Redesigning Stetmann's Prestiges

Co-op Missions Discussion
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Stetmann is one of my favourite commanders, but I’m not very into the designs of his Prestiges. Signal Savant is generally accepted to not be very good, Best Buddy gives Gary immense brute power for negligible disadvantage, and Oil Baron is just strange and narrow (Mecha Ultralisk focused).

I thought I’d play at a redesign for all three, and see what other ideas people have. First, some baseline changes:

• Deploy Stetellite Cooldown -5 sec mastery replaced with Stetzone Radius +50%.
• JUICE Overload now additionally increases cooldown rates by 15% over 45 sec.
• JUICE Overload restores 60 Egonergy/Energy immediately, instead of over 45 sec.

Design: The mastery change has been asked for quite a lot: right now, the ‘make Stetellites easier’ mastery increases APM demand, and Radius is much nicer for pushing into bases. This feature of Signal Savant does feel good, but it still belongs on mastery, instead of the honestly unnecessary number of Stetellites you can field with Deploy Stetellite Cooldown.

The JUICE Overload changes have two purposes. The cooldown rate reduction allows it to help Super Gary and support allies, and the immediate Egonergy/Energy restoration can be used with just one or two casters to boost your tempo. e.g. a Stetellite gives 1 charge/sec normally, so if it only has one Infestor and Super Gary to target, that Infestor will be able to cast as often as 3 or 4.

P1 Redesign: Signal Savant
Advantage: Stetellites deploy almost instantly, are invulnerable once online for more than 3 sec, and overloaded Stetellites grant bonuses three times faster.
Disadvantage: Gary cannot use E-Gorb, does half damage and has 40% less health.

Design: The idea here is to refocus Gary as a support hero. Stetellites will be a lot easier to deploy and keep up, ensuring you can easily fight within Stetzones at all times, especially with the the Stetzone Radius mastery. Granting out Overload bonuses faster (3/sec rather than 1/sec) should actually be a significant advantage, as you can quickly shield a large army with just a single Overload, or cycle from HUGS to FAST and get both bonuses on a mid-sized force.

P2 Redesign: Best Buddy
Advantage: Gary is available at 3:00. Gary always gains the benefit of being in a Stetzone and gains double benefit from Stetellite Overcharge.
Disadvantage: Stetellite Overcharge and Semi-Stable Mass Transportation now only affect Gary.

Design: This Prestige is designed with some mutators in mind, especially Void Rifts. Opposite to Signal Savant, Best Buddy moves Gary further away from support roles. In return, his earlier spawn helps shore up weaknesses in Stetmann’s ultra-early game, and he can zip across the map easily with a personal FAST bonus. Since JUICE Overload now increases cooldown rates, regular use of all the Overcharges on himself will add up to a significant benefit. Constant double HUGS Overload on just one unit is also actually insane.

P3 Redesign: Oil Baron
Advantage: When a mecha combat unit is destroyed, it drops Oil Barrels which can be collected by another mecha combat unit. Each Oil Barrel collected increases the effectiveness of Egonergy-spending abilities and upgrades.
Disadvantage: Combat units cost 40% more minerals. Gary no longer gets the Best Oil.

Detail: This one is a little complex and subtle.

Each mecha combat unit will drop 2 Oil Barrels per supply, plus any additional they had collected. Each collected Oil Barrel gives +10%/Supply effectiveness to Egonergy abilities, i.e., +20% for a Zergling, +1.25% for a Battlecarrier Lord. The maximum bonus is +200% (10 Oil Barrels for a Zergling, 160 for a Battlecarrier Lord). The benefit applies to every ability that uses Egonergy, and every upgrade affecting Egonergy.

The most powerful things I imagine you can do with Oil Baron:
• Mecha Banelings get the most benefit, as they’ll pick up each others’ Oil Barrels as they die, and gain more damage and shielding per point of Egonergy. The rest of your forces can then pick up the Oil Barrels left behind.
• Your armies generally ‘die hard’ – Zerglings reduce the maximum damage they take and hit faster, Ultralisks hit harder, absorb more life and stun longer, etc.
• An early pack of Zerglings can be allowed to die in the mid-game, and their Oil Barrels picked up to help ‘evolve’ some higher tech units.
• Stacking Oil Barrels on some units can lead to hilarious results. The effect would buff the range upgrades for Hydralisks and Lurkers, and UMI-C Charging Protocol on a maxed-out Infestor would gives +75% cooldown rates.

