The most optimal prestiges for regular play

Co-op Missions Discussion
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I intend to get to Mastery level 1000 eventually. Obviously, weekly mutations alone won’t do, I’ll have to play regular random missions a lot, on either Brutal or Brutal+ difficulty.

For such a scenario, what commander prestiges do you consider the most optimal for a regular play of random missions?

I can share my experience and thoughts about several commanders I’ve been playing already (either here at US or sometime ago at EU).

Mengsk — P3
Although P1 may excel in scenarios where you play with ESO alone, in general Mengsk’s explosive infantry makes the gameplay much easier, as it gives you lots of power to counter virtually every enemy composition.

Tychus — P2
One man army. Only in this case you get not one, but five. Sure, one buffed hero won’t be as strong as full party, but the ability to push in multiple directions simultaneously trivializes most of the missions.

Zeratul — P3
They say P3 is good for short missions, while P2 is good for long missions. It has some truth in it, but in practice P3 with 2 artifacts collected turns Zeratul into such insane tornado generator that you may hardly need an army anyway, for either short or long runs. The fact it virtually removes the headache for artifact searching makes it all even better. Even at the cost of lvl 3 upgrades, some perks removed and Avatars unavailable — Zeratul’s AOE is just that strong.

Karax — P3
Karax is one of those commanders that takes lots of time to snowball his might, especially on the offensive missions. But his discounts for SoA abilities give him a huge relief for early game, and they also scale quite well to the late game as well.

Raynor — probably P0
I think P0 is the most balanced solution for Raynor if I am to be prepared to play against different enemies on different missions, which in turn will require different army compositions. P1 is skewed towards infantry, P3 is skewed towards fleet, P2 is just a straight up downgrade.

Stukov — P3 (Feb 2023 update)
Although Stukov P1 is superior in defensive scenarios, Stukov P3 in general is a much more relaxing and strong prestige to play. As long as you invest enough resources in Infested Compound and Bunker construction, and as long as you don’t forget to relocate them closer to the battlefield, then it all becomes about lazy Psi-Emitter movement, and you’ll suffer little to no punishment even if Amon shreds your horde.

What are your thoughts? What can you tell about the aforementioned commanders or about the other commanders you experienced? Looking forward to your advice.

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I think in general you can make it with any prestige but if you want the best for clearing missions fast it would probably be those with the best early game.
Raynor - P0 because MULEs allow you to fund a huge army early game.
Kerrigan - P2, it allows you to solo anything early to mid game with a properly managed Kerrigan.
Artanis - P3, Orbital Archons clear expansions fast and can wipe most attack waves on their own. But be wary of overextending in the late game as you can exhaust your bank due to not having guardian shield.
Swann - P0, just a good generalist build overall.
Vorazun - P3, deploying 8+ shadow guards every time stop can clear an entire base if properly supported.
Zagara - P1/P2 - While P1 is the best burst damage I would prefer the staying power and consistent damage of P2.
Dehaka - P1/P2 - P1 just steam rolls everything late game especially if you know what to devour. P2 is good for solo-pushes.
Tychus - P3 for me, P2 is good for multi-tasking but P3 is just more A-move friendly while also allowing for decent multitasking using the Odin.
Abathur - P0/P2, losing or delaying getting your UEs just slows you down.
Fenix - P0, I feel his prestiges are more like side-grades rather than an upgrade.
Zeratul - P1/P2, I prefer P1 because it allows me to handle hard pushes like in SoA but you can’t deny the late game power of P2. For quick missions P3 is also a good pick.
H&H - P1, Coupled with the improved death effect mastery this prestige can just roll over anything on the ground, the problem is against heavy anti-air though. Mag-mines becoming almost a calldown also helps in early clearing too.
Stukov - P3, I feel that P1 suffers on long missions because this is a gas heavy prestige and your mech units are supposed to be expendable. P3 is just brain dead easy and all you have to do to reach profit is build well placed bunkers and keep up with infantry upgrades. Infested get absolutely jacked when you pair with a Kerrigan or Stetmann.
Stemann - P2, Yes this makes Gary movement limited but rushing as fast as you can to Hive will allow you to just barely keep up stetellite deployment to mitigate this.

That being said I don’t like playing with some of these prestiges as some are too tedious or boring to me. For example I prefer P1 on Kerrigan since I don’t have to manage worms and I like the upgraded malignant creep effects since I like to play army Kerrigan.

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Do his Infested walkers get stetzone bonuses? I thought they were exempt for some reason

As for his P1, you shouldn’t be losing his mech units. Make some Infested Marines (at the Barracks to take damage while Db’s kite and dole out damage from a safe distance. Tanks should be seiged. With vision, they can shoot further than their range.

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On regular Brutal, all of them work. Especially if you’re NOT going to do the bonus (cough SoA).

On Brutal+, I’d say the most well rounded ones are…
Raynor P0
Swann P1
Nova any non-P3
HH P1
Tychus… any should work
Mengsk… not sure, but any of them?

Kerrigan P2/P3
Zagara P1
Abathur P0/P2
Stukov P1/P3
Dehaka… I think any will work?
Stetmann P2

Artanis P3
Karax P3
Vorazun P3
Alarak P2/P3
Fenix P1/P2
Zeratul P0/P3

… note that if you get a bad set of mutators, enemy comp, and mission for a B+ game, you can always form a party and select the Retry option in the Difficulty drop down button to play that exact same configuration again, but with the option to select a different CO, Prestige, and Masteries.

That said, I ended up just switching to even less optimal COs and Prestiges to get more variety in and try them out from time-to-time. However, that was uncommon as I did want to make sure I would win, as that XP (even without the bonus) was 60K to 66K.

