Tips For Playing Mengsk

No, has far as i’ve seen, i’ve had it recharge from 0 to 100 faster that the dogs of war cooldown, i suppose your only limit is the amount of royal guard you can create and how good you are at managing witnesses

The cannons are a bit map dependant, in oblibion express they are godlike since the can reach like 95% of all the tracks from the base, the trick is finding the good spots where they can reach the most objectives.

Also a trick to building them is as follows, since troopers can group build them its usefull to know the following:
-When you control-click a trooper in the comand card you select all the troopers, no matter what weapon they have, labourers are not included, this is good to quickly group build the cannons
-When you double click a trooper you will only select troopers with that weapon type, this is usefull to garrison the cannons since you want the unarmed troopers to be in them first, while the ones with weapons to stay figthing

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I personally find getting the marrader is always a good choice… AI seems to focus splash on him first, and every other unit targeting Ya Boi over the troopers is value.

While the other Royal guards have a niche, I always end up regretting not getting that Tanky Man if I skip.

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Yeah, you can’t go wrong the marauder, adds some ground tankiness that’s much required to the mix from their rank 1. Plus that rank3 stimpack is pretty nuts

the more expensive the royal guard units you control the more imperial mandate you gain per 120 sec.

Mengsk is my new favorite commander. He shines very late at lvl 15 with masteries. The masteries makes him pretty insane, with the quickest fast expand and OP calldowns masteries.

You can adapt to everything, anythime. You can win a game without loosing a single soldier, or turn them all to ashes while you make great use of your royal guards.

Fast expand on all the map you can, with masteries you can pop 2 bunkers full of soldiers first second of the game, it makes you able to clean the rocks, turn your soldiers into workers and start second CC. First, send a SCV to the expension rock so you can drop the bunker near it. This way, you can turn your soldiers into workers right where the rocks are.
If you can’t fast expand, turn thoose soldiers into workers, build raffineries with 3 workers each, build a barrack with 4 workers, then build a factory, then a starport and form a marauder with a medivac. Meantime continue to while make soldiers and bunker. You can defend the first wave easily ; then go clear this expension. Tank with your maraudeur / medivac, and focus dangerous targets with your soldiers. You can clean every extension alone this way (or you can try bunker rush, it might be quicker but it’s way harder to execute on most maps.
On cradle of death, you can pop your bunker just behind first construct then pull ennemis to them with a scv reparing.
On miner evacuation you can pass by the right ramp with a scv. (you might want to make a bunker first in your base to continue scv production, use 4 to 5 scv to build the first bunker quicker).
On malwarfare you can just send 2 scv and drop your bunker in front of the ennemy. On scythe to amon, you might send 4 scv between the 2 lines of ennemy, pass by the top mineral wave and push from the top. It may be the hardest one. Vermillon problem is easy if you pull corretcly + you can defend the first wave from the bunker on your extension.

In all maps, I would go 1/1/2 like they said above, having 2 starports make you able to make enough watchers / medivac.
Once I have my 2 bases full and my 1/1/2 I make 2 watchers, one on each scv lines, later I would add 2 more, with micro, you can always have a watcher over your army, making you able to use every single abilities on your top bar and be at 100 with everything on cooldown.

If you want to go canon instead of making an army, you can still make 4-5 medivacs if he have bio and 1 watcher to help your ally push.
If you plan on doing mass canon, do it only on maps where you can hit near everything from the center. It works quite well ; but you can’t rush maps and if you have a swann or a Karax with you the game might become a litle tricky on offensive maps.

The first upgrade I rush is amplified airwaves in the fusion core ; wirebender is totaly right, then I usually upgrade my medivacs, add a blackhammer and a pride of augustrad with upgrades to my bioball army. Use few weapons at first, 2-3 firemans can tank a lot of damages for you, when one die, a soldier pick it’s weapon, it can save you 50 supply in a hard fight. I add a 3rd CC to make more soldiers until I have 200/200. If you want to add more royal guards, juste kill some of your useless soldiers or make them push.
Mengsk have powerful adaptation, use the most effective royal guards and weapons against ennemy composition.
Never use workers to build bunkers since soldiers can do it pretty well. If you need to repair, you can convert soldiers into workers at a bunker.

With upgrades from the enginering bay, it makes you able to bunker rush everything and defend against everything, everywhere (and you can even call bunkers from space, what are you asking ?) You can then add tanks and medivacs and make you soldiers move in the bunkers where they are needed. Put watchers on every line of bunkers and you can defend everything by your own. You can solo oblivion express with your army split in half on each line and you can do all defensive maps pretty easy.

