I just played with a teammate who went nothing except cannons as Zeratul P2. I didn’t realize that prestige also indefinitely expands the damage of cannons as well. He was only up to nine artifacts towards the end I think.
I wonder if he could do Dead of Night indefinitely this way?
IIRC CtG did a stream to get the most nights out of DoN using P2 Zeratul solo. I think he got pretty far.
I had an ally do that one time as well. Yeah, Zeratul’s special not only b/c level upgrades don’t have that progress bar, but it also ups the stats on armor and weapons on his towers as well!
If not him (likely him), got to lv150-something. T. Monoliths do far more damage than regular Cannons could! I believe there was a hard limit to leveling up (and not just b/c it was imposed by the DoN mission).
pretty sure the fragments cap at 103, or at least they did that last time ctg made a video on it?
still absurd, realistically even with full mastery and near insta relic get, you would get like 10-12 max fragments, which is still amazing for cannons
Don’t quote me on this, but isn’t the max artifacts somewhere in the 160s?
Heh… either way, absurd is the right way to describe it! Even with proficiency in finding AF and the mastery that makes them come out faster, you’d have to stall the game for IIRC… at least 1.5 hours of in-game time?
Even something like lv5 to lv7 is fairly powerful, but still early enough to enjoy it for a good reminder of the game.
I haven’t seen this strategy in brutal yet, outside of Dead of Night. Would it work?
Spamming telecannons with shieldguards to both act with cannons as a mineral dump, and shieldguards as the gas dump is a potentially somewhat viable (but potentially often slower) strat.
I think i’ve used it on some mutators before such as the stealthed reanimators where you could build cannon bases to spawncamp the revive pool.
While also offering mobile detectiom with warps to anywhere on demand. (i may have used p3 zera for the mutation so i could split control of my army into one objective, tele cannons on another, and spin zera as a rogue army whittler/reanimator sniper.
Tele cannons are a viable strategy for situations where mobile detection on demand (or mineral dumps past 100/100) is a option. P2 cannons shine out a bit more since they evade the p2 unit tax, while still allowing you to mineral dump cannons and build gasdump shieldguards.
(If you want, you can even trap in shieldguards near the cannons for lower effort shield restores. Or higher effort seperate control groups for main army with safely parked rechargers.
I find that it was a fun novelty. It’s bulky, it scales infinitely. But even with high upgrades you eventually hit a point where the cannons only take 1 dmg and kill with each 1-2 shots… But it doesn’t have aoe and often apm attention splits in practice might make you finish a map 20-24+ minutes later instead of the 15-18 min mark.
It can have some advantages though for certain mutators or even a normal p0-3 mineral dump.
You can attack without risking material losses (bar time/cd/tempo). Provide vision on demand.
It’s concussion proof, nothing to worry about with chain pulls, no worrys about black death killing the cannons. You can spawncamp reanimators with it, and it doesn’t even take up supply.
The downsides are focusing on cannon only often tend to be slower than focusing fast 100/100 armies like stalkers/sheildguards. And often even free, the cannons cd limits (nontrain) offense capability.
That said, combining zeratul’s infinite scaling with perhaps p1 karax for infinite repairs (and a cap of 1 dmg taken), or kerrigan for lurker aoe/infinite hero on 6 hrs unreplenishable resources.
We’ve already seen people hit the 6 hr mark before. I think it’s a neat prestiege worth playing around with.
It’s often slow but can avoid atrittion losses and disruptor mutators and should have a spot in the mutations /variety handbook.
I’d probably rate cannontul as A on attrittion, B- in speed/tempo and A+ for handling certain mutators. It can also work on trains fine or meme with a dedicated p1 karax ally on trains too or even as a any p flex pick.
The one main problem i see is most games that can go on forever like don. You might want to end asap in the 15-22 min range (depending on commander).
Most maps that are 24-30 minutes on, you can already spawncamp by minute 14-18. And its fun to scale infinitely forever, but since cannons will always cap at 1 dmg taken and 1-2 slow shots to kill, you might end up losing more time splitting your focus on detours rather than finishing rhe map quicker in practice. But i think it’s still a very fun and considerable tool to have in the arsenal of knowledge for fun reasons.
Plus there’s no drawback to mineral dumping cannons after capping 100/100, and p2 can still be good for building faster arti hunting habits as well.
Works nicely on Miner Evac. The P2 ally I had who did this wasn’t on this nor DoN.
EDIT: Oh, that same player also used Void Ray legion a lot, which also isn’t hampered by his P2’s (-).