Zeratul Top Bar/Mastery Combos

I’ve been using Tesseract Monolith and Tesseract Matrix combo in pretty much all my games due to the versatility of turning cannons into offensive tools, though I’m also open to alternative playstyles.

  1. Is Steadfast Reinforcements + Legion CD Reduction + Legion Cost/Avatar Cooldown a good direction?

2a) If I use Void Blink, should I also use more of Ambusher or Void Templar?

2b) What’d be a good first ability, Stasis Beam or Void Suppression?

  1. Since P1 gives an extra CD, how do people combo their masteries and top bars?

It is a matter of how aggressive you want to push. Sounds like your approach is fine to me. Experiment a bit.

I play P3 and generally push fast. So usually Telbrus (zealots/HT) Legion does the most coverage and damage. While Suppression Crystal pairs to again allow you to push into areas with ease. Due to the first 2 choices, the Reinforcement would be best to compliment, I find.

One thing I would probably recommend against is the mastery for Calldown reduction over fragment. This directly interferes with how fast you can achieve power up levels, as Zeratul’s entire concept is based on fragments.

There isn’t a wrong choice but I’d say that particular mastery set is not competitive enough. Similarly though, if you play P3 then set 3 becomes obvious as well.

Legions:
Zealots vs infantry, zerg, infested
Void rays vs objectives, enemy comp has little anti-air
Dark archons vs enemies with lots of big units, on maps where you want to use the legion to push into enemy bases

Stasis beam: never. it is terrible
Monolith: the one I usually get, esp when combined with cannnons. good for projecting to stall
Suppression crystal: when I need to go on the offense and cannons aren’t going to do the job

cannon CD: when I use cannons
blink CD: when I mostly use zeratul (p3 no mining, etc.) or when I have to use lots of ambushers (vs diffusion, propagators, double-edged etc.)
calldown duration: when I rely on calldowns to do a lot of work, and cannons aren’t good enough. i usually have an army with this comp, and it’s usually when I use the DA legion

orange avatar: always
blue avatar: never

I’ve wondering about that. Once you picked up your third fragment, the mastery becomes useless, no? The call-down mastery would work through out the fight.

That is true but the power level of your calldown is also affected. Having more (which in itself cost more - haha, incidentally in re-reading, another case of more isn’t always better). If I recall during testing, even a-next-to-instant find of each fragment, without the mastery you’re late by ~2min per fragment.

What this means even if resource isn’t an issue for you, the calldown legions will be notably weaker until you have obtained your 2nd fragment. Your army is also weaker, including Zeratul himself during this time. Furthermore, your consecutive calldowns are therefore locked behind the delayed fragments as well.

The overall drawback is just quite significant.

I only ever take artifact cooldown when I do P2. I think the base pacing of getting artifacts is fine for me.

  1. I always take Legion cost reduction + Steadfast Reinforcements, unless I want to play with Blink. I almost never take Tesseract Matrix, as playing offensive cannons with Zeratul is boring for me.
  2. Ambusher is preferred for kiting, Void Templar for anti-mass ground.
  3. Void Suppression. Stasis is hot garbage, being a line shot from an awkward point on most maps. Void Suppression also turns off structures.
  4. My masteries are usually on Combat Unit Attack Speed / Artifact Spawn Rate / Legion Cost Reduction. The only time I switch is when I’m on P3, in which I’ll usually switch Combat Unit Attack Speed for Zeratul Attack Speed, and Artifact Spawn Rate for Support Cooldown.

Personally, I’m:
Set 1:

  • Combat Units Attack Speed 30pts (P0, P1, P2)
  • Zeratul Attack Speed 30pts (P3 SpinRatul)

Set 2:

  • Support Calldown Cooldown Reduction 30pts (P0,P1,P3)
  • Artifact Fragment Spawn Rate 30pts (P2 Infinite Artifacts)

Set 3:

  • Legendary Legion Cost 30pts (I kept the avatar for a long time because it was visually fun, but I got bored of it eventually, legion cost seemed more effective)

For the top bars:

  1. Legion is either Telbrus (to rush in battle) or Zoraya (air mobility/anti air). Serdath and his DA are more rare (I’m still stuck with my SC1 image of them being spellcasters, I probably would find more uses to them otherwise)
  2. Always Monolith. Stasis is an annoyance from the lower levels like the Stasis thing of Vorazun Guard that just is there to annoy you by preventing you to quickly destroy stuff. I once tried the Suppression Cristal, but I wasn’t convinced.
  3. Very variable depending on how I decided to play:
    -Void Blink if I decide to unleash Ambushers beams hell on Amon (by warping again and again at level 3+ to trigger the beams).
    -Tesseract Matrix if I go more defensive or canon rush (like in Lock&Load, Mist Opportunities or Void Launch)
    -Reinforcements for P3 or when I decide to use stuff from the Robotic Facility
  4. Always Avatar of Essence (yellow). Upgrades of other units + downgrade of enemies + some attacks feel better than the blue thing whose non army-selectable sidekicks fail to be really practical in comparison

On another note, I gave up on Void Templar. Their blink strike is hard to control, overkill, and capture Zeratul if you just selected all (which also falsify the amount of blinks available).
They are surprisingly inadequate within Zeratul army, though I guess someone that can afford the efforts and have the skill to manage them could boast about how his games go.

