Overview
Stukov is rather unique in that he has both Terran and Zerg qualities, fitting with his infested theme of a grotesque abomination of a fusion of the two races. He control scheme doesn't quite say Terran or Zerg, and it can get some time to get used to. He has creep that spreads automatically and will cover the entire map when you get to the late game. It's required for all of his buildings, which are more Terran than Zerg (even though they don't liftoff, but uproot instead). His army control is strange too; his bio units (which have timed life) will not count as army units, so if you F2 your army, they are not included. He's got access to infested mech units, however at this time they require a lot of babysitting to survive. Overall, he's a great commander for swarming if you go with the infantry route, along with other options for a fresh take on co-op.
Unit Control
I'm adding this section for Stukov because of how wonky it is.
He has Zerg macro mechanics regarding that all unit production comes from eggs that pop from buildings. But he has Terran macro mechanics regarding requiring production buildings to make those eggs. Just remember that he does not have larva. It's weird to be able to hatch 5 infested siege tanks from eggs, but that's how he works :P
His first "calldown" ability is the psi-emitter which attracts his infested infantry towards it, attacking any enemy in their path. It is used as a rally point for your barracks and infested compound. This does not make your infantry not microable though. You can still give them commands like normal units.
His mech units on the other hand, handle just like normal units.
Units
- Infested Civilian: basic melee units that spawn automatically from your infested colonist compound. Nothing really special, but they spawn for free. Some upgrades make them a nice meat shield with their leap attack and broodling spawn. You'll have to work on upgrading the compound early to reap the most benefits.
- Infested Marine: your only AA unit. Cost only 25 minerals. Remember they have timed life, so just spamming them isn't always the best idea if nothing is going on.
- Infested Bunker: considered a unit when uprooted, and a building while rooted. When you finish building one, it comes with 4 (or 6 after you reach level 14) infested marines pre-loaded. It will automatically generate infested marines while rooted over time. Even though you build them from SCVs, they do require 4 supply. Bunkers themselves have a melee attack while uprooted, but keep in mind they do not spawn marines while doing so.
- Infested Diamondback: this unit finally makes an appearance in co-op, though in an unusual state. It can attack while moving, but also has an ability to bring air units to the ground (think of a reverse graviton beam from the phoenix). Later you can upgrade it to leave a trail that hampers enemies too.
- Infested Siege Tank: a siege tank with a large spine colony on top. It eats your own infantry units for ammo for its "volatile infested" cannon (shooting banelings lol). It's quite powerful, but a little fragile. But if you are defending, a few tanks with infested to feed them can do wonders.
- Infested Banshee: comes with cloak for free, and has the ability to burrow to recover health and energy quickly. It's great on hit and run tactics with good micromanagement.
- Infested Liberator: more like infested Valkyrie. It does not have that awesome AtG cannon, so I don't know why it is not the Valkyrie from Brood War. It's range is a bit short too.
- Brood Queen: the BW queen with similar abilities. Ocular symbiote gives any friendly unit detection abilities for a short time. Spawn Broodling simply kills a target and spawns broodlings from its corpse. Fungal growth is your AoE root and damage (basically, a better ensnare).
- Overlord: your source of supply (not depots). Can mutate into overseers.
- Overseer: your detector. They require an infested starport for mutation from overlords.
- Infested Missile Turret: because every race needs something like this.
Calldown Abilities
- Psi Emitter: places a psi-emitter at your target location, attracting all of your infested infantry to it. Works as a rally point and attack-move command. There is no cooldown on this ability.
-
Infest Structure: temporarily infests a structure to spawn broodlings. Usable on friendly or enemy structures (once you reach level 2).
- Apocalisk: causes an Apocalisk to burst out of the ground at any visible location. It's a huge ultralisk with a thor on top, shooting missiles and cleaving anything in its path. Just looking at it is a marvel to behold.
- Aleksander: calls down Stukov's flagship, equipped with tentacles and "egg bombs" to rain hell from ground and air enemies alike. Even if it is felled, the crash site spawns broodlings to help out.
Level Upgrades
1) Infestation: just describes the fact that he starts with an infested colonist compound and that his creep spreads from his infested commander center.
2) Hostile Incubation: gives you 2 extra charges of infest structure and allows you to target enemy structures. Doing so will disable them as well, which is perfect for initiating an attack on a base while broodlings distract enemy forces. This is kind of a power spike, as it gives this ability a lot more utility.
3) Epidemic: allows you to upgrade your infested colonist compound 1 extra time, doubling how much you spawn, as well as another upgrade to increase how many broodlings spawn from your infest structure ability. Improves both defense and offense.
4) Apocalisk: grants you the ability to use this calldown.
5) Infested Engineering Bay Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades to increase bunker armor and their regen rate. If you go with an infantry heavy build, you'll want these upgrades for sure.
6) Corrupted Conscription: doubles how many charges of spawn infested marine a barracks can have (from 5 to 10) and reduces their spawn time. This is quite good as it cuts down on infrastructure costs.
7) Infested Infantry Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades to allow broodlings to spawn from felled infested civilians, as well as giving infested infantry a damage-over-time effect on their attacks.
8) New Unit: Brood Queen: allows you to spawn Brood Queens.
9) Infested Factory Upgrade Cache: unlocks an upgrade to buff siege tanks' damage to armored targets and an upgrade for diamondbacks to leave a trail of slime that slows and damages enemy ground units. If you are bringing in some mech to your forces you should consider both upgrades based on what you are facing (e.g. slime could work against heavy ground bio comps).
10) Aleksander: allows you to use the Aleksander calldown ability.
11) Infested Starport Upgrade Cache: unlocks an upgrade for your liberator to take a lot less damage while attacking, and increased banshee life. To be honest I have a hard time justifying building either unit it most situations as they are expensive units to make and are easily destroyed if you look away for even a brief moment.
12) Incendiary Prosthetics: buffs your Apocalisk to do double damage with its AoE attack and initial spawn. Just a straight damage buff, nothing more, nothing less.
13) Brood Queen Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades for the Brood Queen so they can spawn will full energy (along with double energy regen) and to reveal cloaked/burrowed units with their attack. The energy upgrade is well worth it if you can handle queens.
14) Engorged Bunkers: increases the capacity of your bunkers from 4 to 6 (remember they start fully loaded) and spawn infested marines 20% faster. If you go with infantry, this is a significant boost to your effectiveness, giving you more access to free ranged units.
15) Neural Infestation: Aleksander can mass neural parasite units it attacks with its tentacles (meaning, air units). This can turn the tide of any battle that features non-hybrid enemy air units. This looks cool, though I would have preferred something like spawning scourge or doing something else that wouldn't tie up the air attack.
Pointers
- Where your barracks are placed is important when setting up attacks. After you research upgrades from a tech lab attached to a rax, you can give it up to your factory or starport. Bring your barracks just outside where you need to attack or defend, then spawn your marines. This also applies to your colonist compound. But remember that if you are researching an upgrade from it, it will not uproot. But you can accidentally uproot a barracks that has a tech lab researching something, cancelling the upgrade.
- Infinite creep spread will allow you to root your buildings where they are needed, but creep itself is neutral and does not grant vision, with you do need to place them. Kind of annoying, as this makes setting up camp a pain for your barracks and bunkers.
