Rebuilding Karax

Warning: Long form esssay ahead, I will try to add something of a table of contents at the end

It’s no secret that Karax can feel cumbersome and sometimes unwieldy in the modern world of co-op. Even the most emphatic Karax players will usually admit his ramp up time feels real slow. And there are many reasons for this, ranging from weak economic bonuses and terrible rock killing abilities to overpriced upgrades and units. A couple weeks back there was a lot of discussion around what could be done to improve Karax’s situation, but there was no overpowering majority in favor of any solution or design direction for Karax. So rather than try to suggest ways to fix Karax, it seems better advised to simply lay out what is holding him back, and what of his struggles is actually unique among commanders.

Karax’s early economy does get very real boosts, but this fact is obscured by a lack of early power units. Karax’s chrono field is a passive 15% increase in the work speed of all buildings, a boost who’s potency is a bit subjective as evidenced by the debates around chrono boost mastery. But whatever way you look at it, the fact is this does create faster saturation, which means more money overall. And Karax does get instant pylons, which eliminates the forced supply block protoss commanders experience at the beginning of the game for a few seconds without some supply boost. If you count mastery, only Alarack lacks a solution to this. Yet these economy boosts are not the whole picture.

Karax is probably the worst rock killer in the game. If you use his cannons, then he is outstripped by pretty much everyone except maybe Tychus and Abathur, and Tychus can go CC first next to the rocks while Abathur has half the expansion build time even without mastery, let alone with. He can use full SoA starting energy mastery to destroy the rocks almost immediately, but this is a contentious method as many consider it a waste of mastery and a huge blow to Karax’s already sub-par early power, and in addition it could be argued that if you are using that mastery purely for economic gain chrono mastery might fit your agenda better. And if you use sentinels to clear the rocks, on one hand at least you have units that you may use later depending on strategy, but it’s still definitely not going to set any records for expansion time.

The third major contributor to Karax’s slow feeling ramp up time is his lack of a good early game unit and the over-reliance of his early units on upgrades. For most commanders, you want to start off the mission with a hero unit and/or semi-durable ranged units. This allows for unit conservation while still accomplishing meaningful progress against early bases that shouldn’t be causing you significant casualties. Karax has no such unit. The only other commanders with neither hero nor unit that comfortably fills this role are Raynor and Stukov. However, Raynor, though his best unit for this role is the not-so-glorious marauder, can use banshees and/or Hyperion as effective hero units, and Stukov not only has the apokalisk but has literally free units from his colonist compound to compensate.

For Karax, you only really have 3 options for early units: Sentinels, immortals, and Cannons. Cannons obviously don’t fit this role because they cannot be moved. Any money you put into cannons is now stuck there for the rest of the game, which is a problem for most maps. Meanwhile, his Sentinels are not only melee, but are actually quite fragile until you get a twilight council and pay 150/150 for reconstruction, which also takes a while to research. And while Karax does have the SoA, it does cost an incredible amount to upgrade, meaning using it will only add to the problem of a slow ramp-up. The best unit he has to fill this role is the immortal, which is a weak choice because of how Karax has nothing to allow him to more quickly tech up to immortals. But they do a decent enough job filling this role to popularize one of 3 popular Karax builds: mass immortal. Even still, this is another regard in which Karax is weakest among commanders.

Karax is not without strengths, and it would be unfair to look only at where he falls short. Karax’s static defense is quite strong, and while it may have more competition today than when Karax first hit the field, it still has some distinct advantages. The most notable advantages are the incredible resilience of shieldbattery/cannon set ups with reconstruction beam helping, and the ease with which orbital strikes can quickly thin out enemies clumped up by their efforts against the cannons, and the cannons clean up from there. In fact, this leads into another strength of Karax: his global presence. Orbital strikes can be fired anywhere on the map without any prep or travel time to speak of. You can strike on three different fronts within seconds of each other with no issues.

Karax also benefits from very versatile units. He can function very well with relatively simple armies, not relying on the synergy of 4-5 different units together the way many other commanders must. This fact is again augmented by the SoA, as orbital strikes can be focused on the counters to whatever units Karax is using. His units are also very durable, primarily because of Unity Barrier. Unity Barrier protects his units from high damage burst spells such as Yamato Cannon and Seeker Missile. These spells are usually the bane of high value targets such as Nova or Zeratul’s units.

And finally, Karax is incredibly good at supporting his ally. Karax has more abilities than most commanders that can affect his ally. From repairs to pseudo-guardian shells to subtle but potent economy boosts, Karax does a lot of little things everywhere that add up fast. Further, Karax can support his ally with his SoA arsenal. The greatest power in his armies and his defense both came from how the SoA excels both at focusing down counters to your army and at instantly supporting soft spots in a defense.

