EPTFezvez's' Co-op guide and hero review - Page 17
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rogerkitkit
18 Posts
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Highways
Australia6100 Posts
On May 18 2016 21:52 DrSeRRoD wrote: Yea, I think they are just a weekly bounty for the bonus, plus a daily 10k xp for your first win. I guess it makes it fair. Otherwise it will be too easy to level up. | ||
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
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fezvez
France3021 Posts
On May 18 2016 17:57 Highways wrote: Kerrigan is so weak at higher levels She needs a buff. Make hydras last longer, they die so easy in brutal. Kerrigan's army needs the most babysitting out of all the heroes. The is the Terran of Co-op commanders, you don't look for one second, and poof, your army is gone. But she can be really good. I decided to use her for my first Mutator mission (Brutal) because of how potent she can be. So I don't feel like she needs a buff. By the way, my way of playing her on the mission is the following : - Solo the first 4 waves - Build 12 ling to help her take down the first train (she should solo all the units beforehand so that you lose 0 lings) - Build ~10 hydra to help her take down the second train (she should solo all the units beforehand so that you lose 0 hydras) - Rush to hive + lurker den - You should have your first set of lurkers for the third train - Hydra + Lurker + Spines (really important!) + Spores | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
On May 18 2016 05:14 fezvez wrote: And if you can discuss your mech Raynor, I am all ears! All right then. I mainly go mech Raynor on the temple, train, and lock & load missions. They all start out the same: 14 depot, 15 barracks, 15 refinery. Pump out marines to shoot the rocks until you have 8, exactly enough for two bunkers. You don't really need the two bunkers to hold the first wave on Lock & Load but sometimes I get it anyway to get the marines out of the way, since they're the only marines you'll ever build. You should get your second refinery at around your second marine. Your first 100 gas goes towards a factory. Then you save minerals for your second CC, which you should be able to build on time at your natural, no lifting required. Then you go for a second and third factory, but get a tech lab as soon as your first factory is finished. In terms of orbitals, you don't need as much as if you were going bio. I usually go 6+ for bio, but I still like to have 4+ for mech. Vultures are a good mineral dump but you don't need nearly as many of them as you do marines. If you play them right, the enemy should never even get to your vultures, because all the anti-ground work should be done by mines/tanks (tanks in the train mission). But orbitals are also great for repairing. Raynor doesn't have science vessels or the heal beam... he has mules. Don't forget to mule up when your expensive units are low on health. You don't really need to do that for your vultures. In all three missions, vultures are the core of your army. You should be extremely proactive about planting mines everywhere you need them. Get the mech speed boosting upgrade so that you can send vultures somewhere immediately in an emergency. Half your apm should be in planting mines. But certainly don't go lax on the macro. If the enemy is air, you don't need to focus as heavily on the mines, you should be more proactive about getting vikings. They are the second best anti-air in co-op IMO (the best being scourge). You should also have mines near your own base and your ally's base, enough to cover the area that a ghost would want to nuke, so that when you hear the warning, you can just scan the nuke ground and the ghost will blow up right away. For the temple mission, your composition should be vultures, vikings, and banshees, with the ratio adjusted based on the enemy. If they go air, forget the banshees, just vultures and vikings, and try to have a good amount of vikings up before the side ramp waves. Turrets help with this too. But no matter what the composition is, make sure to plant mines everywhere. Keep the main ramp and your side ramp filled up. Fill your side ramp with mines before the enemy comes. If you're feeling generous, mine up your ally's side ramp. Make sure to fill the north landing dock with mines before the shuttles come in. (Having vikings with the AoE shot helps a lot too.) You can plant a ton of mines at the thrashers to kill them quickly, and the remainder will help you against future waves. Banshees help push into the areas where the thrashers are. Have mines around the four sides of the temple before the drop pods come in. Just laugh at how OP your mines are. If you play Raynor right on the temple mission, you'll realize he's absolutely the best for the temple mission, hands down. You'll never need your calldowns to help you, so you should use them exclusively to get the bonus objectives. For the lock & load mission, your composition should be roughly the same, vultures, vikings, and banshees, ratios adjusted for the enemy composition. Each lock you get should be covered with mines and turrets. When you're fully saturated on your base, keep getting extra scvs on your natural so that you can pull them for turrets every time you get a new lock. If