- Going heavy infantry will keep you mineral starved. In fact, many times you'll find yourself with extra gas even if you never take the gas from your expansion if you forego building any factory/starport units.
- Speaking of which, the easiest build is an infantry build that only uses civilians and marines. You'll need a lot of minerals to get started, meaning you'll have to wait a bit before building any refineries. My initial build would go 15 rax/OL/bunker. Then I may go either refinery, ebay, or even 1st colonist compound upgrade (which surprisingly costs no gas, only 400 minerals). The bunker can help clear rocks if you have time to spare before the initial attack wave, as well as infest structure.
- Infest structure only works on completed buildings (contrast to Alarak's photon overcharge). It will work on uprooted buildings except uprooted bunkers. However, this does open up for some hilarity with other infested structures (like moving infested command centers, or if you have an Alarak ally, a structure that is infested and PO'd simultaneously - and don't underestimate how powerful and tanky it is!).
- I highly suggest dedicating one hotkey to your infantry spawning buildings, a separate one for factories and starports, and one more for bunkers. Learn to use hotkeys for them too (holding down A is simple enough for spamming marines, and R for uprooting and rooting buildings).
Friday, December 16, 2016
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Nova (it's like I'm really playing Warcraft 3!)
Overview
Nova is a Terran commander that is all about specialization from what the game tells you. She's the first Terran commander that can be controlled on the battlefield with some rather unique traits. She is much more micro oriented; her base building is very simple. You can only build 1 barracks, 1 factory, and 1 starport. You do not train units, but call them down similar to mercs in the WoL campaign (though you call them down anywhere you have vision). Fortunately your production buildings can store up to 3 charges of each calldown. In addition, you get a free ghost academy.
She also has a 100 supply cap, and her forces are not exactly cheap; think Karax costs, then bump it up a bit more. So you can't just parade push; you need to consider what you need based on what AI you are facing. Even some of her abilities cost minerals!
Overall I think she is rewarding, but hard to pick-up. You need to familiarize with the abilities of all of your units to be successful. Her leveling perks will alleviate some of your woes fortunately. She is the first commander where I have to actively plan any assault on a location instead of just building the right unit composition. It is definitely a nice pace changer.
Units
Nova: A ranged hero sniper as you can guess. Enjoys perma-cloaking and a very powerful snipe that works on any unit, not just biologicals. Her default mode is great for picking off key units and of course, nuking locations. She has the following initial abilities:
- Snipe: like mentioned above, a very long range single strike that can target bio and mech alike. You can fire two in quick succession at full energy.
Cloak: free cloaking, what else is there to say? Be sure to take out any detectors to keep her safe.
- Sabotage Drone: deploys an invincible controllable drone that you can move to a location where it can burrow and eventually detonate for massive damage in an area. Very useful as an opener when assaulting locations.
- Detection: upgraded at your ghost academy, this makes Nova a detector. Not much else to say.
- Elite Marine: Beefy marines that come in sets of four. General purpose units that you will need to micro to keep alive. They do have 150 HP, but don't just A-move them; for 600 minerals for a single calldown, you don't want to throw them away. Initially you can get a nifty range upgrade for them, and an even more amazing one as you level.
- Marauder Commando: Beefy marauders that come in pairs. Can initially upgrade them to gain aoe concussive shells for slowing targets, and another upgrade later for more damage.
- Spec Ops Ghost: Finally, ghosts are in co-op. They come with an auto-cast snipe and can gain access to EMP rounds. Note that they do not have energy, but their abilities are time based. In fact, all abilities except Nova's are timer based. For a pair of ghosts, they are VERY expensive, so pay attention to them!
- Hellbat Ranger: Super hellbats that can gain the pre-ignitier and a "leap" attack similar to a charging strike. Perfect against swarmy enemies.
- Strike Goliath: IMO Swann's goliaths are better due to dual-targeting, but these are excellent in their own right. They can research upgraded range on both of their weapons, and eventually allow them to wreck Terran/Protoss air with a certain level perk upgrade.
- Heavy Siege Tank: beastly tanks to say the least. Taking a page out of Sgt. Hammer from Heroes of the Storm, you can upgrade them to arm themselves with spider mines that can be deployed in front of them. Another level perk upgrades makes them ridiculous on defense and assaults.
- Raid Liberators: libs make an appearance with Nova as well. They work similar to the ones in multiplayer, just with bigger numbers. Can be upgraded to allow their air-to-ground attack to target buildings, and another one later with a level perk.
- Raven Type-II: an extremely important unit regardless of what you face. I'll remind you again that Nova's units are not energy based, so don't be shy in using all of their abilities. Railgun turrets are great against any ground target, as they do 30 damage in a straight line. Bio-mechanical repair drone is basically a flying medic that heals any friendly unit (not just bio). Predator missiles are seeker missiles that have no wind-up time. Later upgrades make them even more useful too. Note that this is the only unit that is called down one at a time; most of the others come in pairs.
Covert Banshee: air-to-ground flying specialists. Best used against heavy ground compositions obviously. You can research perma-cloak for them, and another upgrade with leveling perks.
Railgun Turret: a ground defense turret that shoots railgun shots, damaging everything in a line. SCVs can build them for 200 minerals a piece, and can be salvaged later. IMO they are emergency defense unfortunately.
Missie Turret: because every commander needs static detection.
Initial Calldown Abilities
-Defensive Drone: summons a drone that protects a target with a 200HP shield. Hotkey your cooldown abilities; usage of this ability is required at all stages of the game. Can be improved later with leveling perks.
- Instant Regeneration: should Nova fall in battle, you can pay minerals to instantly revive her at any visible location. The cost is based on how much time is remaining before she revives automatically. Until you max out your supply, you may want to hold off on using this skill unless you absolutely need her out.
Level Upgrades
1) Covert Ops: just defines her traits. 100 supply, instantly trained units that are deployed wherever there is vision, and buffed up units in general.
2) Griffin Airstrike: a new calldown ability. When used, you select where the strike will start and the direction. Then the Griffin will appear and carpet bomb the targeted location for extreme damage (I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot to say the least). Just one catch: it costs 1000 minerals! So always spending minerals on units is not always the best idea.
3) Assault Mode: a new skill for Nova. Swaps out her sniper rifle for a shotgun for close range action. Obviously, she cannot snipe, and loses her cloaking, but gains that sweet spread shot from her mission pack. She also gains a blink ability that also give temporary shields. Again, this skill requires planning and knowing what you are up against.
4) Barracks Upgrade Cache: unlocks new upgrades at the barracks tech lab. Super stimpacks heal marines over time instead of damaging them. Marauders can also gain an additional attack which fires every so often (30 seconds?). Doesn't sound like much, but it is free, front-loaded damage.
5) Tactical Airlift: Your other new calldown ability. Summon the Griffin at a targeted location to pick up all friendly units (even your allies' unit) to drop them off at another targeted location. A sorely needed skill for mobility. Oh yeah, this also costs 200 minerals to do. Why does everything cost so much -_-
6) Factory Cache Upgrade: new upgrades for mech units. Goliaths can gain lockdown missiles, stunning air targets they attack. Yeah - if you are against Terran or Protoss air, you want this. Also unlocks the Siege Tank upgrade where being in siege mode gradually increases their range to about double the range! Both of these are crazy good IMO and should not be missed if you go heavy mech.
