By design i mean in term of unit types, way of playing, choices, builds, top bar…
Zagara
only 5 units, 3 ground, 2 air.
- Mineral dump unit
- Ground suicide unit
- Ground tanky unit
- Air suicide unit
- Air tanky unit
Doesn’t get simpler than that.
10 Likes
They should add her flavor like Zagara could upgrade herself just like the old Queen and be an Infestation specialist starting from a Larvae just like Niadra from HotS campaign.
I was thinking of Tychus since he only controls 5 heroes
Zagara. Spam units, inject hatcheries, replace, repeat.
I think Zeratul. He also doesn’t have many unit choices, but he also doesn’t upgrade. Everything is rolled in to finding artifacts. Zagara at least has a chunk of upgrades to get, several of which significantly impact gameplay.
Zagara also requires constant production, which is its own APM requirement. Battles can be won if reinforcements are made during combat, which is a bit unique to her.
1 Like
Zeratul’s easier to play, but that doesn’t mean he has a simpler design.
He has to chose his top bar abilities. He has spellcaster units. All his units do ‘special’ things other than just direct dmg. And the whole artifact mechanic is pretty elaborate.
Same thing, just because he’s easier to play doesn’t mean it’s a simpler design.
He has Tychus + 8 heroes. He must choose a team every game. Each hero has 4 unique upgrades. It’s actually pritty intricate.
There’s just more choices to be made with either Zeratul or Tychus. Zagara pretty much always makes the same build, only changing the unit ratio depending on enemy comp. You don’t have to make many decisions, just brute force your way through good macro.
2 Likes
Speaking of which, is it possible to complete missions with Zeratul + Cooldown only?
Thank you
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Tychus and Zeratul are the simplest to play without a doubt, while Zagara has the simplest build and choices because you unlock all of them nearly every game.
Scourges, banes and mass frenzy, add lings and abbs when sieging bases, can’t go wrong with that.
raynor has a pretty simple design if you have completed wing of liberty. even if you didn’t finish the campaign. he is still pretty simple.
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Raynor is way more complicated than most commanders. The amount of OCs you have to build, unit comps, production buildings…you need a lot of apm to make him useful.
5 Likes
To quote Fox from The Dark Knight: “Are we talking Rottweilers or Chihuahuas?”
His topbar is strong and don’t have long cooldowns, and he’s somewhat decent as a hero unit, so it’s possible. However, not all maps are the same.
Easier maps - Void Trashing, Rifts to Korhal, Temple of the Past, Lock and Load (you might need cannons for defending the locks from random units), Chain of Ascension - these should be able to be completed with Zera + cooldowns.
Schythe of Amon, I’m saying no way.
The rest of the maps maybe (a rather big maybe), depends on skill level and enemy comps.
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I’m assuming we’re talking about the minimum, as opposed to how complex you can make them to be?
Artanis
Make Gate, Cyb Core, make more Gates and make a Citadel of Adun
Place Power Field to your front lines, spam Goons, while researching abilities for Goons
At some point, make Forges to get some W/A/S upgrades, and build a Robo to warp in Obs for detection.
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There are two interesting mutation solos done by Zera involving basically all calldowns.
Blind Tribute was cleared with Zera+Calldowns while all of his economy went into feeding Kill Bots. Map was wiped clean in like 17 minutes.
The Polarity VP mutation was soloed by tanking attack waves with calldowns and then devolved with Avatar.
1 Like
The tanking in the vp polarity mutation was mostly done with immortal - war prism micro, while the crystals were also tanked this way or snatched when the enemy moves away from the lava, it’s a really interesting game.
But Blind tribute is really a show of how ridiculously strong zeratul hero + calldowns is.
For simplest commander it’s important to not confuse how easy the commanders are to play with their design, Tychus has complex design, they had to create a ton of abilities and upgrades for all the outlaws, similar for zera and his customizable top bar. Simplest design is definitely zagara.
When players are talking about “simple” I don’t think they’re talking about how difficult it was to program the commanders.
I don’t think Tychus is the simplest because he actually needs a strong econ and decent micro and map awareness.
The topic is about simplest design wise, not simples on how simple they are to play, and really Tychus doesn’t need strong micro or anything, and strong econ is something that applies to all commanders (except abby) and doesn’t really take any effort from the player, you just setup that in first 5 minutes of the game and forget about it.
4 Likes
Artanis is probably the closest commander to vanilla in terms of design. He’s just a bunch of existing concepts pulled from the base game and the campaign.
As stated above though, most responses here don’t seem to answer OP at all. Tychus is basically designed new ground up.
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I agree, personally I felt Artanis was the easiest to learn and master.
Yes there are other stronger commanders like Abathur/Zeratul but they have mechanics that aren’t as easy to pick up. I still see some Zeratul players not knowing how to find their Artifacts quickly using their building rally points.
The OP included “way of playing, choices, builds, top bar…”
which to me includes playing as them.
Even in the context of CO design, I’d still go with Artanis.