EPTZagara is awesome, once you get the gas reduction for scourge you can just pop out a massive chunk of those anytime you need some anti air, otherwise nothing but max upgraded ling/bling end game.
Fezvez's' Co-op guide and hero review - Page 11
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SidianTheBard
United States2474 Posts
Zagara is awesome, once you get the gas reduction for scourge you can just pop out a massive chunk of those anytime you need some anti air, otherwise nothing but max upgraded ling/bling end game. | ||
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Icysoul
Canada254 Posts
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The Bottle
242 Posts
Hands down, my easiest commander, and the one with which I can play solo and without fail even when I'm really tired or high or something is Zagara. Maybe I'm biased because she was the first one I played, but I believe that she is the strongest commander. At the very least, she's up there with Vorazun for me. Here's the thing about Zagara. She has the strongest early and mid game, hands down. Now, it doesn't sound like much, but establishing yourself early is crucial to every mission. Pretty much every hero, once they get established, can break the game and rule the map. Those missions that fail are usually because you couldn't establish yourself on time and handle those early/mid waves. That never happens with Zagara if you play her right, not even with a completely incompetent ally that does nothing. She can handle any first wave on her own with the banelings. She can basically have fully saturated bases and a ton of banes out between the second and third waves. Once your banelings are fully upgraded, the free stream of banes that come out of your nest is faster available damage than Karax's fully upgraded solar core. It is never a problem to keep her ling/bane army up, as long as you have three hatcheries being injected by queens. Zagara is the only one who, mid/late game, stops having any resource issue whatsoever and floats a ton of minerals and gas. (She can have gas issues if you're constantly morphing most of your lings into banelings.) And a strong ling/bane group just demolishes any ground army that can ever be sent after you. Fully upgraded banelings are ridiculously strong. They are cost efficient even against big armored units like tanks and colossi; the things you never want them to hit in ladder. I have learned to keep them up and flowing, so that Zagara never even gets touched behind them. As well, she has the best anti air in the game. Not that you need scourge that often; in most missions Zagara and her hunter-killers are all the anti air you will ever need. But, of course, they're crucial in the shuttle mission (IMO the second hardest one for everyone else, but the easiest one for Zagara), and I use them in the void shard mission to get the bonus objective, and temple mission to intercept the north drops. My second favourite hero is Swann. I have never seen an ally use teleporting tanks in hercules' with him, and I am baffled by this. They are godlike. For most missions, I start with a bunch of tanks, get the maelstrom upgrade ASAP, and get a quick hercules. The drop micro you can do with that can take out early/mid game waves without a scratch. And once you have two or three hercules worth of tanks ground armies just melt. Of course I have them buffered and protected by the goliath-SV ball, which itself is also ridiculous. With the goliath range upgrade, the fact that tanks already have huge range, and the overall mech range upgrade, your herc-tank and goliath-SV ball is basically melting everything before they reach them. Swann may be slow to start, but I can always take care of first waves with the fire turrets which I'll later salvage, and those robot drop pods. So it's not much of a problem getting the momentum going with him, and once you do he's pretty much unstoppable. Also one thing I love about Swann is that he can expand the fastest out of any commander. Of course, controlling the laser drill is fun as hell too. The abilities may not be that creative (kill everything in a line; kill everything in a giant circle) but they sure as hell are satisfying to use. In terms of the actual strongest hero, I agree with everyone in that it's Vorazun. (Though I'd say there are many situations in which Zagara is stronger.) But using her the canonical way (DTs/corsairs) is pretty boring, in my opinion. I have the most fun with her when I use dark archons or oracles. In the shuttle mission, I couldn't make a ground army work with her, so I go voids, corsairs, and oracles. I love the stasis ward upgrade that lets you attack units in stasis. Now that I know where the big enemy balls spawn in that mission, it's fun to litter those points with wards, and just wreck that army while they're in stasis. For the rest of the maps, I always hope we're against terran or protoss so I can mass DAs and make myself a giant mind controlled army. If it's zerg though, just dts/corsairs/oracles. (You need the oracles for those lurkers, so you might as well have some fun with stasis ward.) Karax is fun, and one of my favourites as well, besides Zagara and Swann. I love the solar core/defense style. The only missions in which I don't research the forge defensive upgrades are the two offensive ones (void thrashers and void shards). I just get a solid zealot/energizer/robo army for the thrashers, and a zealot/energizer/phoenix army for the shards (phoenix so I can hit the bonus objective). I always, in every Karax mission, aim for the third solarite upgrade. To me the solar core is the essence of Karax, and the way he can get the most damage out. It's tricky playing the game of balancing that energy, because you can either use too much eagerly, or get so focused on the other parts of the game that you caught yourself sitting at 200. But