I will, and do so very often. We are all here to play a strategy game, what’s the fun if we don’t have to get inventive every once and a while?
I pretty much don’t play Nova or Abathur anymore except in specific tough weekly mutations because they’re just too easy to steamroll with. I didn’t even purchase Zeratul and I’m glad I didn’t because after leveling him to 15 during the free trial promotion they did a few months back I got to see how broken he is with masteries and full perks unlocked. lol.
I play mostly Swann, Raynor, Mengsk, Fenix, Karax and Kerrigan now.
It depends on the map. Some maps, Karax/Swann is super faceroll easy, maps like Oblivion Express, Dead of Night or Temple of the Past.
Other maps, specifically Scythe of Amon, Cradle of Death and Parts and Parcel can be a bit rough due to the slow ramp up and both CO’s reliance on a very fast expansion. It’s still very doable though, but both players need to have a good idea how to play the maps with those CO’s.
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That’s why I play Tychus
Craddle of death is not bad as Karax - first objective/expansion can be cleared right away with Orbital stikes, for the second objective he can help (but probably not solo) with cannons and for the third he can finally have Karriers 
or whatever
Honestly i don’t mind it, just as long as they’re strong enough to be able to complete a normal Brutal in a reasonable timeframe in case of lvl 2 Brutal raynors who attack with one base marines, go crazy. Just as long as they’re fun and offer a different and unique playstyle. But on the flip side there’s no reason making Karax’s almost entirely already nonexistant army even more nonexistant when they won’t build a single unit to say, help cap on lock and load or need to attack the forge next to say hybrids and objectives with cannons… after they were already cleared. Honestly strong cannons are nice, but Honestly Karax could have normal cost units with his hp/shield buffs and be perfectly fine. No 100 mineral 130 hp zealot is gonna outdo a 75 mineral 1500 hp 100% lifesteal brutalisk or Hero units whose Call downs completely obliterate entire waves.
THIS.
I would say perfectly played, Raynor has a fair to good chance to be the best commander out there.
Yet nobody is complaining that Raynor is too strong or OP… because for almost everyone (including myself) he is not.
Skill ceilings may be different, but it does not matter much. What matters is how a commander performs in the hands of an average player. Cause by definition, that is how the commander will be played like in most games.
I disagree. Each on their own with a low synergy ally - yes, they are not good at pushing early. But together its better. They compensate for their weaknesses quite a bit.
Passive chrono and repair helps swanns early game quite a lot. A few goliaths and firebats are not a very impressive army… but with passive healing, some orbital strike support and good micro they can push quite hard. You can delay starport/vessels for more early factory units. And warbots last pretty much until they timeout.
The additional gas income helps karax early game, allowing for a few additional energizers. Much more so mid to late game though, where karax can build quite a few more high tier units.
If swanns warbots or karaxs solar beam is used to clear expansion and the other is used on the first train, you should be fine. At least that’s my experience.
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Are you replying to me? I think you are replying to Mortis and Swordier.
Or are you agreeing/supporting
… that Raynor isn’t weak based on what I said?
That Raynor has strength and weakness like every commander?
I don’t understand why you replied to me when you are not saying anything about me.
Kindof replied to both i guess, since Mortis was replying to you.
No, i think Raynor can be considered weak, despite my conviction that he can outperform all other commanders.
Just because he has weaknesses and strengths does not mean they are similar in any way. You and I have strengths and weaknesses, and almost certainly we are very different in almost every way (except SC obviously).
This was the sentence why i replied… maybe i should have quoted that one. I strongly disagree with the sentiment that hard to control commanders are “perceived” as weak.
Hard to control is pretty much equal to weaker.
Every person has a certain APM and ability to control units. Harder to control means you get less result for your efforts than with a less demanding commander. Unless a person plays a commander close to perfect - which i doubt anyone can with any commander - harder to control is essentially the same as weaker.
Your stance seems to imply that if done as you say, commanders are more or less equally good. I don’t think they are.
To be honest, i don’t think having weaknesses and strengths have anything to do with being equal or similar.
All humans have weaknesses and strengths - and yet a fight between a 130 pound boxer and a 250 pound opponent would not be fair in any way.
