Since many of you guys think Tychus may be up next for a rework, I was hoping to consolidate what I’ve read and experienced on his medic, Lt. Nikara, since this discussion about her seems to be all over the forum in multiple threads.
I originally did this in the Tychus thread but FearrWhalins suggested that I make a unique thread for it because the information was buried in an already long topic.
I know a lot of this is in threads around the forum, (including by my input) but some of it isn’t. Many people feel for various reasons that Lt. Nikara is one of Tychus’s Outlaws who most needs a rework, though there is no solid agreement on the exact reason for this. Hope that me repeating some things doesn’t anger you guys. If I forgot anything, holler and I’ll edit it in and credit you.
Cons:
Runs into trouble if Tychus’s team is not carefully managed; most people agree that she needs some sort of mechanic to prevent this because of the role she serves.
If you are used to relying on Lt. Nikara for healing, (such as not building Medivacs as quickly as you might otherwise have,) if she is killed, there is an increased likelihood that you will suffer considerable losses or wipe. Her tendency to run into trouble if not led properly makes this a serious issue.
Permanently hamstrings the Tychus player who selects her by lowering the team damage at what many feel to be an unnecessary cost. Some of you argue that Tychus doesn’t even NEED a healer due to his Medivacs. Most people who decide they want a healer argue Rattlesnake is clearly superior to her because he has an attack, which has the additional benefit of keeping him from running to his doom if not carefully managed. Lt. Nikara also lowers overall team damage because Rattlesnake, if selected over her, can eventually boost everybody’s attack speed.
Unlike many full-support units in Blizzard games, she has no ability to bolster either Tychus or the partner’s offensive capabilities.
Some of you think Lt. Nikara’s design is flawed and needs to be reworked. This argument is that her healing is “overkill” due to healing too much, and that her Ultimate ability, the shield generator, lacks the impact an ability of that cost should have. Some want the Super Heal buff to become innate and be replaced by another upgrade to be available for purchase.
Pros:
Provides Detection; if Lt. Nikara is not selected, it becomes necessary to select either Nux or Vega for this reason. Sirius’s Turrets can detect too, (thanks, RickRumble for pointing this out,) so technically none of the Fixers are needed, but the vision range Nikara, Nux, and Vega provide for detection is much greater, and it is further amplified by the Tri-Outlaw mastery which gives attack speed to the Guns and health to the Muscle.
Lt. Nikara is highly effective for a coop person who wishes to help his/her partner. While Tychus has Medivacs, many of the hero units the partner may have could greatly benefit from powerful healing assistance that the hero commander’s design hasn’t been blessed with. Also, Lt. Nikara’s burst heal can affect a large number of the partner’s damaged units, especially high-ticket ones like battlcruisers and bring them from critically injured to full life. This may prove a good choice if the Tychus player has lost some of his mercs and Lt. Nikara can bolster the partner while Joeyray’s gets the mercs back out. The Detection Nikara provides further bolsters the supportive utility to the partner; there’s been times when buried Lurkers or similar cloaked/buried enemies were seriously harming my partner which immediately ceased once Nikara was brought to the scene. Rattlesnake cannot serve the ally support function as well because he has limited Revitalizer charges, which are weaker in healing than Lt. Nikara’s healing. Furthermore, all the partner has to do to heal with Lt. Nikara on the field is be around her; Rattlesnake requires active involvement by the Tychus player.
Though there is debate on whether this is deliberate or a bug, Lt. Nikara can heal some of the mission objectives, such as the ships in Miner evacuation. If the miner evacuation ship survived with like 3 health remaining, this can save the mission.
While it is entirely possible to play with Rattlesnake or no healer at all, it might be argued that the strong healing Lt. Nikara provides makes the mission more comfortable to play, so the loss of offensive power is worth it.
So, that’s all the info I can think of. If the devs decide to rework Lt. Nikara, I was hoping you guys could provide suggestions for rework and feedback as to what works well for her and should be kept. I don’t exactly pretend to be as knowledgeable about SC as most of you.
Wait… aren’t we allowed to edit our primary posts and add reasons for them? Either way considering the text length and points made, new post was a solid choice in this case. And I also agree that Lt. Nikara deserves more love than she is getting. And I do not mean this in relation to the developers, but to the players. Like those who (not mentioning names) will leave the second they see someone picking her for no apparent reason other than that they like her genuinely.
I love that you made this point. I tend to pick Nikara almost always 3rd because I really hate Vega and Nux on a personal level. For my purpose, definite reason to pick her for detection.
To be fair, Tychus gets a boost for every outlaw he has next to him, also if fully upgraded. So Nikara does actually help bolster him this way.
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Having said that, I like where Nikara is at honestly, yes she could use a little tweaking but nowhere near the failure of a unit that is Blaze (in my opinion, no offense to any1 who is easily offended [ again not mentioning names ]). The little added APM a player needs to keep her safe or as you said to aid an ally shouldn’t be a problem. Being co-op I’d love to see her revamped, but only a little.
I think a relatively simple and effective fix for Nikara’s ultimate ability is to just rework it into a better version of the Safeguard feature that Raynor’s Medics possess. Basically gives targets healed by her heal beams 50% damage reduction while being healed and for a couple of seconds afterwards. Don’t even need to change the name of the ability. The shield generator can just be implied to be the cause of the damage reduction.
