FInally he has arrived. I looked up on the SC2 official website and there doesn't seem to be any actual datas yet, just this video so we'll have to wait to see how he progresses with level and unit upgrades. It seems Alarak will be a hero unit on the field like Kerrigan and Zagara, there's a Tal'Darim mothership calldown and it features all(?) faction units from the campaign as well as some kind of custom zealots.
Meanwhile, someone has noticed that there was a custom tab for coop in the coop overview video.
Hmm, 4th protoss before a second terran? I didn't expect that.
He has a hero and calldowns. One is like a combination of Hyperion and banshees (mothership and void rays) and the other looks like photon overcharge (which was used on cannons; who knows what else it can be used on).
I hope he's not as hero-dependent as Kerrigan. So I hope they tone down the hero power dramatically from the campaign (his campaign form is extremely OP). But if not, I guess I'll keep an open mind. He doesn't seem as exciting as Karax or Abathur IMO, both of which introduced a dramatically different play style.
Also: J'inara: "I hope Alarak will prove to be a fitting challenger" Alarak: "Bitch I carried you"
On August 17 2016 05:48 The Bottle wrote: Hmm, 4th protoss before a second terran? I didn't expect that.
He has a hero and calldowns. One is like a combination of Hyperion and banshees (mothership and void rays) and the other looks like photon overcharge (which was used on cannons; who knows what else it can be used on).
I hope he's not as hero-dependent as Kerrigan. So I hope they tone down the hero power dramatically from the campaign (his campaign form is extremely OP). But if not, I guess I'll keep an open mind. He doesn't seem as exciting as Karax or Abathur IMO, both of which introduced a dramatically different play style.
3rd* terran. I'm surprised as you are that they actually released a protoss before a terran to balance out races.
The mothership from the calldown is even more extreme than the one you get from the campaign with it constantly spamming the laser ability at 52s.
Looking at 32s, it seems his attack speed has increased so it takes longer between each attack and thus his DPS has decreased unless it's a different gamespeed. After all, brutal is on fastest while others are on faster. At 34s, Alarak is wrapped in a bubble like the chains of ascension duel with those custom ranged zealots(?) providing psionic energy. So far, I get the impression that he's okay by himself and becomes stronger the more units you have near him.
Also at 1m, there weren't any air units showcased while the calldown from earlier featured the destroyers along with the mothership. So no idea how Alarak gets detection for cloaked and burrowsed units, what will his air units be. I think he'll be toned down because Kerrigan isn't as OP as her campaign version either with a ranged nuke and constant heal spam ability.
-Fancy stalkers shooting green lasers instead -30s, there's an an odd red archon of some kind. It can't be Vorazun's dark archons because there are Karax' energizers -40s, again with the red archon. Seems it has higher range than regular archon and right there, Alarak seems to activate an ability to absorb psionic energy along with the weird sound effects -1m13s shows Alarak clearly activating the ability to absorb psi energy -1m22s shows photon overcharge on 2 warp gates this time. So I take that's some kind of calldown where you choose which buildings to have it or something.
-30s, there's an an odd red archon of some kind. It can't be Vorazun's dark archons because there are Karax' energizers
Pretty late into the video (at around 1:15 I think) you see a red archon shooting that orb thing that the weird tal'darim templar can shoot. So it's probably the same dynamic as Artanis's templar/archon. The archon casts the same things as the templars do, but it's also a strong combat unit.
Well I'm sorry, Bottle. Turns Alarak will be a cornerstone of the army with the idea of those supplicants sacrificing themselves so Alarak will live and keep fighting. So if Kerrigan is the one-woman army into support and Zagara is kinda a support, then Alarak is the selfish bastard who sacrifices his own army to stomp on everyone by himself. It's pretty fitting with him because he considers everyone his slaves.
So there will also be a new mission featuring Stettman, the scientist from WOL.
This confirms that it's indeed a "make your own mutation" as you said. Basically a way for people to make their own challenges and apparently not limited to just 3 mutations. So you can go crazy and choose all of them I guess.
From what I see, he's indeed REALLY the selfish bastard I expected him to be and his death fleet calldown is only at lvl 10 so really late.