you mine the locks well enough, they should never run out. But if they do, it's easy to drop more vultures there to restock. It's a little hard to push into new locks with vultures and vikings, so banshees can help you with those pushes. Though if the enemy is air, you should get minimal banshees (mostly vikings), so you can use calldowns to help you push in. It also doesn't hurt to plant mines outside the locks and then lure enemies into them. Your air army is really good for killing the bonus objective. The mech comp on lock & load is a little slow going, but extremely effective. The train mission is a little trickier. Your mines can do most of the damage to the first couple of trains, but at some point the trains will have too much HP and absorb all the mines. Your comp should be vultures, tanks, and vikings, again with the ratio adjusted depending on the enemy composition. On each track you should have a bunch of tanks and turrets. The tank armor upgrade and building armor upgrade helps these things hold their ground very well. (Plus don't forget to surround them with mines.) Mines are amazing for stopping the separate attack waves, unless the enemy is air. If they are air, delay your tanks a bit and try and get the first few trains with mines/calldowns while you're rushing to get upgraded vikings. But don't forget about the tanks, because you'll need them for the later trains, when the mines just aren't enough. For the last train, just pull all your tanks to the area where the last train will emerge, and fill that spot up with mines. | ||
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
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The Bottle
242 Posts
I got Abathur to level 14, so I'll give my thoughts on him now. He has the best variety I have seen in a commander! I have gone so many compositions with him, and they're all effective. Against mass ground, I go roaches, guardians, and vipers. Blinding cloud is amazing against ground, especially in its OP campaign form. (Though it's pretty much identical to corsairs' co-op disruption web, and much more expensive to do.) Like in BW, guardians are damn good at cleaning up ground. Against mass air, I have experimented with devourers, but I haven't had them with reduced morph cost for very long, so I don't know about them yet. But I favour mass ravager against air. AI air tends to clump up, so the upgraded corrosive biles are godlike against them. Once you have a very strong number of ravagers, air armies should melt. Brutalisks and queens are good for cleaning up the remainder. I got swarm hosts for defense quite a bit before the deep tunnelling upgrade, though I had to disperse them correctly. However, after that upgrade, they are the bees' knees. I only ever need to get one giant force of SHs, and teleport them wherever I need them. This is amazingly useful in the temple and lock & load missions. One thing I haven't tried yet, that I'd really like to, is a mass muta build. Abathur's mutas seem to have the most upgrades. They can have the rapid regen out of battle, the 6 bounce, and the 100% versus armor. It would be cool to see how a stack of those can do, though the seeker missiles/parasitic bomb might wreck my day. I'm glad he has a three limit on the super units. I didn't want it to be about massing brutalisks and leviathans. I love that he has a caster, though I feel like the viper is mostly good for blinding cloud. The parasitic bomb doesn't seem to be nearly as effective as corrosive biles for the cost, and abduct is useful sometimes, but it's better for getting a good trade on ladder... grabbing a disruptor or thor is much more devastating to a player than it is to a co-op AI. | ||
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
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The Bottle
242 Posts
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
On May 18 2016 23:49 The Bottle wrote: All right then. I mainly go mech Raynor on the temple, train, and lock & load missions. They all start out the same: 14 depot, 15 barracks, 15 refinery. Pump out marines to shoot the rocks until you have 8, exactly enough for two bunkers. You don't really need the two bunkers to hold the first wave on Lock & Load but sometimes I get it anyway to get the marines out of the way, since they're the only marines you'll ever build. You should get your second refinery at around your second marine. Your first 100 gas goes towards a factory. Then you save minerals for your second CC, which you should be able to build on time at your natural, no lifting required. Then you go for a second and third factory, but get a tech lab as soon as your first factory is finished. In terms of orbitals, you don't need as much as if you were going bio. I usually go 6+ for bio, but I still like to have 4+ for mech. Vultures are a good mineral dump but you don't need nearly as many of them as you do marines. If you play them right, the enemy should never even get to your vultures, because all the anti-ground work should be done by mines/tanks (tanks in the train mission). But orbitals are also great for repairing. Raynor doesn't have science vessels or the heal beam... he has mules. Don't forget to mule up when your expensive units are low on health. You don't really need to do that for your vultures. In all three missions, vultures