Karax is perfectly functional as is, he just requires experience to play.
I complained a lot after they removed Discount mastery, found out the commander is actually ok regardless.
He still has some design issues here and there such as:
Repair Beam upgrade too weak/pointless.
Repair Drones still have issues.
Half the masteries are garbage.
Mirages and Carriers still don’t have clear roles/don’t excel at anything.
His leveling experience doesn’t teach you to use his army, but to avoid it.
He still struggles with basic light air units killing his energizers, and Zerg, a lot of problems with Zerg.
If you’re strugling with resources as Karax, you’re probably upgrading too many things at once. Just get what you need at the time and you will be fine. Takes getting used to. Takes realizing his army is tanky enough to deal with problems. Takes knowing how much energy you are supposed to spend too.
Also takes not doing the super greedy tactic of burning down the rocks with all your energy in the early game regardless of the map/enemy comp that people think is the meta. I main Karax with Chrono Boost mastery, just saying. It is a lot safer and works on all maps regardless of Amon’s composition.
Other things to note:
Opening Carrier is not an option, most people don’t realize that.
Spamming cannons is not optimal and is not cost efficient, most people do it anyway.
Making Sentinels is fine and the safest when paired with early energy upgrade, most people ignore them like the plague.
Your army should have one energizer for every 8 units if you wanna maximize Karax’s synergies and actually have damage without Orbital Strike.
Now, if you’re balancing Karax around mutations, there ain’t much I can say there. They are definitely a case by case scenario and I’m unaware of commanders being balanced around mutations, but I’ve been out of this game for a while, so I don’t know. Did that happen recently?
Well without mastery they still have +50% health over duplicate units but I get the point. I agree maguro’s approach of giving special abilities baseline and changing research to decrease cooldown/increase effect would be the best way to improve units.
Part of me thinks his static defense should just be much stronger, rather than teleporting like Zeratul and Karax 2.0. Stronger turrets = fewer required = more money for research.
Maybe have optimized ordinance, instead of a flat 20% attack speed buff, give a huge attack speed buff that decays as cannon/monolith takes shield damage? Double attack speed with full shields, regular attack speed at 0 shields.
Though we probably don’t need something that complicated.
Your response pretty much illustrates my point. All of the buffs I mentioned are ones that I find “would be nice”, but I definitely understand if they do NOT implement any of them (and I doubt they will).
Likewise, your suggestion for Karax seems to fall under the same camp. It’d be “nice to have”, but I doubt they’ll implement it because it doesn’t feel like it’s really needed (anymore than the buffs I suggested)
Hmm, that could prove interesting. Would get people to build more Shield batteries. I’m guessing that would be on top of any other attack speed buffs, like Energizers?
My suggestion was to:
–Make all of his 0-build time structures 80% cheaper
and/or
–let His Nexus recall those buildings, removing them from the map, and refunding the resource costs
This should put his structure path strong enough to cover the issues with his units. Flexibility in moving structures, and saving enough resources for other things.
Maguro has this covered and I wish the Co-op developers can implement these abilities.
Also to Typhoon, at least Alarak and H&H is surprisingly resource balanced while Karax’s quite isn’t thanks to tax, also H&H has Widow mines which does very well in defence (and mineral efficient).
Noted.
I have to ask though, why do you want Zagara to get generic units rather than advanced ones? Wouldn’t that make her inefficient?
Ah you mean Hydralisk/Ultralisk/Mutalisks/Roach available etc?
Well, Zagara is more of a carthasis commander for me.
All of her units are like ammunitions when they gather in max number (especially Banelings/Zerglings) and when they are unleashed with Fury, they deliever one hell of a destructive power. I do Zagara for the fun of instant gratification and pay off, I think that is what the developers were going for with Zagara.
By “diminishing” do you mean decreased resource return due to increased resource expenditure from purchasing unit/upgrade?
In condition of if this “what if” ability is actually implemented, the resources gain will rise with more workers present by then (even more so when the number exceeds the limit).
