EPT
Fezvez's' Co-op guide and hero review - Page 26
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
On June 23 2016 17:03 fezvez wrote: Question for the usual lurkers, do you agree/disagree with my ranking of commanders , especially the one with mastery levels: At level 5 : Vorazun > Swann/Abathur > Kerrigan > Zagara/Raynor/Artanis > Karax At level 15 with no mastery : Vorazun/Zagara/Raynor/Abathur >Swann/Kerrigan > Artanis/Karax At 60+ masteries : Vorazun/Raynor/Abathur >Zagara/Karax/Kerrigan > Swann/Artanis Basically, the commanders that benefit most from masteries are Karax and Kerrigan, mainly because of the resource cost reduction. I also feel that Zagara has more trouble holding her own in mutations, but that may be because most mutations involve some random AoE damage these days. Kerrigan is a bit special. If there is little air, she is easily Tier 1. But her anti-air is just terrible, perhaps the worst in the game, so overall, I put her behind the "safe" choices. dunno. feels like any commander is unstoppable now (lvl 65 mastery for me) i would object that swann & artanis are at the bottom of the list | ||
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
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APurpleCow
United States1372 Posts
On June 23 2016 17:03 fezvez wrote: Question for the usual lurkers, do you agree/disagree with my ranking of commanders , especially the one with mastery levels: At level 5 : Vorazun > Swann/Abathur > Kerrigan > Zagara/Raynor/Artanis > Karax At level 15 with no mastery : Vorazun/Zagara/Raynor/Abathur >Swann/Kerrigan > Artanis/Karax At 60+ masteries : Vorazun/Raynor/Abathur >Zagara/Karax/Kerrigan > Swann/Artanis Basically, the commanders that benefit most from masteries are Karax and Kerrigan, mainly because of the resource cost reduction. I also feel that Zagara has more trouble holding her own in mutations, but that may be because most mutations involve some random AoE damage these days. Kerrigan is a bit special. If there is little air, she is easily Tier 1. But her anti-air is just terrible, perhaps the worst in the game, so overall, I put her behind the "safe" choices. For level 60+, I think it goes like this: Karax > Vorazun/Raynor/Abathur/Swann/Artanis > Zagara/Kerrigan Part of the problem with ranking is that it really depends on what the mutation/mission is. Kerrigan, for example, becomes top tier on defensive missions (lurkers OP), while Zagara is top tier on missions where she's able to stay maxed out easily (generally not possible on Mutations). The reason I'd put Karax at top is because a lot of his power is in his Spear of Adun, and that doesn't care at all about most mutations. I'm much less in love with Voraxun than the other people here. To me, she takes too long to build up--until she has a mass of DTs or Corsair, she isn't that effective and relies a lot on her teammate. | ||
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MrTic
60 Posts
Karax seems tricky to master and I never played him, I usually like him as an ally if he properly builds turrets to hold objectives, defend bases so I can spend more on units etc. I play Artanis all the time, lvl 39 masteries atm. He's a great commander and I can do whatever is asked of me, except when my allies don't contribute as much as they should. For example, I played a brutal Thrashers mission with a Karax ally today who built a ton of Zealots to support my attacks, used Adun abilities very rarely, while I needed to defend by panic warp-ins and gather a ball to attack at the same time. Needless to say we lost with two thrashers left... Even on Lock n Load, a few times my Karax ally didn't defend more than one objective, and we barely won thanks to my own turrets and warping all over the map. :/ But then I played Shuttles with the same Karax and he absolutely nailed it..oh well :D Edit Just to be clear, I don't rage at people if they fail at somethig, there is no punishment in case of loss.. I just got sc2 starter edition a few weeks ago, and though I figured it out pretty quickly, it often seems like I should have done more :p. My first Brutal ever was with a Raynor pro, he briliantly defended the Temple from 3 sides and I felt terrible while trying to do anything useful :D | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
