The 4.11.3 Co Op nerfs

So I was going to get back into playing the game again, until I saw all the needless nerfs done to commanders like Zeratul and was like “Nope, I’ll come back the moment you undo this nonsense.” the moment I saw it.

There was nothing really wrong with Zeratul to begin with, he had a strong game if you could find and obtain all the Artifacts, I’ve had times where I wasn’t able to and would get slaughtered. These nerfs? Like a nearly double the cost to build his Cannons or the 800 mineral cost for his legions? Nuh uh, screw that.

Addendum: I saw that the mineral cost for the Cannons was lowered to 300, but considering the patch notes for 4.11.4 show that none of the OTHER nerfs to him were fixed? Yeah no, not coming back till that is done.

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The nerfs certainly weren’t needless, he was pretty blatantly overpowered before, “strong game” is quite the understatement. He’s still quite strong, his units are still very powerful and you’ll still be floating plenty of resources in the later game for spamming Legions or Cannons, if you so choose. You just have to, well, play a little smarter? Try a little harder? “Git gud” as they say? Or not, seeing as the prospect of either of those three is apparently asking too much of you. In which case, best of luck in your other endeavors.

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I like how your first reaction is to imply that Im not good at the game…I’ve played my fair share of other commanders who were not anywhere near as nerfed, and played them just fine. I have not even PLAYED Zeratul after all these nerfs, so calling me bad is not even logical. You’ve no right to accuse me being bad just because a whole slew of nerfs to a commander I like don’t make any sense to me.

So before you wrongly judge, please explain why any of the nerfs were needed as he never felt overpowered to me before. As I stated, if I ever failed to keep up with getting the Artifacts I found myself having a much harder time, even got steam rolled a few times and Im not even a bad player, any player no matter how good would find themselves getting steam rolled if they somehow fell behind, no one is perfect.

So please, explain why the nerfs were needed as I GENUINELY do not understand the why.

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The problem with his cannons was that they shat all over the ones Karax had and defences are this guys main feature while for zeratul they serf simply as a mineral dump. In fact the shade projections still make them hell of a lot better.

As for the Legions, did you only look at the cost increase or did you check the buffs they received in return to even out their powerlevel compared to eachother.

I did notice the buffs yes, but that said, I never found them particularly wanting in the past and I’ve used all of the Legion calldowns and found em quite fun :slight_smile:

So I can’t say I feel the buffs were even needed but hey, that’s nice all the same I suppose. But 500 minerals felt like a good chunk for a temporary unit that didn’t last for to terribly long, but at 800 minerals? By the time I have that many minerals, I will have fielded enough units to hit the expansions/defend my base anyways, but I guess that was the point? To try and slow down Zeratul’s early game expansion? I guess this confuses me because I always thought that was a thing for Zeratul, early expansion.

That said, thank you for giving an explanation. :3

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I mean Zeratul still has one of the best early game heroes around and with the new purity of will he is even better.

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I was just about to ask if you were sure about the Purity of Will change, but then I gave it another look and was like “Ooooooh!” :smiley:

So basically he gets 30 Shadow Cleave damage at three artifacts instead of 25
150 extra shields at three artifacts instead of 100 and 3 additional charges of blink instead of 2 at 3 Artifacts.

Doesn’t help that I read that while tired lol :smiley:

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Alright, well, let’s start with the fact that you put a lot of emphasis on how you would get slaughtered “if” you couldn’t find all the Artifacts and would get steamrolled as a result. Both of those are honestly quite the accomplishment; for the former, the first two Artifact pieces frequently spawn fairly close to your starting position (I’ve often seen the first one spawn inside the main) and the game will put helpful location circles on your minimap if you take too long to find one, and for the latter, even with only one Artifact piece, Zeratul’s units and hero are quite formidable, if you’re getting steamrolled or slaughtered, you’re probably doing something wrong. Add onto that the fact that the Cannon and Legion nerfs were apparently so offensive, such “nonsense”, that instead of learning to adjust you quit the game. So I didn’t say you were “bad”, you made those implications yourself.

And before you start thinking that I’m some kind of master-tier elitist, HAH, I’m far from the most hardcore player around here; I’d like to think I’m pretty good, I’ve done most of the campaigns on Brutal and all that, but my micro’s not the best, I make F2A armies, I’m not out there soloing Brutations with a level 1 Raynor or anything, I’m just somebody who’s pretty decent at RTSes and enjoys playing Co-op for fun. If I was reading those implications and think the nerfs were justified, that should mean something.

