Slayn's climate is as merciless as the Tal'darim. Visibility is reduced as a titanic storm rages across the killing fields, freezing its victims solid and sweeping them up into dangerous twisters. Brave the elements and win the challenge at all costs.
Map: Chain of Ascension
Blizzard Storm clouds move across the map, damaging and freezing player units in their path. Twister Tornadoes move across the map, damaging and knocking back player units in their path. Shortsighted Player units and structures have reduced vision range.
Looks like they're cycling over the old mutators onto different maps. Blizzard was on White Out, Twister was on Bad Weather, and Shortsighted was on First Strike. The blizzards and tornadoes both go into the players' expansions. One-base seems to be the way to go here, unless you want to keep losing workers before they even pay back their cost. Vorazun's Orbital Assimilators are pretty good for harvesting while minimizing worker losses. Swann can use his Drones to get gas for himself as well. Time stop freezes [wink wink] blizzards, tornadoes, and hybrids. Mind control is actually ridiculously good. You can't make your own army; better steal the opponents'. Raynor's scan + Hyperion + Dusk Wings seems to be a good way to quickly respond to opponents pushing Ji'Nara back. Theoretically, Raynor can MULE hammer hard on one base and still maintain a decent-ish economy. Good luck with maneuvering bio through the thick blizzards on Brutal, though. I think this one is easier to solo than to beat as two players, if only because at least you would get two-base income.
Only did it once as Aba. The other two mutators don't mean anything, blizzard is pretty much all there is. It's just so damn annoying, ally never supporting the tug of wars makes this so easily 30m map when it should be 20m. Playing 1base for 30m not mah thing Indeed attempt to expand didn't work out. For about 5mins I kept microing drones out of the way of blizz, but I was probably mining less than half the time, and if you one time don't pay attention to it, they all die to one blizz.
I found Karax pretty useful - you can take double exp if you place shield batteries there. Cannon fields with batteries have no problem with blizzard. The only problem is that cannons have low vision so enemy units sometimes attack them and your cannons are not able to retailate. Same with orbital bombardment.
Felt like I soloed the Mutation with Vorazun :/ Had a Zagara as Partner but I cleaned almost all of the waves and battles while she built a lot of Ice Scultupres.
I beat it with Abathur and an Artanis ally, though I don't know if I would have gotten it if my ally wasn't Artanis. It's very useful to leave a burrowed roach near the champions, since they heal faster than the blizzard hurts them and they don't get knocked away by twisters. Toxic nests seem to be immune to the blizzards, except when they're building for the first time. So it's useful to keep nests near the champions, and at your base entrances. I went mass ravager queen, the queens helped keep my army alive. I got some vipers too but I had a hard time keeping them alive.
I wonder if we've seen all the mutation strains at this point, since they're clearly recycling them now. I was wondering how they would stay fresh, and I guess it is by using different mutation traits on different maps. Maybe at some point they'll just completely randomize it. (I don't think they did for this one, since it had its own description.)
Still waiting on that Vermillion problem mutation.
I don't really enjoy the Blizzard Mutations. If they modified them specifically for maps, so they wouldn't auto-trash expansions, they'd be fine. Otherwise it's just forcing you to play the game on one base and it's just so frustrating. Not in a challenging way, either, just in a "Great, the game's gonna take 15 minutes longer" sort of way.
On August 02 2016 02:14 Rehio wrote: I don't really enjoy the Blizzard Mutations. If they modified them specifically for maps, so they wouldn't auto-trash expansions, they'd be fine. Otherwise it's just forcing you to play the game on one base and it's just so frustrating. Not in a challenging way, either, just in a "Great, the game's gonna take 15 minutes longer" sort of way.
Just expo but watch your workers. You get a little less income but not that much.
Did it with Vorazun, going one base, plus 4 extra gas from both expansions.
My ally was Abathur and, to complement my DT army with antiair, went mostly queens, with some ravagers, and overseers for detection.
Queens in particular ended up to be really useful to help healing his army under the blizzards.
Since we were going 1 base, we took some time to pile up a decent army, but the map gives very little rush. Once you survive the early game, it was just a matter of avoiding too much enviromental damage while macroing up.
I echo the sentiment that this mutation is very annoying and not that fun. It may be one of the harder ones, but that has nothing to do with it. (I played the shit out of Bad Weather, which was the hardest one, because I found it very fun.) The difficulty comes from your lack of ability to move freely, and lack of freedom just makes for not fun gameplay. I felt similarly about Whiteout. I prefer more freedom, but more things that can kill you. To me it's analogous to Super Mario water levels vs land levels. Water levels have less obstacles to compensate for your lack of mobility, which makes them roughly equally difficult, but less fun than land levels.
I must be doing something wrong with this mutation. Honestly, it's really annoying to play this because the blizzard goes through expos unlike the shuttle mission. It's not really a challenge to try to overcome the unorthodox elements but just frustration to play the slow game.
This will be one of those frustrating mutators i only beat once. Frustrating being the key word. Played Karax with Vorazun - Karax can get some use out of having an expo with repair beam, and sheild batteries etc. And Autorepair carriers was my tech of choice.
My ally and I pushed slowly towards the end and when the last wave of hybrids spawns he used TS and we bypassed it all together. It wasnt hard to do like this - just very very annoying.
Another frustrating mutator. Beat it once. Will wait until next week.
I don't think it's necessary to expo, but with a karax and swann/vorazun, you can get extra gas without workers. Raynor's scan is probably extremely useful (haven't tried it this time, but I remember doing that in the mutator with the blindness handicap)
Actually i was wondering how one would go about ranking the commanders in this mutator. Despite a lot of people agreeing that this is very frustrating mutator (myself included). I have to admit that it show cases the individual weakness' of the commanders. I mean, i dont think there is a single commander who really has this mutator written all over it.
That being said some thoughts on the commanders: sustanable units are a big plus. Vorazuns recall, Karax's repair on mechanical units, And abathurs regen on roaches to a lesser extend. These might be the factors that'll prove to be the deciding factors on this mutator.
Found a Kerrigan strat I like for this one... maximize unit cost reduction and go ultras with charge upgrade and lots of omega worms. Keep the army in the omega worms whenever you aren't fighting so they avoid taking any environmental damage, and use your attention to micro Kerrigan around clearing out the hybrid spawn areas before they spawn, so when time comes all you have to fight is the hybrids and not a bunch of static defenses and pre-placed units.
When you need to fight with your whole army, use Kerrigan's mobility to get vision where you want to fight and pop up a worm full of ultras. With the charge upgrade they just DGAF about the slowing zones, and they have enough HP to tank the continuous damage. Plus they regenerate if they do die. As long as you are careful with your units you should be able to sustain a big enough force even off of 1 base.
Its pretty much auto-loss against liberator terran, but seems to work well against everything else. Haven't run into an immortal heavy protoss comp yet though, that could be trouble as well.
On August 02 2016 23:59 imJealous wrote: Found a Kerrigan strat I like for this one... maximize unit cost reduction and go ultras with charge upgrade and lots of omega worms. Keep the army in the omega worms whenever you aren't fighting so they avoid taking any environmental damage, and use your attention to micro Kerrigan around clearing out the hybrid spawn areas before they spawn, so when time comes all you have to fight is the hybrids and not a bunch of static defenses and pre-placed units.
When you need to fight with your whole army, use Kerrigan's mobility to get vision where you want to fight and pop up a worm full of ultras. With the charge upgrade they just DGAF about the slowing zones, and they have enough HP to tank the continuous damage. Plus they regenerate if they do die. As long as you are careful with your units you should be able to sustain a big enough force even off of 1 base.
Its pretty much auto-loss against liberator terran, but seems to work well against everything else. Haven't run into an immortal heavy protoss comp yet though, that could be trouble as well.
Thanks. I did this and it was pretty straight forward. the worms die super slow to the blizzards so it was great for mobility too. funniest part was seeing like 20 ultras pop out in a tornado though and go flying everywhere
Won't get to play as much co-op as I'd like this week, having only beaten it with Vorazun, Kerrigan, Swann, and Raynor. Need your help on this one, guys. I feel, however, how good each commander is depends on how well he/she can ignore the aspects of the mutators by either:
Overcoming the inability to mine.
Being resistant to lots of AoE effects.
Vorazun: This one seems tailor made for Vorazun. Autogas, Emergency Recall, and Time Stop are all especially amazing on this mission. Fits both 1 and 2.
Karax: I honestly haven't played it with Karax, but he might be better than Kerrigan with Shield Batteries healing probes and allowing them to mine. Not to mention his repair ability. Fits 1 and 2.
Kerrigan: Kerrigan doesn't care about AoE and Ultra/Omega Worm is a good combo vs AoE as well. Fits 2 well with all these attributes.
Abathur: Abathur relies on biomass instead of resources to get a strong army. Queens can also negate a lot of the Blizzard damage. Fits both 1 and 2 to some extent.
Swann: Has a really slow start, but is really steady once you survive the first 7 minutes. Gas drones fit category 2. Also, Hercs allow you to ignore AoE, somewhat fitting category 1.
Artanis: Guardian Shell is useful, but his units aren't.
Raynor: Fits category 1 with mules, but is crippled by his extreme weakness to AoE.
Zagara: Zagara herself is resistant to AoE, but otherwise she neither fits into 1 nor 2.
Haven't played the others, but Abathur/Aratnis seem to fit in the middle and Zagara seems to be either last or 2nd to last.
On August 02 2016 23:59 imJealous wrote: Found a Kerrigan strat I like for this one... maximize unit cost reduction and go ultras with charge upgrade and lots of omega worms. Keep the army in the omega worms whenever you aren't fighting so they avoid taking any environmental damage, and use your attention to micro Kerrigan around clearing out the hybrid spawn areas before they spawn, so when time comes all you have to fight is the hybrids and not a bunch of static defenses and pre-placed units.
When you need to fight with your whole army, use Kerrigan's mobility to get vision where you want to fight and pop up a worm full of ultras. With the charge upgrade they just DGAF about the slowing zones, and they have enough HP to tank the continuous damage. Plus they regenerate if they do die. As long as you are careful with your units you should be able to sustain a big enough force even off of 1 base.
Its pretty much auto-loss against liberator terran, but seems to work well against everything else. Haven't run into an immortal heavy protoss comp yet though, that could be trouble as well.
Thanks. I did this and it was pretty straight forward. the worms die super slow to the blizzards so it was great for mobility too. funniest part was seeing like 20 ultras pop out in a tornado though and go flying everywhere
Glad it helped! I still haven't beat it yet....Every time we get close the hybrids end up spawning at the very back corner behind the final wall of enemies and jinara ends up getting pushed into the pit before we can clear the rest of the way to them and finish off the hybrids. I can consistently get that close, even with pretty weak team mates, but it just takes so long to play this style slow pushing off of one base and heavily relying on hero cooldowns that I get sick of playing after one or two attempts.
EDIT: Finally got it with Karax. Zealots into double expand into 3 stargate carriers a moved across the map ez. Definitely the top character for this mutator IMO now that I've tried it. The important things to keep in mind about this style (besides spamming shield batteries around your expansions and remaking the mineral workers that die to storms) is to keep your carriers on the front line pushing toward that final objective. The first time I tried this I made the mistake of trying to respond to the side spawns with my carriers and they just move so slowly across the map they ended up never being in position for anything.
Push the front line with carriers, use your abilities and rely on your team mate for clearing the side spawns. I did help clear the bottom left Hybrid spawn and solo'd the final hybrid spawn while my team mate defended.
Don't even bother opening with forge on this one, you don't need to defend early attacks and you can't cannon expand so just make a zealot force and tech up to reconstruction and solar core upgrades, then start forge so you can get both shield battery upgrades done before starting your expos.
Game 1: I don't recall who my ally was but I was kerrigan and the first wave of enemy units was like 8 banshees and 8 liberators, so yeah, air terran. I got fucking wrecked lol.
Game 2: I was Abathur with a friendly Vorazun. This Vorazun just wasn't that great imo. I had a pretty massive pile of ravagers and was pretty much doing everything. Vorazun never helped push much, didn't get extra gasses, I don't even think she used a time stop once. Hybrid at the back spawned and we didn't have enough push to kill it off.
Game 3: I was Karax with a friendly Zagara. I did the Carrier strat explained above and did really well. Unfortunately Zagara didn't seem that great on this mission. Units died waaaay too fast. She did very well with the Zagara Hero and tried massing uhh why can't I recall their name, the beefy tanky unit Zagara gets...too lazy to look it up right now. (Aberrations i think?) but eventually in the end we lost again.
Game 4: I went Vorazun with a friendly Karax. Easy. Just a slow push through the middle. He actually talked in chat letting me know when was the best time to use his chorno wave. We worked well together with his abilities & my dt spam. Just overall a boring mutation though because it's so hard to expand & units move so slow through the map.
Haven't had much time this week to play, but I managed to beat this one first time today. Just went three base five gate carriers with Karax and slow pushed. Ally was Abathur who went mass queens. It was an easy win. I had to rely on my partner for the early game since one-base Karax is very weak before solar forge upgrades but once I got both expos running with shield batteries the rest of the game was trivial. Another mutation that's much more annoying than challenging.
Wanted to bump this thread because I forgot to discuss this. How does everyone feel about like, Co-Op missions like this one where you basically can't 2 base? Is that supposed to be a challenge and I'm being whiny or is it just an annoying oversight and they should always accommodate 2 base play?
I think one base mutators are more annoying than anything. It generally doesn't mean you lose but you have to spend a lot more time just waiting for your upgrades and units. IMO if they're always going to balance Co-op around having two bases only then they should stick to having two bases all the time.
EPT
Indeed attempt to expand didn't work out. For about 5mins I kept microing drones out of the way of blizz, but I was probably mining less than half the time, and if you one time don't pay attention to it, they all die to one blizz.
Every time we get close the hybrids end up spawning at the very back corner behind the final wall of enemies and jinara ends up getting pushed into the pit before we can clear the rest of the way to them and finish off the hybrids. I can consistently get that close, even with pretty weak team mates, but it just takes so long to play this style slow pushing off of one base and heavily relying on hero cooldowns that I get sick of playing after one or two attempts.
