but her units are among the most powerful in co op (if, like, all the units of a commander’s kit were averaged, Nova would be top notch in terms of stats). They also have lots of nifty abilities and upgrades. Downside to Nova is her army is small and can’t afford sloppy losses - playing Nova well means rarely losing a unit. Even with the increased power, a moment’s drift of attention or misjudgment can be crippling as important units can be lost to bad enemy match-ups.
Playing Nova is awesome if you like tactical play that revolves around making good unit choices for enemy comps and micro-focused combat. Nova herself is like a 1-unit version of her army; smart, tactical play allows her to accomplish way more than her base stats would suggest.
Mengsk on the other hand is practically the opposite. He (or Raynor) have the most intensive macro of any commander, and like Raynor, can be pretty punishing of not doing it well. In return though, he offers quite possibly the most diverse and flexible set of tools in the game. He has cheap, swarmy units, he has powerful expensive units, he has static defense, he has map-cheesing artillery - and then he has his whole top bar that is an army all by itself. Best of all, you can win games by focusing on any one of these aspects, or by mixing and matching as you want.
In terms of prestige levels, Nova has 2 good ones (1 and 3), while all 3 of Mengsk’s are worth messing around with. Out of all 5 I like Nova 3 the most though.
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thanks guys, some good feedback here.
i played nova up to 5 a while back, and i remember she was fun-little fuzzy off the top of my head, but i remember the stealth\combat suit deff made her micro heavy, and the slowish spawn times for units means that shield drone is a life saver.
got mansgk up to 4 atm before logging off for the night, and he dose seem a bit confusing at first, but i get the sense that hes like tychos in that if you know what your fighting, you know what to get; not seeing much middle ground with him yet tho(tbh, lv 4 dosnt really give you much for his full kit experience tho lol, but basic troops\spec into a role, and then a few heavy or air units for support; or esos.
now, on the eso, are they usefull in low to med. numbers for simple support or boosting base defense from time to time, or is it kind of an all or nothing thing? they have decent range it looks like, but are they worth it do you think, if you dont just mass them?
mengsk is more powerful unit it comes to hero unit,if you play nova prestige3 well mengsk and nova can be both very good
Mengsk has better marauders and ghosts for sure. However, Nova has better tanks and she has Ravens and Liberators (best siege unit in game) and she also has tools to keep her army alive in every scenario. Novas army is stronger than Mensk in general.
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I vastly prefer Nova but it’s purely a playstyle thing, they’re both powerful (especially now with prestiges.)
If this sort of thing matters to you, Mengsk has some comedic lines when paired with certain other commanders.
That just not true. Single BC of his can destroy most waves in a moment, and with 2 charges of tactical jump can be anywhere. Troopers have a lot more raw dps than nova ball of units that rely on their abilities, and their tanks actually quite similar once you reach 3 stars. On top of that, artillery.
The point of the discussion was SG vs Nova counterparts, not troopers, artillery or topbar. And also, more importantly, this:
Oxstar I’m confused about your statement… I won’t argue about which is actually better, since it’s obviously a preference and situational discussion. But how exactly are his units better PER PRICE?
Mengsk marauder costs 125 / 350 while Nova gets 2 for 500 / 130
Mengsk ghost costs 200 / 500 while Nova gets 2 for 1000 / 500
Mengsk tank costs 150 / 425 while Nova gets 2 for 800 / 600
And Mengsks cost more supply too.
They don’t have any other “overlapping” units, unless you count marines vs troopers, but that’s a bit off since troopers aren’t royal guards.
And we all know, gas is the “harder-to-get” resource in sc2, not minerals. And if you want to bring up Mengsk mastery discount, I can bring up Nova’s healing mastery, which allows all her units to heal (you can’t heal mech with Mengsk, only repair, which costs even more resources). Even with prestige 2 and mastery you end up with:
Marauders - 200 / 210
Ghosts - 320 / 300
Tanks - 240 / 255
So aside from tanks, they still cost more gas than Nova’s counterparts. And even more supply.