7) Automated Refineries: just like Vorazun; you get to mine gas without SCVs. In Nova's case, this is even more crucial since that's 12 supply not needed in workers, and with a 100 supply cap, that's sorely needed.
8) Covert Ops Upgrade Cache: unlocks a ghost upgrade to enhance their snipe ability into a "triple tap", where they fire 2 more shots after the initial one, each doing about 1/2 the damage of the first shot. Basically doubles the damage. Also an upgrade for Nova's life regeneration.
9) Tactical Nuke and Holo Decoy: took long enough; you can finally call down nukes in stealth mode (sniper) and create a holo decoy in assault mode (shotgun). The decoy will act on its own. Because free stuff that causes damage is always welcome.
10) Starport Upgrade Cache: unlocks the banshee ability to do an aoe ground attack, and the liberator's transformation time. The former makes the banshee's job a lot easier; before they were simply air snipers. The latter makes liberators a lot easier to use.
11) Research and Development: halves the cost and time of research upgrades. Yes please. Simple and sweet. One big note: this does not affect weapon/armor upgrades. Bummer, but still very useful in getting your troops in top performance.
12) Raven Upgrade Cache: allows the target of their healing drones to be cloaked, as well as to allow an additional charge of all of its abilities. The former sounds great on paper, but consider that many bases will have detection, and that some of the latter Hybrids are detectors themselves. The latter is amazing though; this allows you to spam their skills a lot more.
13) Military Hardware: allows you to store 2 more charges of the defense drone (to a maximum of 5), and lowers the cooldown by 30 secs (initially, it is 90 secs). Can't complain; its a skill you will use a lot, and this lets you use it more often.
14) Nova Upgrade Cache: upgrades for your hero. Snipe will refund 50% of its cost if it kills a unit, and the shotgun's ability gains increased range. Basically, more opportunity to snipe, and a much meaner shotgun blast.
15) Stance Dance: When switching between stealth and assault mode, you instantly refill your energy. The cooldown to switch is also reduced by 15 seconds. This creates some interesting micro potential for Nova, as you can spam abilities, switch, and spam some more. In addition, you get a damage buff when switching to stealth mode and temporary invincibility when switching to assault mode.
Pointers
- First thing to note: no supply depots required. Sounds amazing until you see the costs of everything she owns. Couple that with the fact that she cannot convert command centers into orbital commands; this means no MULES :( I always find myself more mineral starved than gas starved; be sure to saturate your mineral fields before saturating refineries.
- Because of how expensive everything is, you need to figure out what units you need. Units from your production buildings have a cooldown on calling them down, and it always feels like an eternity. In addition, her own calldown abilities have price tags. You really need to plan our your actions before engaging.
- Base management is simple. No need to worry about how many production buildings are needed; just make one of each. No supply blocks other than being maxed out. This means more focus on your army. Losing any unit can hurt a lot, especially in the early game where she still needs to research all of the good stuff.
- Try to be active with Nova at all times. Snipe units and deploy that sabotage drone as much as you can. Don't forget you can control where the drone (and readjust as necessary before it burrows on its own, or manually burrow it early), and that it cannot be destroyed - it appears cloaked, but cannot be attacked at all.
- Planning your attack/defense is crucial for victory. Ravens in particular need to setup their turrets and deploy their missiles; Nova needs to snipe and/or use her drone; defense drones can be set; tanks sieged up, liberators in place, etc. There's a lot of abilities to go around, and you need to use them all. "Classic" stutter-step micro can only get your so far with a low unit count. Practice using hotkeys.
- Similar to the above, planning what to spend your precious resources is also important given the prices. Except for the Raven, you need to know what you need at the right time. Save up for a Griffin Airstrike? Train goliaths for that much needed anti-air and lockdown? Ghosts for EMP against Protoss? Hellbats for zerglings? Fortunately the decisions are not so much based on what production buildings you have, since you need to build all of them anyway.
Nova is a Terran commander that is all about specialization from what the game tells you. She's the first Terran commander that can be controlled on the battlefield with some rather unique traits. She is much more micro oriented; her base building is very simple. You can only build 1 barracks, 1 factory, and 1 starport. You do not train units, but call them down similar to mercs in the WoL campaign (though you call them down anywhere you have vision). Fortunately your production buildings can store up to 3 charges of each calldown. In addition, you get a free ghost academy.
She also has a 100 supply cap, and her forces are not exactly cheap; think Karax costs, then bump it up a bit more. So you can't just parade push; you need to consider what you need based on what AI you are facing. Even some of her abilities cost minerals!
Overall I think she is rewarding, but hard to pick-up. You need to familiarize with the abilities of all of your units to be successful. Her leveling perks will alleviate some of your woes fortunately. She is the first commander where I have to actively plan any assault on a location instead of just building the right unit composition. It is definitely a nice pace changer.
Units
Nova: A ranged hero sniper as you can guess. Enjoys perma-cloaking and a very powerful snipe that works on any unit, not just biologicals. Her default mode is great for picking off key units and of course, nuking locations. She has the following initial abilities:
- Snipe: like mentioned above, a very long range single strike that can target bio and mech alike. You can fire two in quick succession at full energy.
Cloak: free cloaking, what else is there to say? Be sure to take out any detectors to keep her safe.
- Sabotage Drone: deploys an invincible controllable drone that you can move to a location where it can burrow and eventually detonate for massive damage in an area. Very useful as an opener when assaulting locations.
- Detection: upgraded at your ghost academy, this makes Nova a detector. Not much else to say.
- Elite Marine: Beefy marines that come in sets of four. General purpose units that you will need to micro to keep alive. They do have 150 HP, but don't just A-move them; for 600 minerals for a single calldown, you don't want to throw them away. Initially you can get a nifty range upgrade for them, and an even more amazing one as you level.
- Marauder Commando: Beefy marauders that come in pairs. Can initially upgrade them to gain aoe concussive shells for slowing targets, and another upgrade later for more damage.
- Spec Ops Ghost: Finally, ghosts are in co-op. They come with an auto-cast snipe and can gain access to EMP rounds. Note that they do not have energy, but their abilities are time based. In fact, all abilities except Nova's are timer based. For a pair of ghosts, they are VERY expensive, so pay attention to them!
- Hellbat Ranger: Super hellbats that can gain the pre-ignitier and a "leap" attack similar to a charging strike. Perfect against swarmy enemies.
- Strike Goliath: IMO Swann's goliaths are better due to dual-targeting, but these are excellent in their own right. They can research upgraded range on both of their weapons, and eventually allow them to wreck Terran/Protoss air with a certain level perk upgrade.
- Heavy Siege Tank: beastly tanks to say the least. Taking a page out of Sgt. Hammer from Heroes of the Storm, you can upgrade them to arm themselves with spider mines that can be deployed in front of them. Another level perk upgrades makes them ridiculous on defense and assaults.
- Raid Liberators: libs make an appearance with Nova as well. They work similar to the ones in multiplayer, just with bigger numbers. Can be upgraded to allow their air-to-ground attack to target buildings, and another one later with a level perk.
