Raynor Infantry HP prestige is OP

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Prestiges are suppose to be trade-offs, not outright buffs. The 100% raynor HP one is an outright buff, and a HUGE one. Taking away mules is not a big deal if nothing dies. Fully upgraded marines have over120 hp, with medic heal damage reduction, they have as much HP as Nova elite marines. Firebats have ~450hp and 6 armor.

Even at level 1 on Mist Opportunities/Brutal, I was able to split my bio ball and not lose any units for having done so. I almost never split my bio ball because it seriously weakens it. Doubling hp heavily negates splash damage as a counter and attrition. Compounding this is the ‘super creep’ from Kerrigan which gives them 60% faster attack speed on top of the 50% from stimpack, more than doubling their DPS. I’ll let a kerrigan player opine about that but I can say without a doubt that Raynor got buffed with this one.

MULEs typically only add about 20% minerals, which is a small price to pay for double HP. Double HP means your early game is much stronger, you have much less attrition, so you hit critical mass much faster. I can now survive the first wave without even needing a bunker. Your mech is also not significantly affected other than maybe not being able to spam mines as much. If going into a B+ game blind, I would always get infantry HP because its straight up better in 99% of situations.

Suggested fixes:

  • increase infantry cost 25%
    or
  • decrease hp bonus to 50%
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IMO these are big changes sure, but not unwelcome ones. i was trying out the PTR and the problem was frequently with Raynor. He’s a good speedrunning commander sure, but a lot of new players aren’t too good with him or run him like a death simulator mass grinding units into the grinder. For the Meta before, you did have toilet paper marines sure, but Raynor being able to mass Orbital commands let him literally mine out 20-40k minerals and set up mass death grinders. Is the new bio mastery more powerful? Sure!, but is it, in a day of 6x 1500 hp ultimate evolution units, -75% attack speed on a 100 mineral unit roaches being considered ‘weak / redundant’ since Abathur’s endgame Vipers can Abduct / -100% attack speed everything while having 100 dps with life leech and 400 regenerating shields, sure. Bio mastery Raynor basically lets him be at a level of say a Mass dragoon Artanis or Tychus. It gives him a strong army, but now the highlight gets shifted from high dps, tissue paper army going 200-> 100 supply and churning 100 more marines out a barracks, but keeping your army. Before you could still just use Marines like disposible units and whenever you lost 50, completely replenish them with 4-8 orbitals with 20k floating minerals, get a +60% speed pod boost, and keep it churning with 4 reactor barracks.

Now you just keep your army, but he still takes time to reach critical mass on his bio ball before he can take on everything losslessly and his army can stick. IMo it’s a good change to make Raynor more beginner friendly, but for speedrunners. Well, they already moved on from 14 minute Raynor solos to 10 minute Dehakas and 3-8 minute Abathurs and Zeratuls a long time ago. I think the changes will be fine in making teammates Raynors more new players / random ally friendly and more able to face brutations. You could still always keep it at nearly 180-200/200 supply back in the old days just running death machine printers. Being able to split up a raynor army has nothing on 10 second Abathur teleports + ultimate infestations plus now that he has a sturdy army, army mobility can be his new thing to focus on. Sure he’s got a good army, but so do Abathurs and Dehakas and Tychuses with much more early or endgame power alongside mobility.