Design: Mostly I want a Prestige to benefit Mecha Banelings, but I did like that the existing Oil Baron introduces new brokenness (i.e. oiled-up Ultralisks). Stacking Oil Barrels on a single unit would be a biomass kind of mechanic that could have interesting playstyles. You wouldn’t ever get a whole army all oiled-up, but an oiled-up Infestor boosting Super Gary would be possible, or a small pack of artillery range Hydralisks, or a few Lurkers that can tunnel right through a base.

2 Likes
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Hmm where were people saying P1 is bad? I felt like Stetmann’s prestiges have generally been well received.

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Hey. Haven’t actually read a lot of Stetmann Prestige discussion on the forum, but on the Discord it’s seemed to be a consensus.

The basic calculation is: less E-Gorbs for wave clear, less Stetellite Overcharges for army strength, less teleporting, less ability to drop Stetellites wherever you want on the map (Garyzone) for … more ability to drop Stetellites wherever you want on the map. As someone put it: Signal Savant tries to solve a problem introduced by taking Signal Savant.

What do you think of the current Signal Savant, have you been finding it effective, and how come? And – very relevant – do you spam Super Gary’s abilities normally?

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In the case of P1, I’ve found it fine, but changing it and switch the 50% radious to mastery set would indeed be cool, structure morph beats stetlite cooldown as rushing Super Gary already reduces stetlite cooldown.

P3 Best oil I havent tried myself yet, but P2 is completelly fine as it is.

Also, I’m worried about the Juice overcharge completelly making infestor charge obsolete, I’d rather buff infestor further.

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So you mean I can no longer Stetellities-push with Overload, right?

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I dont like any of your propositions at all. I think he is fine as is, including -5sec mastery.

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I like it. You can get sight on places you normally can’t which is nice, especially for certain partners. I also find stetellites constantly getting hit and turning on and off pretty annoying. Sight is one of the strongest mechanics in the game, especially in Brutal+. I haven’t really played with Mastery much, but I’d say it’s safe you can go Structure Morph Rate over Deploy Stetellite Cooldown and get a fast Lair or Hive which also reduces the cooldown on stetellites, while also unlocking Lair or Hive tech units faster.

If ability spam is more your thing it seems better suited for P2.

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Hm. P2 is strong, but seems too much so. P2 Super Gary can erase endgame attack waves while barely getting scratched, over and over, and there’s essentially no disadvantage for it.

I actually don’t understand what you mean! Could you explain? Not sure if I’m missing some mechanic. What I’m describing should’ve been a straight benefit: Stetellites become active instantly (instead of over 3 sec), but 3 sec later they also become invulnerable (like current Signal Savant).

Aww, that’s a shame. Not even the new Oil Baron (P3) focused on improving Banelings? Took a lot of thought to figure out a mechanic that’d help make Mecha Banelings a better/more core unit, without becoming identical to Zagara, and that it fit into the ‘oil baron’ idea was a really happy accident.

Destroyed Stetellites continue to give vision, of course – I forgot that a few days back but it’s true. Getting vision of places seems like a wash at best to me, since you lose the ability to use Garyzone and have Gary zip ahead and let you deploy Stetellites deep on the map. The current Signal Savant does offer some advantages, but it seems harsh to me that you’re losing out on Garyzone (which gives similar advantages), teleport, Overcharge and E-Gorb charges. That’s a lot, in a lot of different areas.

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I thought you mean “Stettilties are invulnerable once online for more than 3 sec only”. Because normally a Stett player will just push with Super Gary no matter what.

Just drop a Stettitie and immediately overload it, with it, you can just push whenever and wherever you want.

Hence the reason some players prefer p2 or else better.

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There are quite a few prestige (when played correctly) is just a straight up buff without any disadvantage. And I think that’s true of P2, which is perfectly fine in design.