if you balance it out just right, you can do ridiculous damage with it. And it's fun as hell. Just remember the wise words of Professor Fawnsworth advising Fry in playing alien invasion: "Don't shoot where they are, shoot where they're going to be." (It's always funny watching allies throw thirty bombardment shots frantically all over the place in order to hit a few lings.) Karax certainly has the strongest static defense of all heroes. It doesn't have the anti-light unit effect of Swann's flame turrets. But its survivability with shield battery walls (both to block/divert melee units and heal your buildings) and insane range make it able to stand up to end-game armies, which you can't really say about Swann's turrets. I never go carriers with Karax except in the shuttle mission. I found getting them for other missions severely hinders you earlier game, and depends too much on your ally being good. For the shuttle mission, I just start out with solar upgrades and defense upgrades, as usual, and turtle up the three conduits. Then later on I get phoenix and carriers. That's his best unit composition to deal with the massive air waves. Raynor is the one I have the toughest time with. I actually consider him the hardest of the seven to play, which is strange, since he's considered "basic". It requires the most intense macro IMO (making 20 barracks, 5+ orbital commands). I can handle him easily enough on the offensive missions and the shuttles. But when you need to make things like siege tanks for temple defense or make good defense, keeping up with that as well as getting the most infantry you can out of the torrents of minerals you receive can become overwhelming for me at times, and I find myself macroing hard while my marines are just standing there, not kiting, and getting obliterated. Well, terran has always been my worst race so maybe I just need to learn to play that style (although Swann is my second favourite commander). Kerrigan is decently strong, but she has to sacrifice a lot economically to cover the first wave alone (which I noticed you have to do in at least half the games), is always gas starved if you want a dependable ground army plus some anti-air, and just never has the explosive damage that Zagara has. (Maybe she does in lurkers, but they're not nearly as mobile and much harder to replace if you lose them.) Still, it's pretty fun soloing the first bunch of waves with her. My fondest memory of Kerrigan is one in which I actually played Karax, but my ally left immediately, so I decided to go pure four base Kerrigan with the solar core (fully upgraded) to back me up. I went mass mutas and BLs. It was awesome. Artanis is my favourite of the three "basic heroes". He can break down the rocks decently fast, especially at level 15 when you don't need pylons. And he has some of the most fun standing armies late game. I love zealots and high archons; using archons to storm everything away is just the bees' knees for me. No longer do I have that tough choice between strong army units, or storms, but with fragile little guys that I have to babysit. Also dragoons and reavers is a pretty dope late game army. I think reavers are underrated, everything just melts to them. They're not as good against zerg as they are against terran and protoss, because they have slow strong attacks, so they do a lot of overkill to zerg. But that's okay, if they're zerg just get zealots and high archons. (Unless it's the shuttle mission; then you want to go mostly air.) | ||
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fezvez
France3021 Posts
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Skolem
7 Posts
1. Vorazun 2. Zagara 3. Raynor --------------------- op line 4. Swann 5. Artanis 6. Kerrigan 7. Karax As you can see I have Kerrigan low on the list because I do not like playing a solo hero and not sure where to put her. I find all other heroes so much fun to play with and easy to beat brutal difficulty if your ally has a clue what to do. But dont forget that I am talking about level 15 heroes here and naturally you need more ally support at lower levels. The line between the first three and the rest of the heroes is the "o.p. line", that is, I consider the first three to be so overpowered that you can win with very minimal help from your ally. Karax strugles with a noob ally so he is at the bottom. With Zagara and Raynor you need to be a bit careful about storms but it is not a huge problem. Here is how to win with each hero: Vorazun: Take all 4 gases very early. Rush to jumping dts and invisible corsairs. I have only one gate until I have the tech of these up and upgrades started. Then I have a gateway explosion. Mineral dump if you really want: zealots or cannons depending on map. Zagara: Gas units: bailing, scourge. Concentrate on their upgrades and ling upgrades. Make early bailing nest to stop first wave. Mineral dump: lings and/or static depending on map. Playing late game Zagara is mainly resource juggling. If I bank too much minerals, I send zerglings to clear the map or make static. If I do not have a gas bank, I try to retain gas units by using Zagara's spells and attack with zerglings. If the enemy has storms then you have three options: use bailings to destroy the enemy wave immediately, use Zagara's spells, or use some zerglings to bait some of them. Playing Zagara you should always have enough larvae to max out from no army, especially in the late game. Make sure that you have enough hatcheries and use queen inject. Raynor: Mass orbital + mass rax. Bio for the win. Even if you lose almost all of your army for some reason you have a full army a few seconds later. (I cannot play vulture because high apm hurts my hand a lot.) A friend of mine is a very good macro terran and he has no problem dealing with storms with a marine-medic army. That is why he rates Raynor equal to Vorazun! But