On the temple map, Raynor is the king, followed closely by Swann, and then Karax/Zagara. I think most people favour Karax on this one, but they haven't seen the ridiculous power of mech Raynor on the temple. Swann with his towers + teleporting tanks and laser nukes can make sure nothing ever even walks on the ramp (except drop pods). I put Zagara up there with Karax because her very underused bile launchers are godlike against every composition. I usually mass them on that map. On offensive maps Raynor is amazing and can dominate most compositions. But he's weak against a bunch of them. (I try and make other non-infantry to compensate, but other commanders still have much better things to deal with, say, terran mech or protoss robotics.) A commander that's more composition immune is Zagara. Ground? Blow everything up with banelings. Air? Blow everything up with scourge. If you can play Swann right, he is hilariously broken on most maps, against just about every comp except for the bane/scourge/viper one. He and Kerrigan dominate the trains. You say Zagara is weak in some mutations. But IMO she's absolutely the best one on the Chains of Ascension and Lock & Load mutations. You put Karax last, but he makes White Out a bad joke, and he's pretty strong on Bad Weather, provided you have an offensive ally that knows what they're doing. Zagara is actually pretty good at that too, provided you have a defensive ally that knows what they're doing. Kerrigan is often thought to be weak, but she is, IMO, hands down the strongest one on the train mutation. I think the idea of ranking commanders made a lot more sense when Co-op was released than it does now. And it's going to make even less sense when they release more maps, and if they make mutations more accessible in the future. Ranking commanders on a map by map basis still makes a lot of sense. | ||
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CeaselessDC
5 Posts
IMO many people are using Kerrigan wrong, in particular don't know how to utilize omega worms. All her army but her should stay in omega worms most the time or regen at base, and come out from omega worms only at desired positions in fights to avoid unnecessary damage taken, which is easy to do with kerrigan ultimate. By the way omega worms create creep when coming out of ground, which means if you play this way, your units will always have the 30% atk speed bonus and extra regen. Also with high mastery levels, lings aren't really needed. start with 14d 2gas and go straight hive to get all kerrigan abilities asap, and use kerrigan to get rocks. then build omega worms and set base rally point to them, and go for burrow charge ultra and frenzy hydra. For mastery points distribution, if you're 60+ then you should get atk damage instead of mana regen. With 60-70 dmg per hit and frenzy+creep atk speed, early/mid game enemy air dies very fast to kerrigan alone and in late game any air should get wiped with 30+ frenzied hydras coming right under them + kerrigan ultimate. Overall play style is just play kerrigan most the time, and when you have charge ultra/frenzy hydra you can start planting omega worm all around the map and pop out units wherever you like. Just remember to send them back after they wiped the floor. Vorazun is super good most the time, but in rare cases when your corsairs encounter vipers, they just die, even after teleport back to base and it's painful. For Abathur his drawback is mostly mobility. he has trouble moving army efficiently across map even if he goes full muta. He can deep tunnel those three ultralisks and/or split army but sometimes split army isn't strong enough. Think of temple map when your ally is raynor and only build 2 marines at a time and don't expand. At final waves enemy comes from all three directions and you have to kill all of them. | ||
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
another question that might draw people's attention is what you think should be changed in the commanders to make them better? for me, following changes seem necessary: Swann 1) make hellbats cost less, maybe 75 minerals. There is no point in making them right now 2) make cyclones use the immortality protocol. Maybe then people will start using them 3) swap wraith with raynor's viking. that will suit the respective playstyles better, and maybe we'll see something other than mass goliaths out of Swann =) 4) make his masteries from the 3rd set a little bit better, maybe let the vespene drone mastery also slightly increase the mining speed, and the laser drill mastery also decrease the upgrade time. It's not nice to have a mastery that's only meaningful for the 1st 5 mins of the game 5) buff the thors. maybe let them use the 250mm strike cannons by default with the same power as the 330 mm cannons now, and make the 330 mm cannons much stronger, ridiculously strong. Now there is no point in using them whatsoever Raynor 1) buff the banshees. Let them have cloak by default, and add an upgrade that will decrease the cloaking cost. Make this upgrade also affect the wraith (transferred from Swann). Also make wraith's damage evasion upgrade affect the banshee. Maybe then these units will come into play 2) make his lvl 15 attack speed increase also affect ships and vehicles 3) buff the battlecruiser! buff the ata dmg from 6 to 8, and maybe add another upgrade (to yamato cannon or its primary weapons) 4) change his 1st set masteries: replace the stimpack duration with stimpack efficiency - who needs extra duration? replace the drop pod units buff with bunkers attack speed buff - for one, it's not nice to have only temporary buff on your units, for another, nobody needs bunkers now, maybe with this buff they will be useful 5) change his medic damage reduction mastery to banshees & hyperion duration extension (like +1s per mastery). 0.5% dmg reduction per lvl is a joke | ||