However Karax also has shortcomings. This is natural, all commanders have some weaknesses. However, when each commander got their own revamp, most commanders had their weaknesses significantly lessened, and in some cases removed altogether. Karax however still maintains many weaknesses that while not initially problematic are becoming more apparent with time.

Karax’s static defense lacks splash damage. Until recently, this was pretty standard, only Swann and Zagara had splash, and Zagara’s was hard to use, with it being difficult to justify bile launchers as splash damage when they were really just short range orbital strikes. However, with the recent addition of tesseract monoliths, there now exists static defense that accounts not only for massive area splash damage but also a spectacular amount of crowd control, virtually stunlocking entire armies. Usually, lack of splash in static defense is covered by siege units such as tanks, lurkers, reavers, and colossi. However, this adds a substantial gas cost to static defense, which is a problem for Karax as he already struggles with this. Even without adding splash, energizers will often be employed to give a substantial attack speed boost to Karax’s defense, however these units are also very high gas cost, which can be strained further by the highly unpopular 30% unit tax. Further, Karax’s Khadarin monolith is the only defense structure aside from the aforementioned bile launchers with a gas cost. Adding the additional gas cost of colossi on top of all this doesn’t add up very well.

And then there are the flaws in Karax’s army. While his army’s ability to function with only a small set of units is one of his greatest strengths, it is also forced on him in a rather heavy handed way. This is done firstly by the 30% unit tax, which keeps Karax’s army size small. This tax can be removed with mastery, but this comes at the expense of hampering the greatest strength of Karax’s defense: its durability. Further, the mastery has some noticeable rounding error problems, ranging from the 1 extra gas cost on mirages to the 11 extra minerals for immortals. RTS as a rule revolves around critical masses; unless a unit is designed largely around non-stacking support spells, over-diversifying is a major weakness in an army. This is why Fenix’s champions had to be so powerful before the 6-champion army saw widespread use. As a result, Karax is usually inclined to focus largely on the most flexible unit he can find, thus leading to his most popular armies: Mass Carrier, Mass Immortal, and sentinel/energizer against large mind-controllable mech armies.

Another crippling weakness for Karax’s army is his upgrade costs, and this is something that touches his static defense too. Excepting weapons/armour lvl. 3 and hero upgrades, all unit upgrades cost between 50/50 and 150/150, with the exception of Karax. Shadow Cannon and Repair Drone both cost 200/200. From the aforementioned hero upgrades, only Tychus’ upgrades and Kerrigan’s ability efficiency exceed 150/150. Further, Karax has to pay 200/200 each for 2 of his 3 static defense upgrades, and the third is bugged as outlined by Maguro’s bughunt post. So not only does Karax struggle to get a well sized army on the field, but that army also has high cost premium upgrades involved with every new unit type added.

Even more exorbitant than the unit upgrades however are the Spear of Adun upgrades. The Solar Forge starts you out with a 200/200 upgrade right near the start of the game, and it’s one that does very little to help with clearing out expansions, rocks or otherwise. For the full SoA upgrade set, the total bill comes out at 1350/1350. However, given the relatively specific applications of some of the upgrades, it is often not necessary to buy the full Spear of Adun Deluxe package. Instead, it can be perceived once again to be more like the Fenix Champion AIs. Like Fenix’s champions, the SoA is supposed to be a very core part of Karax’s identity. However, the Spear currently is more expensive even than Fenix’s original cost for the full outfit of champions, 1200/900. Even at this slightly lower cost, Fenix was deemed far too expensive, and the total cost was ultimately reduced to a mere 600/250 for the full 6 champion outfit. Like with the SoA, Fenix has the option of only summoning the right champions for the job, but with the reduced cost it is also viable for Fenix to summon the whole team. Karax however is rarely justified in purchasing all SoA upgrades excepting at the end of the game on very long maps.

Karax has real strengths, and weaknesses that often have a logical coloration to those strengths, but he also seems to fall short in potency. At the end of the day, Karax has somehow become a jack-of-all-trades, where anything he has seems to be a watered down version of something another commander, newer or older, already has. The most recent offender in this field is Stetmann’s HUGS algorithm, which heals for twice as many hitpoints/second, with mastery that gives twice the percentage increase, and which heals a theoretically infinite number of targets, rather than max 3, upgradable to 5. Granted, Stetzone healing on allied units is halved while repair beam works at full strength, but even still with mastery it tallies to 8 HPS for Stetmann and only 6.5 HPS for Karax. This continues back: Zeratul’s static defense has range, AoE, and stun. H&H’s strike fighters don’t require vision. Fenix has similar units but for far cheaper and with far cheaper upgrades. This goes on, Karax not only has very few things that only he can do, but most of the things he can do he’s not the best at.