You can say the same thing to both of them: “the key is to [use your] advantages as best as possible while trying to cover {your] weakness as much as possible.”
Yet it would be absurd to think, that just by doing that, the fight would turn fair. And that’s why there are weight classes.
But with commanders there are not classes… or more precisely there is only one class… while their discrepancies are not too unsimilar.
That is just my opinion. I don’t think our coop commanders are more or less equal or similar in performance. Right now, playing karax with a competent ally playing a stronger commander is like a fight across weight classes. Very predictable in outcome and not fun at all.
You mean this reply?
I think this was for @Chickenator not me. Nor I agreed/disagreed with Mortis (actually more to agree).
Absolutely, he has the right tools with High risk and return.
I’m not sure what you are saying. I am saying that Raynor has strength and weakness just like every other commander has.
For example, Kerrigan, Strong ground untis and mobility but weak air. Alarak, Powerful head to head firepower but slow mobility.
And for Raynor, its mentioned above.
That is my bad for not being clear. Raynor is “difficult to master” would be appropriate. Raynor is high risk and return commander, and despite him having many army players need controll him with to micro separate platoons rather than headon attack like Dehaka/Abathur.
It is similar to Mengsk, beginners need to control his Royal Guards, Troopers and Witnesses separately for maximum power. But that being said, to correctly mastery Raynor several hard level control are required. That is why some people go for more simpler and straight forward commanders like Zeratul, Tychus Dehaka, Abathur etc. because master control units are difficult hence percieved weak, they simply couldn’t fulfil their true potential.
I can agree there some distinction from them based on their performance outcome like Mortis said.
Keep in mind though there are some commanders that is considered “unpopular” proves to be the best in some mutations.
Although some commander’s weakness do prove to be very critical like Alarak’s movement speed etc. But there are some people who likes the handicap and strength coming from that commander.
I myself is one of the people who likes to give some buff to mitigate the weakness through editor and show that to people.
There aren’t boxes and it’s not versus mode - commanders don’t fight each other(hello from captain obvious) so this “box” example is irrelevant to discussion. Basically if you compare commander effectiveness (fastest speedrun time, longest encounter with infinitely increasing enemy strength/swarminess or just winrate including different type of enemy composition and mutators), in co-op can exist only one way to do this impersonal way. So even if you compare karax with other commanders for example, you compare all pairing with karax, with all pairing with compared commander and only then you will see the difference how really karax works relatively to this commander. I think results wouldn’t be in Karax favor, but they will be far better then many players here state. Karax+Swann pairing is just an example why this way of comparing is more useful as source of information.
At least one optimal build from each commander can be executed with something like 60-80 apm (i’m not talking about zerg here) so skill ceiling measure method affecting on commander stregth looks unrelevant. And again strength is strength, it’s not swiftness, it’s not flexibility, it’s not mobility, it’s not wieldiness (if we talk about how easy is commander to control). It’s strength. If commander’s units structures are tanky enough to hold fire he is strong. If his units burst or timed damage is enough to kill enemy he is strong. Every commander is strong - no point in this discussion. Karax is weak in mid game, so maybe only this commander may match the topic description. Why not rename it to “Would you play Karax midgame if you like his style”? Because other commanders are all strong.
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Raynor is a funny example since for a long while, in New player hands he was one of the least forgiving commanders with a high skill cap. For a long time he was one of the fastest commanders of the f2p bunch in speed runner hands with face melting stimmed dps and no vision requirement on dropped units enabling sequence breaking.
For a long time it seems like in the early Raynor to Nova days a lot of speed running records were held by Raynor + Vorazun combos whose time stop let Raynor shred.
Then Zeratuls and Abathurs came along and now i think speed running Abathurs can sequence break. Something like maps that were 11 minute solos and 8:54 duos with Raynor + Stukov, Speedrunning Abathurs could do In like 8:52 solo. But most baits require specific map knowledge by spawn and type while Zeratul was like only 10 seconds behind.