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MrTic
60 Posts
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
Artanis 1) swap tempest with Karax's carrier. Everybody agrees that it's better both from the gameplay and from the story perspective 2) decrease the orbital strike cost to 25 energy - it's too weak now 3) replace his warped in units speed buff mastery with matrix overload buff from the campaign - speed buff in the pylon field 4) replace his spear of adun energy mastery with spear of adun abilities cooldown reduction mastery - artanis doesn't need a lot of energy Karax 1) swap carrier & tempest 2) decrease initial units cost from 150% to 140% - 150% is too much to start with 3) replace the lvl 15 unity barrier upgrade with something meaningful =) 4) replace the chronoboost mastery with spear of adun abilities cooldwon reduction mastery - he doesn't need a better chronoboost, and his abilities take too long to recharge (especially the purifier beam at 450s!!!) 5) make the chronowave energy recharge mastery stronger, it's too weak now Vorazun 1) give her the Khaydarin obelisks (both she and Karax shall have them). It's Nerazim technology after all =) | ||
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Ganseng
Russian Federation473 Posts
Zagara 1) replace the cocoon mastery with a max supply increase mastery (like 2 supply / mastery). Zagara could definitely use this, and 0.5 s birth time reduction per level for a 300 s birth time is a joke Kerrigan 1) buff the broodlords. give them at least the 11 range from LotV 2) replace the Kerrigan energy regen mastery with a broodling timelife and hp increase mastery - another buff for broodlords, and the energy regen mastery is meaningless probably also give her more options to spawn broodlings - like from damaged buildings and from killed units 3) increase the initial birth tim reduction mastery effect from 0.5 s to 1 s. Leave the respawn effect at 0.5 s. 0.5 s is ok for a 60 s period, but is meaningless for a 240 s period Abathur didn't play him much, can't really tell. general impression he should be made more abusive (700 hp mutas and roaches with triple attack speed are kinda broken). Maybe compensate this by making units cheaper and/or increasing the number of ultimate evolutions | ||
monk
United States8476 Posts
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MrTic
60 Posts
Agree on Artanis, except the Tempest part, I just love using them  But seriously, his orbital bombardment power is almost useless, and costs 50... What surprises me is also his Solar barrage(?) power not having effect in fog of war.. Why not just create vision in its radius. Edit Just saw a video of the Solar barrage power having effect in FoW, while also reading the oposite.. Should test this soon lol.. | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
Some get a huge boost from masteries, others not so much. I rate the commanders in six categories; Ramp (how fast they reach full production/critical mass), Versatility (how well they can handle different compositions), Diversity (how many different builds are viable), Skill (amount required to get the most out of the commander), Durability (how well their units survive) and Power (how fast they kill stuff). All ratings assume >85 mastery points are available. Weakest commanders rate a 1, strongest commanders rate a 10. Raynor Recommended masteries: - Speed Increases for Drop Pod Units. This applies to all units and calldowns, while stimpack duration only works on bio and you'll usually have enough healing to negate the 5 damage anyway. - Hyperion Cooldown. Hyperion is simply better and hits air, though Banshees every 2 minutes might be better in some cases. Rushing maps where you don't have a lot of units for the +2 damage to take effect, for example. - Medics Heal Additional Target. Raynor's bio doesn't have problems with single target damage, it's splash that kills the blob. This mastery allows medics to heal through storm and fungal very easily. Damage Reduction can work very well on beefy Zerg units like Brutalisks, Abberations, and the heroes though. Up to 40% reduction with the Stabilizer Medpacks upgrade. Overall Rating: Ramp - 9/10 bio, 5/10 mech. Versatility - 8/10. Can handle any situation with ease, provided you have enough of the right production. Diversity - 9/10. Most builds are viable in most situations. Skill - 9/10. Micro and macro are very complex. Durability - 3/10. Units have little HP and die quick. Power - 8/10. Very high DPS and splash capabilities. Additional notes: Bio works very well with the additional medic healing as noted above. You lose much less than normal. I've had good success with mech raynor as well, going vulture/viking and eventually BCs. Banshees and Siege Tanks overlap too much with vultures to be worth the gas imo, but can be worth it on maps when you need pushing power and BCs take too long to get out. Kerrigan Recommended masteries: - Kerrigan Attack Damage. Full points in attack damage significantly decreases the amount of shots needed for Kerrigan to kill things, but most importantly attack damage applies to air units, which are Kerrigan's greatest weakness. Being able to 2-shot mutas/vikings, 3-shot liberators/pheonix, and 4-shot voids is extremely useful. - Combat Unit Vespene Gas Cost. 35 gas hydras. That is all. - Larva Spawn Rate. Full points in larva allows you to constantly produce drones and zerglings until around 25 supply, extremely useful for economic openers. You can also build a few more hatches and do away with inject altogether. 15 seconds off cocoon birth time is just pitiful. Overall Rating: Ramp - 9/10. Versatility - 1/10. Has the hardest time dealing with heavy ground mech or air waves. Diversity - 5/10. Hydra/Queen/Lurker or Ling/Ultra/Hydra are going to be your main builds. Broodlords only work well with Swann. Mutas are right out, play Abathur instead. Skill - 10/10. Microing Kerrigan constantly while injecting, spreading creep, and microing your army is difficult. Durability - 5/10. Ultras and Kerrigan meatshield well, but hydras and lings are still quite squishy. Power - 5/10. High dps with hydra/ling and splash with ultra/lurker. Artanis Recommended masteries: - Guardian Shell Life and Shield Restoration. Guardian shell is a passive and actually heals your units, unlike Shield Overcharge. Overcharge usually doesn't break on enough of your units in my experience to be worth upgrading anyway. - Speed Increases for Warped Units. Better stim for 30 seconds? Yes please. It's good to build extra production facilities and produce units only before attacking to make the best use of this mastery. - Chrono Boost Efficiency. Artanis does not need energy, but greatly appreciates faster probes and upgrades. He can't get supply blocked either. Overall Rating: Ramp - 6/10. Versatility - 9/10. Guardian shell covers all weaknesses. Diversity - 9/10. Most builds are usable against most attack waves. Skill - 3/10. Choose a production building. Make what comes out of that building. Win. Durability - 10/10. I frequently max out with a bunch of zealots and then can't get rid of them to build better things with my gas without deliberate suicide. Guardian shell is good. Power - 7/10. I cannot overstate how good warp-in whirlwind zealots are at cleaning ground armies up. Air is easily taken out by other air, storm, or as a last resort dragoons. Additional Notes: Zealot/Tempest takes care of pretty much anything, but HT can be better against some compositions. I almost never go Reavers anymore, they're just redundant with Whirlwind and take up gas that other units can use. Swann Recommended masteries: - Concentrated Beam Width and Damage. +40% damage (560) lets your beam one-shot BCs, which is very helpful. ARES usually last long enough for me. - Immortality Protocol Cost and Build Time. I am a huge fan of herc tanks, and cheaper Immortality Protocol lets you be far more aggressive with them, but if you only go goliaths and/or turrets Structure Health is probably a better choice. - Vespene Drone Cost. This mastery will save you 720 minerals early and get you gas a lot quicker than normal for upgrades. However, shaving a minute off the Drill production can be useful (especially now that the building drill cannot be chronoboosted). Overall Rating: Ramp - 1/10. By far the slowest production of all commanders. Versatility - 7/10. Can handle most things with tank/goliath, but is very inflexible. Diversity - 5/10. You'll be making goliaths and/or tanks most games. Mass thor or wraith can work if you want to troll the AI, but hellbats are nothing more than cannon fodder and cyclones are just bad. Skill - 3/10 for mass goliath/science vessel. 