I am nowhere as good as him so I add some marauders and try to bait/split as much as I can. I lose more units than him and my macro is not as good as his, so for me Raynor in number 3. Swann: Science vessel with upgrades for the win! Dont forget defensive matrix. Works even on your ally's units. Also that gas cloud thing is good against bio. Try any mech army you want. Easiest: range upgraded goliaths. Laser is not very important and I don't even bother to upgrade it. Upgrading units and researching their properties is much more important. Artanis: The easiest is to rush to reavers but other comps work with a decent ally. Do not make any pylons early and use warp-field-circle to power up your buildings until you can easily spare money for a pylon. If your ally is also toss, use his pylons. Finishing a game without making a single pylon is fun. Karax: Concentrate on upgrading adun-solarite levels. I make zealot+phoenix and static but how much static I make depends on the map. On offense maps make just enough to protect your bases a little bit. Kerrigan: Not sure what is best. I tried to upgrade Kerrigan before units and also to reach broodlords when I played her. But havent played her for a while and cant recall the details now. Notes: For all heroes other than Karax and Kerrigan I give priority to continuously upgrading units and researching unit properties. With Karax I research twilight and fleet beacon upgrades of zealot+phoenix early but attack/armor/shield upgades of these units seriously lack behind other heroes. Adun level upgades take precedence. I take early expo except with Karax. With him I make my first pylon at the natural rocks, then forge and one or two cannons there and expand when that cannon(s) destroys the rocks. Whether I make one or two cannons there depends on how likely my ally is to hold early waves. Super-chrono probes to boost economy when the nexus finishes. Cheers. | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
You should absolutely prioritize laser drill upgrades as well, Swann's calldowns are second only to Karax in terms of damage. | ||
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MarlieChurphy
United States2063 Posts
eg; stun 5k units with or assimilate 50k resources with kerrigan? | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
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Laurens
Belgium4541 Posts
 They didn't really think these achievements through though, did they? Warping in 5000 units takes infinitely longer than absorbing 10K damage with shields. 50K damage and 2000 units would've been better numbers. As for commanders, they are all quite fun and none of them seems significantly harder/easier than the others so far. Though I only play void trashing brutal, none of the other maps. edit: Moved on to Swann, harvesting 100k vespene for allies is gonna be another massive biatch :'( I seem to get ~2-3k per mission with drones on all 8 geysers | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4541 Posts
I guess that's the downside of playing the quick map over and over. | ||
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SidianTheBard
United States2474 Posts
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
On January 01 2016 00:53 SidianTheBard wrote: The only achievement I'm really dreading is the stupid stun 5k units with Kerrigan. I'm at about 2k and need another 3k and it's just annoying. Worst part is you can only use it sometimes only 2 or 3 times per game. Doesn't help that Kerrigan is probably my least favorite commander to play, which is weird because Zagara is close to my favorite. Although Zagara is so much more fast paced so that's probably why it feels more enjoyable. Kerrigan just feels like, you walk around with Kerrigan doing whatever the hell you want because she's OP while you either tech up to Ultras or Brood lords. I found is easier to do this in Rifts map because I can time whenever I want to stun. Memorize the timings for the pats, hope you get Z every time, and just save the stun use for when the pats arrive in the same place where normal mobs are and hit it. You can also run all the way to the back area once the middle is clear and stun by the ramp, which normally contains a LOT of units. Then, run away and wait for stun reset. This will get you at least 3-4 per game, but you need a patient ally. As with almost every single co-op achievement, Brutal Zerg is the biggest factor to getting them because of the sheer numbers with normal mobs, larvae around hatches, and pats with like 50+ lings in them. A single stun in the right spot, at the right time (with pat) can net you 180-200 mobs. Worst case, it takes a few more games, but it will be done without any special playstyle. I found the 'kill 50 with leap in 1 game' to be more annoying since I had to change my playstyle completely to kite around pats and maximize my kills. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4541 Posts
 Sometimes the mission will be brutal difficulty, sometimes hard, but I will always get the full brutal exp. Bug or feature to reduce queueing times? | ||
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fezvez
France3021 Posts
On January 02 2016 02:01 DrSeRRoD wrote: I found is easier to do this in Rifts map because I can time whenever I want to stun. Memorize the timings for the pats, hope you get Z every time, and just save the stun use for when the pats arrive in the same place where normal mobs are and hit it. You can also run all the way to the back area once the middle is clear and stun by the ramp, which normally contains a LOT of units. Then, run away and wait for stun reset. This will get you at least 3-4 per game, but you need a patient ally. As with almost every single co-op achievement, Brutal Zerg is the biggest factor to getting them because of the sheer numbers with normal mobs, larvae around hatches, and pats with like 50+ lings in them. A single stun in the right spot, at the right time (with pat) can net you 180-200 mobs. Worst case, it takes a few more games, but it will be done without any special playstyle. I found the 'kill 50 with leap in 1 game' to be more annoying since I had to change my playstyle completely to kite around pats and maximize my kills. pats? You mean the red dots? | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
