I’m curious how good it would be if the prestige also allowed the laser to attack units and structures from out of sight. It wouldn’t provide vision, but would just do damage.
The vision isn’t even a problem, you can use Hercs, float Factories or any number of other things to give it vision.
The problem is that the AOE is so small it hardly matters except vs things like clumped up Mutalisks.
That same tactic of floating something over for vision, works WAY better when you can just nuke the whole area instead of slowly killing it with single target damage.
The AoE is just too small, and since the drill needs to be upgraded to level 3 for it to do worthwhile damage in the first place it means you’re spending 500/400 without the mastery JUST to get it to the point where it deals decent damage and now with no abilities.
Again I can see it being better, even fun to mess around with IF it has the mastery, but it still won’t be anywhere near as good as just normal Swann. IMO the AOE radius on it needs to be doubled on it at least to make it the prestige worth it.
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The radius is not the problem but the amount of splash damage and the aim time need to be addressed, one or the other.
In DON and Miner, it still fails miserably against the civilian infested.
Fhe splash damage is only 50% so by the time the primary target die, the surrounding units still have 50% health and it keep re-aim and basically have to attack every single of those units just like normal drill does, it doesn’t do it noticeably better and still very time consuming with its aim time.
Either they increase the splash damage to 100% or they reduce the aim time to 0.1s else I don’t see any advantage it has over the default drill. In fact, the default drill can nuke attack waves or base while still being able to snipe base as this drill does. I think the possible pros this drill has is against terran base, as the drill can kill SCVs that are trying to repair the bunker on Temple map which normal null the damage of the default drill.
You can aim it at a big unit and it will kill some small units next to it with less re-targeting. I think the big deal about this feature is really the slow effect. If you have micro / kite intensive army or ally likes to do this, you can take on a larger force than you normally could without much of a problem. Of course, there’s also stacked air units that it seems to work best against. Whether this is “better” than calldowns…well, try it against stuff like Hybrid Nukes and Propagators and see if that makes a difference I guess.
But in general, when using this prestige, I think to make the best of it, you would need to prioritize focusing it in many cases. Like when you’re intercepting a wave, the first thing you do is target the right unit, etc.
There is no bigger unit in a group of infested civilians or zerglings, sometimes there is a lucky Aberration or something flying above it.
Clump of air, clump of ground whatever is thrown at you, it won’t be as useful as its abilities because even if you target the right units, they all have different speed, you will spend more micro for less value.
Currently I don’t see it very worth the chore.
What if this AoE applied to tanks and thors?
After all, “heavy weapons” seems like it would apply to a giant shock cannon and a colossal siege walker.
Maybe have units hit by tanks in siege mode get slowed (both move and attack speed, like the drill). Same thing for the Thor anti air
The prestige 1 if done well can prove extremely powerful with Micro, it having very high DPS, slow effect and splash is upgrade enough. But right now it has 2 problems.
- Lock-on Time is too long (takes full 1 seconds to relock into a target)
- Splash area is 1.5 (only as big as siege tank)
Just by applying mastery 3 to improve these 2 problems (lock-on time/splash area) is enough to fix them.
Also letting Weapon Upgrade to improve Laser/Tower would be a good QoL for Swann.
Employing tower upgrade will help too.
Applying AoE to Tanks and Thors would indeed make them very powerful but those two are already offensively powerful and highly enduring as they are.
Siege mode Blasts need no introductions and Thor’s stun and small area damage is surprisingly astounding.
Adding these upgrades would make their F2 over-powered.
I would rather have this prestige renamed to “Solar Drill” if this prestige is so geared towards the Draken Laser Drill.
I think the Prestige should let the drill levels boost area and decrease lock on time
so
1.5->2.25->3 area range (+50% greater aoe range each)
1 sec->0.5 sec->0.33 sec lock on time (+100% faster lock on each)
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I think it needs to be revamped entirely.
Prestige alters the gameplay, and as such should change the commander in a way to not do certain builds.
For Swann, the disabling of top bar makes sense for p3, as it buffs one of his strongest builds, pushing players to go heavy into Herc/tank variants.
P2 clearly buffs his static so it would make sense to punish going heavy on units.
