As Stetmann says, “This wouldn’t be a problem if…” you had drill top bars.
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Thor/Firebat/Herc/SV is the strategy but what is important is to have the critical mass. If your macro is good (fast expo, early saturation, not floating min/gas) then you’d expect to have enough that even though Blinding Clouds get dropped, Thor’s get Abducted and ganked (immortality protocol is actually quite good for this) and some Firebats mill around uselessly for a few seconds once your guys start attacking everything will be deleted.
For the most part this is very forgiving and you can A-move most attack waves/bases just using top bar for support as long as you keep churning out those units. Once you’re comfortable with the basics you can cast Defensive Matrix on your units that get targeted, herc micro and maybe even some Irradiates for good measure (but this is more style points than actual effectiveness I think).
Off topic (maybe?), but I thought of a draft of a Swann prestige inspired by Fenix P2 instead:
Name: Reckless Engineer thought of “rushed”, didn’t sound good enough, still a temp name
Advantages:
- Units cost 50% less and are produced 75% faster
- Weapon upgrades increase damage by 40%
- Armor upgrades increase HP by 40%
Disadvantages:
- Science Vessels are unavailable
- Normal +x gained from weapon/armor upgrades don’t apply
- Units have -50% HP and do -50% damage
Summary:
- Allow Swann to have an early presence more easily, though being present doesn’t necessarily mean being useful.
- Units regains almost all their strength at upgrade level 2, and may be stronger than with normal upgrades at level 3 (may require some balancing to get that right)
- Units are more meant to be massed and sacrificed until level 3, this point highlighted by the loss of the Science Vessels.
That would mean his units wouldn’t even be at their current strength until after +2 upgrades. That’s pretty terrible lol.
Like Vorazun P2 pre-buff patch terrible but worse… cuz there is no alternative but to upgrade through it all…
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You know, I don’t usually engage in discussions of making sweeping changes. I know it ain’t gonna be done at this point. But I’ve given this some thought, and I’ve figured a big change that could really shake things up. It’s a long one, hope y’all are ready…
Change his second mastery set. Keep the structure health mastery, but replace immortality protocol with Fenix’s starting supply mastery.
Now, I usually hate to just copy something from someone else, but Swann is literally the only Terran commander with nothing special about his depot’s. And a lot of his units are quite supply heavy, meaning your spending tons of early game minerals spamming the things out like crazy. (Plus minerals lost from SCV’s running around building them). This one change would allow Swann to get an army out far earlier, and with less stress and clutter.
As for losing immortality protocol…eh. I’m sure some think I’m a monster, but it doesn’t help early game, it’s only on units you typically don’t lose, you usually have some extra gas laying around later on… Plus I can’t count the number of times I can’t bring a unit back to life because I ran out of supply as my factories queued up back at home starting building again.
So, how does it contrast to building HP? Well, do you want early units, or better turrets? If you can make turrets to cover early waves AND objectives, then sticking with structure HP is better in the long run, since it’s a power boost that carries into the whole game. Do you love spotting with factories the whole game for your drill, or facing mutators where turrets are better? Obvious choice. Do you like to go “idef” on DoN? Oh, we know what you’re picking. It turns it into a mastery set that I could see people going back and forth on. And while I think that for regular brutal games, the earlier power of free supply is a better pick… Well, longer maps could be a different story if you need to cover an area on the opposite corner of your army (particular if you’re trying to solo).
Anyways, Like, Comment, Subscribe.
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IP is pointless and useless. Amongst the worst of mastery mechanic.
- Only 2 of 7? units currently have it
- l have to die first to use it, mmm nah
- You gotta then save the salvage unit (as it can be further killed)
- And then cost you a fortune if you don’t pick the mastery (200gas to revive lmao like waaat?)
- Not done yet! Then takes it’s sweet time to “reconstruct”
Now after all that work, you have a unit that you probably didn’t need to or even want to lose in the first place.
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It’s forgiving. If you make an opps, then immortal protocol it. Your Thors can get toss around but they won’t get hurt. Only thing that can hurt them are banelings, I use barrage to take care of that. For burrowed units you can guess where they are are and use barrage on it, don’t need science vessels.
I’m pretty sure that can be done. But if you take your eye off your units to do some macro management at base, they may disappear after you put your camera back to them 
This is not a bad idea, you know exactly how Swann is resource starved early game. Those 200-300 minerals early game could go a looong way.
Am I missing something? That’s Swann’s only detector, no?
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Perhaps give IP to all his ground units, remove the gas cost, double the time cost, and have the mastery affect the time cost, and make it auto cast.
or, limit it to Thors, cut the gas cost in 1/2 and make the mastery starting supply
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That’s exactly what they should have done. The salvage part can die, but the time it takes to “revive” is +100% and free (perhaps even +100% per death counter, if not laggy). Otherwise, what is the point?
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when did stationary camps of zerg start random attacks? nothing happens if you dont get to close
blinding cloud and mass lings eat thors. i always play SV.
Didn’t realize that.
But Raynor doesn’t have units with detection, and Dehaka without his detection upgrade rely on structures (though he’s cheating having a variant on calldown, but he’s made to be OP after all), so having the units followed by a bunch of SCV for repairs and making missile turrets for detection could work.
It would be a pain for the “We move unseen” mutator, but it’s nothing new that some prestiges don’t work well in some conditions.
Raynor has com-sat scan from commander center.
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I mean those are really poor examples.
Orbital Command is pivotal to Raynor, and it’s quite easy to use (as a single OC can hold up to 4 scans worth, while most people would have at least 4 of them). They can be cast anywhere on the map.
Dehaka himself is a detector. Greater Wurms are top bar that can cast on “explored map”. Wurms can be built, and both can tunnel with vision (as in they can move).
Comparing these to ”you can only use SCVs to build Turret on the go” that cannot move is a bit of a stretch no? Lol.
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It’d be too tall of an order IMO. All other COs have at least 2 sources of detection, with one of them being “projectable”.
If nothing else, keep SV for their detection, but remove their support abilities then, and cut their cost by half.
Why not, then, give the drill an anti-cloak area? The mechanic is in the game with emp. It’d be a good emphasis on the early game push, and it’s not like there isn’t other COs that can get cloak super early on.
Barrage around your Thors to remove lings. Clouds maybe covers 2 or 3 Thors at most.
No random attacks, It’s less forgiving if you play SCs and Herc against that comp.
You can always do … that … would be an experiment. You know what, I call on you to do that! 
do it Fear!
I like a challenge, but I’m not a masochist lol. It’d be like playing a bad P2 Swann (but on most maps, it wouldn’t be an issue until it is lol).
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I HAVE done this. Do you know how hard it is to get your SCV’s juuuust close enough to a lurker for the turret, but not get outsight killed by it is? How about those random DT’s at enemy bases? Having to bring 8 SCV’s and losing half of them sucks. The only other option is to have a bunch of other units tank the fire for you. And don’t even get me started on the banshees.
The best way to go without any detection? Go heavy on the Thor’s. As long as it ain’t flying, you’ve got 330mm’s of a solution at your fingertips.
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But what if you’re like 15min in and it’s a bunch of banshees 
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