While idly sitting about and thinking about different things to help various commanders, I remembered that Alarak’s mobility is a major problem. I also noticed that the War Prism doesn’t have any research tied to it, so I got to thinking… What if we gave the War Prism a specific piece of research to help alleviate some of Alarak’s mobility issues?
Titanic Core
Researched at Robotics Support Bay, 200/200 60s Research time
Replaces the core of the War Prisms, drastically increasing its carrying capacity, and unload speeds.
Alternatively, it could also give it +100 health/shields, but that might be a bit too much. I’ll let you guys decide on that one.
The idea behind this came from some people talking about the Tal’Darim Titanic War Prism from the Temple of Unification mission. If the Tal’Darim had access to that massive, absolute unit of a War Prism, why not give the tinier models an upgrade to improve their warp cores?
The upgrade would increase the War Prism’s carrying capacity to 100 (almost enough to carry Alarak + 24 Wrathwalkers), while also giving it unloading capabilities equal to Zeratul’s Void Arrays. (However, Void Arrays are still stronger.) This would (hopefully) encourage more War Prism play, while also helping Alarak with his mobility issues. The research would unlock at Level 6, alongside the other Robotics Support Bay unlocks.
100 cap is too much. It will be best to decrease it to the point that people are still required to make more than 3 prisms to transport the whole army.
Or set the Titanic War Prism with 100 cap as default, and allow it to gain 100 additional cap by researching Titanic Core. Adding the current Mothership warp ability to it (with a cooldown) and… idk, create a new ability to let Mothership apply specific buffs to those Destroyers perhaps?
The things I want the most with War Prism is that they can load and unload units from afar, and have them not to kill units within its cargo when the prism has been shot down.
change robo unit movement
Havoc to 2.5
Vanguard to 3
Wrathwalker to 2.75
make the War prism slightly better both at carrying and at combat
War Prism to 5.5 speed, carry 16, +50% attack damage, attack speed, hp, shields (actual War Prism)
I gave it the 100 cap originally just as it doesn’t need “infinite” like Omega Worms or Void Arrays. 100 slots almost fits 24 Wrathwalkers and Alarak, but you’ll never have an army quite that size. I don’t know if 50 would be enough.
It’s not a Titanic War Prism. It’s the same, normal War Prism, it just gets a core upgrade from the research. That’s all.
It doesn’t need Mass Teleport. The War Prisms are already very speedy. (Not as fast as Void Arrays, but still very fast.)
They don’t do that in Co-op, IIRC. I remember watching someone testing this with Kerrigan’s Omega Worm, and the units just unload where it died.
I’m suggesting it as a way to mitigate the over reliance on the Death Fleet for that use, especially when it’s a 360s cooldown before mastery.
Having a bit more movement speed would be nice, but I don’t agree on that speed for Vanguards. Will make them a problem trying to keep them behind your Supplicants (both would move at 3 MS.)
Also, War Prism isn’t a DPS unit by itself. It’s better used as a utility unit for drop micro/reinforcements/mobile Overcharge.
SO has a cooldown, and a limited number of charges… more DPS from War Prisms without SO would allow it to make sense to have a small fleet (enough to carry Alarak’s army) without it being too much of a waste of Supply.
For what it’s worth, War Prisms are a fairly decent mineral dump lol. Still, anything to help them further in some capacity would be nice – like say, splash on their attacks?
Great idea and would really help with him feeling so dead slow compared to other commanders. Death Fleet is his only fast movement and it’s on a long cooldown.
I’d give it Zeratul load/unload speeds. And although the extra health/shields is always nice, it’s not absolutely necessary.
I would rather have the upgrade allow structure overcharge to be cast on prisms in transport mode. It still will only fire in phasing mode, but you could decide to give it the extra survivability without the awkward dance of “load units into it, siege up, overcharge it, unsiege, move forward, unload units, siege up again”
This would also allow prisms to be slightly more aggressive, as the high health barrier could allow prisms to siege deeper into enemy bases without fear of getting shot down before you can cast overcharge on them.
Maybe a little overkill. 50 would be fine, especially for something that costs 0 gas.
