I feel like Karax has a lot invested in defensive strategies for the amount of flexibility he has with it. Without the unit cost reduction mastery his offense is severely crippled but because it’s the greater choice you won’t usually pick the structure shield/health mastery. So here’s what I propose, and fair warning, these are not necessarily ideas I would want to see implemented together.
Karax can salvage his defensive structures and pylons instantly for full cost return.
And/or
Karax can “pack up” a pylon with all defensive structures in it and place it somewhere else, completely set up.
And/or
Karax can “suck up” defensive structures already built (but not pylons) and deploy them in any friendly pylon range where there’s vision instantly.
Basically I want to see him be able to move his defenses in a dynamic way.
My last idea is to forgo the extra overlay when you select Solar Lance for easier control and minimap usage. SL could bd broken down to three individual charges with individual cooldowns and energy costs or said things could depend on the charges used. Just a quality of life improvement.
Welcome to the ‘Karax Needs Love Club’, established since his debut. We’ve kept it exactly the same as he was… ah if only master dev-team would visit us again… wipes away sad tear
Your ideas are fine. Many have proposed the same before as well.
Karax lacks a distinctive AA response. Many have identified this and discussed it time and time again.
My personal take is this:
New content is slow to come, including revamps.
As such simplest and least resource intensive change is the most likely we will get soon… if not ever.
And so, giving Shadow Cannon a small AoE provides the least work to maximizing benefit.
Despite Karax’s high unit cost, when macro/micro’d properly (which comes with experience) his army is viable but only with mastery opt-in. This small change gives rise to allowing his army to have an answer to everything relatively easily.
The benefit of this change doesn’t take away the higher skill ceiling from players but also provide a decently efficient solution to less skilled-players.
If you browse around, you’ll see other way more complex ideas like:
Teetering cost between army and static units (ie. one reduce while other increase).
Giving free research and/or upgrades due to high cost.
Teleportation of static in various forms.
Giving Mirage higher damage and/or AoE ability.
Adding entirely new unit like swapping out Carriers to Tempests, etc.
Obviously a ton more but that covers quite a bit of them without full details. They aren’t bad but all takes much higher resources to be implemented.
I tried out mass Immortals recently and it was pretty satisfying. Not to mention faster than mass Carriers. Is mass Immortal the meta for Karax, or do you mix in Energizers or something?
Just make unit cost reduction mastery baseline and give him Kerrigan’s mastery for -60% research and upgrade cost and time.
If you had the money to research shadow cannon, reclamation and along with them all the Solar Forge upgrades and the 3 photon cannon upgrades and still have an army, that would make a combined army/cannon push playstyle much more effective. Your anti-air is cannons built next to the enemy base.
It isn’t meta per se but mass Immortals is definitely a viable build for Karax.
Comparing to the ‘meta’ build, which is a full army composition (ie. Sentinel and Colossi), it definitely is more lackluster in some respect. And always, I mean always use Energizers .
Karax really needs more love toward his combat units. They’re too slow and expensive to make, and have really silly resource requirements. It’s outdated.
Reduce the base costs of his combat units, and then completely change the Mastery from Combat Unit Cost to something else like Research Cost or Combat Unit Build Time.
His defenses are fine as is. He’s the strongest defensive Commander, but one of the weakest offensively.
Yes, he is the strongest in a defensive way, but a lot is riding on that. And it shows how effective or satisfying his defenses are, where virtually nobody picks the structure health and shield mastery. I think they should definitely do something about his units, but also his defenses, so it can be considered as an alternative in more situations.
And personally, so don’t take this as part of the argument, I like Karax as a support/defensive commander, it feels nice to have some relaxing times helping the other player with calldowns and passive buffs. And the defensive lines, of course.
Ranged Building
Just give Probes ranged warper to build pylons and cannons further.
Chrono Surge decreases Cooldowns
So Solar Lance and Purifier Beams can be used more often.
Buff Purifier Beam to DEATH BEAM
It is weak and takes 7 minutes and 30 seconds to recharge…
Double the attack and maybe give Solar Flare.
Work on Mastery Set 1.
