Power creep is noticeable in Co-op. The first Co-op commanders (Raynor to Karax) were designed before mutations were included, and most are weaker than the paid commanders (e.g. Abathur and Nova). Some later ones (Tychus and Zeratul) are borderline OP.
Yet H&H is widely regarded as the weakest commander, even when compared to Artanis, Raynor, and Swann. Their combination of poor survivability, weak defense, and limited production is punishing against mutations.
That being said, H&H is still fun to play, but their design can certainly be improved. I just find it strange that of all the “pay-to-win” commanders, we have H&H opting for “pay-to-lose” instead.
Dehaka is also pretty strong. On the coop website it says he has weak mutation versatility but this is simply not true. Dehaka has answers for almost everything, but does struggle a lot with missile command.
But yes the power creep is noticable. I think many commanders are also held back by their lack of versatile units. I haven’t played H&H so I can’t say for sure if they are really weak.
It should be noted that Zagara was one of the earliest commanders and is good in many mutations. Same with abathur.
I don’t think all COs need to be applicable vs. Mutations, but AFAIK, they seem to be the least applicable towards them.
With HH, their stick is they don’t fight fair, so using Top Bar abilities to soften the opposition (e.g. MM, SFP) usually goes a good way towards survivability. Han units are typically glass cannons that can mop up from there.
Any suggestions?
In general, Dehaka is weak early on. It took me finally trying him one day to realize that at in-game lv1 through lv4… he’s on the relatively vulnerable side. I believe some mutations crank that up in making it even more difficult for him to get Essence.
Whenever I’m Karax with a Dehaka ally, it’s fun for me b/c I can lend out some Orbital Strikes to kickstart Deheka’s leveling up, while preserving as much of his health as possible. Most notably, vs. towers where he flounders against. (later on when he levels up and does 80 dmg to them with a large health pool, no biggie)
I think the problem with H&H is that their expendable units aren’t that expendable with their economic capabilities. There’s salvage, sure, but in general you’re on a standard commander eco setup. You can really feel this against high splash damage comps like scourge-baneling or colossus-high templar where they can mow down your ground army in a few attacks and your only good source of splash damage is strike platforms that are inaccurate when blind targeting due to their travel time. Then they both have one of the largest army blobs making them particularly vulnerable to damaging mutators like blizzards and lava spouts, as well as the mentioned enemy splash damage.
I’d say a good start would be to increase salvage as 10% of a unit’s cost isn’t as good compared to Raynor which just drops a dozen MULEs on his mineral line to recoup his losses.
Another idea would be to allow some units to do splash damage or multi-target at least. Like having their battlecruisers be able to hit multiple targets when switching to laser batteries or having hellion attacks deal some splash and not just with their tar bombs.
In general, Dehaka is weak early on. It took me finally trying him one day to realize that at in-game lv1 through lv4… he’s on the relatively vulnerable side. I believe some mutations crank that up in making it even more difficult for him to get Essence.
Whenever I’m Karax with a Dehaka ally, it’s fun for me b/c I can lend out some Orbital Strikes to kickstart Deheka’s leveling up, while preserving as much of his health as possible. Most notably, vs. towers where he flounders against. (later on when he levels up and does 80 dmg to them with a large health pool, no biggie)
I am definitely to disagree with you. It can argued he doesn’t have the strongest early game true, but Dehaka spawns the most early and he has an ability that can one shot enemies and his leap provides early game AOE. He is even stronger early game if you use Broodbrother. Impalers and Primal Igniters are also very good units. Primal igniters are very tanky and provide good AOE while being very cheap. Impalers you can start upgrading their tenderize upgrade as soon as you have glevigs den which does about 200 extra damage to each target + about 30% and they have decent range. Then on top of this primal wurms can really help push objectives and can be spawned anywhere the player has had vision at one point. If you have P2 dehaka then Glevig is REALLY powerful early game.
Devour doesn’t work on towers. And while Leap does, it’s more so for AoE than high damage vs. towers.
Very early in the game (within the first few minutes that he spawns) he’s not going to have access to many of those things you talked about (perhaps you can rush out a few Zerglings). That is a tradeoff of using those resources for units vs. banking it for something else.
With Karax around, he can just blast towers and units with impunity, without asking the Dehaka player to spend resources and possibly waste units.
I guess it partly depends on what we define as early game. First 3-4 minutes or 4-5 minutes? On average game tend to last around 20 minutes or 30 or some maps.
Devour doesn’t work on towers. And while Leap does, it’s more so for AoE than high damage vs. towers.
Thats true of course. However it does work on enemies and with good decision making it can be extremely beneficial early game. Clearing out enemies with dehaka means more units left to deal with towers when he moves in.
Good. If masochists trying absurd and nonsensical difficulty increase methods to hurt themselves failed to do so because commanders don’t hold them back, they would get bored.
I would consider removing the charges on the Starport and not limiting the number of Galleons. Their cost can be adjusted to account for this.
Also, the Reaper jet pack cooldown could be reduced. Right now, H&H has a glass cannon army without tanks and an expensive air army without the numbers for high enough DPS. Together, they don’t cover each others’ weaknesses and they’re awkward to use.
When it comes to mutations, Zagara is either really good or really bad with no middle ground. Same goes for Karax. Kerrigan might be the exception because she’s good against many mutations.
Just a disclaimer, I haven’t really tried these Co-op commanders against mutations, but this is what I gathered from rankings and my allies’ performance.
And it’s worth noting that they were 200/0/0 at a previous point! Getting reduced to 150 mins ended up being a balance change! I guess it could be a HH P3 thing, but with Assault Galleons. However, half of it is the production they enable.
I should’ve specified that this hits harder on some missions versus others. For example, TotP is littered with towers. Disproportionately more so. You’re limited to the bonus obj areas, or attack waves.
H&H’s issue is they both go too far into their niches.
Hans units are meant to be expendable, but they’re so expendable they often fail to achieve anything at all before getting expended unless you have insane numbers, and those numbers won’t stay insane for long because of the afore mentioned expendableness.
Horner on the other hand has expensive high value units, but they’re too expensive to build a decent sized army with before the game is already over.
They took two different design philosophies, pushed them both to extremes that renders them ineffective, and slapped them on the same commander.
Ever since I learned how to use the Hellion (purchased upgrade) speed buff on death (for both me and my ally), I can find ways to be useful to my ally when I don’t just carry.
And if my hellions fail to die to provide the buff, it just mean the enemy is the one dying.
No, he’s not weak. Go to the maximum level. You understand. I thought Zeratul was garbage too, but he wasn’t. Now I maxed it out to p3 and found it to be very powerful. Remember this saying: Not everything is as it seems, what appears may or may not be beautiful.