4/10 for herc tanks. Durability - 7/10. Units have high hp but are still vulnerable to burst damage and AOE. Power - 1/10 mass goliaths, 9/10 tank mixes. Additional Notes: Make Hercules! Don't just run around with goliaths. Zagara Recommended masteries: - Zagara Attack Damage. Zagara's energy regen is not really a problem with her level 15 ability, and in my experience the 30% increase is not that noticeable. Double her attack damage instead. - Baneling Attack Damage. As far as I can tell each point is a straight +1 damage to banelings, not +1%, so dump all your points into this ASAP. Upgraded Banelings do 100+ damage each with this. - Larva Spawn Rate. Same reasoning as Kerrigan. Overall Rating: Ramp - 10/10. The Zagara Train has no brakes. Versatility - 10/10. Scourge and banelings don't care what you are, they'll blow you up. Diversity - 1/10. Build the same 3-4 units every game. Corruptors? What are those? Skill - 2/10. Pretty much the epitome of attack-move, but you do have to manage your injects. Durability - 1/10. Your main damage dealers are suicide units, enough said. Power - 9/10. Vorazun Recommended masteries: - Dark Pylon Range. A +60% Dark Pylon covers an entire expansion. Its main weakness (enemies just shooting the pylon) is solved by simply putting cannons around the edge so enemies can't actually get in range to shoot it. - Time Stop Unit Speed Increase. Shadow Guard duration is just not that useful. I only use shadow guard at most four times a mission, but time stop benefits all units every four minutes. - Initial and Maximum Spear of Adun Energy. +90 energy allows you to summon Shadow Guard immediately to clear both expos as well as putting down a Dark Pylon to avoid supply block. Overall Rating: Ramp - 3/10 stargate, 7/10 gateway. Versatility - 9/10. Diversity - 7/10. Voids get destroyed by AOE and Dark Archons are fairly useless if there's nothing worth stealing, but everything else is viable. Skill - 1/10. Massing DTs and attack-moving will get results. Durability - 8/10. Cloaked units recall, yes, but they don't heal so they die easier next time. Power - 8/10. Karax Recommended masteries: - Combat Unit Resource Cost. Karax's defense is almost unbreakable without masteries, so I think putting points into Structure Life and Shields is overkill. Unit cost makes non-cannon Karax good. - Repair Beam Healing Rate. I frequently find myself with max energy as Karax just by getting level 2 solar efficiency. More energy isn't really necessary, but better healing for everything frequently comes in handy. - Initial and Maximum Spear of Adun Energy. Max mastery points in this allows Karax to blast down his rocks immediately and bank more energy for when he really needs it. Chrono Boost Efficiency is also made redundant by Chrono Wave. Overall Rating: Ramp - 8/10 cannons, 2/10 units. Versatility - 8/10. Cannons deal with anything, but offensively Karax doesn't do that well vs air. Diversity - 7/10. Skill - 1/10 cannons, 4/10 units. Durability - 10/10. Passive heals for everything and defensive abilities all around make for very tanky units. Power - 7/10. Additional Notes: If you are going units you need to save your energizers. They get picked off very easily but without them your army is significantly weaker. Abathur Recommended masteries: - Toxic Nest Respawn Chance. Biomass is the most important resource for Abathur, and getting it translates into better healing through Biotic Leech anyway. Mend Healing, especially after the nerf, is not worth it imo. - Biomass Recovery Chance. Max points in Symbiote Carapace Absorption gives you 60 extra hp, on a unit that already has 1.7k hp. Just build queens and save your biomass. - Structure Morph and Evolution Rate. 24 second expansion and faster upgrades, what's not to like. Get 3/3 before 12 minutes. Overall Rating: Ramp - 8/10. As soon as you get the first brutalisk you're set for the rest of the mission. Versatility - 10/10. If there's an enemy, Abathur has the counter. Diversity - 10/10. You can build pretty much anything you want as Abathur and win no matter what wave you're facing, plus double larva production and cap makes tech switching easy. Skill - 1/10. No injects and creep anywhere at the press of a button means the only real problem is deciding which units get biomass. Durability - 10/10. Your units just stop dying once they get enough biomass. Power - 10/10. A murder of mutalisks is, hands down, the strongest army in the game. Insane DPS and partial splash to boot. I'm not quite sure about some of these ratings (averaging all compositions and maps into a single score is prone to inaccuracies) but for the most part I think they're correct. Overall, judging solely on the basis of power and ramp (i.e. how fast you can clear maps), I'd have to put Abathur in first, followed closely by Zagara, then Vorazun/Artanis/Raynor/Kerrigan, and finally Swann/Karax. | ||
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fezvez
France3021 Posts
I really really want to put it in a section in the OP. Can I? If you say yes, I'll probably wait a couple of days because there are probably edits you will want to do. | ||