I think while prestige should have a punishment side, it should serve two purpose:

  1. Alter gameplay by bringing a more niche build to mainstream territory.
  2. Improve player’s skill in terms of how the commander is designed.

I think both P1 and P2 does this perfectly fine.

P1 - The increased Stetelite radius reduced APM spent maintaining and spreading its zone effects, altering the player’s gameplay. Clearly catering to more chill-style to allow players to focus and learn how Stetmann’s unit roster and Gary’s functions. As for its punishment, Super Gary micro and aggressiveness is key to a pro Stetmann player’s arsenal. Given that the player is requiring “less apm” to even spread Stetelites, removing the need to further micro Super Gary by removing it entirely makes absolute sense.

P2 - The clear intention here is to encourage engagement within the zone effects. The exact opposite of P1, where focus is much more on Super Gary and his uberness whilst in the zone. Again, pushes the player to learn and stay in the Stetelite’s range in order to avoid its punishment, which is a good way to help them in becoming a pro Stetmann player.

Unfortunately I cannot comment on P3, as I didn’t test this during PTR and have yet to reach it on live version. I did hear it crashed with BCL during PTR testing, which so far nobody can confirm or deny its occurrence on live version.

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But I find his lings/bane combo already pretty strong? A bit expensive, but you do get something back for free through recycling.

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Stetmann is one of my most played commanders and I like P1 and P2 are they currently are. The Stetetllite radius mastery is a good suggestion though.

I like your P3 idea a lot. It plays better into the recycling theme and is applicable in more games since you’ll usually have a lot of tier 1 or tier 2 units die. The current version really only affects the Ultralisk and BCL, and the BCL already has inherent problems of its own like the prohibitive gas cost. I think Infestors would still have to be disabled for this suggested prestige because of the potential Oil Barrel abuse from sending hundreds of roaches+ravagers to die.

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Oops. It started out as a slightly different version which was explicit that it was only the bought combat units it applied to, but that got lost somewhere in there! You’re right, it’s not supposed to generate a crazy amount of Oil from free unit spam. Not sure if Infestors need disabling entirely or just a wording tweak, but maybe the wording would become a bit weird then! Thanks for the catch.

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I dunno I’m just not seeing Gary-zone being anything special, except for P2. I can’t think of anytime I need to put Stetellites any further out than what I already can with P1. Plus it’s only 1 extra charge of the 3 abilities. To me the speed hacks that Stetmann already has kind of devalues his teleport, so I don’t see the need for more than 1 teleport within 3 minutes. E-Gorb has a 30s cooldown and Overcharge has a 45s cooldown, they really aren’t that bad and are even lower if you use the Mastery.

Stetmann is already a very strong unique and versatile Commander which is why I don’t think he needs any amazing prestiges, and also why Best Oil is probably getting nerfed :stuck_out_tongue:

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It’s interesting how differently players approach Stetmann. I did think, of the current Signal Savant, that it might appeal quite well to some players. Hope you don’t mind, but I think it’s largely players who don’t get the most out of Super Gary. (It’s cool if you’ve just never felt the need.)

In principle I’m cool with some Prestiges being for specific playstyles, maybe lowering the skill floor in some cases (Raynor P1) or de-emphasising certain features that players often don’t like (Nova P2). For Stetmann, sadly, I’ve got a commander I love who has zero Prestiges I like, though. I’m hoping at least one will change in a direction I like – if Signal Savant is just destined to not be for me, that’s okay though.

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I think Stetmann is mostly fine. The only addition for P1 I thought he would need is an inherent 25% boost in Stetzone bonuses to offset the lack of Super Gary. With Mastery in Stetzone bonuses, the combined total goes up to 200%, or double Stetzone bonuses for Stetmann and his ally.

P2 is perfect as it is.

P3, I just think Best Oil should grant stacking energy regen in addition to the attack speed and life regen bonuses. That’s basically all that is missing from it.

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The only thing that makes p1 lackluster than the other two is its benefit already exists with no prestige selected. I won’t say the same while I’m leveling though.