are the core of your army. You should be extremely proactive about planting mines everywhere you need them. Get the mech speed boosting upgrade so that you can send vultures somewhere immediately in an emergency. Half your apm should be in planting mines. But certainly don't go lax on the macro. If the enemy is air, you don't need to focus as heavily on the mines, you should be more proactive about getting vikings. They are the second best anti-air in co-op IMO (the best being scourge). You should also have mines near your own base and your ally's base, enough to cover the area that a ghost would want to nuke, so that when you hear the warning, you can just scan the nuke ground and the ghost will blow up right away. For the temple mission, your composition should be vultures, vikings, and banshees, with the ratio adjusted based on the enemy. If they go air, forget the banshees, just vultures and vikings, and try to have a good amount of vikings up before the side ramp waves. Turrets help with this too. But no matter what the composition is, make sure to plant mines everywhere. Keep the main ramp and your side ramp filled up. Fill your side ramp with mines before the enemy comes. If you're feeling generous, mine up your ally's side ramp. Make sure to fill the north landing dock with mines before the shuttles come in. (Having vikings with the AoE shot helps a lot too.) You can plant a ton of mines at the thrashers to kill them quickly, and the remainder will help you against future waves. Banshees help push into the areas where the thrashers are. Have mines around the four sides of the temple before the drop pods come in. Just laugh at how OP your mines are. If you play Raynor right on the temple mission, you'll realize he's absolutely the best for the temple mission, hands down. You'll never need your calldowns to help you, so you should use them exclusively to get the bonus objectives. For the lock & load mission, your composition should be roughly the same, vultures, vikings, and banshees, ratios adjusted for the enemy composition. Each lock you get should be covered with mines and turrets. When you're fully saturated on your base, keep getting extra scvs on your natural so that you can pull them for turrets every time you get a new lock. If you mine the locks well enough, they should never run out. But if they do, it's easy to drop more vultures there to restock. It's a little hard to push into new locks with vultures and vikings, so banshees can help you with those pushes. Though if the enemy is air, you should get minimal banshees (mostly vikings), so you can use calldowns to help you push in. It also doesn't hurt to plant mines outside the locks and then lure enemies into them. Your air army is really good for killing the bonus objective. The mech comp on lock & load is a little slow going, but extremely effective. The train mission is a little trickier. Your mines can do most of the damage to the first couple of trains, but at some point the trains will have too much HP and absorb all the mines. Your comp should be vultures, tanks, and vikings, again with the ratio adjusted depending on the enemy composition. On each track you should have a bunch of tanks and turrets. The tank armor upgrade and building armor upgrade helps these things hold their ground very well. (Plus don't forget to surround them with mines.) Mines are amazing for stopping the separate attack waves, unless the enemy is air. If they are air, delay your tanks a bit and try and get the first few trains with mines/calldowns while you're rushing to get upgraded vikings. But don't forget about the tanks, because you'll need them for the later trains, when the mines just aren't enough. For the last train, just pull all your tanks to the area where the last train will emerge, and fill that spot up with mines. Thank you dude! To summarize what you wrote: just plant the mines everywhere :D I tried the vultures before on the temple map, and I indeed confirm, totally insane! | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
Early game is about as slow as Artanis. You'll want to expo with 2 spines and a toxic nest while spamming the rest of your toxic nests along the enemy attack route. I usually make a couple roaches after the explosions to pick up the leftover biomass and hopefully evolve. Abathur has the most viable options of any commander, so what you make next is really up to you. Units: Swarm queen - Good all-round unit, hits air and ground while healing and spreading creep. Somewhat redundant once you hit level 5 since Mend and Toxic Nests fill the creep and healing roles. I still get a few to heal up my brutalisks, and they can heal mechanical units once you get their level 6 upgrades. Rating: 8/10. Roaches - Are your bread-and-butter. 