Unupgraded, they have the same dps/supply as destroyers against unarmored, for a unit that costs 0 gas. That’s not insignificant. The obvious solution to all our problems is to make war prisms 250/150/4 and give them the destroyer’s attack. (Sarcasm)
This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think this is a good idea…or rather, the right idea. Does Alarak need buffs? Absolutely. But giving him more mobility probably isn’t the right approach, for two reasons:
-he’s already designed around having low mobility, with Structure Overcharge (on-demand defense against flanking attack waves) and Mothership Teleport (long cooldown tied to a big DPS unit, can only teleport to friendly structures, meant to be used sparingly).
-having low mobility isn’t necessarily a bad thing, commanders are designed around having strengths and weaknesses in different areas to define their playstyles. Some commanders can only produce units from their base but then have means to transport them around the map, other commanders can drop/warp units out directly onto the field, but once they’re there they have to go to other parts of the map the hard way. Alarak is clearly designed to be one of the latter, with Warpgate tech for all his core army units, War Prisms and the advantage of building lots of Pylons around the map (also useful for Structure Overcharge), he can keep aggressively pushing the front while continuously reinforcing his army.
The problem is how many other parts of his design are ill-defined or poorly-optimized. His economy is slow, his signature units (Ascendants and Wrathwalkers) are really slow to get rolling, requiring a lot of teching up and a ton of gas for upgrades and production (and Sacrifice stacks), he’s designed around sacrificing units for greater offensive power but doesn’t get a cost reduction on most of them to compensate, and his hero unit strangely has really awkward synergies. His complete lack of air (sorry War Prisms) is also an odd handicap, given that his Death Fleet calldown really isn’t impactful enough to make up for it. (Raynor has Banshees and Battlecruisers as both regular units and calldowns, but Alarak can’t?)
Fix those and you won’t even care much about his low mobility.
I think you should try mass slayer strategy. No supplicants, no vanguards, just alarak, slayers, havocs (detection, obviously) and optional war prism. Kinda fixes all of those problems.
It also coincidentally helps a ton on the mobility front if you’re actively using blink when you need to get somewhere.
Hahahaha, You just reminded me of an Arcade mode where you control a Titanic tal’darim War prism. The trick is, that you can carry 24 Large Units (Any units), after being attacked those Units from Titanic War Prism attack back all together. Its like a moving bunker
For example…
High Templar - Super Stacked Psionic Storms
Ascendants - Super Concentrated Psionic Ball
Wrath Walkers - 24 Wrath Blasts
Swarm Host - 48 Locusts
Creeper Host - 48 Creepers
Ghosts - 96 Snipe
Etc.
Just giving you an idea.
Ps. War Prism could have increased Vision to 15 so it can use Structural Overcharge at maximum capacity
You must not understand the usage of Structure Overcharge. It’s not a primary defensive ability, it’s used as an offensive ability. That’s why they gave War Prisms the ability to be Overcharge targets. 90% of the time, you’ll see it used to break rocks, deal with contested expansions, push objectives, and be used for extra DPS during big fights (especially early on.) Using it defensively on a non-mobile structure outside of the early game really sucks, unless you’re a pylon hopper.
You can teleport to allied units as well.
This is NOT the problem with Alarak. The issue is on big maps, like Temple of the Past, where you need to quickly get from one side of the map to another section. Your units, especially your Ascendants and your Robotics Facility units, are extremely slow. Like, around 2 MS slow. This would allow Alarak to not only pick up his units and move to a critical area faster, but also encourage War Prism pickup play. The War Prisms are NOT linked like Nydus/Omega Worms or Void Arrays.
This isn’t a thing of “reinforcing is slow because of how slow his units are.” This is “Alarak suffers from trying to get across a map.”
The Death Fleet is a special type of thing where you can’t really have a downgraded version. The Death Fleet is a Tal’Darim specialty that can only be ordered around by the Highlord themselves. They are a tight-knit fleet of specialized ships that aren’t made en masse. This is probably why they didn’t give Alarak the ability to mass produce Destroyers. If they did, what would the point of having the Death Fleet calldown be?
Even if you could mass the Destroyers, you’d run into the issue of “why bother playing with Wrathwalkers or Ascendants when you can just mass air and let Alarak with some Supplicant support be everything you need?” (Even then, Destroyers are seriously lacking in the DPS department, especially after the auto 3/3 nerf they took.)
