The title is kind of what I’m asking myself here. We know it’s in the game fully programmed because it appeared in the Nova Mission packs. So I was hyped for it to come to co op… still waiting.
We’ve had stukov, dehaka, and Stetman as zerg commanders since the nova missions and nothing. Then they announced brood war inspired waves in co op…and still no defiler.
The Brood war ground is would have been the perfect fit for it. Classic Ling, hydra, ultra, defiler type comp from brood war…but instead that comp is supported by the Brood queen.
Come on blizzard what’s with the hate for the defiler? It’s literally the only “main” unit (Main not counting variation of units from the campaign aka raptor vs swarmling evolution from hots) . Stukov’s “liberator” is the valkyrie in all but name, the arbiter is a hero option for fenix, and the mothership is represented by the death fleet for alarak. We got original brood queens for stukov and stetmen has the infestor (yes, it has different abilities, but the unit itself is represented) now we just have the Defiler.
Come on Blizzard what’s with the hate? Are you saving it for like an overmind commander? Until then add it to the waves so we can mind control it with a dark archon and actually use it.
It’s a VERY powerful unit. Many say it’s too powerful. We had a discussion on the defiler the other day, I pointed out that Abathur in an evolution mission said it’s extinct and cannot be recovered, other people say it’s still in the canon SC universe and was recovered later. But, most agreed that it was taken out due to being OP.
Well according to the lore corruptors are extinct but they continue to appear with kerrigan during some missions for legacy of the void. As for being OP, it wouldn’t be anymore op then Vipers. It’s the opposite effect of vipers basically. So in co op it would be easier to move around, just retreat and force the enemy out of the cloud. (plus Vipers and scourge are pretty “OP” vs allied air armies. So it’s not like the enemy doesnt have access to super strong units) If you mean OP to put in the players hands…there are plenty of other “OP” units that we can control. Once you hit level 15 with a commander your whole army is basically OP. As for extinct, this is co op so they don’t follow the lore really. The corruptor example is another example as they appear as enemies.
I don’t see how it would be OP. Fungal chaining is arguably more powerful than bloodbath and in co-op with got crazy things like stacking storms and psi orbs.
Likewhise, Abathur’s disabling clowd on an infinite energy air unit with like 20 cast range is gamebreaking as hell.
I am sorry guys, I don’t remember exactly what the other folks said, only that somebody said it.
I just remembered the bit about Abathur remarking during a HotS Campaign evolution mission that Defilers are extinct and cannot be recovered. That got a whole bunch of replies, which I don’t remember as well. Very sorry!
Personally with all the Stetlag™ going around now I think the last thing we want is a couple of defilers spamming that cloud of theirs. Cause that stuff made me lag insanely back in sc1 days, tho to be fair I was playing sc1 back in the day with ‘dial-up’, lol. I imagine they would rework the clouds. As for the plague I don’t see much use for it in co-op to have a skill that slowly makes units go down to 1hp and is not stackable. Where as you can not only stack different abilities on various commanders but can instantly kill targets as well. Seems a bit counter productive if you ask me.
The Defiler model exists in Nova Covert Ops, as it appears in I think the second mission (the one with the reapers). It even uses a version of Dark Swarm iirc. No plague in use, as far as I know, but I do recall that the Defiler itself is vulnerable within the cloud while everything else is protected.
Corrupters, oh god. That is seriously the worst unit in the game, nay, dare i say any RTS ive ever made. Like ugh. How that still has not removed, i will never know. Never seen such a boring unit.
If we use the Broodwar Defilers as they are, there is nothing to stop a melee ground unit with Swarm short of the player making more melee units that can overpower the enemy. Many of the commanders don’t even have this option.
Need more imbalance? Look no further than the aforementioned Plague that continuously drain life until 1HP. Essentially giving enemy free selective cast of Black Death mutator.
All of these coming from a single unit. If their programmed pattern sticks, they’ll just cast and burrow. A serious revamp of Defiler is needed before inclusion. As much of a fan as I am of them, I think we got to be reasonable.
The dark swarm itself is already broken. It give your ground buildings and units 100% evasion. Only splash damage can harm them or spell. And you only need to build one defiler to cast dark swarm forever since Defiler abilities have 0 cooldown and it have an ability to sacrifice a unit to replenish its energy.
Now it is not like we can not tune it to better suit coop.
Dark Swarm as it’s used in NCO isn’t really too overpowered, so bringing that in shouldn’t be an issue. Plague is the bigger problem to adapt, but could probably be replaced with something similar to fungal growth.
Perhaps we will see them in a commander first. I hope they will get a new model. In NCO they look like a giant lobsters and not as good looking as in BW/SCR.
Perhaps then, with rebalanced Plague and players being more familiar with Dark Swarm, we will see them.
Monk said “inspired by the armies used during the First Great War in the original StarCraft”. That means original SC, not BW. But we did get Corsairs and Devourers.
I for one think dark swarm is way less powerful compared to binding cloud, at least you can easily counter dark swarm with spider mines, firebat, raynor banshees, zealot, reaver, HT/DT, zergling, baneling, ultralisk, lurker etc etc. Even over half of the calldowns are unaffected by it.
If anything may scream broken it would be plague, as it may slowly kill deathball of any race without a way to dispel it. But I think balance it with some kind of damage cap (such as 350 maximum damage split among the units/buildings the spell had hit per cast) isn’t too off either.
The plague do not drain you till you only have 1 hp left. It only drain 295 on the span of 25s. Back in SC1 it’s serve as good harassment due to the lack of healers except medic back then. Currently most commanders have way to counter that. I don’t see how it would be imbalance.
It can be a problem for many commanders because one plague if it is same from broodwar is huge amount of damage (up to 300 per unit) that will dry out healer energy or takes minutes to heal back up. You need something broken like the healers from tychus or mend to undo that kind of damage in a short time, most commanders do not have that kind of imba healing.