100 minerals each and normal melee stats, but they do get biomass boosts and end up being very survivable, especially once you get their Vile upgrade. Rating: 7/10, 9/10 Vile. Ravagers - I haven't used these much. Corrosive bile is harder to aim than you'd think, though the double width upgrade is very helpful. +2 range over the standard roach is also nice, as is losing the armored tag. Rating: 9/10. Mutalisk - Much better than Kerrigan's, mainly because Kerrigan's can't get +500 life and don't have Mend as a hero power. Turn into flying, faster, better damage ultralisks with biomass boosts. Make sure to get the 6x bounce and 2x armored damage upgrades ASAP. I'm pretty sure a 100 biomass mutalisk has more DPS and tanking capacity than a Leviathan. Rating: 11/10. Guardian - Actually a downgrade from fully upgraded mutalisks, trading speed, anti-air capacity, and some damage for range. Not really worth it imo. Rating: 8/10. Devourer - Goes through air like a hot knife through butter. They even take out the final wave of Void Launch no problem. Just remember to get the splash upgrade. Rating: 11/10. Swarm hosts - Are not on Abathur's unit list for some reason. Even better than they were at their HOTS peak, but they have two Hive upgrades; Pressurized Glands that allows Locusts to hit air, and Deep Tunnel that allows the swarm host to teleport anywhere on the map with vision (unlocked at level 9). They can drop locusts while unburrowed, and if told to attack move will wait at ~15 range away from any visible enemy while sending locusts in. Rating: 10/10. Vipers - Are insanely broken. They get a 50/50 upgrade at Lair that increases their cast range for all abilities by 4, in addition to having the un-nerfed 90 damage parasitic bomb and disabling cloud (disruption web and time warp in one ability). Their level 9 upgrade makes abduct stun for 10 seconds instead of 5, so you can stun-lock any air unit easily. Consume gives up to 150 energy while draining up to 75 life from your Roaches who don't care, and lastly they can attack with a 10+5 vs armored, 6 range, 1.5 attack speed weapon that still gets upgrade and biomass boosts. Their only weakness is they can't target heroic units with abduct or parasitic bomb, but disabling cloud still works on the ground hybrids so that's never really an issue. Rating: 12/10, super broken. Brutalisk - Really good tank with 1500 hp. Has AOE damage like an ultralisk on the ground and can shoot up, useful for waves with only a bit of air. Watch out for liberators though. Can deep tunnel anywhere on the map, even without vision. Their symbiote upgrade gives them a 200 hp shield every 20 seconds or so. Limited to three at once. Rating: 10/10. Leviathan - Tends to stay alive longer than your brutalisks since less can attack it but loses the AOE damage and deep tunnel. Only slightly slower than a mutalisk though. Limited to three at once. Rating: 10/10. Powers: Biomass - each piece of biomass collected gives +5 hp, +2% attack speed, and +5% energy regeneration (if the unit has energy). Toxic Nests - creep tumors that explode for 125 damage. At level three enemies drop double the biomass if they're damaged by a nest explosion (essential for getting brutalisks early game), and the nests themselves can't be targeted by most enemies (lurkers seem to be an exception to this for some reason and all enemy AOE abilities can still hurt the nest). Turn the autocast explosion ability off and you've got a mostly invincible creep tumor. Mend: Heals most of the screen for 100 instantly and 50 more over time. Heals biologicals, mechanicals, structures, and even Archons. Once you get improved Mend at level 5 you can stop making queens at all. Commander synergy: Abathur is all about snowballing, so commanders that have a great early game complement Abathur very well. Raynor - Having something in front of a bio-ball to tank is very much appreciated by Raynor, and Mend heals much better than medics in case of storms. Abathur can benefit from medics as well. Kerrigan - Excellent team. Kerrigan comes out and destroys the first few waves, letting Abathur pick up the leftover biomass without any risk and potentially get 3 brutalisks very early. Hydras appreciate Mend and tanking quite a bit, and toxic nests spread Malignant creep very easily. Artanis - Another great team. Guardian shell saves Abathur's biomass and Mend heals anything Artanis has, robo, stargate, or gateway. Swann - Can be tough early if you're matched with a Swann that doesn't know how to take advantage of advanced construction and herc tank drops, but the extra gas is much appreciated. Mend heals Swann's units faster than Science Vessals can. Zagara - Not much synergy beyond a better early game. Any air wave will get ROFLstomped by this team though. Vorazun - Vorazun appreciates Mend healing on her emergency recall'd units with minimum health. Not a lot of synergy otherwise, as most of Abathur's units can't attack from cloak or burrow. Karax - Again not much synergy beyond Mend/Queen healing. Reconstruction beam and chronoboost don't help Abathur much. I've done this weekly mutation quite a bit as well. Winning is basically a matter of getting enough dps on target and keeping track of those targets. Artanis has a very easy win, going HT/zealot with immortals and/or reavers mixed in as you get the gas. Swann also has an easy win with tank/herc mobility and turrets to catch the zombies. Karax gets absolutely rekt. He simply won't have enough units or structures to hold on. | ||
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Zedd
Czech Republic107 Posts