- Raven Type-II: an extremely important unit regardless of what you face. I'll remind you again that Nova's units are not energy based, so don't be shy in using all of their abilities. Railgun turrets are great against any ground target, as they do 30 damage in a straight line. Bio-mechanical repair drone is basically a flying medic that heals any friendly unit (not just bio). Predator missiles are seeker missiles that have no wind-up time. Later upgrades make them even more useful too. Note that this is the only unit that is called down one at a time; most of the others come in pairs.
Covert Banshee: air-to-ground flying specialists. Best used against heavy ground compositions obviously. You can research perma-cloak for them, and another upgrade with leveling perks.
Railgun Turret: a ground defense turret that shoots railgun shots, damaging everything in a line. SCVs can build them for 200 minerals a piece, and can be salvaged later. IMO they are emergency defense unfortunately.
Missie Turret: because every commander needs static detection.
Initial Calldown Abilities
-Defensive Drone: summons a drone that protects a target with a 200HP shield. Hotkey your cooldown abilities; usage of this ability is required at all stages of the game. Can be improved later with leveling perks.
- Instant Regeneration: should Nova fall in battle, you can pay minerals to instantly revive her at any visible location. The cost is based on how much time is remaining before she revives automatically. Until you max out your supply, you may want to hold off on using this skill unless you absolutely need her out.
Level Upgrades
1) Covert Ops: just defines her traits. 100 supply, instantly trained units that are deployed wherever there is vision, and buffed up units in general.
2) Griffin Airstrike: a new calldown ability. When used, you select where the strike will start and the direction. Then the Griffin will appear and carpet bomb the targeted location for extreme damage (I don't know the exact number, but it's a lot to say the least). Just one catch: it costs 1000 minerals! So always spending minerals on units is not always the best idea.
3) Assault Mode: a new skill for Nova. Swaps out her sniper rifle for a shotgun for close range action. Obviously, she cannot snipe, and loses her cloaking, but gains that sweet spread shot from her mission pack. She also gains a blink ability that also give temporary shields. Again, this skill requires planning and knowing what you are up against.
4) Barracks Upgrade Cache: unlocks new upgrades at the barracks tech lab. Super stimpacks heal marines over time instead of damaging them. Marauders can also gain an additional attack which fires every so often (30 seconds?). Doesn't sound like much, but it is free, front-loaded damage.
5) Tactical Airlift: Your other new calldown ability. Summon the Griffin at a targeted location to pick up all friendly units (even your allies' unit) to drop them off at another targeted location. A sorely needed skill for mobility. Oh yeah, this also costs 200 minerals to do. Why does everything cost so much -_-
6) Factory Cache Upgrade: new upgrades for mech units. Goliaths can gain lockdown missiles, stunning air targets they attack. Yeah - if you are against Terran or Protoss air, you want this. Also unlocks the Siege Tank upgrade where being in siege mode gradually increases their range to about double the range! Both of these are crazy good IMO and should not be missed if you go heavy mech.
7) Automated Refineries: just like Vorazun; you get to mine gas without SCVs. In Nova's case, this is even more crucial since that's 12 supply not needed in workers, and with a 100 supply cap, that's sorely needed.
8) Covert Ops Upgrade Cache: unlocks a ghost upgrade to enhance their snipe ability into a "triple tap", where they fire 2 more shots after the initial one, each doing about 1/2 the damage of the first shot. Basically doubles the damage. Also an upgrade for Nova's life regeneration.
9) Tactical Nuke and Holo Decoy: took long enough; you can finally call down nukes in stealth mode (sniper) and create a holo decoy in assault mode (shotgun). The decoy will act on its own. Because free stuff that causes damage is always welcome.
10) Starport Upgrade Cache: unlocks the banshee ability to do an aoe ground attack, and the liberator's transformation time. The former makes the banshee's job a lot easier; before they were simply air snipers. The latter makes liberators a lot easier to use.
11) Research and Development: halves the cost and time of research upgrades. Yes please. Simple and sweet. One big note: this does not affect weapon/armor upgrades. Bummer, but still very useful in getting your troops in top performance.
12) Raven Upgrade Cache: allows the target of their healing drones to be cloaked, as well as to allow an additional charge of all of its abilities. The former sounds great on paper, but consider that many bases will have detection, and that some of the latter Hybrids are detectors themselves. The latter is amazing though; this allows you to spam their skills a lot more.
13) Military Hardware: allows you to store 2 more charges of the defense drone (to a maximum of 5), and lowers the cooldown by 30 secs (initially, it is 90 secs). Can't complain; its a skill you will use a lot, and this lets you use it more often.
14) Nova Upgrade Cache: upgrades for your hero. Snipe will refund 50% of its cost if it kills a unit, and the shotgun's ability gains increased range. Basically, more opportunity to snipe, and a much meaner shotgun blast.
15) Stance Dance: When switching between stealth and assault mode, you instantly refill your energy. The cooldown to switch is also reduced by 15 seconds. This creates some interesting micro potential for Nova, as you can spam abilities, switch, and spam some more. In addition, you get a damage buff when switching to stealth mode and temporary invincibility when switching to assault mode.
Pointers
- First thing to note: no supply depots required. Sounds amazing until you see the costs of everything she owns. Couple that with the fact that she cannot convert command centers into orbital commands; this means no MULES :( I always find myself more mineral starved than gas starved; be sure to saturate your mineral fields before saturating refineries.
- Because of how expensive everything is, you need to figure out what units you need. Units from your production buildings have a cooldown on calling them down, and it always feels like an eternity. In addition, her own calldown abilities have price tags. You really need to plan our your actions before engaging.
- Base management is simple. No need to worry about how many production buildings are needed; just make one of each. No supply blocks other than being maxed out. This means more focus on your army. Losing any unit can hurt a lot, especially in the early game where she still needs to research all of the good stuff.
- Try to be active with Nova at all times. Snipe units and deploy that sabotage drone as much as you can. Don't forget you can control where the drone (and readjust as necessary before it burrows on its own, or manually burrow it early), and that it cannot be destroyed - it appears cloaked, but cannot be attacked at all.
- Planning your attack/defense is crucial for victory. Ravens in particular need to setup their turrets and deploy their missiles; Nova needs to snipe and/or use her drone; defense drones can be set; tanks sieged up, liberators in place, etc. There's a lot of abilities to go around, and you need to use them all. "Classic" stutter-step micro can only get your so far with a low unit count. Practice using hotkeys.
- Similar to the above, planning what to spend your precious resources is also important given the prices. Except for the Raven, you need to know what you need at the right time. Save up for a Griffin Airstrike? Train goliaths for that much needed anti-air and lockdown? Ghosts for EMP against Protoss? Hellbats for zerglings? Fortunately the decisions are not so much based on what production buildings you have, since you need to build all of them anyway.
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
Alarak (Edgy McEdgelord)
Overview
Alarak is a Protoss commander, who unlike the others, takes a direct part in the battles. In fact, a big thing about making him as buff as he can be. He is the one that should lead an attack, and will always be the last one standing at the cost of your entire army if need be. Once you unlock all of this skills, he is a force to reckon with.