I never do weapon and armor upgrades on map I hope to finish before 17 min ; but I build 2 enginering bay on long lasting maps and reach 3/3. With the armor upgrades from the blackhammer and medivac support, you will roll on everything with just your bioball, you don’t even need the help of royal guards or calldowns.

For masteries I rececommend : 20/10 (since 30/0 is too much if you micro you watchers correctly ; if you don’t, 30/0 is better) ; 0/30 (except if you use mass canons, you would want to go 30/0) ; and 25/5 (or 30/0 if you want faster first zerg wave on difficult mutations).

For leveling Mengsk, the easiest method is to first build a bunker with 4-5 scv at 15/15 supply then make a 2CC to fast expand with 10 workers at 22 and then turn your workers into soldiers to clean the rocks. If you can’t fast expand, I hope your ally can clear it for you, because you will have it hard. Maraudeur / medivac rush is your easiest option. Don’t even try to clean it before first wave.

Always beware of your medivacs. They tend to stay far behind your army. When a soldier see an ennemy unit, it attack them, but your medivac won’t follow. If you have good micro, you might want to add all your medivacs in the same group or make them on follow mod (it means you never use F2 and it’s very useful with mengsk ultra fast soldiers creation).

I usually don’t make ghost (except 1 against protoss and abilities army composition for emp) because it require too much micro (you allready have to micro your watchers, medivacs and avoid everything that can instantly kill your soldiers) ; but if you are really good then you can mare more ghost factories to have more nuclear missiles. At lvl 3, immolation break every bio attack waves.

Lvl 3 sieges tanks are exceptionnaly good against air in a medivac, but your medivac can’t cloack anymore and it still require a lot of micro if you need to deploy them and put them back in your medivacs (way harder than swaan hercule since you can only have 1 tank for each medivac).

Maraudeurs are wery tanky and can be healed from your medivacs, they do splash damages and slow ennemies. Very useful, very strong, near your only viable option against mecha armies. More importantly, it’s the best way to make use of your medivacs drop, making you able to move quickly and pass over rifts.

Sky fury can tank pretty well at lvl 3 with good dps; if you don’t have swaan, raynor or kaarax with you you will want to have workers always follow them. Take care to macro them well.

I don’t see the utilisty to have more than 1 blackhammer, and it’s useful only on offensive maps where you don’t put your soldiers into bunkers. Pride of augustrad have 3 yamatos that fire in rapid succession and triple tacticals jumps ; making you able to snipe every objective with you calldowns.

Note : the first upgrade on the enginering bay doen’t seem to drop soldiers on rally point (but it drop workers correctly)
Zergwaves units are taken into account when you deploy your watcher. With a 200/200 supply, 100 ennergy zergwave and correct upgrades + masteries, when you deploy a 100 ennergy zergwave under a watcher you can call a nuclear warfare before the end of the fight (well it’s pretty overkill, you might want to drop bunkers instead for the soldiers inside.)

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At least with Supply Bunkers and Enlistment Centers (CCs), if you convert them back to Laborers, they drop all of their weapons at those buildings. Dunno if they do that when loading into ESO’s (since they can’t actually fire their own weapons from within).

No they don’t only when converting (or dying)

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Some quick notes about mandate generation. Note that this isn’t anywhere near a rigorous testing, just a single game’s observations.
200/200 army, 4 battlecruisers, 3 thors for RG, the rest is troopers.

No witnesses
Workers/Troopers: 0 m/min; Royal Guards: 48 m/min
1-1 witness above main/exp mineral line (with research)
Workers/Troopers: 100 m/min; Royal Guards: 48 m/min
The above, plus witness above army
Workers/Troopers: 240 m/min; Royal Guards: 48 m/min

The numbers are from the ingame UI and are without any masteries set.
This shows us that first, witness does not increase mandate gain from Royal Guards. Second, RG mandate generation is almost trivial compared to worker/trooper mandate generation. Just putting a witness above each mineral line will match an endgame RG mandate generation without the research, and double that with research. This also makes the first mastery of choosing between worker or RG mandate boost a trivial question.
So rush out those witnesses because RGs won’t carry your top bar abilities.

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basically indoctrinated worker/trooper generate
1 (2 with upgrade) each

for RG its harder to calculate because it also depends on exp level (but it seems to be too low…or perhaps it is just right and the indoctrinated amount is too high)

(also its amounts per 2 minutes)

Has anyone tried to land a barracks/factory/startport next to a Swann-build tech lab? I know this works with Raynor, would it work with Mengsk?

I’ve been meaning to try this too, but haven’t had many Raynor allies lately. It would definitely be nice to double produce medivacs in the midgame.