What? You would make his overpriced units even more expensive? And with cheaper buildings … so he will be only cannonrusher (with building anywhere on the map, apparently)
Granted I do rush into upgrade SoA and Sentinels as quickly as possible and sometimes my resources do drain quite quickly. Karax deathball is very dependent on Sentinel builds and they are one of the best mineral tanker units I know but the unit taxes makes it tedious to make advanced units. By the time advanced units such as Colossus, Immortals, Carriers gather in number, about 1:6 proportions are sentinels and since that they don’t die that much it’s har to replace them.
Karax’s deathballs are viable but personally I want tax discount back so I can invest to produce more advanced units.
Karax structures already do their job in defensive mutations but all he can do is support with SoA in mobility theme mutation, and with his current unit taxes it may not be as sufficient especially when there is a time limit.
Yeah, on top of speed buffs. Additionally, it gives more incentive to the structure hp mastery, as having turrets stay at high % shields for longer also boosts their damage. The idea is to embrace the bulkiness of karax’s units/turrets and translate that to more offensive strength. (If immortals and sentinels tank damage, turrets can unleash hell)
A slightly different approach would be every point of shield increases attack speed by 1%. So cannons at full shields get +150%, monoliths +100%. HOWEVER, this would scale incredibly well with the structure hp mastery, up to +240% cannon and +160% monolith attack speed. That way, the mastery not only affects structures taking damage, but every defensive turret.
My issue with your suggestions is you’ll be increasing APM required to have a strong static defense (either stand alone or supplementary). With any other commander (bar swann, maybe), I think increasing APM capacity/incentive is a good thing, but idk about Karax. We can see from Karax 2.0 that moving structures is finicky and time consuming, and I don’t think “just make more structures” is any different. And we also already know Karax requires a decent amount more awareness in general due to his top bar design: he has tons of “active” components, so I think buffing him in more passive ways (such that you don’t need to think about them while playing) is a better way to go
What I mean is Karax saturates around 4min mark (give or take difference with build order). At this point, the player continues to tech up and proceeds to making units around 5.5min to 7min (depending on gateway vs robo approach).
What this particular change gives is an additional 1000/500 resource at 7min mark, post the 20min Chrono Wave. So one of two things can happen:
With only saturated bases, the player can now make use of this 20sec window, along with the 1000/500 additionally gained resources, to make a few more units ~ 2-3 depending on what robo unit is chosen.
Instead, chooses to invest an additional 20-30 probes before 7min. This will (according to you), result in a 6fold higher yield. So this option would seem best.
However, we can see a clearly laid out issue presented for the higher economy route of option 2 above. This would mean the player would:
Have only started to produce units at around 7-7.5min (an entire 2min delay).
Due to this high boost, as well as game progressing to over-saturated bases with Chrono Wave, the 2nd and consequent Chrono Waves will yield less significant returns, despite the same 6fold yield each cast. [This is due to running excess resources post midgame for most commanders, including Karax.] I mean unless the player chooses to further delay production and attempt to support 4 Robo and/or Starports rather than the conventional 2.
That’s what I mean by diminishing returns. The overall gained benefit is highly focused on the very first (7min) Chrono Wave. The significance of continued higher yield with over-saturated bases (taking up supply count) is more detrimental because:
Past midgame the player should be approaching 100-150 supply in army. This additional 20 probes per base would means total worker supply takes up closer to 80 supply.
So even though the by 2nd Chrono Wave can (with this buff) produce 4 robo units at a time as oppose to the 2 normally at this time, they’ll soon reach their supply cap.
By the time the 3rd Chrono Wave is available, continued production of robo units would be meaningless. As Karax’s units are quite resilent with higher bulk and repair beam.
And if the player at this mid-late game portion still haven’t maxed out at the 120 army cap vs their usual 150 in army cap, they’ll have to reduce the Probe count to make room… and in turn, decreasing the yield gained from the Chrono Wave yield.