@OP, I’d recommend Nova, she seems feels easier to play for me. Strong, versatile army, good hero unit, nice calldowns and masteries.
Nova if you prefer more micro and Mengsk if you prefer more macro. End of story lol.
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Mengsk’s siege tanks has better range on level 3 and stuns enemies, and also gets a boost to aoe. The one up Nova’s tanks has is spider mines, which takes too long to recharge for anything but wave defense.
Also, siege tanks will defend you against waves better than liberators if you got equal amounts. Liberators is a flexible unit but isn’t the strongest siege units. The reason why it’s popular both in ladder and co-op is due to being airborne and being able to also help with air units.
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It means exactly what I said. Per piece. As you said, they are pricier. An aegis guard will kill one of Nova’s marauders 1v1. A level 3 aegis guard is just leagues ahead of any infantry Nova has. But since they cost more, it will take forever to mass a ball of them unless you are running principal proletariat, with the reduced cost mastery, like I said. I wouldn’t recommend going RG main without these.
Then of course there is also the fact that you won’t ever see level 3 royal guards without getting to 15 first. Level 2 is still pretty good though, Aegis can tank for troopers for instance.
As for healing, you have intercessors. I would say a cloaked medivac that can double heal and also has a protoss shield is a better healing units than Nova’s ravens. When it comes to bio anyways. Blackhammers are so tanky that you barely ever need to repair them, and siege tanks got the range to hang quite a distance back so as to not take hits, and with level 3 they become a kinda silly unit, getting aoe that can both stun and decimate groups on the ground.
That said, with principal proletariat you also get a smaller RG ball. So speed vs size I suppose. But I found RG main to be easy enough that I was floating 5 digit amounts of minerals, thousands of gas, on brutal, with still getting the most kills.
(And yes, I was at max supply)
Long story short, RG is kinda stupidly good.
PS: Didn’t have anything to say about prides. I never used them in RG comps so I am unqualified to speak on them.
Edit: I should probably take good care to clarify that I agree Nova is very strong. The difference if we are talking her elites vs RG is that RG takes longer to amass but are stronger.
Wrong, Novas siege tanks have max 18 range with upgrade comapered to mengsk max 15 range. Liberators / also wrong. Check their dps. No other siege unit comes even close to absurd dmg Novas liberators can do against high hp targets. 4 Libs will easily defend lategame immortal-colosus or terrrean mech. Try it with four tanks…
I like Mengsk, his royal guards are very strong and definetly stronger than Novas if you just a-move. But if you take into consideration Ravens (turrets, seeker missiles and heling drones which heal both bo and mech, not to mention 2-3 Ravens alone can obliterate any atack wave with seeker misssiles the same way 3star BC does), and Nova alone… than Nova wins in almost any scenario. She is not one of the most versatile commander by accident. Her units (most of them) are super strong.
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Being the best siege unit is not about single target damage. This isn’t a duel game. It’s about how much damage you can do to enemy waves. Want examples of better siege units than Nova’s liberators? Abathurs swarm hosts on high biomass, dehaka’s creeper hosts with flying target upgrade, and Mengk’s tanks on level 3. Simply because they exert more pressure, or control, or can do more damage without having to relocate and stop being a siege unit. You don’t need them to kill high hp targets since thats what you got focus fire with your army for, you need them to take big chunks out of enemy attacks, which will make focus firing the big boys much easier due to there being way less things demanding to be killed.
I also wouldn’t call Nova versatile. You ball up expensive units and micro them in patterns you probably won’t change a lot. You can micro RG’s as well, you know. Blackhammers can be microd’s to pummel air units, siege tanks can be micro’d with intercessors and then stutter floated to siege fleets, and emperors shadow has several microble abilities that are all very strong, especially on level 3. I will agree Nova has more micro focus, but she still can’t match the raw power an RG ball of equal size would provide.
PS: About the tanks. Graduating range is only a factor if you are using your tanks for static defense since when you are on the move you often don’t have the time to stand in place and wait for the range to grow. Especially not when you are a commander that is all about hard hitting fast attacks.
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