Seriously, try going Abathur mass air. You make first few roaches to destroy rocks and gather biomass from your traps and then go full air. You make roaches with surplus minerals, but attack with guardian/devourer combination. Keep roaches for defending. Slowpush and abuse guardian OP range and micro devourer to stay with your guardians (and not rush forward). Eventually, you get 3 leviathans and all your other air units will have full biomass which means something like 3x attack speed and 3x health. Dont use mutas as they are hard to level up with biomass (there die from splash faster than you can upgrade them with biomass). It was far more efficient and fun than I expected. | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
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Icysoul
Canada254 Posts
I think Karax will become alot stronger as you get more mastery levels. The 20% decrease in unit cost isn't off of the base unit cost but off of the 50% increased costs, in other words after all the points, karax units cost 20% more than average. Another upgrade is the structure hp increase Karax gets. Suddenly everything is alot more affordable and your cannons are a lot stronger as well. | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
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The Bottle
242 Posts
Still haven't tried the mass mutas, though. I can't seem to find a situation where they'll be good. maybe against mass ground? The 6 bounce 100% vs armor seem pretty sweet. I certainly see now how blinding cloud (the co-op version) can be considered better than disruption web. It slows them down, so they won't be able to get out for a while. And you can refresh it much faster than a corsair can, by consuming one of your big units. A viper should be able to make four in quick succession, with a consume in between. I have had tremendous results using this, allowing me to push into massive hostile territory or a huge army and losing almost nothing, when I should have lost a lot more. They're certainly quite amazing, as Xsyq says, You just have to be careful not to let your vipers fight. The measly damage they do is not at all worth risking them. I always have them in the same group as my overseers. | ||
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tokinho
United States785 Posts
On May 18 2016 23:49 DrSeRRoD wrote: I tried it on a lowish Abathur, but I can see where I might have better luck with Kerrigan since I can just micro her for a while and not worry as much about all of the crazy macro and setups. Lurkers also seem like they will be far better than swarm hosts for clearing the mass amounts of undead. Someone mentioned that ultras for her is real good too. I might try again when Abathur is 15 because that 'healing based on stacks' seems pretty strong for long-term game units, but his early game just seems pretty slow and you need a partner to kill a lot so you can get up a brutalisk or two very quickly. Definitely doesn't seem like the kind of map I would want to grind on though. Maybe the lock and load mines will be a little easier, unless they constantly respawn. I also haven't played in months, so will take a couple of days to get better... just in time for Overwatch to come and kill my grind for a while. If you aren't comfortable with running abathur splitting your army, spamming corrosive bile in places and burrowing key units so that they don't die, you could just try and run an easier commander since the experience is shared. This week, the swann is pretty easy to run. You can pack tanks and static d in a chokes and it doesn't require much micro and attention. Then run abathur in a weekly mission that is better for him. I don't particularly like this map that much anyways. So I probably won't run too much on it. I ran to like Mastery level 20 mostly with abathur and swann. I think that's all I'll do since i don't particularly find it that fun. | ||
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Zedd
Czech Republic107 Posts
Havent done swarm host though, must try it. Does the locust get all the biomass buffs from its father(lol) also? | ||
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DrSeRRoD
United States490 Posts
On May 19 2016 15:45 tokinho wrote: If you aren't comfortable with running abathur splitting your army, spamming corrosive bile in places and burrowing key units so that they don't die, you could just try and run an easier commander since the experience is shared. This week, the swann is pretty easy to run. You can pack tanks and static d in a chokes and it doesn't require much micro and attention. Then run abathur in a weekly mission that is better for him. I don't particularly like this map that much anyways. So I probably won't run too much on it. I ran to like Mastery level 20 mostly with abathur and swann. I think that's all I'll do since i don't particularly find it that fun. Yea, I'm thinking of going with Karax and massing cannons and towers everywhere. I'm having a tough time microing my army or macroing enough units due to my skill level. I was able to easily crush Hard, but Brutal just destroys me. I think I am 0/6 or 0/7 on it so now that Abathur is 15, my primary goal is achieved, next comes the brutal bounty and missions. I feel like making defensive structures to protect the bases and the top track and slowly expanding across the map is going to be much easier for me. I can definitely give Swann a try if the towers and cannons don't work out as I'd like and mass up some tanks. They don't have friendly splash in co-op, right? | ||
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