I’m not sure I did a good job explaining, but that’s what I see as a definite problem.
My possible suggestion to solve this would be that Chrono Wave, in addition to its effect, adds an additional permanent layer of Chrono Field (so +10% each, by 3rd Chrono Wave would be 15% base + 10% x 3 = 45%).
This production itself would help make up (in a way) to catch up on the delayed macro that everyone’s having trouble with. In theory, at least, can provide the Karax player a faster army to move out. And I say this because (as I mentioned above), usually past midgame, Karax’s economy has been saturated and functional for 5+ minutes. And what prevents him having a high army cap is his production time.
Nono, you explained in very great detail. I understand what you mean.
Well I suppose if this is implemented we can find a balanced number of additional workers and when the resource is large enough we can always decrease the number of probes (I say mostly gas as it is the biggest resource problem).
We can make the benefit to varying degree, +10% to Karax and 5% to others.
Interesting idea. Quite a challenge to implement but I see the point.
I’m afraid that @Someone is right. What you are suggesting is not different from the developers went with which made unit production even more difficult.
These are my thoughts on your idea
I have other Alternative solution to Karax’s unit problem, we could give Karax Gas discount with a value of 15% ~ 20%.
Yes… make his units expensive but actually worth it (50% cooldown on abilities, and enhancement of abilities)**
Having them start with some of those abilities baseline and getting upgrades to them makes sense (maybe they start out at normal cooldown and the upgrade give them the boost and a 50% cooldown time (for the abilities with cooldowns)
[immortal barrier, mirage grav, and carrier interceptor production would still get the 50% cooldown benefit from Level1]
[and yes Mirage attacks would ignore armor when the Mirage is invulnerable]
**Karax units would be a little like Stukov bunkers, slow to build up but you don’t lose them.
In terms of Mineral and Gas regulation maybe. You can build Bunkers as Mineral Dumps and produce Gas units.
But Stukov’s gas units snow ball relatively quickly, Karax’s Gas units don’t.
Even if the unit is powerful with upgrade already in researched, if it doesn’t snowball fast enough there is almost no point.
Also, if death ball gathering is slow than players may get tired of him, and it might respond bad with mutations that needs army fast.
That’s why it would be
Stukov: slow build=bunkers, fast build=gas units
Karax: slow build=units, fast build=cannons
With them being cheaper and a 500 range building probe (that was the key idea… global building with vision…Maguro’s range 5 helps, but doesn’t really do justice to phasesmith/offensive cannoning)
I think Zagara’s fine. It’s be nice if she got units that can handle multiple things at once is all. When I say, “Generic”, that’s opposed to “specialized”. E.g. Lings only hit ground, Scourge only do AA. “Generic” didn’t mean basic/tier 1 units.
My point still stands though. People who don’t like Zagara b/c she’s constantly rebuilding units need to understand that that’s what she’s about.
No different than not liking Tychus because “he doesn’t make traditional armies”. Or how Raynor has to keep making and using OCs, how Nova can’t replenish her units quickly if she loses them since her’s are on charges and cd. Or how so much of Abathur is tied to biomass and getting UE’s ASAP.
With Karax, if you want a CO who excels at making units, you simply don’t pick Karax.
I have an idea, it may turn out to be strange, if the upgrades and units were completed during the Chrono Wave, then they will return part of the resources.
Neat, but not the same thing. For Zagara, we’d truly need a general purpose unit that can do both AG and AA. Currently, only 4 things can do that: Zagara herself, her summoned HKs, Queens, and Bile Launchers
I’m split about this. O1H, this seems neat. OTOH, even more coordination required (BTW, does this apply to his ally as well?). I’m annoyed just having to post “Chrono soon”. I mean I don’t have to, but it is a courtesy that’s generally appreciated (one reason why I’m glad to have allies like Tychus, Nova, and Zeratul. They don’t care about Chrono Wave).
