Prestige power creep

[Cheese4life-11914]

These kits are suppose to change the way you play the commander with distinct trade-offs that favor specific builds and strategies. It is normal for them to be superior in those specific situations or else why play them, but a lot of the more well received prestige kits are straight up buffs to the commander.

For example all of Raynor’s kits are superior to vanilla raynor. Kit 1 is significantly stronger since pure bio was already a viable strategy, and Kit 1 buffs that to high heavens. Kit 2 is Raynor+ where your bio is no worse but your mech is much better. Kit 3 is slightly more situational but BC’s are almost never bad in any situation and having hyperion on the field with more than 50% uptime is just insanely strong late game. There is no reason to play vanilla Raynor ever again with the current balance. Likewise, all of Dehaka’s kits are superior to vanilla Dehaka, and he was already one of the most noob-friendly keyboard face-roll commander. I’ve started soloing brutal with Raynor/Dehaka, and I’m not even a remarkable player. If I were to play ladder, I would probably be in gold to low platinum (50%-60% percentile).

The big problem with this power creep is that Brutal+ is a broken and inconsistent experience that is incredibly RNG heavy. I go into detail here:

Brutal+ is a broken experience

Because of the way mutators are designed, queuing up for a random B+ game can create games that either feel marginally more difficult than brutal or damn near impossible. This is terrible game design. Imagine if people playing ladder had the possibility of either playing someone close in skill or several tiers higher. I understand that there is always going to be some inherent RNG depending who you get as your ally but this compounds the issue. The easiest solution is to just give each player t…

If these kits make brutal a joke and brutal+ is not consistently enjoyable, then all you are left with is soloing brutal, weekly mutations, and custom games that require a party. I’ve largely stopped playing as a result because so much is starting to feel like a waste of time or a grind.

[IRKillRoy-1566]

I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but as a person having a handle that suggests you Cheese4Life, you complaining about buffing cheese seems disingenuous. These Prestige are not designed for players like you who clearly understand the power of each unit and the balance of your total army. Blizzard needs to inject new blood into the game, and you don’t do that with keeping things the way they were, you do it by addressing the entry to mid-tier players and buff the play styles accordingly.

There are plenty of skilled players who wouldn’t agree with you on the Brutal+ observation, because it IS what they asked for. They wanted to be challenged and to have it different each time they play so it’s kept fresh for them.

I leave you with this, your concerns are valid points from someone who doesn’t like to see change, but as a feedback for this update what are you asking for? It has to be asked because this post is literally a complaint with no value being added regarding the changes that ARE happening.

Pro-tip: If you’re gonna complain to someone you should have a solution to the problem you are presenting.

[Cheese4life-11914]

Excusing power creep as ‘change’ and ‘new blood’ is the laziest form of game design. Just look at World of Tanks. It is a quick sugar high at the cost of long term damage to the game.

Prestige is suppose to be different flavors of a commander similar to the generals introduced in C&C Zero Hour. Those generals were excellent in certain situations but weak in others. None were meant to be superior in all situations. Prestige also requires maxing out a commander first before shunting you back down to level 1. Some of the prestige benefits don’t even kick in until you are leveled up. How exactly is that for entry players?

Fedex Nova is a great example of something that could be a good prestige kit as it was suppose to be intended. Its currently significantly underpowered but could easily be made viable. It forces you to use mobility in lieu of airstrikes, which are often just win-buttons and make encounters trivial.

Are you being intentionally dense? My solution is obvious: nerf these overpowered prestige kits instead of using them as the ideal standard to buff everything else up to.