Units
Alarak: A melee hero that is empowered by his "allies" (more like sacrifices). He himself doesn't have a lot of health or shields, but is sustained by the army behind you. He's also got some skills to back up all his smack talk too. He has no energy; all of his skills only have a cooldown.
- Deadly Charge: charges at your selected target or area. It will inflict 200(?) damage if it does connect. Useful for sniping key targets, like disruptors or lurkers. Also gets him into the fray.
- Destruction Wave: an AoE skill in the shape of a rectangle that starts a little bit behind Alarak and extends in front of him. Does 50 damage and knockback. The knockback can act as a short stun, and can wipe out weak enemies. Very effective against smaller Zerg units, and Terran bio.
- Soul Absoprtion: explained later, but it's his ability to steal life from your own units to survive.
- Empower Me: buffs both his normal and skill damage based on how many friendly units are near him. This includes both your own and your ally's units. It can get ridonkulous if you time it just right with your ally. Even gets more powerful after a certain level.
Supplicant: A light, short ranged warrior that you warp in pairs. No zealots for you. They do cost 150 for each pair though, and will eat up supply. They are mainly to keep Alarak supplied with life during a battle as well as weak damage support. They are also used as sacrifices for your ascendants as well.
Slayer: A stalker that needed to be even more edgy. Can blink and gain a skill to avoid damage for a brief moment after taking a hit. More like emergency anti-air if you ask me.
Havoc: A pure support unit from the gateway. It has no attack, but acts as a detector which is rather nice, but also can buff the range of non-melee attacks for you and your ally, and make enemies take more damage. It's worth having a few around, but not too many. Do note that they only cost 1 supply.
Ascendant: The edgy HT. No psi storm, but has a psionic orb skill that launches a ball that travels in a straight line and does AoE damage to anything near it. Mind Blast is a powerful single target skill which is also for sniping. Sacrifice basically kills off a supplicant to restore energy. Later on it also permanently buffs the ascendant and gives it a neat archon like effect.
Vanguard: An immortal that shoots rocket clusters onto an area of ground. Pretty powerful, and can be buffed to be even more effective. Not sure if they are worth it though since they are a robo unit, and the other main robo unit has a unique role in your army. You also have Alarak and Ascendants to do AoE as is.
Wrathwalker: A colossus that replaced its thermal lances for a powerful blast of enregy. You can upgrade it to attack air and ground, and later, a faster attack speed. Note that it has a fairly slow attack speed regardless, but it hits very hard. Also has 9 range to boot. Unlike Karax, these don't cost and arm and leg to make.
War Prism: Because being a warp prism isn't enough. It functions like one, but can actually attack while in transport mode. Otherwise, it's main use is to allow you to warp in anywhere you have them.
Photon Cannon: Because each commander needs static defense available.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- Structure Overcharge: temporarily grants any friendly building the ability to defend itself like Photon Overcharge in multiplayer. You can store up to 3 charges at a time. Useful in the early game, and works well in supplementing defense later. Note that you can use it on your ally's structures too.
- Summon Death Fleet: explained later, but it's a summon ability on a long cooldown.
Level Upgrades
1) Soul Absorption: Alarak gains 20 life and 20 shields when an enemy is killed near him. Gives him some ability to sustain himself. This also sacrifices the life of one of your nearby units if Alarak takes fatal damage so he can recover. So in essence, if Alarak dies, that means your whole army was destroyed.
2) Overcharge Amplification: when using structure overcharge, the structure also gains a 200 HP barrier. Helps with defense, so no complaints.
3) Aggressive Tactics - your deadly charge can strike from a further distance, and has a shorter cooldown. Sorely needed since I always felt like I'm waiting on this skill.
4) Death Council Upgrade Cache - unlocks upgrades to grants 25 more shields to supplicants to make them beefier, and the slayer ability to avoid damage for 2 seconds after taking a hit. Both are made to make your standing army last longer.
5) Empower Me: explained earlier, but it's a new ability for Alarak, giving him a lot of power (and I mean a lot in the later game if you build up your numbers).
6) Robotics Bay Upgrade Cache: unlocks the upgrade to the Vanguard's splash area and the Wrathwalker attack speed. Both are useful, the latter even more so. Your anti-air is somewhat limited, and they provide hard-hitting damage against heavy air units.
7) Lightning Surge: basically, when you sacrifice a supplicant, Alarak's next deadly charge is buffed up to do AoE to 4 targets near your primary target. It's amazing once the other upgrade is unlocked for him at level 15.
8) New Unit: Ascendant: Powerful caster. Explained earlier. Strangely I find myself more mineral starved than gas starved, so you should be able to fit some of these in your forces. They do have a normal attack as well, but it does not target air units.
9) Havoc Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades at the cybernetics core, one for increasing the target lock damage and increased range of force field and squad sight. I don't use FF that much, but the buff to the other skills are welcomed.
10) Summon Death Fleet: summons a Mothership and a squad of Destroyers (Tal'Darim void rays) to a targeted location with timed life. Perfect for adding additional punch to an attack or for emergency defense. And they all can attack air targets. The Mothership can use recall to port itself and nearby units to a targeted location. Also gets another ability later. Destroyers are similar to the ones from the campaign with their evil chain lightning attack.
11) Overpowered: just like what it says. Using empower me makes Alarak do AoE with each attack. Yeah.
12) Ascendant Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades to allow psionic orb to travel farther, and allow sacrifice to permanently buff your ascendant's shields and ability damage. It also turns him into an archon (in looks only, but still cool). If you like casters, you'll love this upgrade. Psionic orb can mow through weak units ground and air alike.
13) Burning Skies: your summon death fleet will summon 4 more Destroyers. Your Mothership also gains the thermal lance ability, which does damage across a line that originates from the Mothership itself. It's called a Death Fleet, so it should bring forth death to your enemies.
14) Alarak Upgrade Cache: finally, more upgrades for him. Unlocks the ability to stun with normal attacks (wow), and doubles the knockback from destruction wave. I dunno about the latter since there are some cases where knocking your enemies around may screw up certain things like your ally calldown skills, but the former is very welcomed. Though the knockback also works like a stun, as well as giving your army more distance between them (your Wrathwalkers in particular).
15) Wrath of the Highlord: reduces the cooldown of Alarak's deadly charge and destruction wave abilities when you sacrifice a supplicant. In game it says by 10 and 5 seconds respectively, which I think are almost their normal cooldowns. That means you can spam these a lot whenever Alarak leads the charge.
Pointers
- Photon, I mean structure overcharge, can handle initial attack waves, sometimes by itself. I'd suggest creating a hotkey for abilities like these, since by default the game does not do this.
- You'll be making quite a few suppliants. Consider this in your build order; you don't need to mine gas that quickly.
- A simple go to army composition is Alarak + supplicants + wrathwalkers, with a few havoc sprinkled in there. You might have to build some slayers to start if you desperately need more anti-air capabilities, but Alarak does have a ground-to-air attack, and can use destruction wave to attack air units.
- If you haven't noticed already, he does not have access to stargates. You might want to rely a bit on your ally at first, then later have wrathwalkers or ascendants to help.
- Keep an extra eye on your supply. Supplicants come in pairs, and cost 4 supply each time. You may find yourself supply blocked faster than you expected.