Used to think blimps most important to tech into. I’ve reconsidered, if it’s an early expo possible, tech into getting both extra gasses first. You will be gas starved, not mineral starved as mengsk

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Sorry to spoil the party boys, but it was tried. Didn’t work - likely due to the fact that Mengsk’s buildings are not coded to use addons.

Damn too bad, but thanks for the info

They don’t, had to manually select and ungarrison them one by one when i had unknowingly garrisoned the wrong troopers, but workers can be garrisoned in them, so you can quickly dearm them and garrison then.

Also something i have noticed is that troopers inside a bunker can pick up weapons droped next to them, noticed when i was converting some troopers to repair the bunker, their weapons disappeared and the bunker starting using their attacks

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@EnkerZan So I just started to lvl Mengsk. I read all 35+ pages of this thread and found it helpful. I was hoping you could share what you learned from all the comments? What is a good build order, how do you clear the early expansion rocks and what do you hotkey for Mengsk?

Thanks for the thread, again, I found it helpful. :slight_smile:

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Mengsk sure seems to have a “pre mastery” and “post mastery” build order. Here’s what I was doing “pre-mastery”:

2 SCVs to have 15 “in the pipe”. Peel off lines to build supply bunker on front as soon as 100 minerals hit after initial order. While waiting for the bunker, peel second worker off lines to start barracks at 150 minerals.

When bunker completes, queue 2-3 SCVs, use worker 1 to build second supply, keep queueing SCVs and at 17 on the line peel 3 to rush-build (and auto-fill) both refineries. Barracks worker starts E-bay on completion of Barracks. Finish saturating line, and build one more SCV after full saturation.

At this point, I build troopers and only troopers. The 3 SCVs (barracks guy, bunker guy, spare) go to work rush-building Factory, Starport, Fusion Core, Armory, ghost tower if desired in that order, the troopers rush build a pair of Earthsplitters then whatever supply bunkers I find necessary, diving into a bunker to stave off first attack wave.

Shortly after starport is up, order 2 Imperial Witnesses. Take trooper mass & second witness to expo for rock clearing. Typically I’ll have “earned” the 25 mandate (at base levels) to drop a supply bunker by this point, so the bunker drops at the expo (for defending it & being the base where the rock-clearing trooper wave is converted to workers for a rushed second CC / instant near saturation of expo.

Build order from this point becomes dependent on mission goals / enemy comp.

Sure! I learned quite a bit from this thread myself. Earthsplitters wreck face on offense maps, they are a little micro/macro at times, but it saves you the casualty count if you got good APM.

The mandate generation doesn’t seem to have a limit, but it may have diminishing returns for royal guard units after getting around 15+ because the number generation seems like it goes up very little passed that point. Similar to Stettman, it is far more beneficial to tech up as fast as you can and get the upgrade for the Imperial Witness to generate more mandate. And you want to build at least 6 Imperial Witness in any given mission, 8 at most. Also similar to Stettman, you want to park an Imperial Witness over each mineral line owned by you and you are partner because they boost the overall speed of the units within the radius. If we use the Void Thrashing map as an example, you could have 100 points ready for the Dogs of War ability before the Thrashers appear on the left side of the map if you rush the witnesses as fast as possible.

Oddly I rarely ever found a use for that chemical warfare ability that costs 25 mandate, I was always saving up to 100 mandate to drop either the zerg or the nukes and one or the other would be off cooldown by the time I reach 100 again. Usually when I do drop one of those, it’s because the game is pretty long and I will reach a point where both will be on cooldown while at 100. The ability itself has a learning curve of timing the drop, and in all honesty it doesn’t really help that much and I pretend that it doesn’t exist most of the time; if they were to buff anything on Mengsk, it should be that calldown.

As for the selection of units, the safest and easiest way to push objectives with or without Earthsplitters is massing Aegis Guards with some AA missile trooper support. Aegis Guards are incredibly tanky and the forward AoE-cone shotgun blasts from their grenade explosions shred the hell out of any ground units no matter the size. They also happen to be the fastest and cheapest-produced royal guard in the arsenal. I train at least 8 of these guys before I build any other unit due to their performance and for that quick mandate generation.

When it comes to defensive maps like Dead of Night or defending in general, Mengsk places #2 in this category. Like Karax, defending the entire base as Mengsk at his full potential in Dead of Night is a little tricky due to how your ally builds their base. If your ally plays like its a ladder match (blocking off entrances with main buildings) or just sloppily builds all over the place, there won’t be any room to put a healthy amount of Earthsplitters to be effective. If anyone is one of those players and is reading this, please build as neatly as possible on Dead of Night, it makes things a lot easier.

