You barely get to see the positive effect while making his expensive units even more expensive cripples you all game.
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Very accurate. Buffing already strong units with “more upgrades levels” is a great idea… if you can actually get there before the game’s over… 
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Yeah. P2 Zeratul is late-game, very late-game, most games don’t get that long. Which is pity.
They have it use nothing to lose playing cannon zeratul
Playing cannon also mean legion spam it made legion stronger too with each upgrade
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Is cannon Zeratul still good after the big nerf?
Fun fact: Zeratul’s cannons get buffed hardcore by this prestige. And they don’t cost a single mineral more.
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On shorter maps, yes, it’s kind of a bad choice, but for maps over 20 min it’s ok.
You should have full army by that time anyway, and floating a lot of resources, so why not improve it a bit? I mean, if you’d have to choose between having 15 immos with 3 upgrades or 15 immos with 7 upgrades at 20 minute mark, which one would you choose? You can argue the fact that you might get 5 or 10 immortals earlier and have a bit of power spike at one time if you’re not using the prestige, but at max army it’s definitely better to have more upgrades for your units.
And don’t forget these artifacts also boost Zeratul’s stats, which means at higher levels he can almost wipe out an entire wave with a shadow cleave. And he gets more blink charges and more shields, so he can even tank better.
I end up on OE with ~9 upgs on OE and ~12 on MO - with artifact spawn mastery ofc (at 12 you have 1000+ shields and 220 dmg for zeratul’s cleave). You can’t tell me 6 more upgrades aren’t worth 25% extra cost on units.
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It was still useable, just not as mindless. Since then they’ve relaxed the mineral cost nerf of the cannons themselves so it’s sort of a middle ground. It’s not necessary his best strategy anymore, but it’s certainly playable as it is now.
Per OP, it’s a good prestige I think, not always the best choice out of the 4 but it’s fun on longer maps and doesn’t hamstring him too much on short ones to make it a problem.
Or in other words, it’s not necessarily strong, but seeing the numbers go up is fun dangit.
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Well, this Prestige is for the cannon. You get the full benefit of armor/wep upgrade on cannon while they don’t take a hit from penalty.
Also, since the cannon build is not Micro intensive, you will be able to freely focus on Zeratul fragment treasure hunt.
This prestige is PERFECT for cannon build.
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It’s the ultimate quality over quantity play-style.
It’s decent enough.
StarCraft II Co-op: Explosive Hunt Zeratul Solo - YouTube
I got told this was the perfect video to cite for cannontul post nerf.
As for p2, I’ll note that it’s almost mandatory to have maxed artifact cooldown mastery for this prestige, and that the unit who gets the most benefit out of it is the fast attacking ambusher. If you want I could dig up a video of p2 Zeratul solo vs. avenger/just die/heroes from the storm on OE.
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I disagree.
I’ll quote Zeratul’s commander page on SC2 Coop .com:
In many ways, Zeratul’s prestige design is ideal, as all of his prestiges have specific uses and situations in which they are very viable.
Yeah, he’s a lame, boring design that could have been so much more interesting but instead it’s just 1A deathballs in between scavenger hunts.
And his P2 is pretty bad too.
Every “late game” perk is lame. HH P3, Aba P3, Zera P2
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P2 just makes his deathball more hilariously deathbally, if the game lasts long enough.
The worst part is you don’t have as many minerals lying around to spam cannons all over the place.
pretty much this especially if the cost is early game ramp-up, as all that does is making your teammate do the hard work while you work up to an army that doesn’t matter because you’re already done with the actual hardest part of the map.
With that said, I know you can’t make every prestige about better early game without it getting boring.
Between finding 3 artifact fragments and annihilating everything by A-click and finding 7-10 artifact fragments and annihilate everything the same way, but maybe in 2-3 shots instead of 3-4, which would you choose?
The problem is that Zeratul already powerful enough to do anything, P2 just adding more annoyance to gameplay.
But the main problem here is that you don’t know what situation you’ll get in before selecting the prestige, so P2 and P3 suck for regular gameplay on random map.
I see the message didn’t get across the first time. Maybe after watching what Zeratul can do with +9 weapons without dragging out a map…
Zeratul’s p2 is extremely strong. Artifact better.
Yeah I think what people are saying is that even when you get to 3 fragments, which is something like 10min. You’re getting the prestige benefit at 12, 14, and so on. At this point the benefit is only seen on a mutation as you reach past 5/5/5 at say 16min. In any regular game, your army is far strong enough to take care of anything (as long as you’re not just A-moving into something like a sliver).
And the video shows the player using Stalkers, Zeratul’s strongest composition. Not to mention he/she clearly had the spare APM. When you look at it as a whole:
- Higher APM required
- Strongest composition used
- On point collection
- Mutation on a known long map
All of that add to a very specific mutation friendly prestige and not for regular usage. I don’t think P2 is “bad”, just not that much “good” regular use.
Assuming optimal play, it’s much closer to 8 minutes. In theory it’s
Fragment 1 at 4 minutes
Fragment 2 at 6 minutes
Fragment 3 at 8 minutes
Fragment 4 at 10 minutes
However there obviously isn’t going to be literally 0 search time. So 8:30-9:00 is a better bet.
I would also point out that other similarly “long” (or even longer) maps would include Malwarfare, Mist Opportunities, Temple of the Past, Vermillion Problem, and Void Launch. And let’s be honest: how many Zeratuls can claim that most games on the other maps end by 12 minutes?
Also, last footnote: for p0 Zeratul Void Templar usually will significantly outclass Ambushers, it’s just that their abilities (which is their real power) receive no benefit past artifact 3.