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Xsyq
143 Posts
You can also see pretty clearly why I consider Abathur to be the best commander. | ||
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The Bottle
242 Posts
Ramp: Zagara > Raynor > Abathur > Vorazun > Artanis > Kerrigan > Swann > Karax Versatility: Abathur > Zagara > Raynor > Vorazun > Swann > Artanis > Karax > Kerrigan Diversity: Abathur > Raynor > Karax > Artanis > Kerrigan > Vorazun > Swann > Zagara Skill: Kerrigan > Raynor > Karax > Swann > Artanis > Abathur > Zagara > Vorazun Durability: Abathur > Artanis > Karax > Swann > Vorazun > Kerrigan > Raynor > Zagara Power: Zagara > Abathur > Swann > Vorazun > Raynor > Kerrigan > Karax > Artanis Of course I did all this on a whim, and I haven't played Vorazun or Artanis in a really long time. With power I was tempted to put Swann in first (rather than all the way at third). I think he has the best anti-ground in the game with herc+tanks, and he has his two laser nukes. But his inability to wipe out air quickly (besides with the laser nukes) put him below the other two I listed that can do that, and still wreck the ground. I don't think Vorazun has more destructive potential than him, she's just more "OP" because it's easier to cause destruction with her. And of course, it's situational (Raynor has the most destructive power on the temple, for example). As for skill... sure you need a lot of APM to get the most out of Raynor. But you need a lot more smart micro to play Kerrigan effectively IMO. Splitting units and avoiding death is a lot more important for her. Plus there's still the injects, creep spread, and controlling her separately. | ||
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monk
United States8476 Posts
On June 24 2016 04:56 Xsyq wrote: I've been working on rating all the commanders now that I've gotten to level 90. Was going to post this in a different thread, but the discussion came up here, so here it goes I suppose. Some get a huge boost from masteries, others not so much. I rate the commanders in six categories; Ramp (how fast they reach full production/critical mass), Versatility (how well they can handle different compositions), Diversity (how many different builds are viable), Skill (amount required to get the most out of the commander), Durability (how well their units survive) and Power (how fast they kill stuff). All ratings assume >85 mastery points are available. Weakest commanders rate a 1, strongest commanders rate a 10. Raynor Recommended masteries: - Speed Increases for Drop Pod Units. This applies to all units and calldowns, while stimpack duration only works on bio and you'll usually have enough healing to negate the 5 damage anyway. - Hyperion Cooldown. Hyperion is simply better and hits air, though Banshees every 2 minutes might be better in some cases. Rushing maps where you don't have a lot of units for the +2 damage to take effect, for example. - Medics Heal Additional Target. Raynor's bio doesn't have problems with single target damage, it's splash that kills the blob. This mastery allows medics to heal through storm and fungal very easily. Damage Reduction can work very well on beefy Zerg units like Brutalisks, Abberations, and the heroes though. Up to 40% reduction with the Stabilizer Medpacks upgrade. Overall Rating: Ramp - 9/10 bio, 5/10 mech. Versatility - 8/10. Can handle any situation with ease, provided you have enough of the right production. Diversity - 9/10. Most builds are viable in most situations. Skill - 10/10. Micro and macro are the most complex of all commanders. Durability - 3/10. Units have little HP and die quick. Power - 8/10. Very high DPS and splash capabilities. Additional notes: Bio works very well with the additional medic healing as noted above. You lose much less than normal. I've had good success with mech raynor as well, going vulture/viking and eventually BCs. Banshees and Siege Tanks overlap too much with vultures to be worth the gas imo, but can be worth it on maps when you need pushing power and BCs take too long to get out. Kerrigan Recommended masteries: - Kerrigan Attack Damage. Full points in attack damage significantly decreases the amount of shots needed for Kerrigan to kill things, but most importantly attack damage applies to air units, which are Kerrigan's greatest weakness. Being able to 2-shot mutas/vikings, 3-shot liberators/pheonix, and 4-shot voids is extremely useful. - Combat Unit Vespene Gas Cost. 35 gas hydras. That is all. - Larva Spawn Rate. Full points in larva allows you to constantly produce drones and zerglings until around 25 supply, extremely useful for economic openers. You can also build a few more hatches and do away with inject altogether. 