Another tip I can give (some always argue this) is when you are defending a position, do not rely on siege tanks for AoE clearing. They are not much more effective than a regular tank in terms of performance and they cost a ton of gas and take a while to build. You are better off putting in upgraded troopers in bunkers and building Earthsplitters to compensate, especially on Dead of Night.

I mainly hotkey the Command Center(s) and Earthsplitters. Everything else is pretty basic. As for builds, this is what I did:

Pre-level 15:

Build a few workers, send a worker to the front door of your base and build 3 supply bunkers in formation while still building workers. Get your refineries and barracks up during that process. Right before the first attack wave arrives at the front door, break off 12 workers and arm them as troopers and garrison the front-most bunkers while still building workers. When the enemy dies, get the troops out of the bunkers and send them to clear your rocks.

When the rocks are clear build a supply depot, switch the troopers to workers, and then build the Command Center and Refineries. Should the enemy attack again while you are doing this, break off another 12 workers, arm them, and send them to same bunkers again; then return them when the enemy is dead. By the time that expo is done building, you should be at max workers for your main mineral line and gas and filling in the expansion base.

While expo is being filled, get the Engineering Bay started and break off 4-10 workers from the mineral line to rush-build the Factory, Starport, Fusion Core, and Armory in that order. The worker amount depends on your available funds, you can have up to 10 workers on 1 building. If you don’t have access to the Fusion Core yet don’t fret.

By this time your ally should be ready and pushing the objective when the 3rd attack wave arrives. While they are busy, you need to rush out 4 Imperial Witnesses and park them at each base to generate your mandate then at least 1 more to follow your army; and also build 2 more Command Centers to start mass-producing Troopers and another barracks to produce your Aegis Guards in pairs.

From here you can either start building cannons to push your objectives if you have them unlocked, or you can wait for at least 4 Aegis Guards to be trained and accompanied by around 40 Troopers and then push. At least 8 Troopers should carry flamethrowers at all times til you have at least 8 Aegis Guards to start face-tanking the enemy. As long as you keep the Troopers behind the Aegis Guards, you casualties should be at a minimum.

At any time you push or your ally pushes when you are not ready, try to drop the 100 point Dogs of War calldown to assist. if your ally is competent, this will be more than enough to push any first objective.

Level 15 with 90 Mastery:

My mastery settings:

Set 1
Laborer and Trooper Imperial Support Gain - 30

Set 2
Royal Guard cost reduction - 30

Set 3
Initial Starting Imperial Mandate - 30

The build is roughly the same, the difference is the start of the game. As soon as the game starts, drop 2 supply bunkers at the front door, evac the troopers and send them to clear your rocks and your ally’s while setting up the barracks and engineering bay.

By the time they finish clearing rocks, the first attack wave should be on its way and you will get back in time to re-garrison those bunkers and deal with the enemy.

When the enemy is dead, evac the bunkers and switch the troopers to workers and build your expansion base. After that follow the previous steps and you are good to go.

Hope this helps!

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Just to clarify for you and anyone else, it’s not worth your time putting an Imperial Witness over your allies mineral line. It doesn’t generate mandate and the increase to movement speed is meaningless because they should already be fully saturated (this goes for Stetmann’s blue zone too). The increase is to movement speed, but doesn’t affect the speed of mining a mineral patch. So an increase in speed just means that workers get to the mineral patch faster, but then have to spend time waiting around because the previous worker isn’t done mining yet. Ultimately it’s a zero sum gain.

I typically build 3-4 Imperial Witnesses. 2 for my mineral lines and 1 or 2 to accompany my army. Between fights, seige the Witness over your troopers for increased mandate. Then unseige it when you need to be on the attack again. Because troopers inside bunkers or ordinances don’t get increased mandate from Witnesses and the gas spent on ordinance gives you less royal guard, if you really want to spam abilities, it’s best to get up close and personal with a huge army. Rush for the mandate upgrade and get 4-6 CCs depending on the map and just crank out troopers with the appropriate upgrades. Once you have your set up you will have so much mandate generation that the only limit will be cooldowns. But that isn’t a problem because you can alternate between using Dogs of War and Nuclear Annihilation. Both abilities kill bases and objectives much faster then ordinance can.

Ultimately your play style is up to personal preference, this is just what I’ve found to be most efficient as someone who likes to clear maps very quickly.

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Are you sure? I’ll check next time I’m in, but I thought they did (which they should).

Agreed, I find on a lot of maps ESO slows a map clear vs RG.