How useful is this power set? I’ve read people using it as a way for offense or to boost defense (by keeping DP further away from cannons. How do people feel about it?
And if with P1?
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I tend to see black hole as the more popular choice, since outside of DTs Vorazun struggles with armour.
That said, I found it pretty helpful for DAs, and it can be useful with cannons. Though cannons are often more of a trap than anything in coop.
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I go DP Mastery for her P1. May as well amplify the prestige.
It seems like this would be her version of (Stetmann) purple zone. Anybody who uses units with energy would make well use of this!
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Black Hole duration is better in most cases. Dark Pylon Range has niche uses, particulary if you’re creating a cloaked wall to counter/nullify certain mutators.
P1 is a noob trap since it relies on losing your units, the opposite of good Vorazun play. There are some niche uses, like Black Death or while levelling Vora, but good players know the value of mobility.
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For P1 the dark pylon range is fun and kinda… maybe okay.
For everything else the black hole mastery is just crazy overtuned.
Blizz could probably halve the bonus and it would still be the clear choice.
I mostly use it for P1 when I’m going mass void rays. I also dunk 15 points on it on P2 when I have like 8 or more Dark Archons as they tend to crowd a lot and so the increased AoE helps them be in the cloaking field and regen their energy after mind controlling stuff.
P1 also reduces CD and cost of DP, right? In a sense, less energy spent on DP = more energy for Black Hole, and saves time/minerals early on?
So Black Hole duration would be roughly 8 + 2.4 seconds. Hm, maybe I should just kick other units out of stealth until DA recovers. XD
When you have army - blackholed enemies die in couple seconds anyway, when you don’t - couple additional seconds won’t save you anyway. Cases when BH mastery actually makes a difference are so rare in my experience that I just go with DP choice. Maybe it’s a noob choice, maybe, but it’s so satisfying when my entire base is cloaked with just 1 pylon or when I have some space to move around while still cloaked if it’s on the map.
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a good example of play to your preference and not some elitist telling you it’s not the optimal choice because it won’t work for x and y mutator.
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With energy mastery you have enough for the first DP and DT topbar.
That’s great, if you can time it well then by all means do so. The extra time really helps the average player to get into position and gives leeway if you place it slightly wrong and need to draw units into the blackhole. It also helps with the many mutators that buff Amon.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s not elitist to give someone an optimized solution, it’s simply logical. For example, wouldn’t you want Google Maps to work out an optimal route? Or should it send you on a route that avoids free motorways/highways because it doesn’t like them even if that takes half an hour longer to get to your destination?
Naturally you can choose to play however you want, but it’s not elitist to recommend to someone to first try a more optimal solution.
P.S. Strategies like mass DA certainly are fun, even though generally weaker than DT/corsair.
Dark Pylon range:
- Covering both gas rocks so you can break them with Probes (leave 14 probes paired up on each mineral patch and rally probes to rocks to break them fast for a gas boost).
- Full invis wall to counter Void Rift units, Reanimated units, Broodlings, Infested Outbreak etc.
- Enough range to cover a full mineral line on DoN to protect against Seeker Missiles (especially against Power Overwhelming).
- Extra range to use offensively with Void Ray’s or Dark Archons.
How much is too much? Hard to say. I switch between 10 and 15 Dark Pylon Mastery. Try it and see how it feels. You definitely DONT want to end up in a situation where a single Black Hole isn’t long enough to kill everything that needs to be killed (including long enough to prevent Hybrid Dominators from firing Plasma Surge).
Much better to play P2 vs Black Death and Double Edge.
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Ooh, actually, yes. I tend to avoid Vora for those, but that makes more sense.
The interactions are interesting. You probably know this but for our valued readers the damage penalty of P2 means that vs Black Death an Infected unit won’t die and vs Double Edge the damage penalty is applied twice.
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If you need to make a full dark pylon wall, use this mastery.
Examples: TotP, ME, DoN, void rifts, maybe RtK
If not, use black hole mastery.
If you’re playing random map, use black hole mastery.
I think what Koe meant was that, the difference between optimal route and alternative route aren’t wide enough to “require” Black Hole duration over Dark Pylon range in the hand of most players, in most non-mutate difficulties?
Let’s see, Black Hole is 8 second base, 10 pts makes it 9.6 secs, 15 pts is 10.4 secs, 20 pts is 11.2 secs, 30 pts is 12.8 secs. Dominator/Behemoth have about 2000 hp total (IIRC), so it takes about 250 dps (8 sec BH), 200 dps (10 sec BH), 166.6 dps (12 sec BH), and 153.8 dps (13 sec BH) to kill one of them. Max 30 pts in BH reduced the required dps by almost a 100, while 10/15 pts reduce the required dps by “about” 50.
Feels like 12/13 pts in BH has the most optimal gain?
Now that you mention it, it’s also useful for any partner that has energy based casters (though not Stetmann, if I recall he’s got a unique resource that’s similar but separate from energy for his units).
That I agree on. But sometimes people give advice and impose that it’s the only way instead of saying “but you can still do…” and that really irks me. Also, I think giving advice on things at Brutal difficulty, as it’s the highest difficulty with the least variability, unless someone asks for Brutal++ usage because a lot of us here aren’t really dabbling with Brutal++.
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Ah, ok. I rarely see people say you have to do something a certain way, but I do see it strongly recommended. If someone asks for advice it makes sense to encourage them to first try the better strats.
I think most offer that as the default and then add useful points for mutators. For example, cases in favour of Dark Pylon Range tend to fall in the mutator category.
Absolutely, if you’re partnered up with someone you can synergize. But in general an ally won’t make good use of the field since they don’t even know what it does. Far better on pub queue to buff your gameplay and then help your ally kill stuff.
If you’re using BH perfectly then you’re in the camp of @che. Usually there’s a delay before you start attacking as well as a delay for all the units to bunch up. And there’s a lot more units to kill. A good example if the first big wave on Mist Opportunities where there’s multiple hybrid with a regular wave. You’re unlikely to catch this on the ramp so it’s probably spread out when it gets to you. There’s also the 2nd wave on Chain, which many people don’t avoid, that takes more time to kill due to the small size of your armies. TS is also often mistimed here, so a longer BH really helps.
So basically, full Black Hole mastery is the simple choice that best covers random map, public queue brutal. Once you get better at Vora you adjust as needed for different situations.
By all means test and refine to improve your gameplay since Vorazun is strong.