P1 is entirely unclear on the direction, disabling the abilities removes a number of Drill-oriented openings like Cyclone and Wraiths (as well as the slower transitions of Herc-tank and static strategies, compared to the above).
So if we look at what isn’t being altered based on p2 and p3, then it’s clear p1 should be buffing the drill. Giving the slow and tiny AoE definitely fall short of it. I think instead, it should be:
- Each drill research still unlocks the top bar.
- Top bar abilities do far less damage but with quicker cooldown.
- Charges can either be purchased and/or stored.
The idea is to allow more uses of the drill with far less per cast damage. While the “increase AoE” and “decrease lock time” are good, it is still just a drill that targets one at a time because enemies don’t nicely fall in a clump for us.
Actually… perhaps make it better single target.
x5 the damage output and remove the area damage.
Make it an objective sniper rather than a wave clearer
IMO the Drill mastery can be totally viable and fun with proper upgrade.
Personally I look forward to devastate enemies with power of Sun Beam.
I’m not sure about that, the laser drill works only when vision is provided.
I can see using Herc Dropship to provide necessary vision and have it locked on to the target until its dead, but I’m not sure how useful it is except for very specific situation.
How about this? While you army is dealing with wave/enemies, the Drill (with minor splash damage/slow) deal double or triple its damage and cast stun. That way it is better suited to take down dangerous units, primarily Hybrid Dominators, Hybrid Behemoths, Battlecruiser etc.
Have it kill the objective while your army holds againt the wave/defenders
Bad thing is, your army is already so damn good at killing objectives as is. Not much survives for long against a full Herc of Siege Tanks, Cyclones using lock-on, or Wraiths being micro’d to keep doing that extra 300% damage.
I do like the idea of using Wraiths to sneak around the map, getting vision and sniping all the key units like siege tanks, turrets etc. Or, if you were going for a Cyclone build and had a lazor that could target faster, and maybe had a bigger stun area, it could make kiting those enemies so much easier. But it’s still a hard sell to trade that kind of micro with the delete button the current lazor has.
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Yeah, why would you need the drill to cheese an objective if you need your army to provide vision so it can cheese, when the top bars can clear everything around it to keep your army safe. Also, mastery becoming useless still since no top bar but now 5x damage.
I think one ideal scenario is actually Defense Swann. Now you might think that the Turret’s solve this, but that’s not necessarily the case because there are times when Static Defense is not always ideal as certain mutators punish Static Defense and certain enemy compositions are strong vs. Static Defense (in which case you can tune Herc groups to respond to waves instead). So in this “Defense Swann” scenario, you would pretty much have Herc’s ready to warp to intercept waves while maybe assisting ally with Science Vessels or something if you’re ambitious. The Drill will then allow you to harass fronts easier or if anything help turn the battle in the ally’s favor. One thing I notice is that it does do a pretty good job at keeping Hybrids from closing and big units like Ultras and Thors and stuff.
Actually the P1 is pretty good for Cyclone opening. I tried it. It allows you to have a much easier time kiting the initial units to death. There might be some juggling between Cyclone and Drill control at times, but this is one way to go if you’re doing a Cyclone rush.
I think we play cyclone build very differently.
I find both cyclone and wraiths require drill top bar abilities. This is to cover early to mid game transition.
Without it you have to rely on your ally for a bit no matter what you do. Although I’m interested in seeing how you play cyclone, wouldn’t mind learning 
I know what you mean. Because Cyclone (and Wraith) is relatively weak in low numbers, I normally would use Turrets and calldowns to help “ramp up” the build and just concentrate on upgrades with gas.
With the P1 Drill, you can just pump Cyclones (I think early Lock on Range upgrade helps) and you might need to DropBot the first wave (depending on comp I guess), but other waves can be handled by firing the Drill at the Wave before and while Locking On. And if there are zerglings, it’s OK because the AoE weakens them enough but technically, you should have a Hellbat.
In the past when I used to open like this, it’s a bit of a challenge and the Cyclones would get hit A LOT (since I’m not the best micro player) and I would need a few SCV’s on follow. The SCV’s would also get killed often too, but I guess it’s better then losing Cyclone. But with the Drill, as long as you target the closer units, even the SCV’s can run faster and It seems I don’t even have to pull SCV’s until the Cyclones are really damaged. Then of course shortly after you should have Science Vessels too.
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