15 seconds off cocoon birth time is just pitiful. Overall Rating: Ramp - 9/10. Versatility - 1/10. Has the hardest time dealing with heavy ground mech or air waves. Diversity - 5/10. Hydra/Queen/Lurker or Ling/Ultra/Hydra are going to be your main builds. Broodlords only work well with Swann. Mutas are right out, play Abathur instead. Skill - 7/10. Microing Kerrigan constantly while injecting, spreading creep, and microing your army is fairly difficult. Durability - 5/10. Ultras and Kerrigan meatshield well, but hydras and lings are still quite squishy. Power - 5/10. High dps with hydra/ling and splash with ultra/lurker. Artanis Recommended masteries: - Guardian Shell Life and Shield Restoration. Guardian shell is a passive and actually heals your units, unlike Shield Overcharge. Overcharge usually doesn't break on enough of your units in my experience to be worth upgrading anyway. - Speed Increases for Warped Units. Better stim for 30 seconds? Yes please. It's good to build extra production facilities and produce units only before attacking to make the best use of this mastery. - Chrono Boost Efficiency. Artanis does not need energy, but greatly appreciates faster probes and upgrades. He can't get supply blocked either. Overall Rating: Ramp - 8/10. Versatility - 9/10. Guardian shell covers all weaknesses. Diversity - 9/10. Most builds are usable against most attack waves. Skill - 3/10. Choose a production building. Make what comes out of that building. Win. Durability - 10/10. I frequently max out with a bunch of zealots and then can't get rid of them to build better things with my gas without deliberate suicide. Guardian shell is good. Power - 7/10. I cannot overstate how good warp-in whirlwind zealots are at cleaning ground armies up. Air is easily taken out by other air, storm, or as a last resort dragoons. Additional Notes: Zealot/Tempest takes care of pretty much anything, but HT can be better against some compositions. I almost never go Reavers anymore, they're just redundant with Whirlwind and take up gas that other units can use. Swann Recommended masteries: - Concentrated Beam Width and Damage. +40% damage (560) lets your beam one-shot BCs, which is very helpful. ARES usually last long enough for me. - Immortality Protocol Cost and Build Time. I am a huge fan of herc tanks, and cheaper Immortality Protocol lets you be far more aggressive with them, but if you only go goliaths and/or turrets Structure Health is probably a better choice. - Vespene Drone Cost. This mastery will save you 720 minerals early and get you gas a lot quicker than normal for upgrades. However, shaving a minute off the Drill production can be useful (especially now that the building drill cannot be chronoboosted). Overall Rating: Ramp - 1/10. By far the slowest production of all commanders. Versatility - 7/10. Can handle most things with tank/goliath, but is very inflexible. Diversity - 5/10. You'll be making goliaths and/or tanks most games. Mass thor or wraith can work if you want to troll the AI, but hellbats are nothing more than cannon fodder and cyclones are just bad. Skill - 3/10 for mass goliath/science vessel. 4/10 for herc tanks. Durability - 7/10. Units have high hp but are still vulnerable to burst damage and AOE. Power - 1/10 mass goliaths, 9/10 tank mixes. Additional Notes: Make Hercules! Don't just run around with goliaths. Zagara Recommended masteries: - Zagara Attack Damage. Zagara's energy regen is not really a problem with her level 15 ability, and in my experience the 30% increase is not that noticeable. Double her attack damage instead. - Baneling Attack Damage. As far as I can tell each point is a straight +1 damage to banelings, not +1%, so dump all your points into this ASAP. Upgraded Banelings do 100+ damage each with this. - Larva Spawn Rate. Same reasoning as Kerrigan. Overall Rating: Ramp - 10/10. The Zagara Train has no brakes. Versatility - 10/10. Scourge and banelings don't care what you are, they'll blow you up. Diversity - 1/10. Build the same 3-4 units every game. Corruptors? What are those? Skill - 2/10. Pretty much the epitome of attack-move, but you do have to manage your injects. Durability - 1/10. Your main damage dealers are suicide units, enough said. Power - 9/10. Vorazun Recommended masteries: - Dark Pylon Range. A +60% Dark Pylon covers an entire expansion. Its main weakness (enemies just shooting the pylon) is solved by simply putting cannons around the edge so enemies can't actually get in range to shoot it. - Time Stop Unit Speed Increase. Shadow Guard duration is just not that useful. I only use shadow guard at most four times a mission, but time stop benefits all units every four minutes. - Initial and Maximum Spear of Adun Energy. +90 energy allows you to summon Shadow Guard