[Suggestion] Improve Swann P2 (Grease Monkey)

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

P2 Swann feels so weak compared to P1 Karax when it comes to defense, but even without comparing the 2, Swann P2 is… disappointing.

  • The Prestige Grease Monkey says that it doubles the effectiveness of turret upgrades. It doesn’t do it to all of them. Attack speed is affected. Armour is affected. Range is affected but does not affect the Perdition turret. Healing rate and max HP restored by the automated repair drones is completely excluded and receives no bonuses.
  • Swann has a bonus to turrets when he reaches level 3. Missile Turrets get +125HP. Devastation turrets get +3 to range. Perdition turrets get a 50% discount. None of these increase in effectiveness by any amount.
  • None of Swann’s turrets except the Missile Turret has detection. Science Vessels have detection too but… can’t repair buildings… so having it there makes it cannon fodder for anti air. Even when not fighting an air comp, you would need a Missile turret which won’t shoot just to see. Feelsbad when playing a turret-heavy comp. Since you can only have so many turrets firing at 1 target due to space limitations, wasting 4 spaces ain’t great.

Now compare this to P1 Karax:

  • Around 6 structures can be repaired to full HP way more rapidly, allied structures included, automatically, and at 0 cost. Painless.
  • Shield Batteries can restore shields mid-repair, giving cannons tons of survivability. They can also apply what amounts to an Immortal shield to any structure on autocast
    (THIS CAN ALSO AFFECT DEBRIS ON DEAD OF NIGHT <— this is awesome btw)
  • Karax can have Energizers near his defenses, eliminating the need for a Pylon to take up additional space, and offering a portable power field that can’t be disabled by say, a Hybrid Reaver or a Dead of Night Spotter. Energizers can also massively increase the rate of fire of any building (OR UNIT) near itself.
  • Chrono Boost and its Karax counterpart can also affect structures, making them attack even faster, which makes Khaydarin Monoliths deal absurd amounts of damage very quickly, in addition to massing a gigantic economy and a quickly replenishing army.

Now let’s look at units:
Karax has carriers. Swann has nothing that can compare to carriers.

The only thing Swann excels at is giving you way too much vespene, lots of my allies don’t even bother using that vespene and float more than 1k (sometimes 2k) of it. Not to say it’s not useful at certain times, but mostly it’s a letdown.

Also… P1 Karax’ only disadvantage is that repair beam can no longer target mechanical units. Thas it.
Swann’s disadvantage is a gigantic increase in unit costs, almost forcing Swann into a defense position whether he likes it or not. With Karax’ instant defense buildings, P2 Swann doesn’t hold up in Random Missions because some maps will just not be friendly to his Prestige. Cradle of Death is a prime example, pure pushing power is required. P1 Karax doesn’t do much better, but can outperform Swann always, and offers more benefits than Swann ever could…

P2 Swann is a troll pick in random missions, the disadvantage is too much for the limited (and vague) advantage that he gets, and his defense is not stronger than Karax’ which is what bothers me. P1 Karax stays flexible, P2 Swann literally can’t afford an army.

Let’s not forget that the strongest part of Swann’s defense comes from his Siege Tanks. Those tanks will now cost way more than they usually do, all so that turrets can get +2 extra armour, +1 extra range, and a bonus to attack speed which Karax also has. It’s too weak, and puts Swann in a very awkward position too often, locking Swann down to only a few select missions where he can be considered even remotely powerful.

And… let’s not talk about how annoying Perdition turrets are to repair in Dead of Night… Whenever they come out of the ground, any SCV currently fixing it will run for its life because it auto-repositions whatever’s above it, for some reason SCVs always stand on top of it. Perdition turrets are also INFRONT of your other turrets, since it has no bonus to range, meaning if your SCVs are fixing it mid-combat, they’ll be forced into the enemy infested due to space issues…

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2

We sure about Flaming Betties not getting the full, double range after that ability upgrade from the Ebay? I recall only the auto-repair the only thing that got left out of P2’s (+).

My suggestion to buff P2 would be to to just that… let them get repair rate doubled, to 100% hp. Otherwise, his towers are powerful and can hold their own.

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How I would improve Swann P2.

-Allow SCVs to “drop” a Turret (ie instant build) anywhere visible on the map (ie range 500 for building)…to allow offensive turreting

-increase the bonuses to +300% (including hp/sec of fire suppression so 15->60…but still limited to 50% of max)

-Disable Vespene Drones, +100% unit gas cost (from +50%)
-Turrets take supply
-Salvage costs gas

4

P2 Swann is amazingly powerful at what it does but it is a specialist prestige and not appropriate for random Brutal+'s.

This is okay.

On the other hand, Swanns P1 and P3 are incredibly powerful in different ways and neither gives up on his amazing defensive game (like Karax P2 does) or sacrifices his economy (like Karax P3 does).

I’ve been playing a lot of Swann P3 lately. His tanks are absolutely monsters defensively and offensively when deployed from a herc. Throw in fast Warp and SVs fast warping and you have a winning combination.

5

Swann P2 has several design problems.

First off, should a prestige be designed in such a way that its truly useful only in Brutal+ Mutations?
Not to mention its crucially useful in only a handful of such Mutations…
Personally i think every prestige should have a clear and valid use in most if not every Brutal maps (no mutators) - and if it fails to meet that basic criteria it should be reworked.
Swanns P2 miserably fails to have any crucial benefit in regular Brutal, even in the most optimal conditions its just not needed compared to p0/p1/p3 - often p2 is actually inferior even on defense.