-His zealot equivalent, the supplicants, are what are sacrificed for Alarak to continue being selfish and stomp everyone. On top of that, you can warp 2 at a time like zerglings. -From reading the thread, havocs, the sentry equivalent, are the detectors. -You can use war prisms like warp prisms. -His only form of anti-air are Alarak wave aoe ability, slayers (stalker equivalent), upgraded wrathwalkers (collosi), war prisms and ascendants (templars). -For splash damage on the ground, you have Alarak, vanguards (immortals) and ascendants. -No stargate so Alarak only air units are war prisms and his death fleet calldown.
From bits I've seen from Lowko vod, ascendants are stupid broken when you get to lvl 12 because of the permanent buff. Kill count for upgrade is both enemies killed and sacrificed supplicants. Turns out the "red archons" were fully upgraded ascendants. Though note that Lowko coop parts was on casual difficulty, so maybe it would be a different story on brutal.
Something interesting to note are that spawn placements are different on trains mission. Instead of 1 at the left and 1 at the right, they're both at the right with 1 below where the right spawn usually is. In addition, there are rocks blocking vespene geysers at the expansion, probably as a way to nerf Vorazun (does it matter though for high mastery Vorazun with early DT calldown?)
On August 20 2016 00:42 FeyFey wrote: Alaraks popularity is exploding haha. Think that confirms his campaign to be the next one \o/. Or just wishful thinking of me.
Following the SC2 order, the next campaign should be Zerg, but yeah, there are really no cool Zerg characters. The HOTS campaign was simply not good. It was all about OP Kerrigan in the end.
It looks like the name of the game for Alarak is to just mass taldarim templar and sacrifice your suicidal zealots ASAP. The spell damage those orbs and blasts will get from the sacrifice enhancement seems broken as hell.
As for other commanders, yeah the zerg is kinda lacking from SC2. All they really have left is Stukov. IDK if they'd be willing to go into SC1 territory because I think a cerebrate would be kinda fitting. The cerebrate itself would be a structure at your main base, like the laser drill and solar forge. Terran has a plenty of material from SC2 though. Mira Han can give you the mercenary theme, Matt Horner can specialize in terran air as a "fleet commander", Nova can have the few spellcaster "specialist" units, etc.
I saw a video where the thrasher map has enemies at your natural instead of rocks. So it's a subtle nerf to commanders like Swann, Abathur, and Karax who can fast expand but need workers (or worker vision) to do so. I don't consider that a huge deal though. What's really keeping me up at night is the possibility that the tank's inability to be picked up by medivacs might "leak over" into co-op, which would be a massive nerf to Swann.
I don't see how to be creative and make another different commander zerg interesting. The only ones that are significantly different from the others are Stukov as mentionned earlier and Dehaka with primal zergs.
I think that's unlikely to happen. Like back in WOL, the campaign collosi didn't attack as quickly as the multiplayer collosi. And if they were really going to do that... yeah, it would have been really nice if someone played as Swann back at Gamescon and had tested it. Usually, multiplayer is kept seperate from everything. iirc for campaign, someone said that they aren't touched unless there are significant issues to be fixed. At most, if Swann cant use hercules to pick up tanks, it will more likely be an accident than intentional.
And interesting, so it's not just rocks as geyser but also other maps as well.
I'm predicting now that ascendants will be the big OP composition, where as soon as you make them, you just rapidly cast orb + sacrifice until you max them out immediately. Then their single target spell + orbs will just break the map. But we'll see if that's the case.
Also I just learned that he's voiced by the guy who plays Jane's dad in Breaking Bad..... {queue stupid joke of the day} makes me think they should give him scourge.
I'm predicting now that ascendants will be the big OP composition, where as soon as you make them, you just rapidly cast orb + sacrifice until you max them out immediately. Then their single target spell + orbs will just break the map. But we'll see if that's the case.
Also I just learned that he's voiced by the guy who plays Jane's dad in Breaking Bad..... {queue stupid joke of the day} makes me think they should give him scourge.
Oh finally. Thanks for linking this here. Yes, when the protoss campaign was released, many mentionned him as Q from Star Trek though I never watched that show. Gotta say, his voice makes Alarak even better.
I'm kinda surprised. I would have expected Blizzard to tone down the ascendants from what has been showed at Gamescon. Maybe we are just a minority of people who abuses the commander to their maximum potential while the majority of coop players are just casuals who have fun playing anything?
The biggest thing that came to mind few days ago was detection while playing with a Kerrigan partner. Alarak can actually uses the omega worms and not worry about leaving detection behind because they can't use the worms.
EPT