- If Alarak dies, you can warp in supplicants near where he is reviving. He will sacrifice them to gain health to revive faster.
Alarak is a Protoss commander, who unlike the others, takes a direct part in the battles. In fact, a big thing about making him as buff as he can be. He is the one that should lead an attack, and will always be the last one standing at the cost of your entire army if need be. Once you unlock all of this skills, he is a force to reckon with.
Units
Alarak: A melee hero that is empowered by his "allies" (more like sacrifices). He himself doesn't have a lot of health or shields, but is sustained by the army behind you. He's also got some skills to back up all his smack talk too. He has no energy; all of his skills only have a cooldown.
- Deadly Charge: charges at your selected target or area. It will inflict 200(?) damage if it does connect. Useful for sniping key targets, like disruptors or lurkers. Also gets him into the fray.
- Destruction Wave: an AoE skill in the shape of a rectangle that starts a little bit behind Alarak and extends in front of him. Does 50 damage and knockback. The knockback can act as a short stun, and can wipe out weak enemies. Very effective against smaller Zerg units, and Terran bio.
- Soul Absoprtion: explained later, but it's his ability to steal life from your own units to survive.
- Empower Me: buffs both his normal and skill damage based on how many friendly units are near him. This includes both your own and your ally's units. It can get ridonkulous if you time it just right with your ally. Even gets more powerful after a certain level.
Supplicant: A light, short ranged warrior that you warp in pairs. No zealots for you. They do cost 150 for each pair though, and will eat up supply. They are mainly to keep Alarak supplied with life during a battle as well as weak damage support. They are also used as sacrifices for your ascendants as well.
Slayer: A stalker that needed to be even more edgy. Can blink and gain a skill to avoid damage for a brief moment after taking a hit. More like emergency anti-air if you ask me.
Havoc: A pure support unit from the gateway. It has no attack, but acts as a detector which is rather nice, but also can buff the range of non-melee attacks for you and your ally, and make enemies take more damage. It's worth having a few around, but not too many. Do note that they only cost 1 supply.
Ascendant: The edgy HT. No psi storm, but has a psionic orb skill that launches a ball that travels in a straight line and does AoE damage to anything near it. Mind Blast is a powerful single target skill which is also for sniping. Sacrifice basically kills off a supplicant to restore energy. Later on it also permanently buffs the ascendant and gives it a neat archon like effect.
Vanguard: An immortal that shoots rocket clusters onto an area of ground. Pretty powerful, and can be buffed to be even more effective. Not sure if they are worth it though since they are a robo unit, and the other main robo unit has a unique role in your army. You also have Alarak and Ascendants to do AoE as is.
Wrathwalker: A colossus that replaced its thermal lances for a powerful blast of enregy. You can upgrade it to attack air and ground, and later, a faster attack speed. Note that it has a fairly slow attack speed regardless, but it hits very hard. Also has 9 range to boot. Unlike Karax, these don't cost and arm and leg to make.
War Prism: Because being a warp prism isn't enough. It functions like one, but can actually attack while in transport mode. Otherwise, it's main use is to allow you to warp in anywhere you have them.
Photon Cannon: Because each commander needs static defense available.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- Structure Overcharge: temporarily grants any friendly building the ability to defend itself like Photon Overcharge in multiplayer. You can store up to 3 charges at a time. Useful in the early game, and works well in supplementing defense later. Note that you can use it on your ally's structures too.
- Summon Death Fleet: explained later, but it's a summon ability on a long cooldown.
Level Upgrades
1) Soul Absorption: Alarak gains 20 life and 20 shields when an enemy is killed near him. Gives him some ability to sustain himself. This also sacrifices the life of one of your nearby units if Alarak takes fatal damage so he can recover. So in essence, if Alarak dies, that means your whole army was destroyed.
2) Overcharge Amplification: when using structure overcharge, the structure also gains a 200 HP barrier. Helps with defense, so no complaints.
3) Aggressive Tactics - your deadly charge can strike from a further distance, and has a shorter cooldown. Sorely needed since I always felt like I'm waiting on this skill.
4) Death Council Upgrade Cache - unlocks upgrades to grants 25 more shields to supplicants to make them beefier, and the slayer ability to avoid damage for 2 seconds after taking a hit. Both are made to make your standing army last longer.
5) Empower Me: explained earlier, but it's a new ability for Alarak, giving him a lot of power (and I mean a lot in the later game if you build up your numbers).
6) Robotics Bay Upgrade Cache: unlocks the upgrade to the Vanguard's splash area and the Wrathwalker attack speed. Both are useful, the latter even more so. Your anti-air is somewhat limited, and they provide hard-hitting damage against heavy air units.
7) Lightning Surge: basically, when you sacrifice a supplicant, Alarak's next deadly charge is buffed up to do AoE to 4 targets near your primary target. It's amazing once the other upgrade is unlocked for him at level 15.
8) New Unit: Ascendant: Powerful caster. Explained earlier. Strangely I find myself more mineral starved than gas starved, so you should be able to fit some of these in your forces. They do have a normal attack as well, but it does not target air units.
9) Havoc Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades at the cybernetics core, one for increasing the target lock damage and increased range of force field and squad sight. I don't use FF that much, but the buff to the other skills are welcomed.
10) Summon Death Fleet: summons a Mothership and a squad of Destroyers (Tal'Darim void rays) to a targeted location with timed life. Perfect for adding additional punch to an attack or for emergency defense. And they all can attack air targets. The Mothership can use recall to port itself and nearby units to a targeted location. Also gets another ability later. Destroyers are similar to the ones from the campaign with their evil chain lightning attack.
11) Overpowered: just like what it says. Using empower me makes Alarak do AoE with each attack. Yeah.
12) Ascendant Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades to allow psionic orb to travel farther, and allow sacrifice to permanently buff your ascendant's shields and ability damage. It also turns him into an archon (in looks only, but still cool). If you like casters, you'll love this upgrade. Psionic orb can mow through weak units ground and air alike.
13) Burning Skies: your summon death fleet will summon 4 more Destroyers. Your Mothership also gains the thermal lance ability, which does damage across a line that originates from the Mothership itself. It's called a Death Fleet, so it should bring forth death to your enemies.
14) Alarak Upgrade Cache: finally, more upgrades for him. Unlocks the ability to stun with normal attacks (wow), and doubles the knockback from destruction wave. I dunno about the latter since there are some cases where knocking your enemies around may screw up certain things like your ally calldown skills, but the former is very welcomed. Though the knockback also works like a stun, as well as giving your army more distance between them (your Wrathwalkers in particular).
15) Wrath of the Highlord: reduces the cooldown of Alarak's deadly charge and destruction wave abilities when you sacrifice a supplicant. In game it says by 10 and 5 seconds respectively, which I think are almost their normal cooldowns. That means you can spam these a lot whenever Alarak leads the charge.
Pointers
- Photon, I mean structure overcharge, can handle initial attack waves, sometimes by itself. I'd suggest creating a hotkey for abilities like these, since by default the game does not do this.
- You'll be making quite a few suppliants. Consider this in your build order; you don't need to mine gas that quickly.