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Wasn’t aware of this issue. They’re more better on malignant creep than on stetzones except maybe if they’re near an overcharged one.

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Coincidentally I think the prestiges mentioned are the optimal prestiges for most mutations, although Raynor P3 is a contender.

Why is that? I thought Nova P3 was good.

You have to destroy the shards in the order pre-determined by the shuttle. Worst map ever.

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Currently I have Zagara, Stukov, Dehaka and Nova up to P3 and Egon up to P2. So ill report on those for my list.

  1. Zagara P2

Zagara P1 popular, but trust when I say its not as good for general use as P2. There is numerous reasons why P2 is better, but one of the biggest is that you can steamroll pretty much any ground objective by massing abberations like crazy. And you don’t have to replace them as often. Plus you get access to Zagara. With P1, even with all the free units you are going to have to be replacing your army very often which can get super pricey and her mobility is weakest with this prestige. And although Scourge do good burst damage, you have to replace them often and they are very susceptible to AOE.

  1. All prestiges including P0

For general normal brutal missions I would say all prestiges are really good. Each of them have strengths more so in certain situations. But keep this in mind

-Dehaka P3 is bad for situations where either dehaka may get hit by strong burst damage. Also bad if you can’t micro well.

-Dehaka P2 is very good for sniping objectives and breaking into new areas.

Dehaka P1 is good for maps where you will encounter very high amounts of enemies like infested maps and the map has a lot of psionic units.

P0 is good for maps where you need to apply a lot of pressure to multiple locations at once as well as tank enemy mobs. Dehaka can level up fast and also summon pack leaders to deal with certain things.

There is many situations on all brutal maps where all of this becomes useful so all of them are good tbh.

Stukov P1

P3 is bad on maps where one will have to split up forces a lot and it can be kind of risky. plus it requires a lot of extra space to place bunkers. Some maps don’t have a lot of space to do this. So its not ideal for general use in my opinion. When I was leveling stukov, pretty much all I did was spam diamonbacks and siege tanks. Its reliable and gets the job done. P2 is just really niche and plain inferior to the other prestiges.

Egon P1 and P2

P2 is the most popular, but just because its the most popular doesn’t mean it outclasses P1. P1 is actually very good if you focus on stetzone bonuses. It allows you to get a lot of vision, you never have to worry stetzones dieing and it also makes it easier to expand your stetzone as you are pushing into new enemy controlled areas. P2 is pretty good too though. Gary is very poweful, but to maximize is power you have to sacrifice stetzone bonuses for ability cooldowns.

Nova P0, p1, P2 and p3 are all viable, but for different strategies

P1 is good if you want to spam a specific kind of unit to counter. I personally don’t like this one though because I tend to like to use a bunch of different units to cover different weakness of the others.

P2. This one is my favorite. Helps make nova a lot more mobile as her army is rather slow without it. A good strategy with this one is to use this to move sieged up siege tanks so you don’t have to unsiege then siege theem. Good for breaking into guarded enemy areas. Use this one if you want your main power to comes from your army.

P3. Good for maps when you are dealing with lots of entrenched enemy encampments. Not as good on maps like miner evac. You can use use this to spam payload drop.

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She is, but I don’t believe enough missions justify her (+), as not all of them have you push, or push that much

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I was tempted to comment, but I guess those quotes prevent me from having a relevant opinion, too much different from my usual play.

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I wouldn’t mind if you shared you experience. Even it’s related to different scenarios, I’m sure I could extract some useful information for mine nonetheless.

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The Stukov you send to a mutation blind is P3, not P1. although P3 has a hard counter (ie life leech + diffusion) and less than ideal ones and then you may consider P1, but it has fewer than P1. Having said that, you can build mechs with P3 and marines with P1, so its only about QoL.

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Nova P3 is so frustrating if your ally is impatient (mostly on a random queue). He’d have cleared everything before your sabo drone explodes.

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Explode faster then!

It’s not too bad with P3 though because there’s nothing stopping Nova from doing her own thing and exploding stuff on the other side of the map.

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I’ve been trying to do that; sending Nova on the other side of the map where my ally isn’t in. If it doesn’t work I just add Nova to my army and F2-A, works really well as long as you remember to start with a snipe or basic attack so Nova decloaks and doesn’t run right into the middle of the enemy base.

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She should be fine if she ends up in the middle, on account of the cloaking.

You probably know this already, but you can select F3 for Nova (or any other hero). F4 selects the artifact truck in CoD.

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yeah but I forget she’s in the middle of the enemy base and I order her to hit snipe and she gets blown up lol.

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Don’t snipe teal hybrids one-one-one. Its “Yamato arm cannon” is singlehandedly enough to take her out (300 dmg vs. her 250 hp)

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After playing Stukov P3 for a while, I have to admit, Stukov P3 is indeed a much more relaxing and stronger prestige to play on a regular basis. Sure, it takes a bunch of resources to invest at first, but when you do get your meatgrind production up and running, then after that it’s just all about Psi-Emitter relocation and moving Infested Compound-Bunkers-Barracks closer to the battlefield. No micro involvement whatsoever, no big expenses for army production, and, most importantly, no harsh punishment for when your army gets crushed (as it’s sentenced to die one way or another).

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It really is ridonkulous. Before we had the prestige system, ofc. there was no P3. On the flipside, Bunkers only cost 300/0/4 instead of 400/0/4! One person reported that after he set up a critical mass of them, he was just watching Netflix while games were going on, turning his attn back to change the Psi emitter from time to time! :open_mouth: