I'd say mutas are still reliably his best anti-ground DPS. For some compositions, like protoss robo or zerg mass ground, I think mutas are still clearly the best choice. Against others with anti-air AoE, mutas can still be pretty good if you're willing to put the effort in babysitting them (which I'm sometimes not). And they're definitely a prime choice against the trains, like Monk said. But clearly devourers are better against air waves, or scourge.
I definitely think the Abathur nerf was a really good one. Before that, mutas just dominated everything else as a composition choice. The change gave him much better diversity IMO. Though I could still go for a slight nerf to his air and buff to roaches, ravagers, and swarm hosts, but at this point it would just be more finely tuned tweaking than any of the other commanders get.
I'd say Alarak is still at that place that Abathur was at before the nerf, where he has one unit composition that just dominates all others. Stukov too. Though in the latter case there's a tad bit of diversity, I doubt anybody here would go a single game with Stukov without maxing out all his zombie researches, which makes the majority of the damage you do with him come from the same source every game. Contrast that to, say, Karax, for whom it's definitely feasible not to max out on his solar core upgrades, or his cannon upgrades in many games.
Terran is pretty much the most painful race to go mutas because of ravens and science vessels irradiate. With all the lag I get with my current computer, babysitting is pretty much impossible.
How would you change Alarak though? I agree that his ascendants make his robo pretty useless but I can't quite see how to change him specifically, whether it's buffing robo or nerfing ascendants. Only reason I still go robo is that it's much easier to a-move and if I lag a lot, my army can still attack without much input.
Pretty much agree with what everyone else has said so far. The most typical tech paths I run through are:
Vs standard waves including vs Shadow Tech(Reaper, Maruarder, Liberator)
Roach->Queen->Viper->Devourer->Guardian
Roach(for Brutalisks)->Muta
Vs ZergSwarmy(Viper, Scourge), ProtossSkytossTempest(Adept, Phoenix, Oracle Tempest), SkyTerran(Viking, Banshee)
Roach->Queen->Devourer->Guardian
Roach->Queen->Devourer->Muta
Ravagers and Swarm Hosts are mostly outclassed by all of Abathur's other units.
The trick to not failing with Mutalisks is to have two separate hotkeys for them, using one for combat and one to pickup excess Biomass at the end. Never use fresh Mutalisks with under 50 Biomass in a fight.
Thanks for the responses. No ravagers in your composition due to the gas costs? My experience is that my anti ground dps is a lot higher with ravager over roaches (more range, dps, corrosive bile spam) while I don't need that many devourers to dominate air (especially in combination with bile). How much gas usually goes into vipers? I've been making none or 2-4 usually (which is already equivalent to 10-20 ravagers but still makes me able to afford them).
I wish ascendants were more like high templar: powerful splash-damage support units that can't be massed as a primary unit. I think in order to do this, you'd probably have to make psi orb not stack (i.e. an enemy unit can only be damaged by one psi orb at a time). That's how high templar are limited/balanced, at any rate: if storm stacked, they'd be OP as all hell. You could maybe even give psi orb a damage buff, too, if you did that.
One thing I've wondered about Stukov is that is there really no way to rally the civilianbuilding and separate raxes to different locations? Anytime I rally barracks somewhere, it puts the transmitter thing there. Feels so dumb that I want to assume I got some bad setting on or missing something obvious.
Yeah Psi Orb stacking is pretty easily why mass Ascendant is the strongest strat on Alarak. I like that he's got a caster focused army, but I agree you could balance it better by making it not stack and upping baseline DPS. Mind blast is still strong and a reason to have many ascendants, but it's not easy mode spam psi orb
On Alarak. I actually don't mind that the most powerful composition is the one that requires the most input from the player, in fact, I prefer it that way. And as we push beyond 11 commanders I'm not even so sure that we need lots of variety for each commander. (Though I definitely prefer having variety to not having it, and it is annoying for commanders to have units that you never really need to make.) I get wrathwalkers anyway, but only after I got all the ascendants I want, and the walkers end up having a very small impact. I still wouldn't mind if they buffed robo and nerfed ascendants a little, but if a-moving wrathwalkers and immortals becomes the cookie-cutter build of Alarak I'd probably get bored of him really quickly. Ascendants and offensive overcharges are the most fun things about him.
On a separate note, I really want a random commander option. In fact, I would use it all the time on regular missions (and even sometimes on mutations).
Upgraded Wrathwalkers + supplicants + Alarak is a really good, really easy deathball though. Can A-Click everywhere and you only have to worry about microing Alarak since your Wrathwalkers stand so far back that they are usually always out of danger. Sure Ascendant stacking is the most overpowered but whenever I feel like going braindead it's mainly just get 6ish Wrathwalkers then just do nothing but spam supplicants.
Or if you want, just keep getting more and more Wrathwalkers. I swear one mission I was with a Raynor and just had like 20 Wrathwalkers + Alarak and Raynor was his typical bio ball and it was cake.
On December 27 2016 04:12 Ouga wrote: One thing I've wondered about Stukov is that is there really no way to rally the civilianbuilding and separate raxes to different locations? Anytime I rally barracks somewhere, it puts the transmitter thing there. Feels so dumb that I want to assume I got some bad setting on or missing something obvious.
Nope, that's just how he works; everything is mindless and heads to the psi emitter. Once the eggs or the units spawn though, you can select them and give them a different rally point and they will ignore the emitter until you place it again, which then overrides any manual waypoint.
Yep that's how I've dealt with it. I just thought it was buggy - why does barracks rally point work like this? Your fac/starport rally points don't move the psi-emitter, so this just feels like extremely dumbed down way to make sure nobody ever has idle units that might die without ever getting out. It's not hard, but damn annoying to make raxes in different parts of the map but not be able to rally point them. Bleh [/endrant]
Are the enemy AI banelings bugged or intentionally buffed? I played a few games against swarm zerg and I get the impression that they're much deadlier than before. 1 Kerrigan dash against a 1st wave of ling/banes and she's dead. I checked and banelings tooltip around 40 by default and 80 vs structures but they seem to do way more than that.
I think they're bugged. It wasn't documented in the patch notes, and seems to be a fairly random/nonsensical change to make just out of the blue. Enemy banelings were already fairly powerful; the ling/bane/scourge/viper composition certainly didn't need a buff.
Why the hell does the Stun 5k units with Kerrigan take so damn long to do if you don't try to cheese it against ling/bling/scourge on certain levels? I'm level 70 mastery, usually just play whatever random commander I want (random.org it and select what it lands on) but I'm still at like 3500 out of 5000 stunned units for Kerrigan. Shit takes so long compared to every other commander achievement.
It also doesn't help that although Kerrigan is fun, if I feel like playing a Hero Commander I'd rather play almost any other Hero commander over her just because they are more fun to me. Zagara & Alarak my two favorites and I'd still rather play Nova over kerrigan.
Although using Omega worm with unkillable ultras is pretty fun. Unless it's a mutation it's pretty boring since you don't even really need units since Kerrigan can solo most everything....
On January 04 2017 11:51 SidianTheBard wrote: Why the hell does the Stun 5k units with Kerrigan take so damn long to do if you don't try to cheese it against ling/bling/scourge on certain levels? I'm level 70 mastery, usually just play whatever random commander I want (random.org it and select what it lands on) but I'm still at like 3500 out of 5000 stunned units for Kerrigan. Shit takes so long compared to every other commander achievement.
It also doesn't help that although Kerrigan is fun, if I feel like playing a Hero Commander I'd rather play almost any other Hero commander over her just because they are more fun to me. Zagara & Alarak my two favorites and I'd still rather play Nova over kerrigan.
Although using Omega worm with unkillable ultras is pretty fun. Unless it's a mutation it's pretty boring since you don't even really need units since Kerrigan can solo most everything....
Same thing with Zagara kill count with her roach calldown or Nova assault mode. Some achievements are just really annoying to deal with. At least Stukov is pretty simple if you tend to use infested rines.
Blizzard really should elaborate in patch note what they do. I remember the 2nd new pattern in Temple caught me by surprise but it wasn't too bad. Hell, mention that you fixed nydus/omega network on Miner. They still haven't fixed the 2nd attack wave on Chain of Ascension which is way too strong either.
I hate how Kerrigan is so OP against ground units, between her abilities, unkillable Ultras, and Brood Lords and Lurkers which the A.I doesn't know how to deal with, but then the moment an air unit shows up, all she has is her auto-attack, Hydras, and Mutas (and Queens, I suppose), none of which are particularly good. I like the other hero units in the game because they complement their armies' weaknesses--Alarak provides splash damage for a Wrathwalker-based army, Zagara + her hunter-killers provide the anti-air that a ling/bane army is lacking until scourge come out, Nova has different modes you can use to complement whatever army you have, etc. But Kerrigan is insanely strong when you don't really need her to be and just not strong enough when you're really counting on her. I wish they had given her Kinetic Blast and Crushing Grip instead of what she has now.
