Just asking this question out of curiosity.
Say if a commander is weak for example, they can’t speed run. They can’t be everywhere. They can’t warp-in, nuke the map, or having a Godzilla.
Would you still play a commander because you like their style even though they may be weaker than other commanders?
Absolutely, assuming “weak” was merely relative to other really strong commanders. I don’t mind working harder as long as I’m having fun and still contributing. I think Stukov, Raynor, Karax, Alarak, and Kerrigan fall in to this category to varying degrees right now. None of them are Weak, but they certainly take more concentration and effort than the face-rolling commanders like Tychus, Zeratul, Dehaka, or Abathur.
There are no weak commanders perse, “weak” perceived commanders are usually hard to control.
Each have their own weaknesses and advantages and the key is to play their advantages as best as possible while trying to cover the weakness as much as possible.
I think Karax had it worst because while he has nice defensive play, ever since his tax mastery is gone his army building and field activity is the slowest and awkward.
OP commander don’t exist in commander scale because it’s always tagged as “TO NERF”. I our case this tag is permanent probably cuz devs unlikely will balance commanders much. So when we are talking about weak and strong, imba commanders does not exist. So no zeratuls abathurs dehaka and like that (they arent strong, they are disbalanced and thus unfinished and cannot be compared to others more balanced ones), there aren’t weak commanders. Karax is weakest at offensive which makes him sometimes tedious to play - everything is too cost-efficiently expensive when we talk about army. If we forget about karax army there aren’t weak commanders so no point in this discussion.
You are the only one who thinks this, so I’m gonna say nah you’re wrong. Everyone else will continue to use weak —> strong as a relative scale of essentially how much a commander has to offer based on an average player playing them.
“Weak” commanders take some combination of more APM, game knowledge, finesse, and tactics and are unforgiving of player mistakes. “Strong” commanders take less APM, less game knowledge, less tactics, and can easily compensate for player mistakes. The ceilings of the various commanders aren’t necessarily different, but their floors and average outcomes certainly are.
Yes I am right. It doesn’t matter how many people think each way or other if it’s wrong. In older days most of people thought that earth isn’t spherical but spoiler - they were wrong despite their numbers.
Weak is when you have enemy army in front of you and you can’t do much about it. Because enemy is stronger. If you can kill every enemy army and complete objective you are not weak. Simple.
Dude. My guy. Bro. Friend
Weak is being used relatively. A Lamborghini is slow relative to a jet. That doesn’t mean anyone thinks a lambo is slow.
I play Karax all the time despite his relative lack of forte in general. So absolutely I do, and so do people because a lot people still play Karax. Just as an example.
Sure, I will.
20 characters.
I think, just as long as they’re capable of doing the bare minimum of completing a brutal alone, even if challenging but in a fun and unique way, i don’t mind.
Sure offering fresh and unique playstyles, or something different like a Karax or a Mengsk where they perhaps don’t get the most face shreddable army but things like unique cannon defenses and nukes and super death cheese and unique comps, that’s great.
Like sure, sometimes when i get a Karax on a Temple of the past, great! When i get a Karax on a quick attack map or say a Void thrasher map where the only thing they were able to do the whole game was spear of Adun the stuff while their probes got destroyed on the way. Ehhh… I’m glad they’re in game, but i have no idea why with a already weak army they just made it more expensive. Lock and load clueless Karaxes can sometimes be terrifying, they just don’t build any units the whole game and put cannons but no units to cap for 20-40 minutes straight and you try to tell them to put a unit to cap and they won’t do anything but slow carriers… at the 35 minute mark.
When the map got cleared 20 minutes ago. If you’re doing expensive units, why not just raise say, a +30% more expensive zealot to have +30% more attack power too? It’s not like a same cost effectiveness zealot is gonna break a mode with 6x 100 mineral 1500 health brutalisks with 100% life leech.
Imo the commander just has to be fun. Sure some commanders are powerful and it’s good to have one grinding commander. But being fun and enjoyable to play while effective matters. No one wants to play a commander that feels bad to play without rewards. Imo gameplay wise, i like commanders like Mengsk, Tychus and Stetman (before the lagfest). While i know i tried out Zeratul and found he was already pretty capable of clearing the whole entire waves of brutal at lvl 1 without much interaction. IMO Zeratul is a example of boring OP, in that he takes away all upgrades and even the gas, which while sounding neat replacing it with a pointless scavenger hunt doesn’t really make stuff better. Meanwhile i think you really have to try hard to fail with him. His units are all extremely sturdy, but boring. Only Zeratul has any abilities, but he tends to just one shot everything. Which sounds… exciting at first the first few slashes, but i think there’s a point when you look forward to a fight that just ends with them vanishing into mist it’s just emm… I kinda wish there were more meatshieldy kinda minibosses. Like not “delete entire army in 0.02 second” bosses, but, “alive for 10 seconds” kinda bosses. Maybe say with weak points or interactivity.