I think it’s a good change and really helps new players get into the game. I think it’s a good one… Now Lone wolf Tychus on the other hand. I love tychus, but 300% damage Tychuses at the 3 minute mark literally trying to micro a whole Dota team at once, it’s kinda brokenly disorientingly powerful but you can try to argue about a 375 damage grenade that one shots everything save for 30 ultralisks and 3x 3000 damage c4s. He can instantly clear rocks or run around DoN setting 900 damage blaze chains to light the entire map in fire going from 25-45 minutes for a 131+ building clear/solo to 15 minute full clear essential solo while leaving a spare outlaw at base to defend and clearing another half with Tychus / Rattlesnake. But trying to manage 3-5 outlaws that each need to be seperated with 1 camera, 0-2 detectors with anti synergy +40% visions, it’s just super disorienting. I like the idea of super outlaws, but that one i wish came with like a 1-2 outlaw limit rework with maybe +100% increased gear costs but letting you get the ultimate gears or put them together. Since you can literally clear enemy bases and reach full power at the 3 minute mark, but then just get weaker and weaker as the game goes on before it becomes too dangerous to lone wolf with 3 upgrade outlaws or the map just funnels you too tightly to use all of them at once. and 400% of all 4 outlaws > 300% of one. That one has a neat idea, and i love tychus but it’s just too disorienting to play and it kinda feels bad that the Outlaw availablity Mastery does nothing for you, but the Vision upgrade mastery on Fixers make them harder to use and i found myself often having to do counterintiutive things like having to run my outlaws away from eachother to have tychus aoe a spot so Sam could safely approach while having him medivacced away so Lone wolf’s 3000 damage c4s would trigger while also having to micro Rattlesnake to shoot a spot while stealthed air or a lurker was attacking him and Nikara was oh so helpfully set to follow heal a commander who came to heal and trying to manage the +40% vision radius while healing his army.

It’s just a neat idea but super janky but i feel if it went live, it’d be the strongest playstyle. I like the idea of super strong Kerrigan level outlaws, but i want the ultimate gears and maybe tall on them. Like… +100% strength outlaws, but 100% cost upgrades and a 2-3 outlaw limit, that could be really fun. Lone wolf Tychus needs to be less janky. And the -35% cooldown but +50% unit cost mastery is just a straight up downgrade. You can’t afford 1500 mineral outlaws and only tend to use 1-2 cds a fight anyways and rarely use the 2nd cd a fight. The abilities i do want it on, like Vega’s MC or Rattlesnake revitalizers, are too expensive to get their upgrades and the downside is too big for a upside so negliable, i hope that one gets a rework or something like. “Your abilities recharge and activate 50% faster and can hold 2 extra charges each, but abilities deal only half their damage” or something.

That way you could do Vega MC builds or something, but you’d trade off 1 nade or quick finishes for two grenades or something while only getting 250 damage c4s, but you could use them to quickly finish off opponents with 2.5 second fuses (with a stun tradeoff), and maybe Sirius getting more turrets, but shorter fears as well, etc.

Tl;DR

Sure yeah Raynor bio becomes stronger and sturdier and more new friendly. But i don’t think that’s a bad thing. We’ve come a long way from 14 minute Raynor solos being the fastest to 10 minute Dehakas and 3:46-8 Minute Abathur/ Zeratul Brutal solos. It makes the commander more friendly and adaptable for f2ps and i think that’s a good thing.

Some Prestieges like Tychus’s Lone wolf or others concern me however, while i do love Tychus i do rather prefer fun > Power in commanders. I was playing lone wolf tychus and while it did have really good rewards and some lategame tradeoffs on small maps, it was also extremely disorienting to play. Basically turning the game into a Disorienting single player moba MoBA where you had to play basically all 5 characters 50 feet apart from eachother, at the same time, with one camera. (Basically, imagine having 5 kerrigans, now imagine Alone they each have 1000 - 2000 hp, 3000 damage c4s, 375 damage grenades, but together they only have 500 hp and get eaten without healing. While 1 kerrigan lacks aoe, the other lacks a air attack. It’s extremely disorienting op to say the least. Probably his most powerful prestige atm, but after 2-3+ heros it becomes a disorienting mess to play him at the least or #feelsbad to have to pull the lone wolves into a ball at the end. Those are the prestiges that are potentially super op or could lead to more 3-4 minute solos left in, but give you a headache for average people to play.