The Death Fleet, and the cost of his units aren’t the issue here. It’s the mobility. I’ve spent probably 75% of my hours in Co-op playing Alarak, I’ve seen other and much more skilled Alarak players using him. While the Destroyer production is a want by many, there’s a general consensus that his mobility is the major limiting factor, not his costs.
Standard Colossus movement speed is a whopping 3.15,or 2.25 in Co-op. Alarak’s Wrathwalkers move at 2.
High Templar move at 2.62, or 2.25 in Co-op. Ascendants are 2.25, marginally slower, but still slow as molasses.
Having these really slow movement speeds means that your big, expensive units are effectively food, especially if you get stuck in a blinding cloud. Air units will eat them if they run out of energy, or are disabled… And Wrathwalkers well… Let’s just say that Scourge aren’t very kind to them. Among other things.
That’s an interesting idea. However, that would make them maybe a bit too good. Not even Pylons have that much range (but Zeratul’s Observers do.)
I want Alarak mobility really badly. He is an amazing commander but at times feels very stiff to play.
Some maps aren’t too bad for him, but then you have maps like void launch where you gotta be all over the map around the same time (especially if your partner is spawn camping shuttles). I’d give anything to have something that allows him to have some mobility. The mothership teleport is stiff and on a long cool down. Yes, you can make him work for all the maps, but it would be infinitely more fun to be able to respond on the map quickly.
I have actually, and it’s a perfect example of what’s wrong with Alarak: it’s painfully generic. He’s got all these really unique and flavorful units and mechanics, these cool build-your-own-Archon Ascendants and special Colossi with this long-range burst attack, and his most successful comp is…less interesting Vorazun (Which is ironic, given all the jabs he takes at her in the campaign). Slayers certainly fill a valuable role in his army, but they are literally just slightly beefier Ladder Stalkers.
It can be used offensively, but the ability to Overcharge War Prisms was added after Alarak was released to give us some reason to make War Prisms, they were pretty useless before that. If it’s not a primarily defensive ability, why do you think he says “I find your lack of defenses disturbing” and “Your base is becoming a liability” when you use it?
That’s literally the time to use Mothership Teleport, to get from one side of the map to another. If you’re having to do that frequently, your ally is not pulling their weight.
The Tal’darim do not hop around to defend, they attack and commit until their enemy is destroyed.
So why can you mass Destroyers in campaign, under Artanis’ command? In co-op, Alarak is in full control of his army, so why does he give command of his full fleet to someone else but then not use it himself? To go back to my comparison, Raynor’s Dusk Wings are a special type of thing, but his regular Banshees are not, so the former are stronger but temporary and the latter are weaker but are permanent. Why should Alarak be any different?
You want to play the Lore game, I can play the Lore game.
Thank you for answering your own question.
Yes, that’s called “being a glass cannon that you have to protect and use carefully”. Very powerful offense, but slow. That’s how balance works.
For the former, that’s why you make Supplicants and keep Sacrifice on auto-cast: they use energy, eat Supplicants, they have energy again! If you’re still running out of energy, you’re either overspamming abilities or aren’t making enough Ascendants. For the latter, that’s literally just Blinding Cloud, and nobody likes getting hit by Blinding Cloud, not a unique problem.
So…don’t make them against Scourge comps? That’s why they give us those little tooltip boxes in the bottom of the screen with the enemy’s comp, so we can see what’s coming and try not to get hard-countered. And again, not a problem unique to Alarak, Karax Colossi and just about anyone’s air units get the unkind treatment from Scourge.
And most of my hours in Co-op has been playing Random, which gives me good perspective on how all the commanders compare to each other, their strengths, weaknesses and design philosophies; I can’t just play one or two well, I have to be prepared to play them all well. Maybe if you played a little less Alarak, you’d expand your horizons and have a better understanding of where his strengths lie and what the trade-offs for those strengths are. If you don’t think those trade-offs are necessary, we’ve got good ol’ Zeratul over here to demonstrate what happens when a commander has a ton of strengths and no weaknesses.
You’re reading it wrong you tool. Death Fleet Destroyers are lacking in DPS, as 8 of them don’t do much to most compositions. Massing them up turns them into an A-Move GG deathball.
Scourge and Vipers say hello. Go ahead, try and protect against a spell that turns off your ability to fight back.
Your responses are extremely snarky and unwelcomed. Your opinions are going to be disregarded from here on out.