But speaking of which, let’s start with the pre-nerf Cannons: completely broken. For other commanders, the trade-off of building entirely static defenses was that their mobile offense suffered as a result, but not so for Zeratul. You could easily just cover your bases in Cannons and then clear the map completely risk-free with Shades and your hero. Who needs an army when you can just teleport a few dozen Cannons wherever you need them and suffer no costs if you overextend and lose them, since their physical forms are safely back in your base. The perfect defense, the perfect offense, all for 0 gas cost and 0 supply cost. If that’s not broken, I don’t know what is. Thing is, even after the nerf (even at 400 minerals), they’re still quite usable, quite strong, you just can’t rely on them entirely, you have to be more strategic about where you place them for defense and think more carefully about when you use their Shades.

As for the Legions, that nerf was pretty simple: their low cost made them undervalued by players. With full mastery, they cost the same as a Stalker, so I’d see people using them to clear expansion rocks and clearing maps without ever having to make actual units. They’re still quite good now, you just need to use them in the same way as other commanders use their calldowns; save it for an emergency or to amplify a push.

And I know what you’re thinking, “but this is PvE, we don’t need balance, we want to feel powerful!” To that, I’ll just link you this thread from a month ago which covered that very topic. Nerfs to come with compensation similar to Hearthstone's full dust disenchantment - #15 by GhostWhoWalk-1854

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Okay, so I started reading your post, until you once again started making assumptions about me. I never Implied I was bad and I even said that I “was going to get back into playing the game.” which means reinstalling it, which means I haven’t played for some time, so, no, Im not bad, I just haven’t played for a while. Last time I remember playing was a few months ago when Zeratul first became a thing, played for a while but then had to uninstall, back then as I said I don’t recall him being OP, maybe he was and I just never noticed.

As for failing to keep up with the artifacts? That can easily happen if one is to distracted with something else or just simply forgot, as I said, no one is perfect, are you going to sit there and imply that ANYONE is going to be perfect all the time? Cause if you are, Im gonna have to call you out and say that you are expecting the impossible. How do you think one player in a one on one match against an equally skilled player manages to lose? They made a mistake somewhere.

Also I never once thought of you as a master-tier elitist, not once, so don’t make baseless assumptions please. If anything, I thought of you as a jerk who was making to many assumptions without even taking the time to first explain why the nerfs were necessary to a fellow player who clearly didn’t understand. A mature person would have explained the reasons behind the nerfs to their fellow player, rather then take the more toxic approach of just accusing them of being bad for no real reason. While you did discuss the topic of the Cannons and the Legion nerfs just now, you unfortunately marred your own position by once again needlessly starting off and ending your post with an attack on me, when I’ve never once attacked you, so defend yourself how you will against this, but it doesn’t change the fact you are rudely and wrongly attacking a fellow player who is disgruntled with a change he didn’t understand, why couldn’t you remain civil and just talk to me as a fellow player? Cause like you, Im just here to have fun with my fellow players.

Now if I somehow…took a shot at you, that warranted an attack on me or my playing skills, then I’m sorry.

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Me personally? Of course not. But go back and re-read your initial post: that’s some awfully demanding and combative words and tone you’ve got there, man. “Undo this nonsense”. “Screw that”. “not coming back” until the nerfs are reverted. Your follow-up did nothing to change that impression. And then you insist that I need to be civil and less rude? Come on, now. If you want to talk civility, why not open up the thread with something like “What’s up with these Zeratul nerfs, can someone explain it to me?” Or “I just came back after a long break and it looks like Zeratul got nerfed, does this change how he plays?” Go in peacefully if you want peace. Go in looking for a fight, don’t be so surprised when someone steps up to give you a fight.

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This guy is probably a filthy Zeratul Cannon spammer. Every game, never makes an army.

Well, if you had played him post nerf, you may or may not have realized that it wasn’t actually that bad.

What WOULD be logical would be to actually PLAY with the nerfs and see if they’re justified.

With the cannons, the nerfs were very justified if you look at mutations. The thing about playing starcraft with an army is the inherent risk of losing that army.

Think about nearly any other Commander: crippled if they lose too much, and they HAVE to use that army and risk it in order to win missions. If you lose units, your “momentum” is slowed down. If you make 4 immortals, but lose 1, the next immortal you make is just bringing you up to 4 immortals. Basically, losing units is bad, and that adds up over the entire game.

Except cannons don’t care. They can kill whatever they want risk free. Think about all the mutators that make units stronger or cast spells on the field: they’re intended to kill commander units better. Projections are free, so it doesn’t hurt momentum. If you build 4 cannons, and lose all 4 projections, it doesn’t matter, you will get them back for free very soon. He can constantly be throwing cannons down on the map, taking inefficient trades, getting bombarded by AoE mutators, getting slaughtered, it doesn’t matter, because Zeratul lost no resources from those trades.