Ultimately, all of these problems lead to a Karax that can feel slow, overpriced, and at teams even lackluster or pigeon holed. The foundation is there for a strong Karax, but currently his weaknesses are overpowering his strengths. It’s not just one thing that’s wrong with thing, it’s the way the whole picture is adding up. All of the most commonly cited flaws with Karax are both the cause and the result each other. It’s difficult to demonstrate exactly how everything is connected together, and even more difficult to decide what to change. But at some point, something has to be shifted, because Karax has a lot of unique weaknesses that pile onto each other into a difficult situation. Karax needs a way to get his power onto the field more practically, so that he can show the world what he can do, rather than the focus falling on what he can’t do.

Paragraph topics in order (table of contents thing):
- Introduction
- Economy strengths
- Openers and rocks
- Skirmishing/early power units for other commanders
- Skirmishing/early power units for Karax
- Static defense strengths
- Army and offensive power strengths
- Support and global presence
- Brief interlude on commander weaknesses
- Static defense weaknesses
- Army flaws and weaknesses
- Upgrade costs
- Spear of Adun and the Solar Forge
- Overlap with newer commanders
- Conclusion

Overall, I don’t expect everyone is going to go through the whole wall of text. I just wanted us to have a common foundation for discussions around Karax in the future.

18 Likes

TLDR: Karax sucks dick, please buff.

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What I think would be good is to focus on his cannons.

I would make 2 changes

  1. 50% cost reduction in cannons and monoliths (and batteries?) at level 1
  2. let probes build at a distance (say 4-6)

That would make offensive cannons more effective as a strategy

6 Likes

Well written, I like it.

I think you described current Karax’s situation really well, just forgetting a little bit the bizarre difference in effectivity Karax has between the different races, in this case, Zerg being very difficult to deal with in comparison.

For everything else, personally I’ve been part of these Karax discussions for the most part, and been thinking about ways to fix his issues. Changed my mind multiple times, changes that I thought were fundamental had so many bad consequences I had to remove. Others made him overpowered, others were redundant.

Currently, I feel like the way Karax could be fixed would be by doing the following things:

Changes
  • Remove Unit Tax.

I believe there is a consensus in which this feature is no longer welcome for this commander. The extra cost is injustified overall as his passives, units and powers are nothing extraordinary when compared to other commanders.

  • Unity Barrier cooldown reduced to 120s.

As outstanding as this passive may be, I find it to be a bit too inconsistent in value given it has a 4 minute cooldown. For one of the support tools that Karax has, I’d rather have it be a more present variable in the commander’s experience, than a mostly one time instant kill life saving tool.

  • Unit Cost Reduction Mastery changed into Unity Barrier Cooldown Reduction , reducing the cooldown of Unity Barrier by (-2s ~ -60s).

Given the unit tax is removed, the mastery would have to be changed. And I believe going further beyond and making sure Unity Barrier is such a consistently present power, protecting units from nasty one-shot kills would be a powerful addition to Karax.

This mastery would compete with Static Defense +60% health and shields, giving you the opportunity to choose: Durable Army or Durable Static Defense.

  • Unity Barrier now also triggers when enemy spells are used against units, protecting them from the effects.

What I believe to be the most important change, is to help certain units in Karax army to avoid “other types” of instant kills.

Both Colossi and Mirage excel at fighting zerg, be it with Colossi AoE, or Mirage’s anti-light and very mobile fighting, but the Zerg have overwhelming counters, rendering these useless.

Colossi being pulled by Vipers, Mirages taking Parasitic Bomb and dying in the masses are things that constantly happen and make said units inviable in the very situations they should be employed.

With Unity Barrier nullifying the effect of these abilities, there would be a higher chance these units could survive from these hard counters.

  • Sentinel Reconstruction ability cooldown reduced to 60s.

One of the most incredible and yet underwhelming abilities in this game suffers from the issue of being available only in half if not less than half of the encounters a Sentinel faces, while other zealots will find their own abilities always usable in every encounter.

Also, while Kerrigan’s Ultralisks and Dehaka’s Mutalisks ressurrection skills have a cooldown of 60s, for some reason the Sentinel’s ressurrection skill remains with a cooldown of 120s, which is abysmally weak.

  • Repair Beam now heals 10 health for both units and buildings and prioritizes Karax’s units.