30% Health/Shield and Cost of building - for better buidling offence and defence (you can make better Photon with 105 minerals)
60% increase of Unit’s Health/shield/attack and attack speed (Well the description said expensive but POWERFUL purifier machines…)
Work on Mastery Set 2.2 Chrono Overload Energy Regen : +1 – +30
Now this is said… 20 seconds = 30 solar energy.
This mastery needs to be fixed or be replaced with other mastery.
“Virtually nobody”
He’s the strongest defensive commander. If you aren’t taking his Structure Health + Shields Mastery and are not using his offensive units, you’re doing it wrong.
His defenses are fine as they are. They really are. They aren’t great at leap frogging like Tanks are, but if you understand the map and how things work, they can work in almost any map. Emphasis on almost.
The only maps that I can think of where they aren’t that useful is Temple of the Past and Cradle of Death. Temple, because of the Void Thrashers that you need to run after. Cradle because Cradle.
If you make his defenses movable, we’re going to have Zeratul 2.0. Zeratul’s cannons are stupid enough as is.
I don’t know man, most people so far gave me the advice to go with the combat unit cost reduction mastery and build units because it’s better than relying on towers + energizers.
I don’t entirely agree with them. The towers work just fine if you know how to actually use them. Yes, they’re static, but they also are his strongest build type.
It really tedious with tower rush for me.
Sure you have spear of Adun but it is risky… Probes build towers at Zero range and they are extremely fragile. And besides, Swann’s towering is economically flexive due to refund option but Karax isn’t.
Besides, I feel his units are mediocre despite their expensive cost. The description describes them expensive but ppwerful.
They are expesnive but they dont seem worth it.
Karax does need some revamp.
For me KrikkitOne, it is okay to be fairly expensive (for varieties sake) but only if they are Really Worth the Price (which really isn’t)
The main problem i see with Karax, beside his meantime questionable unit tax, is the fact that too few people know, how to utilize him, when they are matched with him as a partner:
Few/None research or build units, while chrono wave is up (I always annouce it a couple seconds (5-10), before i trigger it).
Toss/Terran partner going heavy bio, while matched with Karax.
?(Not clearing spawn/choke points, so i can set up cannons and strike the hell out of any attack wave, while my partner can continue going rampage and clear more areas/destroy more stuff)? (advanced)
Taking on bonus objectives, while i got to defend /contest main, not even having set up cannons and getting blamed, if we loose it.
Just a couple issues, which came to mind, have surely missed some out.
I mean it’s true but going offensive static takes good understanding of map and composition. It isn’t something that can be pulled off effectively (as in a timely manner) by most. And case and point here:
People who goes static tend to lack adequate timing in terms of push-timings. So if you are remotely interested in finishing map early (as oppose to just finishing), then army mastery is always better.
The static mastery provides 0 benefit because if a player is able to timely and I emphasize timely push with offensive towers, then the positioning of static become much more key than HP tanking it with mastery.
Ultimately, it’s still player preference of course. What I take out of the conversation is Karax’s forever needs of love seems forever far away from him.
Do you think the tower mastery would potentially be useful with mobile towers, or it would be just a tool to keep less experienced people on level with offensive tower strats?
Either way, do you think a buff to the mastery (without completely changing it) is warranted?
Structure mastery is already useful and viable, though it needs a competent karax and a good ally to pull off. Raw number changes wouldn’t help the structure mastery to improve, because it’s already good enough.
If your partner doesn’t free space for you every here and there, so u can set up cannons properly, there is not much you can do as a Tower Karax early. Of course again depending on the mission, it’s sometimes easier and sometimes more difficult.
A lot depends on your partner as Tower Karax, at least that is my experience.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course i’m gonna build units and an army on top of cannons later on in the game, but it’s simply not affordable/effective up until mid game, if you have put all your points into structure mastery.
they should buff the reconstruction beam by increasing its speed(through a buff to the mastery) and the number of targets it affects. for example rather than 3(5 after upgrade) they should increase it to 5(10 after the upgrade). it is ineffective as it is, specially when matched with an all mechanical commander like fenix.
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