This is just my thought on it, I just don’t think these abilities have much merit on it.
I measured them based on,
Actual usefulness
Use frequency (on my own perspective)
Havoc’s Force Field - We all know Havocs are essential to Alarak and their support abilities very useful, but Force Field I don’t know its point. I can see they are mostly for blocking enemies from approaching but this ability can be easily nullified by massive units which all enemy wave have, which render this ability useless.
Corruptor’s Corruption - I can see that +35% damage increase has some use (especially against building) but really supply 100, manual click and non-splash effect make it somewhat useless. And besides it’s doesn’t seem that useful when Scourge and Banelings can just easily smash through everything without it.
I think this ability should have more splash and auto-casted to be better.
Sky Fury’s Mode Change - When Sky Fury change their forms they activate Tactical alignment and Phoenix Protocols. These abilities are terrible. Tactical Alignment itself is useless as its duration is only 5 seconds and they immediately cancel itself when Sky Fury transforms again (There is no counter either to tell how long is it effective). Phoenix Protocol is hard to tell because there is no separate shield meter to tell how much shield they have (There is no counter either to tell how long is it effective) and they only lasts for 15 seconds.
Then again Sky Fury itself is a terrible unit on the whole.
4(Tie). Queen’s Transfusion - I guess they are ‘kind of useful’ when healing the hero but I have rarely seen anyone using it saved for healing crawlers or Bile Cannons.
4(Tie). Brood Queen’s Ocular Symbiote - They are very very very rarely used ability but they are not really useless, they can be an ace ability to short sight mutation especially when used to Overseers (Their vision and Detection range gets +5 bonus).
Too bad that they are only 3 minutes long.
4(Tie). Zeratul’s Stasis Beam - They are kind of useful in early stages but they really quickly become useless when they reach high sub mastery and mastery.
Deimos Viking’s W.I.L.D Missiles - They seem to be useful ability but they have 2 problems for me; slow animation and overkill.
These missiles go through slow loop animation before enemy attacks, this is kind of a problem as it lets enemies attack your forces before the missiles connects.
Also, these missiles cause overkill. For example (5 missiles are shot in single use) when the 2 W.I.L.D missile kills a unit the remaining 3 are wasted. It also doesn’t help that sometimes Deimos Vikings fire the missiles at single target and wastes so many of them.
It would be nice if remaining active missiles automatically target another unit after the original target dies.
From here its Complicated, they are useful when it comes to specialty but outside of it they have less use.
6 (Tie). Tempest’s Disintegration - This ability are great against objective targets such as infested huts and trains. But they are not effective on actual combat while enemy takes 25 per sec they deal more damage before they die, I suppose they are for demolishing structures like Terraclean Solvent. These would be more useful if they stacked, but they don’t.
6 (Tie). Mecha Corruptor’s Terraclean Solvent - I think this ability was included for the sake of its identity as Corruptor’s ability.
I haven’t seen this ability being used but I gave higher marks than Disintegration because they can stack. They are great against Large Hybrids as well as Objective units (especially Trains).
7 (Tie). Mecha Infestor’s Deconstructive Roach-nites - I haven’t used it as of yet or saw anyone using yet, but lot of people find this ability very useful and reading the description, I can see it can be useful to disable enemy buildings.
7 (Tie). Mecha Infestor’s UMI-C Charging Protocol - I haven’t used it as of yet or saw anyone using yet, but lot of people find this ability very useful and reading the description, I can see it can be useful to improve tough units like Ultralisks and Broodcarrier Lords.
I agree with these assessments. Sky Furies are especially bad and really need some tweaks. Even with P2 Mengsk they are still garbage due to their low stats. Also their evasion ability needs to be higher and able to be used in mech mode.
I use this all the time. It’s not a great ability but for 150gas, the limiting resource, in a speed run via Tempests, it is far more useful than say…
Getting air armor
Waiting to kill static that you don’t have to engage.
Add a bit of extra damage (since it doesn’t stack unfortunately… ++agree) to objectives.
My counter to replacing this on the list is 330mm barrage (Ah that sounds better than 30 xD, thanks @Swordier) from Thors . Used far less as a strategy and far less as an ability.
One redeeming thing about them is their 50% Evasive maneuvers. I really hope Devs can implement some serious quality of life into them.
Huh strange, I actually find this ability very useful because of its outstanding ground destruction capabilities. I use them all the time when dealing with dangerous waves and clearing objective targets.
I think what suck is the Corruptor itself. When I do make them, I make use of this ability, hoping to decrease a bit their uselessness.
Also, Zagara stay true to her image I have of her of being bad at anti-air, with that ability that can be like saying “I weakened the enemy, please ally, finish the job”.
In conclusion, rather than the ability, it’s the unit that should be changed.
Okay, I gotta now disagree with that Sky Fury mode change being on the list.
It is quite literally the only redeeming quality for them. The transformation is so quick that you should be:
Travelling via air mode for super mobility
Massacre all ground with a quick transform to ground mode.
Remember to rotate this every 15sec (agreed an icon for timer would be nice)
For the damage, at rank 1 it boasts upwards of 90 to rank 3 of 120 per attack. Since we are discussing ability usefulness, this is actually quite useful.
Sky Fury is still fragile unfortunately but is not due to its abilities. In fact, these abilities (including Aesir Engine? Can’t remember name and Smart Servo for transforming) are wicked good.
Also, why isn’t Queen’s Transfusion on this list? Thinking about it, I’d venture a guess that even the players that use Queens don’t use Transfusion.