Do Support Calldown CD reduction adds up with Avatar CD reduction?

Separate as far as I know.

Don’t suppose there’s a formula on how the calculation go?

The wording of Support Calldown mastery is vague. What exactly does it reduce anyway? Does it include legion, monolith, and suppression crystals?

So it includes the 2nd tier (your monolith, supression Crystal, and your beam). Think of the 30% reduction as Cooldown x (1 - mastery).

  • Beam 90s x (1 - 30%) = 90 x 0.7 = 63s
  • Monolith 180s x 0.7 = 126s
  • Suppression 180s x 0.7 = 126s

Legion has its cost reduction mastery, support calldown seem to be for the next tier (2nd), and your avatars are separately affected by the avatar cooldown mastery.

This is the correct answer. Support is the Tier 2 ability (Suppression Crystal/Statsis Beam/Tesseract Monoloth). Does not affect Legion or Avatars.

Ditto. I still struggle with finding AF*, so speeding this up conveys no extra advantage for me. May as well do the other ps. Whenever I get to try out his P2 again, I will consider that.

*. yes, I know about using the Rally lines trick. The difficulty is despite knowing that.

I feel like just doing Zara’s prestiges and playing around with P2 was enough to get the hang of AF locating.

Alternatively, you can learn how to cage the fragments on maps where this is possible.

I agree though, no need to reduce the cooldown by much or at all for P1 and P3 as most games are lost either in the very early game (between artifact 1 and 2) or late game (after artifact 3).

I think I currently have have Zaratul set at P1 with 10 points in Artifact cooldown mastery.

So here’s a nice table for people to see regarding Mastery Set 2 choices:

Mastery 1st / 2nd / 3rd Artifact (min) 1st Support 2nd Support Support in 20min
30/0 4 / 6 / 8 4 7 (~ +3min subsequent) 6
0/30 4 / 7 / 10 4 6 (~ +2min subsequent) 8
10/20 4 / 6m40s / 9m20s 4 6.5 (~ +2.5min subsequent) 7

The reason the total number for 0/30 split within 20min isn’t 9 (1st @ 4 + 16/2 = 1 + 8 = 9) is because the actual in-game time between finding fragments not landing exactly on 4min (usually 4:15 to 4:30), thus costing time in between. As well as the ‘~ approximation for table friendly numbers’, with 30 support mastery, it is 128sec and not 120sec. When you round them here and there, those are the more accurate numbers of supports within 20min.

In terms of the Support Calldown itself, Tier 2 (2nd top bar lol), the numbers are extremely insignificant. *Please note that this assumes cast off cooldown, so any delay would rend that difference null.*

What the mastery would further affect though is subsequent power-ups for Zeratul, his army, as well as his top bar Calldowns. (When Artifact Mastery isn’t chosen.)

There’s never a “NEED” for anything in coop. Mastery isn’t NEEDED to win. That said, a 1min delay here and a 2min delay there during the 5-10min frame could mean a very significant difference for your overall strength at that stage. It is also important to note that the Support Calldown itself does absolutely nothing. You need an army and/or Zeratul to use in coordination with them. Whether it’s Suppression Crystal, Beam, or Monolith you need at least something (even if it’s just cannons). So casting more without a stronger push is kind of counter-intuitive.

Of course, what Ack identified is crucial. If you simply can’t find them I suppose there’s a small case for it? That said, then wouldn’t having an extra whole minute to find it better than not? (ie. You have trouble looking, but u start at 6min rather than 7min and it still takes you 1.5min to find it… So starting at 6min would net u 7.5min rather than 7min @ 8.5min? )

So going from 0/30 to 30/0 AFCDM provides a benefit for a total of 3 minutes of a game that lasts 20-30 minutes on average (for P0/1)? While SCM provides a benefit from minute 4 until completion.

In the longest games (30 minutes) this could be the difference between using the support calldown 9 times and 14 times. That’s 14 Monoliths. Or 14 Void Crystal’s. Each are fantastic depending on whether the mission is offensive or defensive.

If anything the numbers you’ve provided make me think I should ditch all of the points out of AF Mastery.

Unless you want to hit something during that time, or if you’re using P2 (naturally.)

Why am I not surprised at the dumb-dumb logic you show every time.

Please do ditch it and play like the pro-pro that you are. I don’t think anywhere in my post that I suggested anyone (especially you) to change their mastery?

So, on a defensive map where you want Monoliths I see no contest. 14 Monoliths will do much better than 9 Monoliths for final wave of Void Launch (for instance).

Early game defensive maps don’t need early fragments. When was the last time you lost a map on wave 2 of VL or 2nd night of DoN? The second ship of ME has to be the easiest for sure.

For offensive maps the early fragment is awesome for a boost to your power. However, at 6 minutes would you trade that fragment in for another cast of Void Suppression Crystal (which should let you kill an objective) considering that trade gives up to another 4 Crystal’s throughout the map? (As each Void Crystal should be an easy kill vs wave or objective right?)

On the flipside if you are speed running and going for early finishes (Void Thrashing and L&L primarily) then fragment spawn rate for sure but this is a classic “win-more” scenario that doesn’t necessarily help you actually win games that you might have otherwise lost (as usual this doesn’t apply to people who only play Brutal).

Ymmv.