Like say, a giant death robot with a lightbulb and fusion core you could hard target to stun it and deal double damage to it for 5 seconds, armored with cages. or say on a battlefield with explosive buckets, gas turrets that you could shoot to leak gas and interact with the opponent. I mean i like Sc2 but i just feel like, most of the strat in a coop is just knowing what comp and build orders to use. And then once you know it once it tends to work every other time. But while there’s micro on some, it just is… just moving your units for a better shot or moving units into say a concave to get better exposure or something while the other person just gets bored and nukes it. Imo i want to see A: New and Fun playstyles or B: Loved and successful playstyles like say, Zerg/Protoss Nova/Tychuses. I would absolutely love like a Tosh added in as say a Dark mirror to Nova, having both a merc compound with Campaign Merc Marine models (with knifes and guns and the war pig model, which would just fit tosh so well in black! ), maybe spectres to snipe and a Tosh hero unit who could ambush. Maybe a few broken things from arcade like say, a Power Overwhelming buff as his big 4-5 minute cooldown, giving him a 66 damage rifle with a 1 second attack interval, going into a 20x faster attacking 0.05 attack interval with 66 damage shooting everything in sight to gib it into ashes over a nuke while rapidly regenerating energy for all his abilities for 5-10 seconds. Before collapsing and losing all his energy at the end. That could be a really fun ability.
Or maybe something like. Revisiting the Parasitic Broodmother Niadra concept. Who in the HoTS, played with her as the spawner of a endless brood with a endless 6-40 supply of zerglings, roaches, and hydralisks that increased as you killed more units. It’s something so simple, yet, actually kinda fun having a endless stream of disposible units. I guess Zagara did part of it. But you could give Niadra like the Parasitic Roachlings strain from HoTS that swarms 2 roaches on each death, and maybe set her apart by making her spawn as a parasitic Larva with a protoss holding chamber with the animals to possess. While the other units have traditional hero units. You could play around with Niadra having her be a mind control focused hero focused on stealing units and mind controlling them until they died. Maybe with Niadra as a spawner hero unit like H&H galleon with two supply resources. 1: The normal 1-200 supply for permanant units (increased by overlords), and 2: a 2nd 10-80 supply for her spawned / Mind controlled units. She could gain biomass from killing enemies like abathur, but instead of using it for Ultimate evolutions, the more she killed, the more she could regenerate a endless suicidial swarm to rush in while protecting her more expensive units. Maybe getting zerglings/roaches and hydralisks for free with lair/hive upgrades, but expensive units like Defilers and vipers and infestors and Sc1 Brood queens with spawn broodlings and maybe 1-3 parasitic larva, a charge respawning every 20 seconds to mind control a unit for 600 seconds. Kinda like Tychus’s Vega, mind controlling can be fun, but who suits it better than a parasitic commander?
Yep. That was one of the reasons I mastered Swann in the beginning. Then I became really good with him and can still crush everything.
It’s one of the reasons I love Alarak. Sure, he has the best, and most consistent army melting units in the game with Ascendants. But a few wrong moves can literally wipe your whole army.
I like the variety of the commanders, and I like the challenge of some moments from time to time.
Plus I literally had an Abathur player at the beginning of one game complaining that he’d have to carry me because I choose Swann and he was thinking about dropping from the get go. And while I know we’re not supposed to compare kills in coop…I did kill more units then him, did more damage to the objectives, and still used my units to lure enemy zealots into his toxic nests. Felt damn good, lol.
Is it possible to put some effort into formatting if you are going to write an entire wall, Rukanth?
I scrolled through 7.5 pages on my mobile just to make sense of what was posted.
who would complain about swann as an ally unless they didn’t bulid the gas things? Gas is amazing as an ally lol.
I played Swann for nearly 100 games because I was doing a data collection thing to see what the just popular commanders were. I picked Swann because I knew he was pretty unpopular. By the end Swann is my favorite.
Swann has one of the best unit comps in the game. Few other commanders have the selection of viable units that Swann does. His defense is #1. His top bar is one of the strongest. And his vespene bots are just gravy. My only real complaint is his detection is pretty slow to access and rather cumbersome.
Plus that 'stache. Chef’s kiss
for you swann and karax players: how well do your games go when it is swann + karax
Well the game doesn’t end early if that’s what you’re getting at. Besides that, fine. Neither of them might have the fastest army, but their early defense is fast so it’s not like they’re going to get overwhelmed. And Swann’s bot calldown + Karax’s Spear is plenty of army for the first several minutes.
Definitely. A commander being fun is way more important than them being strong in my opinion.
In fact a CO that is TOO strong actually makes them LESS fun because they take all the challenge out of Co Op. Zeratul is the prime example of this.
I certainly would, I very much prioritize fun over power myself, just as long as they aren’t so weak as to stop me from actively contributing in a game.
No CO’s that bad in the game as it stands.
Part and parcel sucks when you’re a Swann/Karax team. That mission always gets down to the wire. That old lady gets real mad.
Aside from that, it’s a powerful pairing, but it’s not the best combo out there by far, due to you both having the same strength and weaknesses. Example, you’re going to have a harder time pushing into enemy bases before they get their upgrades. Or your going to have a slower time trying to spawn camp most enemy waves since the ramp up time for both of you is so much slower.
If nothing else, Karax’ Orbital Strikes being able to take out stray detected units has been handy.
This is pretty much the reason I’ve gone back to main-ing Swann, Karax, and Stukov. Sure, it’s easier and quicker to use someone like Artanis and mass Goons, throw in spinlots for AoE, Immortals for high DPS, and Obs for detection. But it sorta gets boring too.
With missions where you need to push, just get Zealots out ASAP. SoA lasers are usually enough to take out most of what’s needed. For Swann, I have half my Mastery into laser drill, so I can count of that helping out sooner than later.