- A simple go to army composition is Alarak + supplicants + wrathwalkers, with a few havoc sprinkled in there. You might have to build some slayers to start if you desperately need more anti-air capabilities, but Alarak does have a ground-to-air attack, and can use destruction wave to attack air units.
- If you haven't noticed already, he does not have access to stargates. You might want to rely a bit on your ally at first, then later have wrathwalkers or ascendants to help.
- Keep an extra eye on your supply. Supplicants come in pairs, and cost 4 supply each time. You may find yourself supply blocked faster than you expected.
- If Alarak dies, you can warp in supplicants near where he is reviving. He will sacrifice them to gain health to revive faster.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
Abathur (Biomass useful, must collect)
Overview
Abathur is a Zerg commander that appears to be the flipside of Zagara; instead of cheap throwaway units, you build up units in your swarm to increase in power by collecting biomass from slain enemy units. He is also the first Zerg commander that does not directly take a part in your Zerg army, but can supply your team with defenses and support in his own way. He is more like the Zerg version of Swann. He is all about evolution - as the game progresses, your army will evolve into tougher units, or entirely new units altogether. He is also the first pay-to-play commander too.
Units
Roach: Your basic unit. You do not have access to a spawning pool. These also do not cost any gas unlike the multiplayer version, though they do cost 100 minerals each. However you can get their multiplayer upgrades and some extra ones from the campaign, making them useful no matter what build you go for.
Ravager: a morph of the roach, trading a little bit of health for extra range no armor type. They can serve as a siege unit as well as AoE against ground and air. They can serve as anti-air against AI enemies quite well if you get a lot of them. Note that a lair is needed before you can morph ravagers.
Swarm Queen: The HotS campaign queen makes an appearance here. Since you can't make a spawning pool. your queens require a roach warren instead. You cannot inject with them, but your hatcheries can have a higher max amount of larva each (9 I think). Note that they do cost 50 gas a piece. They can also serve as anti-air, since they aren't slow as molasses off-creep.
Swarm Host: They work sort of differently from the HotS campaign and multiplayer. Attack-moving with them will have them stand a good distance away from enemies while spawning locusts even while they are not burrowed. They can also be upgraded to be not super terrible, though I have trouble finding a proper use for them other than wanting variety in a roach/ravager army. Can be upgraded so their locusts can attack air units, and can gain the deep tunnel skill to teleport to any place you have creep.
Mutalisk: Works like the Brood War version believe it or not. They can morph into other air units described below. They can also gain some nifty unique upgrades from the spire.
Guardian: Massive air-to-ground specialist morphed from a mutalisk. Think of a brood lord, but does not fling broodlings, just a strong attack than be upgraded for additional range. You don't need them in every game, but in certain games they are immensely useful for breaking heavy ground units.
Devourer: Air-to-air specialist morphed from the mutalisk. Not quite the same from Brood War, but do pack a punch, and can be upgraded to do splash. Perfect against large air armies regardless if they are armored or not.
Viper: Aerial caster. Insanely powerful with a set of skills useful to pick off single units or disable clumps of units. Though not really necessary, they can be useful in the hands of a good player.
Overseer: Because you need a detector.
Brutalisk: Ultimate evolution of any ground unit. Very massive, powerful unit that can melee ground units and spit at air units. They can also deep tunnel as well (without needing research).
Leviathan: Ultimate evolution of any air unit. Doesn't have the skills of the HotS version, but are amazing on their own anyway.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- Deploy Toxic Nest: place a toxic nest ANYWHERE YOU HAVE VISION. They are not required to be placed on creep. In fact, they generate creep like a creep tumor. They will automatically explode when an enemy walks over them. You can disable this if you want to keep it to maintain creep, which I personally do a lot in situation where I can spread creep quickly. You can hold up to 5 charges (more with mastery levels).
- Mend: Recovers health of all friendly units in a large area. Necessarily to save weakened units. Later upgraded to be doubly useful. It will give a burst heal, and then a heal-over-time. Protoss allies will revover their health, not shields.
Level Upgrades
1) Biomass Harvester: Your units can collect biomass dropped from slain enemies to improve their stats. They can hold up to 100 biomass, in which they gain the ability to undergo an ultimate evolution once unlocked.
2) Ultimate Evolution: Allows units to undergo an ultimate evolution based on whether it is a ground unit (Brutalisk) or air unit (Leviathan). Obvious powerspike since they are amazingly powerful and tanky units. However, you can only have 3 of them at a time; any others will not be allowed to evolve until one dies.
3)Virulent Nests: double biomass from enemies hit by them, and makes them untargetable once fully deployed. Very useful for spreading creep and early defenses.
4) Roach Warren Cache Upgrade: gives Hive tech upgrades for roaches - extra armor when at less than 1/2 health, and improved damage from Ravager bile shots. Decent upgrades based on what you are going for.
5)Improved Mend: allows you to store 2 charges and cuts the cooldown by 30 seconds. Solid power spike, allowing you to be more liberal with the skill's usage. Don't forget you can heal your allies' HP too, and it works on anything.
6) Evolution Chamber Cache Upgrade: allows research for hatcheries and queens. One upgrades allows a double queue for your hatcheries, and the other allows queens to heal a lot more efficiently.
7) Biomass Recovery: Units you own may drop all the biomass they collected upon death. At baseline it's a 50% chance. Not bad, though ideally you wouldn't want them to die at all, though that is sort of hard to avoid as a Zerg player. Can't really complain though.
8) New Unit: Viper: Powerful aerial caster. Can use abduct, disabling cloud (like a superfriendly, more powerful blinding cloud), consume (eat for energy), and parasitic bomb.
9) Infestation Pit Upgrade Cache: upgrades to allow deep tunnel for swarm hosts and a longer stun for the Viper's abduct ability. Deep tunnel is great for quickly defending a position or catching up with an army. The other is more of a gravy upgrade, just to guarantee the abducted unit doesn't get away.
10) Symbiote:Grants all Brutalists and Leviathans a symbiote resembling the ones from Heroes of the Storm (if any of you play that). It looks like some floating hat that will shield it's host as well as attack any hostile unit near it. A simple buff to your heavy hitters.
11) Spire Cache Upgrade: allows research for unique air upgrades. Mutalisks can do double damage to armored units (and don't lose their bouncing glaives), guardians can increase their attack range to absurd levels (though not Tempest range, but still really long), and devourer attacks can become AoE. Not a big power spike, but useful if you can squeeze in these upgrades.
12) Mutagenic Potential: Halves the costs and morphing time of any roach or mutalisk morph. Immensely useful for saving resources (gas in particular). Not much to say but a great level upgrade.
13) Locust Injection: Slain enemy units have a chance to spawn a locust on death. A "win more" level upgrade, but it's passive so I'm not complaining.
14) Roach Evolution: Vile Strain: Roach attacks will now slow their targets by a significant amount in terms of movement and attack speed. Makes roaches very A-move friendly
15) Biotic Leech: Your units can heal every time they attack for 1% of their damage per stack of biomass. Doesn't sound really amazing, but it's free of charge.
Pointers
- Toxic mines augment any defense early on, and can later be used to spread creep anywhere you can see. Abathur will even remind you to use them if you have 5+ charges. Don't forget that your queens can still drop creep tumors - and those don't even cost energy. Work on your creep spread!