Second design issue is that turrets in general are not all that great in SC2 Coop because building collision size prevents stacking (meaning low dps density per space) - not to mention that turrets can not move to assault bases.
This is not easily solvable without turning turrets into regular movable units, or giving them some kind of a “chaining” shot so that towers in the far back can shoot at enemies that are in the front.

Third… swanns best “turret” is the Siege Tank + Maelstrom rounds.
Why would you ever take P2 that makes your best “turret” more expensive while providing pathetic bonuses to your inferior disposable (actual) turrets?
Aside from the few weird mutators the p0 is actually superior to P2 for defensive maps.
This holds true even vs Air amon since missile turrets can not be stacked in sufficient density to counter massive air armies (which have no collision hence can all shoot) meaning you have to again rely on factory units.

Swann P2 should be imho scrapped and turned into something more consistently useful, since his turrets are already great.
Perhaps new P2 should disable the drill auto-attack but make factory/starport units notably cheaper and faster to produce - something like a “swarmy” swann style, mobile and aggressive.
Or go FULL out and make swann p2 like Karax p1, where his turrets are turned into absolute gods but you are limited to 100 population… though its not that great imho.

2 Likes
6

Why should it be reworked? You ask a valid question about prestige design and then give your opinion on it but then don’t really provide any evidence to support your opinion.

Brutal+1-6 and weekly mutations are the “end game” of coop and P2 Swann is sometimes fantastic at beating difficult or annoying missions at end game. This week’s mutation was a great example with Barrier and Overwhelming Power on Dead of Night where Swann P2 provides an easy option to hold the defense solo while your ally goes an offensive commander to clear buildings (I recommend Mengsk P1).

I’ve been playing a lot more B+4-6 lately and Swann P2 is a common pick against some nasty combinations for the amazing defense while giving your ally a great gas boost to give their offense a kick start (something Karax doesn’t do as well).

The range and attack speed boost provides a pretty massive benefit. If you go vespene Drone Mastery you still have enough gas to build an offensive force (even a single Herc with tanks can help push very well).

Even under your own arbitrary criteria I think you’re on shaky ground. So many maps have defensive aspects and all maps have attack waves spawning that can be camped very well by Swanns P2 turrets which don’t take up supply.

1 Like
7

No one is forcing you to use P2 for every mission. It’s there for an alternative playstyle that’s better in some cases and worse in others. It’s not meant to be a balanced, “do-everything” prestige, rather it leans more heavily into static-d.

I’d argue that Swann is better for this week’s brutation than Karax due to Flaming Betty aoe.

How can two early Flaming Betty be the same effectiveness of one?!
How can a Blaster Billy that outranges almost every Amon unit be no more effective?!

Here’s some stats

P2 Blaster Billy - 480hp, 4 armour, 11 range, 50dps vs armoured
P1 Monolith - 320+160, 3s+1hp armour, 15 range, 41.67dps + energizer = 52.09dps
Really close for the same purpose, though the range of monos is awesome. But then consider that you get about 3 blaster billy for the price of one monolith!

Now apply the same comparisons to the other towers and see how well Karax fares against lings, broodlings, zealots, etc.

Try floating factories and using the drill if you felt forced to use Swann P2 on a regular brutal CoD. The drill has constant dps and two abilities.

Of course, since on average his other prestiges are a much better choice. But the same applies to many other commander prestiges - Karax P1, Aba P3, Stukov P2, Kerri P1, Stetmann P1, Nova P2, etc, etc.

Edit: My ally played Swann P2 on this week’s brutation and only lost a few flaming betty when the stank ran into them. He cleared buildings using factories for spotting and his other top bar abilities.

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They can be fast built with multiple SCVs (can’t do that with Tanks). When you’re done, Salvage them for full refund. They cost no gas, nor supply. B/c they cost no gas, you’ll have enough for units again.

They do their job. Early base defense (esp. Rifts To Korhal where 1st wave shows up at 2m41), while being a supply dump for late game (great for camping spawn points).

9

So, as others have said, P2 Swann should not be the default pick for regular missions. However, the same can be said about P1 Karax. While it’s easy to lump the two defensive CO’s prestiges together, they both accomplish very different things. Mutations and maps that favor a massive defensive choke point, will favor Karax. However, mutations that favor multiple fire bases in multiple locations will favor Swann.

Now, that being said, I do feel that P2 Swann is his weakest prestige. The fact that Fire Suppression doesn’t change, delays your army some, and has no benefit until you build a factory, an engineering bay, and THEN also get some researches out is… Painful. But I still prefer a P2 Swann when a map has constant streams of enemies attacking multiple parts of the map where the more economic smaller firebases far outweigh the massive investment Karax has to do for each firebase.

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10

This so much this. A single Flaming Betty with P2 upgrades can destroy almost unlimited amounts of Zerglings, Infested and Broodlings without ever going down. Karax doesn’t have anything on this at the low end.

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I think Swann P2 is like Abathur P3, a prestige to have fun doing things in an unusual way, not competing at high difficulty levels.
So I hope suggestions based on Brutal difficulty, mutators or maybe even Players Versus Players logic, will be mostly ignored.

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I heard that Swann’s P2 is the preferred choice for speedrunners and soloers. It’s pretty ironic, but if one thinks about it, it becomes quite obvious as to why - everything is done with just floating Factories + Drill + calldowns + turrets to spawncamp, and usually not a single combat unit is being built. Without any units, P2 is basically just a slightly better P0.

So, in short, it’s not because P2 is so good, but because it’s not really any different from the baseline.