That doesn’t even touch on the fact that pre-nerf Zeratul cannons were about twice as cost efficient as Karax’s cannons, which, you know, CANT MOVE

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I don’t always find all 3 Artifact Fragments either. On the shorter missions like Void Thrasher or L&L where we can end up finishing by the 15:00 to 20-minute mark, I’m left fumbling for where the freak the 3rd AF is, but I notice we’re going to finish the mission in the next few minutes, so why bother?

I rather loath searching for artifacts. There are numerous complaints about Karax (still). Mine would be for Zeratul, if they could just give you the dotted circle from the very start. IOW, don’t make you wait 3 minutes or whatever for that. Yes, I’m aware of the trick of looking at this Premonition bubble, clicking around the minimap with his other units, and looking for them waypoints/rally lines. However, it’s still tedious to do.

There is a part of me that’s sad they nerfed Zeratul since when I got paired up with him, that was my ticket to get a far easier Brutation win (Dark Prelate Mutation Specialist :smiley: ), but I could see why the nerfs were needed.

Mind you I feel his cannons would’ve been fine at 400 or even 350 minerals, but if I didn’t know better, making them 300 wasn’t so much a gameplay decision rather than a business decision (to win back those who were upset over the initial nerf, while still appeasing a good enough folks in the crowd that felt 250 was waay too cheap)

You can beat Brutal campaign? That tops me! I did WoL on Hard. IIRC, I did some of those missions on Brutal, but only a few. And I’m sure I resorted to “cheating”… save often, and keep reverting to those save points when things go south.

Otherwise, I can’t solo regular Brutal. Every now and then, an ally would leave, and I’d see if I could solo with both team’s worth of resources. For the most part, it didn’t work out. However, I did have times where I got close, or did win out. It may be different now that I’m better, have played ALL COs to mastery (so I’m much more familiar with the tools I’m left with, what’s leeft out due to lack of Top Bar access, their tech trees, etc.)

Don’t forget that zeratul got buffs in other places, telbrus legion is very strong now and the hero unit is so strong now it can easily hero solo some maps. He only got nerfed if you were the type of player that was playing mass cannons every game and complaining every mutation was too easy.

In fact, after zeratul changes his speedrun times got better in every map, so as far as speedrunners are concerned (early game) zeratul got buffed.

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Big reason why I have his Artifact spawn mastery maxed out, you can usually have all 3 pieces by around 7-8 minutes. It’s his central mechanic after all, you want to get it done ASAP. But even without mastery, Zeratul was the commander I avoided buying the longest because even his free level 5 version felt almost as powerful as my other, full-masteried commanders (this was before the nerf).

I definitely wouldn’t have any problem with that, but it probably mean some of the power would need to be shaved off of his upgrades/higher tier cooldowns; the design of Zeratul is that you’re supposed to be devoting most of your time and focus on hunting for those artifact pieces, which is why his units are so unbelievably powerful and his micro and macro reduced to such a bare minimum; you have to be able to keep up with your ally to some degree while you roam the map with your hero, looking for those artifacts. There are two problems with this:
a) due to the random placement of the artifacts, finding the pieces can often be brainlessly easy; as mentioned before I’ve sometimes had matches were the first piece spawned inside my main, I practically landed my base right on top of it.
b) if you have that dotted circle every time you search, finding the artifacts would definitely be very easy, and then you have just a normal commander who gets free gas, doesn’t need power fields, has a tiny tech tree, over-statted units with powerful auto-cast abilities and a very powerful hero and calldowns. This would then lead to:

And unless you’re trying to get carried, it’s not a fun time for Zeratul’s ally, because while they have to spend time and resources building up their tech tree and macro to get an army that’s only about half as good as his, he’s already cleared half the map.

Hah, yeah, I won’t deny that there were a few missions that I ended up using some trial and error and save scumming for “perfect” runs just to get by. Completing Brutal was a challenge, but that’s kind of what I’m getting at with these whole Zeratul nerfs: rising to challenges are how you hone your skills and become a better player. They make you think about how you can do things differently, consider all the tools available, take another look at units and tactics you had overlooked before. None of that was necessary with pre-nerf Zeratul, just faceroll to easy wins, no need to improve.

Don’t really care for legion to break rocks anyway. Only time I used that was when my partner had autogeysers that could be set up quickly or if it was vs zerg

Well, if people get to complain about Karax, I get to complain about Zeratul :wink:

Heh, yes, but the difference is Karax is below average on the power scale of commanders while Zeratul is above average. The former needs to be brought up to be on par with his peers, the latter needs to be brought down. Are you willing to get that increased convenience in finding the artifacts in exchange for a weaker army/cooldowns or increased micro/macro?

I’d be okay with it. I’ve found his units to be ridiculously strong, especially against ground compositions with Abrogators… Good lord those things are broke.