So, Abathur and his UE are getting a buff? 
Zagara “scourge queen” prestige talent is on top of my list.
- Max supply increased by 50. Zerglings and Scourge spawn one extra unit per egg. Baneling Nests will spawn an additional 4 free Banelings and Scourge Nests will spawn 4 free Scourge.
- Zagara is unavailable
Sounds really fun
Curious. Guess I’ll Prestige 3 Vorazun, Zagara and maybe Karax.
Abathur basically got 3 weird builds. One guarantees units drop 100% of their biomass on death but disables Ultimate evolutions, letting you build a more rampup army and use the +45% biomass perk. The other lets you get unlimited Ultimate evolutions, but they cost 200 biomass each. Then the other just makes swarm hosts better but gives you a tax. Im not 100% sure if they’re upgrades or sidegrades yet but the 100% Biomass recovery one is pretty forgiving and turns him into a ramp up commander basically.
To me this looks like the double biomass mastery was increased from 30 to 45 %, without disabling UE
Anyway, as many players complain that Brutal is too easy (and mutators annoying and not being proper solution), many of the changes look like unnecessary buffs 
No. One you activate the Prestige mechanic, the commander is lowered to level 1 and permanently loses access to all Mastery points until they are back up to level 15. There’s a double confirmation when activating Prestige to make sure players actually want to do this.
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Well perhaps but gameplay wise it’s been a blast. Sure, winning is easier perhaps but the point of “I’ve done all there is to do and the gameplay is repeative” isn’t there as much anymore. It adds a ton of replayability to the mode and seeing people react to eachother + the flood of likely lvl 1 prestiged brutals will probably mean in the first weeks people will be playing it with lvl 1s prestiged commanders the first few weeks. Giving you a new challenge and way to work with your ally as people experiment more. While not only does Amon’s build matter, but your builds interactions with your masteries and also your allies choices. Games feel more dynamic and you can mess around with heroes a lot more now. I think it’ll be great.
But yeah for some reason A lot of Guides recommended faster build masteries with Abathur, but im not really 100% sure why unless you’re super baiting already wanting ults at the 2 minute mark. +45% biomass is a nice change and really works with the prestiege and you can just build 2 research dens anyways. IMO i think i changed my mind about starcraft 2. I don’t care about winning or losing, i just want to be mentally challenged about finding the optimal way to win each time or have a different way to play each time. The PTR is actually really fun, everyone should try it!
Yeah, this seems to be a great update for coop indeed, it’s important to know that this+the prestige will increase the quality of the commander quite a lot.
Looking formward to play Karax, Stetmann and Vorazun.
I am not talking about the prestige, because there is not much about that in the post … but about the general buffs esp. to Aba or Dehaka
And you are trying to find the optimal way? Getting Brutalisk at 2 minute is huge, I don’t think any other way of playing (eg. getting more eco or regular army first) could beat it
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I’m pretty happy with the concept, and gives me more options to play certain play styles. One thing I’d like to suggest for the Dev team is to have some indicator either on the load screen or when the game first loads of what Prestige your ally is playing with. That would help me know early game build order (I switch up depending on if i’m faster or slower than my ally).
Swann - Heavy Weapons Specialist and Payload Director are the ones that standout to me. There are times where I wish the Laser drill did splash, and would make it interesting to deal with enemy waves instead of sniping them. And the payload director looks like more fun micro manage options. Does this also increase the distance the Hercules can pick up units? Like not having to be as close? I think that would be a nice boon on top to make it less clunky.
Karax - I definitely want to play with Solarite Celestial and Templar Apparent. I like to tech his top bar fast, and the cost reduction of units can make early game easier alongside allies.
Stukov - Lord of the Horde is what has my eye, especially with the reduced cost of spawning Infested Marines.
A lot of the rest look good. Only one that I’m not too excited about is Tychus. Each one looks rather clunky.
Perhaps, i play Abathur as a side commander. Unfortunately while i really wanted to enjoy him the commander for some reason. (biomass or queens) lagged heavily on my computer leveling him to the point it was unplayable to get more than 1-3 fps with him.
Thankfully on the new ptr he seems to be less laggy for some reason, but Tychus or Zeratul are usually my main pushing commanders. Sure a 2 minute in brutalisk or speedrun for a main abathur sounds great, but +45% more biomass army sounds great. I really liked the faster nests, but outside of the first roach warren. I feel like Learning all of Abathur’s baits sound great but the commander is too laggy for me to actually play him smoothly even with 8 gb of ram. A lot of the new prestiege options like the No Evolutions but 100% biomass recovery and 125 cap looked neat so i tried em with the 45% biomass one. Didn’t seem any special, but it seemed pretty neat. While just for firing and forget, a lot of the time i just like the vision from basically +50% more toxic nests to cover the map for my personal playstyle to litter em and trap on ramps for a casual playstyle and go lategame on Abathur games while early game maps i just run Tychus or zeratul. I get like 12-14 minute games for the speedable ones on Tych while my Abathur is a side hero, so i just go by personal preference. But i kinda like it that way, seems like masteries are meant to give you that option. More nests or biomass hardly seems like a weak play though for casual play just since you can defend so well with them or set a lot of traps or litter them for vision. And oftentimes just being able to have complete vision of a map or every ramp covered in traps with Juicy 183 biomass drops waiting seemed really nice. I can outspeed most people on my tych but i admit my Abathur is a bit slow, i think my Tychs are like 12-14 minutes clears for like a lock and load or Void shard/thrasher map while my Abathurs are like 17-22 minutes. Mine are a bit slow but i figure im playing him for lategame power and traps when i pick my Abathurs haha.
