What to know when allied with certain commanders

What would be useful for an ally who has never played your commander to know about them?

  • Kerrigan – she can solo with hero for the first 10 min
  • Mengsk – Imperial Witness will not increase mineral income once the mineral line is saturated
  • Raynor – each orbital scan costs 1 mule, or the equivalent of 240-270 minerals
  • Stukov – he needs creep early game, especially on the Purifier mission
  • Swann – it is difficult to get an army before the 10 min mark, but he should still be helping with calldowns, turrets, or carefully micro’ed units

So how does Abathur’s biomass work? Which units does early game Dehaka need to eat?

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Biomass increases stats of a unit, but most importantly, once a unit gets 100 biomass they evolve into an ultimate evolution. These are capped at 3 brutalisks for the ground, and 3 leviathan for the air.
Enemies that die after taking damage from his toxic nests drop additional biomass. This is very important for Abathur’s early game to rush out ultimate evolutions, so do not kill waves before they walk into his nests. Lategame, this doesn’t matter as much.
Dehaka - Wants to eat psionic units (mostly means energy users) for a large AoE explosion. Early or late game, doesn’t matter.
Stetmann - Like Mengsk, speed zone will not increase income once your saturated on workers. Also Super Gary is very strong, doubly so on P2 where it can solo the map.

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Abathur - let Toxic Nests take out as many units as possible. I even lure units into them when the occasion calls!

Dehaka - Dehaka sucks during early, in-game levels. Especially vs. enemy towers since his abilities don’t really help with those (units in Bunkers are protected from Roar, and Leap doesn’t do as much vs. them). Helping out Dehaka level up means both of you will have a swell time late game!

Karax - He has no basic ground combat unit that can hit air, so you covering that weakness goes a long way (e.g. Marines, Hydras, Goons, Stalkers, etc.). Karax can Orbital Strike cloaked and burrowed units without detection

Swann - slow to start off, so help cover his early game gaps, and he’ll become a powerhouse late game

Raynor - supplement his Com Scans, as that’s on energy, needed for MULES. Even if he’s on P1, having more permanence in detection is still handy.

Mengsk - Detection is lackluster. Blimps/Imperial Witnesses are slow and fragile. Emperor’s Shadows have spells for detection (sort of), and Contaminated Strike does reveal units. Still, help supplement his detection.

Mengsk can panic build missile turrets in a pinch, so as long as you have enough volunteers, you can always give the enemy something to hide from.

There are other use cases where it’s nice to have Laborers around, so something I’ll have to keep that in mind.

You don’t need laborers for that – troopers can construct defensive buildings

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I’d want Laborers for repair, but still, point noted.

Nova has auto-extractors, but her army is slow to build because of cost. If you can spare opening her expansion Vespine early, she can get 4 operational extractors up before needing to invest in a second command center. Since her entire army is based on resources, this is really useful. Also, if you’re playing a hero that doesn’t use a lot of Vespine, consider letting her have one of yours.

Tychus is more gated by Minerals than Gas lategame and has very weak defenses besides. Against ghosts on certain maps, an ally helping out with a few turrets is highly appreciated.

On the other hand, he also has access to some very bountiful healing output, and most aren’t narcissistic enough to refuse to heal you.

Ghosts don’t drop nukes on buildings if there is 2 or less so Tychus turrets are perfect antinuke defense if you put one or two on the paths the Ghosts take.

artanis can use chronoboost on zagara’s baneling nests to help speed up her free banelings but tech upgrades and stats at the forge are far more relevant for an army with that high quallity. that being said, I have build extra nexi for zagaras before with the understanding that she takes initiative to soften up bases, while my high quality army cleans up and entrenches and tanks after that. but it’s not a necessity early game.
also it’s true that the chronoboost also increases larva production, perhaps the only early game incidence where it’s worth changing targets

Pretty old post you resurrect… i remember making a very extended post about this topic, some 5,6 or 7 years ago on the old forums covering all available commanders.

I hate it when people say “the internet doesn’t forget” … cause it does. It does all the f-ing time.