Proposal to improve under-performing Prestiges

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1

The experiment is still on going but here is what I got so far.

Kerrigan

  • Kerrigan’s Fury and Chain effect are buffed in this video.
  • Kerrigan’s Immo wave can immobilize Structure (No damage)
Prestige 1: Malevolent Matriach (Video Included)

Link: https://youtu.be/iPKBs70KJ_k
While Kerrigan using Omega Worms, she gains +100% potent Malignant Creep and two super Queens or Broodmothers.
Two Broodmothers was inspired from ending cutscene in Waking the Ancient when two Queens accompanied Kerrigan to meet awakened Zurvan.
Broodmothers can spawn creep tumors and have lots of other abilites.
Splash Heal (Very useful for Mutalisks), Buffing Massive Units and Structures Only and ability to sacrifice all but 1 life to fully restore Kerrigan.
They also benefit from Kerrigan’s Upgrade such as Heroic Fortitude, Chain Reaction and Ability Efficiency.

I’ve already uploaded Kerrigan’s Broodmother Proposal videos and put an article in Blizzard Co-op Mission Forum.

But to put it in more elegant way, just simply make Queen more battle capable and do automatic transfusion, also have them be unaffected by Creep slow penalty (Although this makes them more like Abathur’s Swarm Queen).

Also Creeps should also affect air units at default.

Presitge 1: Ruler of the Sky (Alternative)(New)(Video Included)

Link: https://youtu.be/5FV3BJhLTxg
Malevolent Matriarch is IMO is underperforming, tedious to control and has ambiguous concept.
So instead of this I propose this prestige to have better air performance for Kerrigan.

Advantage:

  • Stronger Mutalisks - gains +30 carapace that leeches 30% of its attack, do +3 damage to armoured and has +1 range.
  • Stronger Broodlords - gains +3 range, (Rapid healing should be in the default)
  • Her Zergling gains air attack through leap (happens every 5 seconds)

Disadvantage:

  • Kerrigan loses Omega Wurm (as with Malevolent Matriach)
  • Loses Malignant Creep entirely
  • Hydralisks and Torrasques are disabled
  • Her Air units are +20% more expensive (Maybe +30%).

In conclusion although Kerrigan lacks the malignant creep and powerful ground units her Air Compositions become more stable and lesser risky.
Her air units are more expensive, but mass zerglings that now can leap into the air can buy enough time for them to enmass as well as staying as effective mineral meat shields throughout the entire game.

Prestige 2: Folly of Man or One Woman Army (MY PERSONAL WISH)(Video Included)

In my opinion, Folly of Man Prestige is OK. Many heroes turn obsolete when they gather enough army but this prestige renders Kerrigan useful even if she leads massive army. Just have her attack some time then use her ability.
Just have 4~5 Torrasques with her to do the tanking and DON’T make Kerrigan leave the flock.

However I have alternative suggestion.

One Woman Army (MY PERSONAL WISH)
Link: https://youtu.be/G_XCHy5PWx0

  • Advan: Attack Speed Ability Damage are enabled to benefits All of Kerrigan’s passives, upgradable (Except for Queen of Blades Talents and immobilization Aura). Her Fury stack now damages +50 to 3 air units (Psionic Shift to ground unit can deal damage extra damage to air units) (can be increased with Mastery 3.2), Her Assimilation Aura is replaced.
  • Disadvan: Her army cost and are increased by +50% as well as Supply + 50% (A Torrasque cost 450/300 and 9 Supplies) and all upgrade/research cost and research times are increased by +50%

With Prestige dictating the advantages and disadvantages, this prestige may become Viable.

While the One Woman Army is my personal favourite but Folly of Man isn’t bad when you are commanding an army and use careful control.
From my perspective all of these three prestige primarily focus on Army rather than Kerrigan herself.
Another question I have that One Woman Army prestige is strictly commands Master 2.2 & 3.2 to be effective and 2.1 & 3.1 are rendered useless in tandem, however it is interesting to see what kind of gameplay that true solo-Kerrigan can promote.

