Vorazun Prestige 2: Withering Disappointment

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1

When I saw this, I thought it was a really cool idea - every single CC effect becomes a mini Psi Storm - but at the moment it is ridiculously, critically undertuned.

The good:

-It feels fantastic to drop Disruption Webs all over an enemy army and then send your units (or watch your ally) clean up everything in one hit.

-Stasis Trap, plus the research that makes trapped enemies attackable, is a very cool combination.

-Makes Centurions really interesting and desirable in certain cases.

The bad:

-You have literally no way to address flying heroic units. Normal fliers can be mind controlled, stasis trapped, or confused. Ground-based heroics can be hit with disruption web. You can do nothing but attack heroic fliers and fully upgraded Corsairs do 3 or 4 damage per attack.

-Clearing rocks takes forever because Centurions are only doing 4+4 damage per swing.

-Enemy units with more than, say, 150ish HP may as well be invulnerable. 20 damage per second means it takes 20 seconds of targeted abilities to bring a Thor to 1 hit point, and don’t even get me started on Hybrids.

-You have literally zero way to meaningfully damage enemies until you get Darkcoil from Twilight Council. Even then, your strongest effects come from Dark Archons and Corsairs, each of which require Tier 3 (Shrine for DA unlock, Fleet Beacon for Disruption Web research).

-If you forget to turn off D-Web autocast, your entire fleet of Corsairs will cast it on a single target, wasting it. Newly built Corsairs come with autocast activated, and if you have your entire army selected, you need to right-click the ability twice to turn it on, then off, for everything, and if you forget then that’s often 3-4 D-webs wasted on a single spore colony.

-Stalkers and Void Rays - your main anti-Armored tools - have no access to CC, making them basically useless.

Some propositions for improvement:

-Let the Withering damage stack with multiple effects. This at least gives you an answer to big targets, or a consolation prize if your units autocast a bunch of Darkcoils or D-webs on the same target.

-Apply the Withering effect to Black Hole, too. There’s already a nice combo with BH+D-web but again, that’s tier 3, and it would be nice to have a “desperation” play against a large group.

-Maybe make the damage debuff only apply to uncloaked/detected units? This at least gives you a bit of room to play around. Drop a Dark Pylon to create a strongpoint, prioritize perma-stealth upgrade for air units, focus down detectors first… Still doesn’t solve the heroic air problem (since a lot of those are ALSO detectors) but it’s better than nothing.

-If nothing else, maybe consider another downside entirely? “Better status effects, but your army is weaker” is a great concept, but there are multiple ways to ensure a player will generally have a weaker army. Plus, if you do this, you really, really need to make it easier to access status effects - I might even go so far as to have all of those abilities come unlocked by default, but maybe increase supply cost for units…? Or something?

3 Likes
2

I’m not sure why you’re not using Shadow Guard to clear rocks but other than that yeah this is a big problem.

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(tbh I only played 2 games with the prestige, first was lvl1 so I only had 2 shadow guard, 2nd was lvl15 but it was on a map without rocks. It’s just that this prestige sucks so hard that I actually felt less useful than those 4 games each as lvl1 zag and lvl1 karax)

4

In hindsight, I am surprised they didn’t make a Prestige on the old Mind Control build that was popular back in the heyday before it got hit with the nerf hammer. That was a playstyle that Vorazun players liked and played so much, that the devs had to weaken it. As in, Mind Controlled units didn’t take up supply back then, nor did they lose all their attack and defense upgrades.

With some tweaks, I feel like Prestige offers a way to give that back at the cost of her own produced units suffering from the 50% DPS nerf that she currently has.

Perhaps that could be baked into this Prestige, as another perk?

3 Likes
5

Do mind controlled units keep their regular damage? If not, they should. I think a talent based entirely around darchon is a great idea.

Reduced energy cost of mind control (slightly), mind controlled enemies don’t cost supply, and keep their upgrades. Increase AoE of confusion maybe?
However, non-mind controlled units have damage reduced by 50%. Black hole costs 50 energy.

Tbh withering siphon sucks so much you could throw it in there as well

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Does it not stack? How long does the effect last? If it’s only for the duration of the effect, then 10 secs of DW, for example, for would remove 200 HP.

The most you could do with this is run-by’s where you first DW an entire base manually, pull back and then go in with weaker ground forces. However, this isn’t better than just F2A-moving that same army into the enemy base.

I suppose you could spend on Centurions & Corsairs instead of DT’s & Corsairs so that you spend even amounts of gas+mineral.

7

I think maybe if the penalty was 50% less dmg v. non heroic non stucture units (So you can clear rocks/objectives)
And apply siphon to any enemy that any reduced move speed/attack speed effect as well as fear…(that way it can benefit the ally as well as black hole)

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Tried it once on Mist Opportunities against Classic Mech Terran. Went Dark Archon / Centurion. Had almost no problems with enemies, but killing bonus objective took FOREVER.

1 Like