Rendered underwhelming by what many commanders today can achieve in terms of healing support, I believe the repair beam should, when actually healing someone or something, be very powerful.

A total of 13 hp/s with the repair beam mastery, to both units and buildings would make this passive a lot more relevant, than the current 6 for units.

I find it also saddening, that in a situation that Karax is paired with a commander with an overwhelming amount of mechanical units, such as Swann, Fenix and specially Stetmann, with his army of Zerglings, Karax units that rely on that repair rate are left without any repairs, due to the beam being occupied healing the ally. Because of that, I believe Karax units should be prioritized by this passive.

  • Photon Cannons, Shield Batteries and Khaydarin Monoliths have now a new ability called Warp , that allows them to teleport to a new location with pylon power every 30 seconds, and Photon Cannons are renamed Phase Cannons.

I’ve been thinking for a really long time on how to solve the issue Karax has with anti-air in many situations.

I thought of many things. Buffing Mirages, buffing Orbital strike, giving Sentinels two cannons one on each arm to honor the original Super Zealot art concept they were based on and give them some kind of anti-air, hell, I even considered giving Energizers extra damage against biological units to make sense of that Sanitization Beam they are supposed to have as a weapon.

But when I look at my build order, that uses Chrono Boost mastery, and Forge into two cannons in the expo, and when I look at the Karax missions in which he summons, temporarily, two Photon Cannons to fight, I started to realize that maybe Karax anti-air is supposed to be his Photon Cannons after all.

I also find it saddening, that despite having such a powerful shield restoration tool such as the Shield Battery, that could help his army in harsh encounters, it is very difficult to put them to use, be it because they are warped with half energy, but also because they will stay there forever.

I believe Karax should be able to phase mode an Energizer, and warp in, without a probe, immediately, from pre-built Photon Cannons, Monoliths and Batteries, warp them in that field to help with an encounter, immediately.

The Shield Batteries would most likely have full energy for recharging in the field for a while, and the photon cannons would give necessary support against air units, receiving the Energizer’s buff immediately.

I believe Karax was always intended to have a smaller army with this Static Defense helping it, but without the ability to warp them around that has never been truly viable.

Conclusion

These changes would make Karax’s army far more tanky than it currently is. Karax would still work as a commander with a slow ramp time, few units, but durable units that can do work.

Every single mineral and gas you invest, be it in Static Defenses and Units is going to be valued in ways it currently is not. Mobile Static Defenses will give purpose to those cannons used in breaking rocks, being, literally, your starting units in the game.

Specialized, glass cannon forces such as Mirages and Colossi will have an actual chance to remain in a fight, do work, and not waste your hard earned resources.

Karax will be a commander in which, although there is commitment and hard choices to be made, whatever you put out, be it cannons, zealots, robots or fliers, they will do the work they are supposed to do and they will last and honor your decisions.

5 Likes

Stopped reading after this. Karax expands the fastest of all comanders. Clearly this is another post from someone who can’t play and wants a red button to win with no effort.

Indeed, I agree with everything you’ve said, a nice summary of the problems Karax has.
There are good reasons that so many people have talked about removing the unit tax. Though I don’t think that’s quite enough, since as you’ve said, it’s a number of intertwined problems that reinforce each other.
My suggestion in another thread was to cut 50 gas of all his unit researches. But as you mentioned, the Spear of Adun and static defense researches are also quite expensive and could stand being cheaper across the board also. I think if 50 gas was taken of everything or 50/50 then it would go a long way towards Karax feeling faster.
As well as a few buffs to bolster his strengths. Not sure what would the best way, but whatever would replace the unit cost mastery could certainly be a part of that.

Yes. He definately feels much more playable with it gone.

I was going to say that I would even go as far as to reduce it to 1 minute, but then I saw…

Yes, choosing between tanky buildings and tanky units does seem like a very nice tradeoff.

Oh interesting. Yeah, that would be a cool idea, most notably for abduct which normally is another reason why Zerg is the bane of Karax.

Naturally. For all the reasons you gave.

If we really wanted to go nuts with priorities, we would probably want a priority order of
-Karax probes
-Karax combat units
-Ally combat units
-Karax other
-Ally other

I also think that maybe repair beam should be flat doubled to 10(20 for structures), and the mastery improved from 1%/tick to 1.5%/tick. Currently without building hp mastery cannons can feel very flimsy; you have to be VERY fast with orbital strikes to prevent it from just dying to a bunch lings or zealots. Would it be too strong? Maybe. But I would argue there are some really strong things in co-op. I think it’s worth a shot.

Personally I’ve always been in the “against” camp as far as moving buildings goes. But I also know a widely popular solution and know that I would probably come to it with enough use.