Tempest Disintegrate just needs to be more fast-acting. Instead of doing 10 damage every 0.4 seconds, it needs to do so every 0.2 seconds. It’s a pretty good ability for sniping things ahead of time especially if you use an observer to spot, but it takes ages to kill a lot of things. Having tempests sit around and not do anything just feels bad, and it’d be much quicker to move in if you could just kill the problem units faster.
That’s 330mm barrage to you good sir! And I’ve got to admit, I love the heck out of it myself. On maps where I’m going against a ground comp, and don’t need to zip around the battlefield a whole bunch, it’s good fun to build an army of Thors backed up by SCV’s (then later Science Vessels), then stomp around, timing your barrages perfectly to destroy entire waves coming at you. Clearing entire waves of marines, zerglings, banelings, zealots with juuuust the right timing feels great. And if you forgot detection and a Dark Templar or a Lurker is hitting you, just barrage that as well.
The only bad thing about them is that Swann already has great answers to clearing ground waves, mostly his Herc/Tank wombo combo. But if you feel like switching it up some, or are getting tired of vipers pulling your Herc full of tanks into the group of banelings and scourges, it can be good fun.
If this is based on use frequency this is a good list.
Assuming this is just abilities of units you have to manually cast here are some others:
Thor’s 330mm Barrage Cannon - Thors just feel weird to control as Swann, but I have seen allies make them before. Haven’t seen the ability.
Karax’s Immortal Shadow Cannon - When was the last time you seen a Karax make an Immortal? I know people argue that it’s good for antiair but it’s a 45 second cooldown and Karax already has an entire top bar to work with.
Abathur’s Ravager Corrosive Bile - It seems great in theory but Abathur’s units are so fat and the cast range so short that you’re better off just attack moving. Even if you do cast them, the enemies will probably die before the bile lands.
Abathur’s Viper Parasitic Bomb - Abduct is one-fifth the cost and just better in every situation.
Stukov’s Infested Banshee Burrow - Stukov Banshees are actually really good (eight range, tons of health, can full heal themselves after every fight) but people favor Diamondbacks for non Barracks or Bunker play. They also tend to overkill things just like Artanis Tempests.
Stukov’s Brood Queen Ocular Symbiote - Has anyone ever used this?
Stukov’s Brood Queen Spawn Broodlings - Only does a measly 300 damage as opposed to the expected one shot kill of sc1.
Stukov’s Brood Queen Fungal Growth - I bet you guys didn’t even know they could Fungal. You have to research the ability first.
Fenix’s Disruptor Purification Nova - I have never seen a Disruptor from a Fenix. The weird part is that there are probably dozens of posts praising Fenix Disruptors in these forums and the old forums.
Stetmann’s Mecha Lurker Tunnel of TERROR Algorithm - Basically a Lurker’s version of Zeratul’s damaging DT Blink, but much much slower. It’s not a bad ability at all but I just haven’t seen it used or found the need for it. Would be better if it didn’t automatically burrow your Lurker.
Stetmann’s Mecha Infestor Deconstructive Roach-nites - Remember when it got removed from the game and no one noticed for months? Yeah.
Mengsk’s Emperor’s Shadow Tactical Missile Strike - Only does 150 damage. I did see a lot of this ability used when Mengsk first came out though. Still wasn’t any good back then as well.
Who here remembers the days before Karax 3.0 where mass Immortals was one of his only good builds? Good sad times.
Shadow Cannon is really good though! It does more damage than Yamato, on an actually good unit! Karax P2 just makes all his units work, so the less F2A builds get left in the dust. Plus 3.0 brought his Sentinels and Mirage out of the shadows.
I use transfusion when I’m leveling Zagara and get a defensive map, transfusing crawlers is actually surprisingly descent (for normal/hard).
My problem with sky furries is that with Black hammer, anti air missle troopers and flying siege tanks I never really feel I need more anti air and Vs ground I have the same with aegis guard/tank/fire trooper… Vs what composition do you recommend them ? (I only occasionally get them on the shuttle map if I roll a bad ally and have to snipe the shuttles instead of spawn camp the shuttle waves).
Also fully agree with burger on Zagara corrupters, only use them Vs massive hybrids and trains.
Don’t fully agree with the mecha corrupter though, Vs air waves I really like the ability. Only thing I dislike is when I stack order (with shift) the ability they sometimes somehow take forever and only shoot after the wave is gone…
The 2 unit abilities I never use are the Stettman/Dehake lurker ones, with Stetmann I never need it and with Dehake it doesn’t feel worth the trouble…
I would say this ability is not useless, but rather powercrept too hard. Back then, when people still needed “co-op” to beat Brutal, Disintegration was:
One of the best DPS sources on trains (putting them on each carriage, ignoring the armor)
A reliable way to kill Vikings, Void Rays before your Tempests took too much damage due to the super short anti-air range, or to pick up those annoying Ravens, Science Vessels.
Also some extra DPS on building when you raided a base. (we couldn’t delete a base in 5 seconds back then, so yes it’s nice to do that stuff a bit faster)
Swann’s thors suck vs air, thors + barrage makes them not suck vs ground, try them vs ground armies, it works.
But that’s his best unit for an all-rounder can be used vs most comps but mass air, far too many Karax players only stares at carriers, I rarelly see even those sentinel+energizer vs mech comps despite everyone saying it’s cool.
P1 Kerrigan I do for Kerri herself and Ultras (full mastery on gas+upgrades makes me fly on minerals, queens don’t cost larva though not worth massing, 6-8 is enough), Zagara tho I don’t even make Queens because not worth the supply, at most, creep spread on defensive maps and that’s it, why heal aberrations when they have 2 banes inside them? And that Zagara’s army is too fast for queens to keep up to even bother healing.
. Used far less as a strategy and far less as an ability.