An alternative is just the regular 25% damage reduction Raynor’s Medics have, but also make it apply to her heal burst ability to give group wide damage reduction for the duration of the heal over time.
That is a solid point. Now that I think about it WHY did the developers not implement that? It feels like if Nikara had that she’d be a full unit and unchallenged for changes. Kinda feels like the developers left that out even though one would think she shouldn’t have abilities less than that of Raynor’s marines.
That sounds really good! Would do more than the occasional unit protected for 200 damage temporarily.
Well, I mean, yes, by being on the battlefield, she boosts Tychus. What I meant, though, is Blizzard supports usually come with something extra other than the heals, like Lucio in Overwatch, who provides a speed boost and powerful burst shield as ult, or Mercy in Overwatch, who can amplify damage when not healing. The zMonk build in Diablo III provides stuff like resistances or added bonus to dodge attacks.
I am just saying, in the Blizzard tradition, healers don’t just heal, they usually have some added utility. Arguably, the damage shield ultimate has some of that, but since so many people feel that’s not powerful enough, maybe something more could be added – or the damage shield remains her ult but gets strengthened like you guys said here in this thread, which in my opinion would be enough to satisfy the other-than-heals request.
There is one other detection choice for Tychus, Sirius’ turrets can do it too. At least for non mutation brutal, I find I don’t need to research detection if he’s out.
Also, I thought Nikara was able to heal herself if you got the double heal ability. Did that change?
I’ll edit the Detector point to state that Sirius’s turrets can detect; sorry about that.
Her self-medication is definitely not a product of Super Heal or double heal. It’s like the gradual Zerg regeneration, only faster. If she affected herself with the Super Heal, the healing would be way, way faster than that.
Huh. Guess I’m crazy, or maybe it was only right when Tychus came out. Ah well, was one of the reasons I liked to choose her. Still would depending on the map, mind.
But yeah, no worries, I just figured mention Sirius since it’s another option.
Edit to respond to the topic edit (): to be fair, Sirius is a terrible choice to rely on with harder brutations and the like. Since if the turrets get vaporized you could easily be waiting on a cooldown for detection. So really, fixers can easily be the better option.
This is something I think people forget, lots of Tychus builds go for 4 outlaws rather than 5, there’s nothing wrong with adding Nikara in and not upgrading her. It adds some excellent survivability to the setup and does buff Tychus some.
rest removed as it twas ultimately unneeded and is thus irrelevant to the conversation
Vega doesn’t bring as much as I would like to the table. Her kit as a whole makes me avoid her even though I know she has a solid one, it’s just a question of taste really. But to be fair I was never a fan of Dark Archons to begin with, as is Vegas control abilitites. Even on Zeratul while I might prefer his Dark Archons over any other calldown it is the most productive one vs ground zerg units. As for Nux I just genuinely do not have much experience with him. I’ve used him maybe a dozen times but even then the 4 I do prefer overweight him and it just got to the point where I never get around to picking him up. Nothing against other people who play him of course.
rest removed as it twas ultimately unneeded and is thus irrelevant to the conversation
Eh, I’ve double posted before and I’ll do it again. Old phone makes quoting multiple people in a single post both slow and tedious. Nice reference by the way.
Going to stop being off topic now, don’t worry.
Anyway
One last thing I wanted to add for her is I do find it useful to have her on a number of mutations. Anything that does continuous damage is trivialized by her healing ability, black death for example may as well not be there. Doesn’t help on clearing faster obviously, but Nux exists and is a very common choice so that’s not exactly a good counterpoint.
I don’t use Nux, but many people do, as RickRumble pointed out in the post above this one. Those psi storms are very good for killing masses of mobs, especially once upgraded. I might be wrong but I am pretty sure Nux is “A-list” grade for people who divvy up Tychus units into desirable or not desirable.
Not that literally anyone notices this, but Blaze can “detect” ground stealth units by throwing oil on them (works on Zerg and Protoss). Blaze is also something of a train wreck and too specialized.
I want a pea shooter for Nikki to use when she isn’t healing anyone. That would be enough of a fix for me. I do like the damage reduction for her Healing Burst ability though. I think you could bake that into her Z upgrade by making the 100% healing boost just on the initial heal.
I find her ultimate gear quite underwhelming as well.
Re: Vega. I find myself going Vega against one of the new ground comps that gets pounded by Rattlesnake+Cannonball due to being able to Web their air support.
Another thing that wasn’t mentioned. Nikara has never had the ability to heal herself directly and she doesn’t have a Mercy type effect either. What people saw was the dual healing beam upgrade being able to target her while she is healing someone else with her primary beam. That was a “bug” that was “fixed” sometime recently and made her much worse. Now she has to Healing Burst to recover her own health.
I am going to need to check this. I am pretty sure I held off on the burst heal before checking if she regens. Can’t now because of the Overwatch event that requires me to look at streamers for six hours straight . x_x
![:sweat_smile:](https://d212vo0owly06i.cloudfront.net/en/sc2/images/emoji/twitter/sweat_smile.png?v=6" ":sweat_smile:")
): to be fair, Sirius is a terrible choice to rely on with harder brutations and the like. Since if the turrets get vaporized you could easily be waiting on a cooldown for detection. So really, fixers can easily be the better option.