That said the difference between a Great Raynor and a bad one is like having a Hanzo main on your team. Either everyone is dead or trying to hard counter them or they’re sitting in base doing nothing at all. I don’t get mass bc Raynors either over even meme mass carriers or mass Dragoon Buffed Artanis. You’re just trading the Bio commander for Vanilla bcs while missing out on the dps while other tankier armies already exist.
I basically play every commander based on their playstyle. It just so happens most of the ones I consistently enjoy are also very effective. 
Who are you to decide how people use the word “strong”
If a PLAYER gets 200 supply of carriers, is he strong? What if it took him 50 minutes and he would never be able to support himself? What if instead of making a couple at a time like a sane person, he made 30 stargate s and made all of the carriers at once? Would he be a strong player? He wasn’t quick, flexible, mobile, or easy to work with, “but hey he got carriers, he must be strong.”
Starcraft is a real time strategy game. It literally doesn’t matter what you do if it takes you too long to do it. Mobility is also a factor in that, as it doesn’t matter how big your army is if it’s not in a useful position. 1 probe does 5 damage. A zealot does 16. Does that mean probes are garbage and should never be built ever? Of course not, because more probes speeds up the rest of your tech tree and production. The time it takes to do things matters, especially in the context of timed missions.
By extension, the time it takes to move into positions and the time it takes to clear out an enemy attack wave/base matters, because that directly impacts your ability to complete the mission
In response to zhadoom…
I’d somewhat argue against Swann and Karax complimenting each other. Sure, the repairs for Swann are nice, and the gas for Karax is great, but…
They’re both “defensive” commanders with a slow ramp up. And while yes, everything you said is true about both CO’s working together on P and P, it does take quite a bit more effort than other combos.
Indeed, whenever I’m playing as either a Karax or Swann, and I’m paired with either of them, I usually dread it. Unless it’s a defensive mission, I usually have to assume my partner is going to have a slow ramp up, (and I’m usually right) meaning I have to bust my butt to get any scraps of army out as soon as I can. And Pnp is one of the more brutal missions for slow start up commanders. Especially when your Ally takes their small army and goes after the bonus instead of getting extra parts when the timer has only practically no time left. Ah, good times.
So while yes, you can make early pushes with either of these commanders, it’s MUCH harder to do than other CO’s. But that’s okay, it’s a quirk, and I still appreciate it on the CO’s.
It’s a common misconception that people some time ago believed that earth is flat. Egyptians knew it’s spherical form 5000 years ago, and Greeks even calculated it’s radius with high precision over 2000 years ago. Only a bunch of idiots are flatearthers now, and you certainly can’t call them “most people”.
The argument though is absolutely correct - amount of people believing in some statement is irrelevant.
For example I believe that there are no weak or strong commanders. There are weak and strong players. And I have seen people who can’t even play zeratul, and that says nothing about zeratul. Only about those people.
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K. And I don’t believe your statement. Sure, if you’ve got enough skill, you can make damn near anything work. But the ridiculous amount of effort it can take to accomplish the same thing with certain commanders is there.
Not to mention, some commanders are FAR more resistant to mutators than others, allowing them to fare better on a wider range of maps. I know it’s coop, and you should always be playing with an ally, but there is clearly a pecking order here.
Yeah, just because someone is better doesn’t mean the balance is equal. For instance, Alarak can be devastating, but he’s also a lot more mentally taxing to play to full effectiveness for me than, say, Tychus. I’m sure the opposite is true for some macro-minded players who don’t mind losing units as long as they’re pumping them out so quickly it’s not a big deal.
Even if Alarak is amazing, the disparity in required utilization of ALL RTS knowledge versus being strong in a few is an imbalance in strength of that commander in and of itself because it’s not as easily accessed. That’s by design of the commander as much as it is player ability.
Kind of reminds me of the “this game is fun because I played it with a friend” argument. Any game can be fun with the right company. It doesn’t make it a good game. Any commander can be utilized effectively if you put a 400 APM player in the seat. Probably any build with any commander can be on vanilla brutal. Does that mean it’s strong?
The bigger problem is from other player. If you cannot cooperate with your teammate and he feel fighting alone, he/ they will hate you, ignore you and quit at the next game immediately or even block you. You will become “suc.KKker” in their mind.