Swann

Improved Heavy Weapon Specialist (Video Included)

Link: https://youtu.be/NQoP_j3jszI

  1. Drill can now benefit from Weapon Upgrade (Max. 50 to 65)(Actually this should be applied as default (As well as Karax)).
  2. Drill’s radius corresponds with Swann’s 3.2 Draken Laser Drill Mastery 1 to 1.45 radius
  3. Drill’s lock-on time is reduced by 100%. It can immediately fire onto the target. (Maybe roll it back 50%)

From what I understand the Drill is the main focus with this prestige. Unfortunately the lock time of Drill remains long.
With my proposal the drill becomes far more efficient extra range dealers.
Even against highly densed enemy waves the Drill with fine control can greatly aid supporting fire.
While I also increased its splash area (bit larger than Siege splash) but I think they will still be viable even when they are decreased.

Improved Payload Director (Video Included)

Link: https://youtu.be/or0B9ZjF8Xg
When reading the prestige benefit I realised that doubling the cooldown duration of top bar is a big blow for Swann despite how Hercules are improved.
The mobility improvement while big I question its necessity when mobility with Hercules isn’t an issue for Swann and its production cheap. It was an unnecessary benefit.
The Top Bar Cooldown is a great life saver for Swann and making it more tedious to use, wasn’t a fair trade.

I decided to replace Hercules with improved Zeus Lander as a compensation (It costs triple the price and limited to 3).

Additional Advantage:

  1. Zeus Lander’s life is double that of Hercules (1200HP)
  2. They can attack Air/Ground (has minor splash)(They are very combat capable)
  3. Immune to stun or slow (or abduction)
  4. They can land on ground and provide additional fire support as well as a wall.
  5. They benefit from building upgrades

Additional Disadvantage:

  1. Zeus Lander costs triple that of Hercules Dropship and its production time is +50% longer.
  2. Only 3 can be made.

It is my hope that these Behemoths would provide additional safety in transport as well as more versatile combat support.

Nova

Improved Prestige 2: Tactical Dispatcher (Updated)

Link: https://youtu.be/3Zvr1MPidn0

Nova’s Tactical Dispatcher prestige is actually not a bad prestige however it’s compensation is inadequate with the absence of Griffin Air Strike.

Improvement was made.
Additional advantages:

  1. Griffin doesn’t need vision to transport units
  2. Griffin creates powerful shockwave that disables enemy units/building for 5 seconds (2 seconds for heroes)

Additional disadvantages:

  1. Griffin no longer carry allies

In conclusion, when Nova’s forces gather in good amount of numbers the Improved Tactical Dispatch boasts very good synergy in mobility and attack.

Prestige (Alternative): Agent X41822N

The work is incomplete but here is the gist of it.
I still haven’t played NCO yet but I’ve seen the gameplay and read to wiki for it to understand the basics.
I think it would be interesting to give Nova more versatility.

Advantage: Nova’s default abilities and passives are replaced by Equipments from NCO which has its own abilities and passives. They can be purchasable from Ghost Academy.
There are 4 Equipments Slots: Visor, Suit, Gadgets and Weapons, Nova can purchase all Equipments. Each Equipments have their own abilities/passives and once purchased Nova can use them immediately

Disadvantage: Nova is unable to use her abilities/passives/weapons (she cannot attack) when she first comes out unless she purchase equipments.
Equipments are costly and has 90 second cooldown for each purchase.

Nova’s role with the prestige may overlap with Tychus though.

Alarak

Prestige 3: Shadow of Death (Improved) (Video Provided)

The only good thing about this prestige is Mothership and nothing else.
I made an alternative adjustment.
Link: https://youtu.be/Xrch485fJNc (Unit introduction)
Link: https://youtu.be/LW9Xx8bPMTA (Performance Demo)

This prestige is a massive disappointment for me. I’m not sure if the Devs are saving Death Fleet army for Jinara but I guess maybe “not” because why would they make a prestige for Alarak regarding Death Fleet?
This prestige is more of a army composition swap rather than giving advantage and disadvantage perse.