On January 03 2016 01:44 Laurens wrote: It's happened a couple times now that I select 'Brutal' and get paired up with someone who selected 'Hard'. You can find out by hovering over their units. It's also painfully obvious due to slower unit speed Sometimes the mission will be brutal difficulty, sometimes hard, but I will always get the full brutal exp. Bug or feature to reduce queueing times? I noticed this too. Funnily enough, the first time this happened to me, I got the "Brutal 150" achievement. So if you beat it it counts as a brutal game. I got "brutal 150" for beating a "hard" game. | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
On January 03 2016 01:44 Laurens wrote: Bug or feature to reduce queueing times? Pretty sure it's a time saving feature. I'm not sure if the difficulty is either brutal or hard in that case, it might be halfway between the two in terms of units spawned. On January 03 2016 02:43 fezvez wrote: pats? You mean the red dots? I believe he means pats as in patrols, so yes. I prefer saying wave myself. | ||
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
On January 03 2016 01:44 Laurens wrote: It's happened a couple times now that I select 'Brutal' and get paired up with someone who selected 'Hard'. You can find out by hovering over their units. It's also painfully obvious due to slower unit speed Sometimes the mission will be brutal difficulty, sometimes hard, but I will always get the full brutal exp. Bug or feature to reduce queueing times? It is a feature. If it is taking too long to find a game, the matchmaker will put you with someone else queueing. Hard sometimes gets a Brutal partner. The waves alternate between Brutal and Hard difficulty I believe, and when the game is over, you get the experience/achievement credit based on what difficulty you queue'd for. This works out great for the Brutal player, as the game is easier, but the Hard player only gets 'Hard' experience, even though he was in a mostly-Brutal game. | ||
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Laurens
Belgium4541 Posts
Before lvl 11 I went early double gas and rushed solarite upgrades 1&2, playing a heavy support role while teching to carriers. The only problem I had was allies being too scared to move in. With infinite solar energy there's really nothing to be afraid of xD After lvl 11 I went forge first and used cannons, CANNONS EVERYWHERE, was great fun. | ||
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Malhavoc
Italy308 Posts
At Brutal, given a random partner: - Karax is the worst: it's a great support with its abilities, and tower and units are good support too, but can't win alone if your opponent sucks - Kerrigan is the second worst in my opinion: you can handle the first wave with some spines if you need to, and the early game with her alone, while macroing and upgrading. But in late game all units are very squishy, and it lacks Zagara's ability to remax quickly. Ling/Hydra is probably the best combination: ling tank (and die) usually enough for most hydra to survive. Muta are squishy as hell, Brood Lords and Ultra are gas sinks not worth for. You MAY be able to win with a worthless ally, but it's a lot harder than with other commanders - Swan: a well rounded Goliath army + Vessels is unstoppable, but it takes a good amount of time to reach it. His abilities needing upgrades before being available, and his drone extrators stealing your early minerals make his early game really weak. You need your ally to hold the early game for you, or you really risk to die, but then you become unstoppable. - Artanis: with full supply 15lvl bonus, you really go smoothly through the early game: his cannon ability isn't so great, but the bombardment is awesome, and you have a couple of good unit combinations: whirlwind zealots are godly against terran and zerg, reavers are really good even if expensive, and even going tempest only is worth it. You can do it even with a worthless ally, but that would be a pity for your shield ability, which makes kerrigan/raynor/zagara in particular really op - Raynor: as other have said, with a good macro, you can make it alone pretty well: late game and storms can be really a trouble, but enough rax and mules make up for it - Zagara: your early game rocks, and you can take everything in seconds with banelings and scourge in particular. Just get around 3 macro hatch with queens, and get the scourge cost upgrade fast. Everything dies. - Vorazun: enough have been said about her: you can solo brutal as low as level 3 or around that.. Talking about maps, best for farming are indeed Void Thrashers and Rifts of Korhal: with a good ally I could do them in around 18/20 minutes each. With a bad ally, they are the easier to solo. As for the achievements, the ones taking the most (quite a lot of games after lvl 15) were: - Kerrigan's Stun above everything else (left every game against Protoss: only terran and zerg give you enough units to stun). Rush to hive to get her last in-game upgrade fast so your cooldowns is reduced - Swann's gas: took less than kerrigan, but still a pain. You can make it in easy mode too, while kerrigan needs brutal to get more enemy units - Artanis' warp 5k: takes a bit, but suicide units when maxed, and you make it in a reasonable time. Can be done in easy mode too. Use the gas for observers in easy mode, or for HT/Archon in brutal. | ||
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