I don’t think raynor being more sturdy is bad or anything, just the game has sped up a lot more and the Lone wolf Tychus mastery letting you steamroll the map at literally 3 minutes in, while being a situational endgame pick but headache inducing to play is my concern. I think having more sturdy raynors would be great! Tychus with 300% damage, 900 damage burn chains, 3x 3000 damage c4s, 375 grenades. As much as i like tychus, there are times when i don’t mind fighting the mobs longer and enjoy his sturdiness. Lots of fights are 5 minute waits for fights that end in less than 2 seconds. I honestly as a Tychus main player, who loves the ability, wouldn’t mind it being toned down since i feel if it was published as is, i could pull it off but it’s not enjoyable gameplay imo. It’s like, completely steamrolling the game but you’re so just disoriented in confused and have no idea what’s going on the whole time trying to manage 3-5 heroes at once without vision while your ally confusedly watches you solo the entire map from 3-10 Minutes with neither you or them knowing what the hell was going on.

Those prestige are the ones that concern me. While Raynor having a sturdier 100 hp army. I get your concern, but imo it’s a great new player change and vets could already print out units with 4-8 orbitals and get the +60% speedboost anyways.

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I take your point that Raynor has not kept up with the power creep of the new commanders, but to me that’s a better argument for nerfing the new commanders. Blizzard has no idea how to make the game consistently harder after BRUTAL so instead we get the mess that is B+ and mutators. BRUTAL should be challenging to the bottom 80% or so of players with level 15 commanders. Raynor is closer to the ideal power level and not Abathur or Dehaka, who can roll face on BRUTAL at very low levels.

I disagree that this helps the learning curve since this is Prestige 1 so a player would have had to get to 15 once already. Crappy raynors will likely give up by then. Raynor’s late game was NOT weak. The difficulty was always getting there and reaching that critical mass of units. Losing MULES makes life EASIER because effective use of MULES and orbitals is what made Raynor hard. Orbitals take awhile to even pay themselves off and the tension of whether to add army or orbitals was a big part of mastering raynor. A typical game would have something like 35000 mined for Raynor and 30000 mined for ally, but you had to spend 2000 or so building orbitals and you probably had nothing to spend money on once you maxed out. Most games did not require more than 3-4 either. If you went up to 8-9, then you were just styling.

Raynor is conventional Terran. High DPS but very squishy, and needs to hit critical mass to be effective. But +100% HP does not make them ‘less squishy’, it makes him not squishy at all. As a level 1 raynor with the prestige kit, I had a total of 20 or so losses in an entire game of MO where I split my bio ball against devouring swarm. Nothing would die. Now that I’m 15 again, B+ is a joke. If they want to make Raynor more accessible, they should make MULES 25 energy so the average player does not need to get 3-4 orbitals most of the time. Raynor’s mech is also as strong as any other commander’s mech and having mech as support is how you avoid the meat grinder. If infantry cost was increased 25% with prestige kit, you will see more balanced infantry/mech compositions - which is the point of prestige. Prestige is not suppose to be a buff, but a change to how you play.

No comment on Tychus since I don’t play him. You should start a thread if you think the changes are bad since I don’t want this to veer too off topic.

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Raynor’s army is stronger, no doubt, but not having the mule isn’t something to scoff at. As you’ve already mentioned this pretty much invalidates trying to use mines or really any higher tech in a timely fashion. Detection is a bigger concern since you don’t have all those extra mins for orbitals. Which is especially bad against certain mutations.

Splitting your army up is also harder since you have less troops until late game. The biggest drawback though is the loss in dps. Yes, late game when maxed it will be the same, but until you hit that point your army will be half the size it could have been. You’re essentially throwing away Raynor’s mid game power spike.

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What slows down higher tech is the need to macro up with orbitals early game. What limits higher tech production is always gas. This change affects neither of those things and arguably makes it easier in the case of the former.

In the MO game, I split when I hit 200 supply and we had to defend multiple angles since there were 3 bots. Im not saying you should split in every situation or even most. But splitting was usually a bad idea pre-prestige. Instead I split a level 1 army with about 50 units each group and not suffer a single casualty A-moving the attack wave. Granted devouring swarm is not the best AG army, but I also do not have any of raynor’s kit or masteries.

