WoL is way harder, right? I’m not just terrible with Terran? I had to restart WoL missions many times (trains, supernova, the Hansen rescue or purge missions, and of course All In, along with others I’m not thinking of), but HotS I’m cruising right along. Up to mission 15 and I haven’t restarted at all.
I still haven’t beaten All In on hard (playing this all on hard). I hate that mission.
It’s definitely not you. WoL and Hots are at opposite ends of the difficulty specrum (with LotV and NCO falling in between).
To date, there are a couple missions that are still white-knucklers on brutal for me. Brutal HotS on the other hand is a breeze all the way through.
And what about All In? Is that considered the hardest? WoL is a tough campaign and All In still feels out of place.
It is a bear compared to the other missions within the respective difficulty. The trick is strategy.
Since it’s a pure defense map, you have to combine all the defence mechanics the campaign has. I like the ground attack version best so I only have a strat for that one. If you’re playing the air attack version, you can research some stratagies on Youtube.
There are other things that help as well.
If I have time in the next day or two, I’ll make a replay if you want to see it.
Edit: Added a little more.
I’m sure this is excellent advice, but how do you build up to that degree? My problem thus far is barely keeping up with attack waves, then when Kerrigan comes I think the 4th time (it’s around 85%), she smashes one side of my base and the zerg just start streaming in and I can’t recover. This happened even on my most recent attempt when I thought I was doing well - I hit supply cap pretty early, but it still wasn’t enough to manage the 85% attack wave.
I’ve been sniping worms with banshees, but I think I might give up on that and try pure tanks. The banshees are expensive and fragile.
I’ll make a replay in the next few days (hopefully tomorrow). What I wrote above is just the gist of my strat, but seeing it is so much easier!
If I had to pick the key to it all, I’d say the Psi Disruptors They cause the waves to bunch up and the fully upgrades tanks’ splash damage melts them.
Nah, that’s pretty normal.
HotS has trash difficulty.
In Utter Darkness, All In, Safe Haven, Great Train Robbery without Siege Tanks (not for me), Welcome to the Jungle especially without Siege Tanks and Supernova are generally a difficulty ahead of the most difficult HotS mission. With HotS being so dumb easy, I don’t know which one it is.
Here’s the video. I did it on Brutal to help show that it will definitely work on Hard.
I’m not even that good of a SC2 player (you’ll see micro mistakes all over the place). So if I can do it, anyone can! Also, I occasionally have trouble playing and talking at the same time, so if I say something weird, call something by the wrong name, or just trail off mid-sentence, I apologize now.
EDIT: I just wanted to add, assuming there’s no randomness to Kerrigan’s appearances:
The initial (start of the mission) Artifact charge up is shorter than the all the rest. It’s ready to go by the 10% mark. All the rest take ~12% to recharge. Kerrigan’s first appears at ~29%. So, that means you can use the Nova to clear/save your base as long as you don’t use it after the 17% mark (maybe 16.5% to be safe).
For example, early in the video, there was hydra/roach/ling push on the left side while I was still building the wall. I used the starting units to repel it, but since it was at about the 10% mark, the Nova could have been used to clear them as well.
Sweet! Hopefully I can finally put this stupid, stupid mission to bed.
I think you’ll find that once you figure out a good strategy and are finally able to beat it, it’s actually a lot of fun. I haven’t played that mission in ages, and I enjoyed playing it to make the video!
Considering regular Brutal difficulty and achievements on Hard, in my expirience NCO is significantly harder than LotV and WoL.
WoL has some easy missions, but boy it does have highlights.
the last wol mission on brutal was exhilarating for me. i had tried every set up and composition i could think of to beat it. finally i realized if i hot keyed my psionic mind controllers (a research i had chosen awhile back and written off and forgot about) i could simply spam the living hell out of them as i kept building more. i ended up beating the mission with my entire army being a mind controlled zerg swarm haha. (air version) and it was still EXTREMELY close. great times.
i had fun with hots but agree it was very easy.
Achievement-wise NCO definitely had some doozies. I agree there.
I’m only a hard mode player so maybe it is different on brutal . But does anyone else feel the LotV difficulty scales weird? For me the hardest 2 missions where the 3rd mission where you activate the SoA, and the Shakuras holdout mission (especially if you don’t play it from the master archive, and you did the right thing went to Shakuras first). I kind of felt the campaign either got easy or at least didn’t get more difficult as the you progressed.
The 3rd mission is pretty obnoxious on brutal too. The Zerg has their whole tech tree and all you have are Stalkers.
I haven’t tried it . But I’ve been told a trick is to not clear any of the creep until you’ve cleared all the locations, then clear them all at once. Maybe I’ll try it next play through.
Anyone confirm if that helps?
Those are some strangely tricky missions.
Waiting to clear the power cells all together does make it a little simpler because clearing each one triggers a warp prism/nydus worm attack wave. If you do them all together, you can clear them before the triggered attacks get very far.
Another way that I like is Blink micro. Mass stalkers (if you make Zealots, make very few, perhaps to draw aggro from bigger units like Immortals). As soon as you see a Stalker’s shields drop off (or the first few HP), blink it to the back of the group. By the time you engage in another fight, the shields will be recharged and you have a virtually new stalker again. That will save minerals to replace any that are lost.
Last Stand is just a mind freak of cannons and monoliths built in a certain order around the base. The one video I saw on it was impressive the way the player spaced everything just right to maximize ‘floor space’ for as many cannons/monos as possible. He stationed 8 DT with the Shadow Fury upgrade off to the side of each ramp. Solar Lanced the waves to weaken them (especially the Banelines) and moved the DTs in to Shadow Fury the rest.
Also, I go to Shakuras last if playing though the campaign. Doing so opens an additional SoA ability immediately before Last Stand. Even if you don’t want to use the abilities, maxing out Starting Supply and Construction Time is very helpful.
Shakuras last makes no sense from Artanis character perspective. I can’t bring myself to do it no matter how much it may help game play wise. Korhal first is already pushing it. But under zero circumstances would Artanis go to Glacius before Shakuras, and neither can I.
You, I like you. Shakuras last is for people who hate Protoss.
And yes, third mission (Spear of Adun) is probably the second most difficult main body LotV mission after Last Stand.