Starting to think that the reason why the enemy banelings are bugged is because they have Zagara upgrade where baneling primary dmg is increased which goes from ~40 to ~120 but tooltip isn't updated to reflect that. Seeing just 1 bane explode on a elite rine and go below half HP, that's only explanation I can see after someone else mentionned the dmg of Zagara banes
What is best starting for Swann now a day? I use to play him a lot more but now whenever I play him I"m never really sure what's best. Usually I just rush a CC near my main and pull like 5 or 6 scvs to build it fast, then max saturate first base with two ccs. I tend to call down my gas drones on geysers asap (lvl 71 mastery and I'm doing the -% drone mastery) just to get extra gas which swann needs.
Is it always best to pull 3 or 4 scvs to finish buildings faster (first factory? first engi bay?) or is it just better to allow those extra scvs to mine earlier for longer? I know using a handful of scvs to get your CC done faster is smart so you now can produce more scvs faster but never sure about the other buildings.
Also, how important is it to build units vs upgrades with him? I swear I try to rely on calldowns + laser drill + ally to solo the early stages + part of the middle stages while I just do nothing but mass upgrades early. That works fine on most brutal missions but when you start doing any type of mutators usually you can't rely on that.
On January 14 2017 07:35 SidianTheBard wrote: What is best starting for Swann now a day? I use to play him a lot more but now whenever I play him I"m never really sure what's best. Usually I just rush a CC near my main and pull like 5 or 6 scvs to build it fast, then max saturate first base with two ccs. I tend to call down my gas drones on geysers asap (lvl 71 mastery and I'm doing the -% drone mastery) just to get extra gas which swann needs.
Is it always best to pull 3 or 4 scvs to finish buildings faster (first factory? first engi bay?) or is it just better to allow those extra scvs to mine earlier for longer? I know using a handful of scvs to get your CC done faster is smart so you now can produce more scvs faster but never sure about the other buildings.
Also, how important is it to build units vs upgrades with him? I swear I try to rely on calldowns + laser drill + ally to solo the early stages + part of the middle stages while I just do nothing but mass upgrades early. That works fine on most brutal missions but when you start doing any type of mutators usually you can't rely on that.
Optimal saturation (highest efficiency) is two workers for each mineral patch. Adding extra workers will increase your income by less, but you want to fully saturate anyway since you're so limited on income in coop. So your rule of thumb should be: don't use extra workers to build if it drops the number of workers mining to less than 2/patch. So for your first base, it should always be saturated with 14 workers on minerals. Anything below that detracts from your income.
I think going for army before heavily investing into upgrades is a must on most mutation. The overall trick is to use a unit composition that doesn't require a lot of different upgrades. I usually go for goliaths (2 upgrades) and science vessels (2 upgrades). You could add tanks which only require 1 extra upgrade, but that is situational. One important thing to consider when evaluating upgrades is how long the mission is. The longer the mission is the more you benefit from upgrades. It kind of sucks to have 3-3 for like half a minute. That's a huge investment for very little payoff. So on long maps I go double armory and on short maps I go for single armory.
My build assuming level 90 mastery. I'm pretty sure this is optimal.
Constant SCV Production throughout
Depot
Factory, speed built with 4 SCVs
Billy Blaster at rocks, speed built with 4 SCVs ->Kill main rock at natural
2nd Billy Blaster at rocks, speed built with 4 SCVs ->Kill main rock at natural
When rocks have 25% HP, send 4 more SCVs to your natural
Salvage 1 Billy Blaster
2nd Billy Blaster kills the gas rocks, then gets salvaged.
Command Center at natural, speed built with 8 SCVs
Build all four gas, drone them immediately.
Also, drone your ally's gas whenever you get the chance.
This build is the most economical build early game and it lets you skip the 2nd Depot as your 2nd CC provides the necessary supply. At this point, however, the build diverges. The number of works you put on gas depends on the individual mission as well as how good your ally seems to be.
If your ally plus your ARES calldown can basically carry the first 7 minutes (usually the first two waves), put all on gas immediately. Throw down a Tech Reactor on your factory and a starport with a Tech Reactor. Aim for four Siege Tanks with 1 Herc + 1 Science Vessel. Follow up with the correct units you need depending on the mission/mutation and enemy composition. Thors vs Mutalisks, Goliaths vs all other air waves, more Tanks vs ground waves.
If your ally plus your ARES calldown can carry the first 9 minutes of the game alone, saturate all four of your gas. Rush for an armory and +1 weapons and drill level two upgrade. Build two Tech Reactors with your Factory and build a Starport on top of the first Tech Reactor. Then, do what I described above, except a minute slower. This is not recommended at all for beginners. It's only for when you have extreme trust in your ally or you're doing a speedrun.
If you need to build Turrets for some reason (your ally is bad or the mutation calls for lots of defense), slowly saturate your gas with 2 workers on each geyser at first. Then, do what I described above.
And if you haven't figured it out by now, if you're not using Herc/Tank, you're playing Swann in an non-optimal manner.
EPT
