Hi there, I’ve reached level 1000 with all co-op commanders and have problems about some specific situation.
For the co-op experience, here are my suggestions.
1: Abathur, Biomass bank. I’ve always pay most instruction on collecting them, it’s kind a mess. The biomass should be collected by any Abathur units, and store in the biomass bank. After that, player can decide which units should be upgrade then click the specific icon to. This is important to improve the ingame experience.
2: Artanis switches tempest with carrier from Karax.
Artanis needs the repair ability for his own mech units. Karax can easily clean small units by top bar abilities but short in cleaning structures, huge HP units etc. Tempest + energizer will be helpful.
Also, this change fits the campaign setting, carrier belongs to Daelaam and tempest belongs to purifiers.
3: Raynor should put dual mules back, or directly build the orbital command without upgrading, to shorten the expansion pipeline.
Also, infantry weapon/armor upgrade LV2/3 should need not any Armory to early fast upgrade.
Hope this suggestions help some non-meta commanders can compete with strong commanders, a little.(except Abathur, is quite strong already but annoying)
Definitely agree with the Raynor upgrade reqs. I’m generally in favor of simplifying tech trees. Raynor in particular needs the space, and requiring him to make potentially extraneous buildings is annoying.
I’d also add that Kerrigan’s econ is weak. She has swarmy units, but no way to generate the income to support it. She needs double drones, a mule-like ability, automated gas, something to boost income.
Her economy is fine especially with Assimilation Aura (although granted most players don’t really know about it).
Her gas costs are mitigated by her gas mastery.
If you are going for Ultralisk + Hydra + Zerglings I guarantee you will have more than enough resources to rebuild them.
If you lack the larvaes make more hatcheries or Queens (For me I go for more hatcheries).
Kerrigan’s Army (well except for mutalisks) aren’t the problem.
If I have to nitpick about her “army unit”, Mutalisks are too fragile even for high return and return.
I wish Mutalisks can regenerate “while moving” rather than regenerate out of combat.
This will reinforce them to be more fitting as “hit and runners” and give them some remedy against Anti air spells such as “Irradation”.
It really depends how you use the Aura. You need to use them at the right crowd at the right time.
But I do agree that they are almost useless in some maps like Dead of Night and Miner Evacuation (Where most infested hardly give minerals as they don’t take up supplies).
If you can use the Aura against crowed areas with Immobilization aura, you will find them a great boon.
Would be nice if UE can collect Biomass then distribute them amongst lesser zergs. But then again, you can always make use of Nydus worms or spread creeps with Toxic nest or Creep tumours.
I’d rather prefer improved tempests.
Tempests have short air to air range (from 6 to 10 or 14)
I wish Disintegration can stack.
This will make Raynor insanely overpowered. Dual mules will collect minerals at even more insane speed. And without orbital command limiting the build, Raynor will have edge at earlier stages which is too OP.
Giving a bank removes micro required for an already A-move invulnerable army (literally the strongest to date, when biomass’d up). The proposal further allows any unit to collect to said bank, again allowing instant UE transformation or any low-HP unit to become relatively indestructible to their current engagement.
What this shows is a lack of understanding of Abathur’s core mechanic. Yes, the proposal will undoubtedly make it very easy to Abathur by far, power creeping the most powerful commander even further.
While Artanis indeed lack healing, this is clearly by design. His ultimate unique feature is his Guardian Shell, providing support to his army and his allies.
Giving Karax tempests provide 0 advantage to Karax at all. This suggestion is an old proposal seen many times before. Meanwhile, a fast repair from carriers combined with Guardian Shell gives a “fast warp-in” commander another form of invulnerability. I am seeing a theme here.
Raynor’s dual mule was removed for a very specific reason. The boosted economy by far out performs any other commander. Even with his current 1 mule per cast, his economy and power growth rivals many (just as LilA). This proposal again wants to not only revert this clear design nerf, but further boosts it with a CC remove into OC.
I don’t mean to be skeptical but honestly these proposals are just ideas born from a true lack of understanding of each commander’s potential. The fact it is opened with:
is already so telling how the opposite is true. Not even many of the known pro players has ever even boasted this statement on the forum.