Maybe it’s not speed optimal but 50% more nests hardly feels like the weakest choice you could make. (I still really want to like Tychus outlaw availablity, but the problem is you still only have like 4 good outlaws and money and upgrades are the limiting constraint, not time.). His +15% attack speed on only half his units, while good, aren’t the most gamebreaking masteries, and oftentimes i get away with skipping the 15% hp one entirely. (By endgame you’re spending 150 minerals on just giving rattlesnake like 19% more hp after armor upgrades anyways). I think i kinda like it where there’s two really strong choices for a commander, and two sites can fight over which is the best for both with both being solid brutal picks while another mastery might just be a dead pick or bleh on both sides… Like say +15% attack speed vs outlaw availability without the economy to support faster outlaws. The 1000 + 1800 + 1200 = 4000 minerals + gas each you need to ult gear a outlaw are the limiting constraint to Outlaw availability, not time. You can go wide but really Rattlesnake + Sam/sirius + Sirius/Sam are all you really need. Those ones i can’t figure out since, while i loved the gameplay of quicker outlaws… they were right, even if you got them quicker it was still stronger to just go without the boost, get your outlaws, and have strong and tall gear on a powerful few on each than wide. I like when there are good choices for both on each though.
I tried em both and the playstyle and way i hurl Abathur at the wall. (Lategame / spawncamp trap setter), i like having 50% more toxic nests to spawncamp hybrid spawns and stairs with. While getting 50% faster researches and faster building toxic nests feels really good too. Most of the time i used it though i’d find the enemy comp i tried to bait was Terran bunker + siege tank. Plus the 1-2 fps lag i get playing him makes it too unreliable to even try doing basic operations with him other than “target the spot where your screen froze 30 seconds ago” on 8 gb of ram so idk. Setting up giant traps just works better for me for what im gonna throw him at the wall for. While tychus or Zeratul cover the other bases and i can heal the Abathur mains to keep them 100% hp to avoid them lagging me and keep their max army rofl and maybe help bait into theirs or nuke a enemy base and watch them get ults by the bucketfull lol.
Faster nests really did seem pretty handy, but is the faster roach den really that big for abathur? I always figured the endgame army or extra biomass or more spawncamps from More nests seemed to help me more. At the very least i didn’t feel gimped at all with them or disadvantaged. Sure maybe there’s more than you can figure out what to do with, but just from a casual brutal completion playstyle, having 100% map vision and random 185 biomass drops all over the map and on ramps hardly felt weak at all…
While im pretty sure you could forget to put points into Tychus’s 15% tri outlaw improvement and not notice the missing 10-30 dps in the 2.2 a second of combat it feels like most fights end in.
At some point i stopped just trying to use Sam for removal and legit just went Vega for instant carrier/ Battlecruiser /ultralisk removal with a gravity grenade + confusion wave as the 4th/5th outlaw and it doesn’t seem that bad. You pull the units together, they get stunned and dazed and then attack eachother while the mced units are fun and the kills aren’t bad. I know the TL guide i went to recomended like a Nikara Vega nux build, but hey you kill units so fast that vega helps as a instant unit removal + wave clear with a free unit while i was just applying c4s watching them die clipped in 2 seconds i was wondering why i bothered. Now i just pick Vega when the good units show up, get instant unit removal and still end up like 50-80% of the kills in a pug, im happy, they’re happy. And it’s fun lol. I think that’s what i’m after, at some point, you already hit 90, you got all the mastery, now you just play for fun and MC hits my itch and having multiple ways to play a commander is something i’ve wanted for years lol. So happy for this update.
thats already a thing. just as you see enemy composition and mutators, you get additional icons if you or your teammate does use any prestige which also have the same tooltip as in the mastery/prestige window in the main menu
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For those paranoid about getting Zagara killed, and cringing when it happens too often, this’ll be right up their ally!
Also pleased to see buff to Abberations and Corruptors, but don’t know if that’ll be enough.
My mains are and remain Swann, Karax, and Stukov, so I’ll prioritize them first.
Wait, so if you do confirm to do this, can you at least go back to “stock commander” that is fully leveled up? Or do you need to fully go through the leveling up for that prestige to switch back?
Go through the entire relevel!
Or at the very least I haven’t seen a way to reverse it.
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I have a question, when will this be officially released?
I’m guess it could at least be a month, seeing there are lot of things to straighten out.
When you choose your Prestige, you actually have four (4) choices, the “base” commander, and then the three alternate choices. “Base” is set as default until you specifically choose to start leveling Prestige. You can change back and forth between games at will.
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It’s unfortunate that you can’t pick the one you want first, you have to do them in order going down the list.
Really? That sucks. 
You can change between them once a 1-15 relevel is complete. But can you change them at will during the 1-15 relevel?
EDIT: Just tried it. You can’t change back to the normal commander mid relevel. Once you start, you have to finish it if you want your mastery points back.
Agreed. I dropped a post in the PTR Feedback forum pointing out how it would be better to choose the one(s) that you want.