Advantage: Alarak can use the full might of the Death Fleet. Death Fleet Calldown is replaced with 10 Royal Destroyers (more powerful Destroyers).

Disadvantage: All of ground Mechanical units from Gateway/Warpgate and Robotic Facilities are disabled.

Added Unit.
Sky Talon
Ability: Soul Reap - Sky Talon have weaker health but stronger shield than Phoenix Counterparts. Their 40% attack restores their shield.

Eye of the Slayn
Ability: Gaze of Submission - 10 ranged beam which greatly slows down (50%) enemies. Targets one at a time.
Ability: Hallucination Zealots - Summon 3 Hallucination Votaries that are less durable.
Ability: Permenant Cloak

Destroyer
Ability: Destruction Beam (Deals +1 armour damage) (They cast spell damage)
Upgrade: Increased range and bounce range

Skylord
Ability: Launch Shurikens that attacks units at melee. Shurikens can dodge 20% of the time and do minor splash 20 damage at death.

Stukov

Prestige 2: Plague Warden (Improved) (Video Included)

Plague Warden buff seems to be a strange QoL rather than a prestige so improvement was necessary.

Stukov is a vengeful man, he is determined to return his enemies twice the suffering he has endured. Thus he invented highly lethal plague to unleash against his enemies.
Link: https://youtu.be/N2IrPmGMhZE

Advantage: Stukov’s infested infantries and Broodlings carries very deadly plague which affects units and structures alike.
The plague lasts for 60 seconds and does 30% damage in total (the potency can upgraded by total of additional +9% with each compound upgrade). Aerial units Infested Banshee and Infested Liberator can deal Plagued damage.

  • Note: I am thinking of decreasing the spread area, Damage out put to maximum of 26% and have disease affected from same ground places (ground unit infect ground units only and Air units does the same)

Disadvantage: Due to the Vicious nature of the Plague all unit production/cooldown are slowed by 30%.
Stukov’s Infested lasts 30% shorter due to the disease and constantly taking 0.5 damage per second (yet to be shown in the video).

Further work is still ongoing

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Maybe just nerfing the nydus rather than removing it, your suggestion is a pretty ridiculous buff (something all your suggestions have in common), on top of Kerrigan not losing anything to pay for it. There would be no reason to use the standard Kerrigan loadout then. Or was it a mistake when you wrote that she would keep the nydus in your version?
Kerrigan doesn’t exactly need two hero queens either. And if you are going to test stuff with malignant creep, maybe not do it where it’s a zerg opponent, it’s basically easy mode since your opponent has already spread creep for you.

Something more sensible would be to just nerf the nydus instead of removing it entirely. I’m thinking: remove detection, make load/unload slow like the ladder version, and add a 50/50 or more cost. So they can still help spread creeps for assaults and be used for map traversal, but it would require an investment, and you would have to get overlords for detection, which is another cost.

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Perhaps render inactive creep tumors (that have already spread) invulnerable (like Abathur’s Toxic nests)… but a disadvantage is they lose their vision and any ability to be targeted by friendly effects (overcharge/infested)

That way you can spread the creep fairly well, even without Nydus

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Not a bad idea, though won’t fix the problem with assaulting non-zerg bases.

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Well the speed+range boost of Malignant creep should also be increased by 100%

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That was in a past, I try to look for balance.

What are you talking about? I wrote two versions for Kerrigan, First prestige was for giving her more versatile queens or broodmother to facilitate creep spreading (and some new abilities to compensate).
Two was for expanding Kerrigan herself and increasing the cost/upgrade taxes in order to make a Prestige Variant for solo Hero play.