Assimilation Aura is garbage. It gives like 1k resources over an entire game. That’s 7 hydras. All I’m saying is that Kerrigan is there one commander that I’m not sitting on 4K+ resources by the end of a game because I’m constantly spending down and waiting on income to maintain an army.
Take a very simple yet fairly representative example:
Void Thrashing, wave 1 with let’s say Zerglings.
There are at least 20 of these little buggers, and at least 6+ Roaches and 6+ Hydralisks with more lings defending the first Thrasher.
Assimilation Aura is available at 4min upon Kerrigan spawn, with a cooldown of 120sec (2min)
In a standard let’s say 15min game, this will be at least 6 uses.
*Let’s jump back to the example, 30 Lings x 5 + 6 Roaches x 10/5 + 6 Hydras x 10/5 = 270/60.
Note, this is vastly under-estimating already since I don’t have the exact Roach/Hydra/Ling kill return from aura, so I went for low estimation.
This can be repeated with a well placed wave + base + Immobilization wave.
Easily yielding 500+ resources per Immo-wave ( x3 times per game at least if you’re doing it remotely right, for longer games).
And a boost of 300 resources at 4min of game seems pretty good already, but that’s just me I guess.
Did a couple tests, pretty sure Roaches are worth 10/5 and Hydras are 20/10 (or something like that), basically you’re getting a lot out of it.
Although the point wasn’t, “you can rely on Assimilation Aura to support your economy”, it is that “it’s a very nice boost, if you know how to maximize its use”.
I dunno, I think they could be pretty good. Even a couple can give Karax (apparently?) much needed anti armored air without the need for a ton of air weapons upgrades. Karax also has solar and orbital to cover swarms of units, including air.
They will probably need stat tweaks, but I like them from a design standpoint much more than carriers.
Precisely right. Not every commander needs a heal mechanic. Is it nice? Absolutely. Is it boring, also absolutely.
The swap of Tempest to Carrier between Artanis and Karax provides literally nothing for either commander. And honestly, if visually (and lore) is the only reason for it, then it is a weak support at best. Karax’s lack of AA is at least mitigated by the interceptors of carriers, switching to Tempest would replace him with another “super high cost, 1-2 short to death again many (vipers abduct/para, scourge, yamato, seeker, etc.) clunky unit” that would take just as long to make and die easily.
On the other hand, providing carriers with repair does give Artanis a… let’s call it… unnecessary heal, except when you consider the context. Which Artanis player would go full Gate/Robo as well as make Stargate units, let alone Fleet Beacon with Robo and Gate?? If Artanis has carriers, people would go for mass carriers, making it just another standalone outlier unit that provided nothing but healing itself - no decent player would make reavers, immortals, or even goon support to help carriers…
Like I said initially, this particular idea isn’t new at all. When you really dive in and discuss their uses, this change is actually quite ineffective. And if actually done, it would bring an onslaught of “this unit should be swapped to that unit for all commanders”.
I wouldn’t even play Abathur anymore if his design was changed in the way you suggest. It’s part of the fun in a weird way. He’d be so brain dead otherwise, especially when I exclusively play him for ravagers just because they’re such a fun unit.
There would be no reason at all to nurture your first brutalisk (you barely have to as it is) this way, when you can just bank biomass and click to spawn a new one. There’s also the motivation to get a few mutalisks out at an opportune moment so I can go gobble up that blob of 87 biomass on the ground before I accidentally collect it with my murderball when I’m not really thinking about it. It’s just part of the play.
I strongly disagree with point 3 for Raynor. I am glad they reworked him years ago. The suggestions in the OP sounds like it would have him to be reconfigured back to a Sim City commander with no “V” hotkey buildings and a nonstop downpour of MULEs on the mineral line followed by an inflexible hailstorm of marines and medics from the sky to be used like zerglings.
Raynor is one of my favorite commanders but back in the day people got rather annoyed if I made factory or star port units to branch out or deviate from that playstyle. No thanks.