Raynor’s strategy of relying on a mid-game power spike was only so you can keep up late game. Raynor’s early game was always very weak and brittle. You are relying heavily on calldowns as you macro up, and the effectiveness of that varied greatly depending on the map (and 1st wave timing) and mutators. Now I start producing marines immediately since there’s no need to rush orbitals (or even 2nd CC). I can usually hold the first wave with just marines and don’t even need a bunker (though its probably still smart vs vultures and reapers). Once I get to about 100 supplies, my bioball is large enough where I suffer almost no attrition in fights. MULES add about 20-30% more minerals, not double. They were normally needed for the constant marine attrition but that’s not an issue anymore with 120hp+ marines.

The only strategy this hurts is spider mine spam, but you still have mines. You just cant go ham with them as much. But once you max out, your army takes so few losses you can still spam a lot of mines at that point anyways. I’m still floating tons of money by the end.

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I can now solo brutal games with Raynor bio, even against compositions that should counter it. It is so overpowered.

Malwarefare vs Classic Skytoss - not even close
VP vs Immortal/Archon/HT/Colossus - harder since a lot of storms and I had to split bio into two groups since its common for one to get trapped on the wrong island.
OE vs Lurker/Hydra/Ultra - not even close

You dont need to FE to keep up. Just go depot, rax, refinery - and slowly trickle out infantry. You dont even need 2nd rax for quite some time since you shouldn’t be losing many units. Upgraded firebats have over 600 effective HP with medic heal. Marines have about 170. Medics also rarely die since they have a lot more hp too. These units are tankier than Nova spec ops.

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To be fair, they’re crazy strong, but you don’t built up the bank you do with Mules. A base with 6 OCs and 8 Barracks can overcome any counter to Marines just the same, but you also tend towards more dps as you get a maxed out army faster.

From what I’ve seen it’s better for those with less Macro/Multitasking skills, or those with better Micro. But the opposite is true as well.

The other thing is not having Mules hurts his other strategies quite a bit, mass Vulture/Mine gets hurt with no benefit for example.

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Here are my 3 solo replays - money was not a problem. 6 OC + 8 rax is over 4000 minerals. It will take some time for that to ramp up. You can max out faster with the prestige since you have no attrition. Your army power growth is also consistent since you dont need to need to make massive investments early game that takes time to pay off. Coop heavily penalizes commanders that have to look back at base frequently. Many mutators are ‘dodge this’ types. If this reduces base management, that alone is a massive buff for the coop environment.

1drv . ms/u/s!AkHgoJ8j0vUh9mUtzTLtluV1p72d?e=LZWWk0

Yes, it hurts vulture mines, but it doesnt make it a non-option. Its still there, you just need to be a bit more judicious with it. You can still spawn camp just fine with them. You also have much more gas for mech units since medics die very infrequently.

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Oh I didn’t see you making this thread and I couldn’t find your solo replays, links please.

I’ll summarize what I said on my thread.

Prestige 1 is great for beginners who didn’t learn how to manage their macros and micros well. Just build 2 CCs, upgrade them to orbitals and use them for scans. I’m not criticizing people, I spent a good amount of time learning how to play Raynor decently.

Prestige 2 is super OP. I think they should reduce the attack speed to about 50-70%. Increasing attack speed 100% is like having siege tanks (in siege mode) shooting like marine’s. Leave the disadvantages alone. Maybe add after-burners for Hyperion and Banshees :joy:

Prestige 3 is for Air Mech and the point of that is to spam Hyperion near end of each game.

I hope to see more people playing Raynor after this is implemented, especially the first one.

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Put that into your browser, remove the gap. It should download a zip file with 3 replays.

The Vermillion Problem one is the best example of how insanely strong kit 1 is since it was against an anti-bio composition.

UPDATE: I added a replay of Mist Opportunities with mine spam. Apparently you have plenty of money for mines since you aren’t replacing infantry constantly. So Prestige 1 apparently has ZERO drawbacks. :man_shrugging: