Raynor is so fun

Co-op Missions Discussion
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Awhile ago I made a list of my favorite to least favorite commanders, and Raynor was pretty low on the list. I thought he was a pain to play, underpowered, and lacking any of the really cool tricks other commanders had.

But! On the other side of quarantine and 3 months of playing SC2 for several hours a day, I can play Raynor much better! And he’s great! The complexity of his macro is a ton of work compared to other commanders, but it’s extremely rewarding to pull off. He has almost no one-size fits all responses, and army comp must be tailored to the enemy comp otherwise it’s an uphill battle. It’s almost like playing a different commander each game.

I’m particularly fond right now of marine/medic/marauder/BCs - the life of my infantry goes up dramatically when there’s 10 BCs flying overhead, and the tactical jump gives a map presence that the infantry alone would lack.

I still stand by Raynor being a weak commander, in terms of effort to return. He’s definitely trickier to play and relies more than anyone else on hitting build orders and maintaining a strong econ. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be just as effective when played well, and the difficulty can be very satisfying.

In case anyone read this far, no I have no real point. I’m posting this simply because I have “discovered” that Raynor is actually really fun and I encourage anyone that has turned away from him to give it another shot because the payoff is worth it. Although if anyone had unconventional army comps, I’d love to hear about them.

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Yep i can identify with this. Its a really hard commander to pull off i find.

Whats fun to use as raynor for example is adding like 10-20 vultures with their mine upgrades into the comp on certain maps. Certain maps being where you clear the enemys spawns or when objectives spawn at a certain point and you can place mines ahead.

Oblivion express trains are a great example. If you have quite a good partner that helps you push trough the whole left enemy base early, you can mine-kill a complete train just with this cheese :slight_smile:

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Indeed. Raynor is great and difficult to play.

I think he could use his double mules from ages ago, where it was considered OP and nerfed. But seeing the state of coop today and with all the new super fast expanding commanders, i feel double mules would actually be fine nowadays.

Although arch enemies in SC2 lore, i feel that Mengsk and Raynor share similar complexity and army structure. So if you like playing raynor, you might like Mengsk as well.

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I’ve yet to use Vultures. I was watching a LilArrin video last night and Vultures were used extensively, so I definitely want to give it a try. Are Vultures good at fighting, or used just for the mines?

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Vultures are okay against light ground but Raynors stimmed marines 2 vs one beat em for dps and air. They can still be used as bait though to run and take fire from a siege tank or hybrid and suicide bomb em though and the mines in coop are well worth it. Arguably you can see them as a 30 mineral unit with 45 minerals of mines on them.

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They are not good at fighting directly… however if you like to play with F2, mixed into your bio army, they fare ok-ish due to medic heals and firebats in the front.

That being said, loosing them is not a big deal, since they cost minerals only.

Best use I find is having something around 8-16 vultures on a separate control group, laying mines at areas you expect ground enemies to spawn or come along. If your micro is good, you hardly ever need more than that to lay mines, since they build mines quite quickly.

If you want to try that, i would highly recommend the rapidfire keybind for mines. In short: you bind the vultures mine hotkey to “Choose Abilily or AI target” as well. That way the mine hotkey does select the “place-mine” ability and also places the mine… all you need to do is hold the key down and move the mouse, droping a dozen mines per second - this greatly reduces the clicks you need to make, which otherwise can put quite a strain on your fingers and wrist over time.

PS: rapid fire keybind is also nice for abathurs ravager biles and stetmans infestor roaches.

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Is that a third-party thing or an in-game thing?

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https://sc2swarm.com/index.php/2019/10/08/hotkeys-rapid-fire-and-repeat-rate/
https://tl.net/forum/sc2-strategy/446530-rapid-fire-hotkey-trick

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The ironic thing is he’s advertised as “for all players”, but he really does require experience to play effectively.

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To get above normal difficultly, certainly. All three of the “basic” commanders have pretty low floors and very little to carry a bad player with. It’s pretty ironic.

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Not at all. Artanis is VERY easy to play since his supply is already maxed and he can warp in anywhere. The only “difficult” thing about him is if you start using a lot of Psionic Storms or Phoenixes that have to be micro’d. If you go a standard Dragoon/Immortal build he’s simply a-move.

Kerrigan can solo most everything by herself once you hit level 15 with her. You don’t even HAVE to really macro with her unless you want to. The only thing that makes her look bad in the hands of a bad player is that bad players don’t use her Omega Worms the way they should.

Raynor is the same way. Once you understand why Orbital Commands are mandatory for him, everything else he has just makes sense. I cant count how many players with no campaign experience and no multiplayer experience try and queue with him in Brutal+ and go straight for Battlecruisers with no Orbital Command. That doesn’t work! I don’t know why so many new players flock to that strat, but theyre the ones that give Raynor the Stigma that he’s hard to play.

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It’s a regular SC2 hotkey function. Nothing bad or wrong about it. You just bind two actions on the same key.

Many top players use it even in official tournaments… you will learn to notice it once you know what it looks like.

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As someone else mentioned long ago, i think “for all players” indicates not how easy a commander is, but how similar to regular ladder terran / zerg / protoss the commanders is. So if you know how to play ladder, you can start coop with raynor, kerrigan or artanis as they are quite similar to what you already know.

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It’s because BCs are big, cool, and fun. Same reason Karax and Fenix players go Carrier. Plus is does work just fine on lower difficulties so it reinforces the behaviour.

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Karax has that stigma that he sucks for the same reason!

If you actually play Karax properly and use his other units he’s a perfectly fine CO, he has weaknesses and strengths just like anyone else.

But if all anyone does with him is make Cannons on maps that aren’t defense maps and rush Carriers then he looks really bad.

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pls never mass vultures, they kill my fps on a map with creep and some extra effects like cradle of death xd.
raynor has been fun for a while, i played him long time back, very powerful, but the vespene harvesting is a pain if you want to go mechs earlier than around midgame.
imo his ready up time and some tech they decided to exclude makes him odd to play.

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I buy spidermines, Vulture bikes come free with the purchase as a bonus.

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I think you are wrong. I don’t think he is fine. At all.

Please play with me 100 games. I am certain i can destroy your opinion utterly and completely.

Many years ago he was my favorite commander… i played him more than all other commanders combined. Not any more. Whatever you may think about my skill, i have played karax for longer than sub level 500 players have played SC 2 coop in total… hundreds of hours for sure.

Playing with any decent ally (except swann) you will feel like sitting in the back seat of a car that drives without your interaction. Sure you can throw some SoA abilities to feel like you are at least somewhat useful… but in the end, Nova does not need you. Not even a little. Neither does Tychus. Neither Dehaka or Kerrigan or Zeratul or Abathur or Mengsk …

Even commanders many consider as weaker - like raynor or alarak - far outperform karax offensively, when you play them well enough.

Karax excels really only in one thing: static defenses and orbital strikes for certain hard mutations… and even there swann can perform similarly.

Karax is one of the least played commanders for a reason: he is worse.

He has sooooo many aspects that should attract new players like a magnet… strong static defenses, instant SoA abilities on demand, auto repair for every unit and building, chronoboost across the board plus chrono wave, etc. etc. But you almost never meet any karax player.

Do all of them suck? Or is there maybe a different reason?

In my opinion it is because you can perform better with the SAME skill playing a different commander. And that is true, wether you are a mediocre or excellent player. A same skill Nova will do pretty much everything in the game faster and better than you. Same for Zertul. Same for Tychus, Dehaka etc.

Playing as karax, is basically being permanently broke all game long. His units are so expensive, that you can’t even produce from 2 stargates permanently. A decent Rynor or Tychus or Kerrigan will be banking thousands of resources late game. Not because they are bad, but because they are maxed. This also means that they can recover from loosing a decent chunk of their units… karax cannot. Never.

All the last years the power creep has pushed commander abilities forward, yet karax has stagnated. Other commanders get buffs… what does karax get? A mastery that brings down his unit cost to ALMOST normal price… gets REMOVED and replaced with an HP mastery. Glorious.

Now karax has tougher units, but LESS. If you managed to keep your units alive before, the new mastery does NOTHING for you. You have less impact on the game, no matter how you look at it. Less units equals less damage, less mirages to lift up enemies, less energizers to buff your army or reclaim enemies, etc.

That is worsened by the fact that karax already has a horribly slow ramp up. You never reach even close to max supply with any decent ally. Many times you don’t even reach max upgrades before the game is over. And that in the face of improved chroboboost plus chronowaves. That’s how broke he is.

If you still doubt what i am saying, ask yourself this: imagine each commander being played by an EXCELLENT player each. Lets say they all 2 base solo rush a coop map like Rifts to Korhal. Which commanders do you think the karax player can beat in time taken to win?

If you ask me, i would say: none. No commander would be worse than karax. I think even stukov would win despite his need for creep.

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Your entire post is pointless because I don’t judge a CO by how fast they rack up kills.

I judge a CO by how strong they are at the role they were designed to be good at.

Karax is a SUPPORT! Read it, SUPPORT! Once more SUPPORT! CO.

Of course his allies perform better than him, THATS THE ENTIRE POINT OF HIS DESIGN! HE MAKES THEM BETTER!

If you can’t understand that, that’s your problem. If that’s not what you want to play in a CO, that’s fine too.

But that’s how he is designed to operate. If you think he sucks because other CO’s pick up more kills than he does vs offensive objectives then you’re not judging him by what he is designed to actually do.

Karax makes the game easier for himself and his ally when played properly. Other CO’s have support abilities that do this too but none were designed with that much of it in mind like Karax was.

That’s the simple truth. Don’t like it? Tough.

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I’ll give you one more example. Have you ever played mass Energizer vs Terran or Protoss air? It’s the most hilarious thing ever that will NEVER show up on the end scoreboard.

You just mass mind control every Carrier and BC. Those mind controls don’t count as kills though and there’s no statistic to keep track of how much damage they end up doing the way Vega has a stat for.

All of Karax’s strategies are like this. If you ignore the end scoreboard, and just judge by how easy he makes the missions you’ll understand that.

If you judge a CO on how fast they solo clear Brutal, when that’s not what they were designed for then your entire judgement is wrong.

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