immediately to clear both expos as well as putting down a Dark Pylon to avoid supply block. Overall Rating: Ramp - 3/10 stargate, 7/10 gateway. Versatility - 9/10. Diversity - 7/10. Voids get destroyed by AOE and Dark Archons are fairly useless if there's nothing worth stealing, but everything else is viable. Skill - 1/10. Massing DTs and attack-moving will get results. Durability - 8/10. Cloaked units recall, yes, but they don't heal so they die easier next time. Power - 8/10. Karax Recommended masteries: - Combat Unit Resource Cost. Karax's defense is almost unbreakable without masteries, so I think putting points into Structure Life and Shields is overkill. Unit cost makes non-cannon Karax good. - Repair Beam Healing Rate. I frequently find myself with max energy as Karax just by getting level 2 solar efficiency. More energy isn't really necessary, but better healing for everything frequently comes in handy. - Initial and Maximum Spear of Adun Energy. Max mastery points in this allows Karax to blast down his rocks immediately and bank more energy for when he really needs it. Chrono Boost Efficiency is also made redundant by Chrono Wave. Overall Rating: Ramp - 8/10 cannons, 2/10 units. Versatility - 8/10. Cannons deal with anything, but offensively Karax doesn't do that well vs air. Diversity - 7/10. Skill - 1/10 cannons, 4/10 units. Durability - 10/10. Passive heals for everything and defensive abilities all around make for very tanky units. Power - 7/10. Additional Notes: If you are going units you need to save your energizers. They get picked off very easily but without them your army is significantly weaker. Abathur Recommended masteries: - Toxic Nest Respawn Chance. Biomass is the most important resource for Abathur, and getting it translates into better healing through Biotic Leech anyway. Mend Healing, especially after the nerf, is not worth it imo. - Biomass Recovery Chance. Max points in Symbiote Carapace Absorption gives you 60 extra hp, on a unit that already has 1.7k hp. Just build queens and save your biomass. - Structure Morph and Evolution Rate. 24 second expansion and faster upgrades, what's not to like. Get 3/3 before 12 minutes. Overall Rating: Ramp - 8/10. As soon as you get the first brutalisk you're set for the rest of the mission. Versatility - 10/10. If there's an enemy, Abathur has the counter. Diversity - 10/10. You can build pretty much anything you want as Abathur and win no matter what wave you're facing, plus double larva production and cap makes tech switching easy. Skill - 1/10. No injects and creep anywhere at the press of a button means the only real problem is deciding which units get biomass. Durability - 10/10. Your units just stop dying once they get enough biomass. Power - 10/10. A murder of mutalisks is, hands down, the strongest army in the game. Insane DPS and partial splash to boot. I'm not quite sure about some of these ratings (averaging all compositions and maps into a single score is prone to inaccuracies) but for the most part I think they're correct. Overall, judging solely on the basis of power and ramp (i.e. how fast you can clear maps), I'd have to put Abathur in first, followed closely by Zagara, then Vorazun/Artanis/Raynor/Kerrigan, and finally Swann/Karax. First of all , I think it's pointless to rate commanders at this point with maxed masteries on the non-mutator missions. On non-mutator missions, Abathur clearly dominates the other commanders since he has the highest potential power. Other disagreements:
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MrTic
60 Posts
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The Bottle
242 Posts
Also, out of the six mutations we've had so far, Zagara was (IMO) the absolute best in the lock & load and chains of ascension maps, she wasn't that bad as the "offense" in the void shards map (one baneling barrage kills a rift), and a lot of people think she's the best in "War is Hell". I guess when it comes to Zagara and mutations, she's usually an extreme, i.e. either really good or really bad. She's absolutely awful in the train mutation and whiteout. As for Abathur, while not everyone agrees, I found him absolutely amazing and second best on the chains of ascension mutator, with some good burrow micro, one of the best in Whiteout, and IMO the absolute best in War is Hell. I don't think that mass goliaths is "bad", but I would rate its "power" category in the 1-3 range. It's very durable, and can kill the enemy eventually. But I interpret "power" as blowing the enemies up. With what all that the other commanders have (including Swann), with, say, herc-tanks, vikings, devourers, DTs, bane/scourge, lurkers, etc, goliaths have laughable killing power in comparison. | ||
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