For the shield battery thing, I feel that shield batteries should warp in with 100 energy, improved to 200 energy with the existing energy upgrade at the twilight council.

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Maybe if you kept reading, you would know that I acknowledged orbital striking rocks, and how it has its flaws and many Karax players agree this is NOT the best way to kill rocks.

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That is the kind of thing that only play-testing can confirm, if it is too much or just right. But I wonder if the other mastery, the Energy Regeneration during Chrono Wave, should go through some change after this serious buff to repair beam, since, personally, I would never bother picking it.

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I mean, currently I don’t usually consider the other mastery honestly.

One solution is do like they did with Alarack’s second set and just double the numbers outright, but I think it would maybe be better if they replaced the mastery with something like spear of Adun upgrade cost reduction. Still accomplishes the goal of getting you more energy over the game, but doesn’t tether it to an ability that you kind of want or be timing out.

1 Like

Oh yes! Make it ALL the upgrades in there, including the fire and the stun and I’m in. Funilly enough, for allowing more comps to get all the upgrades, and faster, it technically contributes to more SoA energy, so it still achieves the same goal. I think that is a good idea.

It is also an interesting trade-off.

Beefier army, or more easily accessible map-wide nuking?

1 Like

I wouldn’t say many, at best some on the forum.

It definitely has its pros and cons, as is any mastery set. Admittedly, neither choice in Karax’s set 3 are great options. Certainly I wouldn’t say Chrono is better than SoA Energy by any measure.

Anyway, regardless of that (which is a minor point of debate), Karax’s need for revamp surfaces again and again and again and again. I would be super happy if this topic finally did the trick.

It’s a subjective and stylistic choice. I think ultimately you get a better economy out of chrono than firing at rocks, and the chrono at least makes your spear of Adun upgrades hit faster and lets you save the first chrono wave for units over workers since you’ll be fully saturated by then.

Subjective indeed. That timing on Chrono Wave can be used on units over Probe regardless of mastery choice. Arguable though on better economy:

  • SoA mastery allow faster expansion.
  • Chrono allow faster saturation per Probe count.

Either way the difference is no more than 1min for full saturation. Your OP was a great analysis though. Again, hope it is the straw that breaks the metaphorical camel’s back.

1 Like

I’d be willing to say sentinels could have a 30 second cd on reconstruction and they’d still be balanced. Kerri ultras and dehaka mutas are both incredibly tanky as is. (Ultras have stun charge and life leech, mutas have double health since they’re worth 4 supply and fly). If an ultra/muta dies, it’s going to live long enough to see its revive come off cooldown. Sentinel, on the other hand, has no such beefiness.

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I’ll shamelessly plug in my suggestion of giving them 2 more arms with psi-blades on them, and upping their damage from 8x2 to 8x4 :blush:

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I’ve been helping my friend level various commanders, and up to Karax, I have been successful. I am not really all that good, but if I try hard, I can carry on Brutal.

With Karax, I just can’t. My friend isn’t being lazy and he’s doing his best to help me, but carrying Han and Horner (or others) I can do, but with him playing Karax I phailed.

Karax might be the weakest commander below lvl 15, one of the most frustrating lvling experiences of the game.

Another reason to remove that unit tax for good.

5 Likes

I’m just sad 'cuz I used to main Karax for a long time, watching him slowly crash and burn over the course of the commander reworks and the surprise Amon buffs I’m still mad about that DESTROYED Karax - 55hp marines surviving Orbital Strike is a huge bloody deal, and Stimpack/Extended Thermal Lance make Terran/Toss armies WAY better at deleting Sentinel frontlines. To say nothing of the absurd DPS Zerglings put out now! Sentinels just don’t stand a chance these days.

Honestly really disappointed in Blizz for just pushing all those upgrades in at once without considering what it’d do to commanders that were barely scraping by.

With all that said, FIXING Karax is hard without just obviously overpowering him to Kerrigan levels, and I don’t have the answer to that - my initial two thoughts are that his orbital could just do 100 to everything instead of 50/100 vs armored, and it’d be cool if one of the Energizer upgrades gave 3x damage vs bio. Karax doesn’t have any issues vs terran/protoss air, Reclamation is AMAZING and orbital strike nukes them instead if desired, but he has no real option against mutas/scourge that move too fast and irregularly to orbital well, and are nearly immune to Energizers.

Sentinels being a bit tankier somehow would be nice too - either faster revive cooldown or built in armor.

4 Likes

Corrected, but fundamentally true.

And generally spoken, Zerg-AI can be and sometimes is a hot mess.

4 Likes