Good point, but in the experiment video I was attempting to show that the Queen/Broodmothers can lay creep tumors within Kerrigan side not from enemy side and thus never showed Broodmothers laying creep tumors in the enemy creep. It is my perspective that Kerrigan should get more versatile creep makers since she lost the Omega Worm.

Wouldn’t that make Kerrigan play more tedious? The developers clearly wanted to remove the existence of Omega/Nydus worm to give a new gameplay unfortunately with Prestige one the compensation aren’t enough. Maybe Kerrigan can have “Super Overlords” with Detectors to facilitate creep spreading and provide lot more supply (Although I don’t thin supply is an issue for Kerrigan).
In my standpoint adding minor Broodmothers would promote more aggressive Queen play (since other than Swarm Queen they are not used as much). And besides the Prestige is called “Malevolent Matriarch”, Malignant Tumor got the Malevolent surely we can add more versatile queens to fill-out the Matriarch.

As you said, Omega Worm aren’t there to spread creep to increase army power, so why not have a supporter to supplement other support to the army before they can lay the field with creep?

The Toxic nests are actually untargettable but I like the idea. But I’m not sure that the creep tumors should lose their vision.

Losing Omega Worms are big deal for Kerrigan as Omega provides Creep/Detection/Wall/Transport and is really Kerrigan’s identity. And I think just giving Malignant Creep +100% capability won’t cut it as compensation (Malignant Creep affects allies too but so does Omega Worms).

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You have to be very precise have the tumors not to come to enemy range.
Hate to break it to you, the spread range stays the same.

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This one, you worded it like she will both keep nydus and gain two broodmothers. That is very much, not balanced.
And spreading tumors from Kerrigan’s side won’t help with assaulting bases.

Also, a nerfed nydus will still be far less tedious than creep spreading with tumors. Adding broodmothers are simply a bad idea in my opinion, at least for Kerrigan. Their heal isn’t all that necessary, Malignant creep’s healing rate will also be doubled.

But I do agree that it’s slightly underperforming, at least on maps where you can’t stay on the defensive, but there’s no need to add a new unit, when the easier solution is to nerf nydus instead of removing it entirely.

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No I didn’t. I said losing Omega Worm not Gaining it.
I meant it as “Losing Omega worms but instead, they will gain…”
Prestige 1 I agree they will lose them but gains more efficient creep spreader (Advanced Queen or Broodmother).

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On another note, personally I think they should scrap Prestige 2 entirely, it feels like an outright nerf, Kerrigan is already a one woman army if you use the masteries for it.
What I would love to see instead of number 2, would be a Prestige that focused on boosting her air, they need it more, perhaps at the cost of removing Malignant creep bonus.

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Then the way to word it is “Instead when” rather than “Instead of”
Again as I said, for assaulting, queens or your broodmothers are a strictly inferior and much more tedious way to spread creep compared to nydus when assaulting. I would much rather see a nerfed nydus instead.
Otherwise, not really worth selecting when not playing on defensive maps.
So won’t be used much when randoming, relegating it to a infrequently used mutation counter IMO.

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Added new Prestige idea: Ruler of the Sky (Video Included)

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Swann - Heavy Weapon Specialist

To further explain the importance of reducing the lock-on/begin-to-fire speed, I noticed in my games that units weakened by the splash damage would become a likely next target, and the drill would “finish” it off very quickly, making it take a while to help damage a group effectively enough. Really clunky at the moment vs it’s intended effect of extra damage alongside your army.

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2 Prestige proposals added.
Agent X41822N (Nova) + Plague Warden (Stukov).

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Improved version of Alarak’s Shadow of Death Prestige has been added.
Improved Payload Director (Swann) updated.
Replaced Hercules Dropships with superior Zeus Lander for transportation and field combat.
Video Included.

Improved Tactical Dispatcher (Nova) update.

Improved dispatchers to vastly increase mobility and stability of Tactical Airlift.

Video Included.