- Based on your strategy, you may not need a ton of gas early on. Roaches do not cost gas, and later on, ravager costs aren't extremely gas intensive. Even if you want to focus on air units, try to saturate your mineral lines before taking your expansion's geysers.
- Units that have biomass will grow in size and even start glowing. Keep this in mind if you want to rush to an ultimate evolution. Some builds do not have your massing a ton of roaches; you can simply make a few and focus collecting on those few to reach brutalisk evolutions faster.
- Speaking of biomass, they are dropped when an enemy dies regardless of if you participate or not. If there are any enemy waves that split between your base and your ally's, you might wanna check where your ally fought to see if you can get some free biomass.
- Practice micro with your units. Burrow damaged roaches, move low HP units away before re-engaging, etc. Keeping units alive is very important, especially if you are only building a few units to save money while acccessing an ultimate evolution.
- From my experience I only get gas starved if I go with a heavy air play. Even then, spare minerals should go to roaches if your supply is good.
Abathur is a Zerg commander that appears to be the flipside of Zagara; instead of cheap throwaway units, you build up units in your swarm to increase in power by collecting biomass from slain enemy units. He is also the first Zerg commander that does not directly take a part in your Zerg army, but can supply your team with defenses and support in his own way. He is more like the Zerg version of Swann. He is all about evolution - as the game progresses, your army will evolve into tougher units, or entirely new units altogether. He is also the first pay-to-play commander too.
Units
Roach: Your basic unit. You do not have access to a spawning pool. These also do not cost any gas unlike the multiplayer version, though they do cost 100 minerals each. However you can get their multiplayer upgrades and some extra ones from the campaign, making them useful no matter what build you go for.
Ravager: a morph of the roach, trading a little bit of health for extra range no armor type. They can serve as a siege unit as well as AoE against ground and air. They can serve as anti-air against AI enemies quite well if you get a lot of them. Note that a lair is needed before you can morph ravagers.
Swarm Queen: The HotS campaign queen makes an appearance here. Since you can't make a spawning pool. your queens require a roach warren instead. You cannot inject with them, but your hatcheries can have a higher max amount of larva each (9 I think). Note that they do cost 50 gas a piece. They can also serve as anti-air, since they aren't slow as molasses off-creep.
Swarm Host: They work sort of differently from the HotS campaign and multiplayer. Attack-moving with them will have them stand a good distance away from enemies while spawning locusts even while they are not burrowed. They can also be upgraded to be not super terrible, though I have trouble finding a proper use for them other than wanting variety in a roach/ravager army. Can be upgraded so their locusts can attack air units, and can gain the deep tunnel skill to teleport to any place you have creep.
Mutalisk: Works like the Brood War version believe it or not. They can morph into other air units described below. They can also gain some nifty unique upgrades from the spire.
Guardian: Massive air-to-ground specialist morphed from a mutalisk. Think of a brood lord, but does not fling broodlings, just a strong attack than be upgraded for additional range. You don't need them in every game, but in certain games they are immensely useful for breaking heavy ground units.
Devourer: Air-to-air specialist morphed from the mutalisk. Not quite the same from Brood War, but do pack a punch, and can be upgraded to do splash. Perfect against large air armies regardless if they are armored or not.
Viper: Aerial caster. Insanely powerful with a set of skills useful to pick off single units or disable clumps of units. Though not really necessary, they can be useful in the hands of a good player.
Overseer: Because you need a detector.
Brutalisk: Ultimate evolution of any ground unit. Very massive, powerful unit that can melee ground units and spit at air units. They can also deep tunnel as well (without needing research).
Leviathan: Ultimate evolution of any air unit. Doesn't have the skills of the HotS version, but are amazing on their own anyway.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- Deploy Toxic Nest: place a toxic nest ANYWHERE YOU HAVE VISION. They are not required to be placed on creep. In fact, they generate creep like a creep tumor. They will automatically explode when an enemy walks over them. You can disable this if you want to keep it to maintain creep, which I personally do a lot in situation where I can spread creep quickly. You can hold up to 5 charges (more with mastery levels).
- Mend: Recovers health of all friendly units in a large area. Necessarily to save weakened units. Later upgraded to be doubly useful. It will give a burst heal, and then a heal-over-time. Protoss allies will revover their health, not shields.
Level Upgrades
1) Biomass Harvester: Your units can collect biomass dropped from slain enemies to improve their stats. They can hold up to 100 biomass, in which they gain the ability to undergo an ultimate evolution once unlocked.
2) Ultimate Evolution: Allows units to undergo an ultimate evolution based on whether it is a ground unit (Brutalisk) or air unit (Leviathan). Obvious powerspike since they are amazingly powerful and tanky units. However, you can only have 3 of them at a time; any others will not be allowed to evolve until one dies.
3)Virulent Nests: double biomass from enemies hit by them, and makes them untargetable once fully deployed. Very useful for spreading creep and early defenses.
4) Roach Warren Cache Upgrade: gives Hive tech upgrades for roaches - extra armor when at less than 1/2 health, and improved damage from Ravager bile shots. Decent upgrades based on what you are going for.
5)Improved Mend: allows you to store 2 charges and cuts the cooldown by 30 seconds. Solid power spike, allowing you to be more liberal with the skill's usage. Don't forget you can heal your allies' HP too, and it works on anything.
6) Evolution Chamber Cache Upgrade: allows research for hatcheries and queens. One upgrades allows a double queue for your hatcheries, and the other allows queens to heal a lot more efficiently.
7) Biomass Recovery: Units you own may drop all the biomass they collected upon death. At baseline it's a 50% chance. Not bad, though ideally you wouldn't want them to die at all, though that is sort of hard to avoid as a Zerg player. Can't really complain though.
8) New Unit: Viper: Powerful aerial caster. Can use abduct, disabling cloud (like a superfriendly, more powerful blinding cloud), consume (eat for energy), and parasitic bomb.
9) Infestation Pit Upgrade Cache: upgrades to allow deep tunnel for swarm hosts and a longer stun for the Viper's abduct ability. Deep tunnel is great for quickly defending a position or catching up with an army. The other is more of a gravy upgrade, just to guarantee the abducted unit doesn't get away.
10) Symbiote:Grants all Brutalists and Leviathans a symbiote resembling the ones from Heroes of the Storm (if any of you play that). It looks like some floating hat that will shield it's host as well as attack any hostile unit near it. A simple buff to your heavy hitters.
11) Spire Cache Upgrade: allows research for unique air upgrades. Mutalisks can do double damage to armored units (and don't lose their bouncing glaives), guardians can increase their attack range to absurd levels (though not Tempest range, but still really long), and devourer attacks can become AoE. Not a big power spike, but useful if you can squeeze in these upgrades.
12) Mutagenic Potential: Halves the costs and morphing time of any roach or mutalisk morph. Immensely useful for saving resources (gas in particular). Not much to say but a great level upgrade.
13) Locust Injection: Slain enemy units have a chance to spawn a locust on death. A "win more" level upgrade, but it's passive so I'm not complaining.
14) Roach Evolution: Vile Strain: Roach attacks will now slow their targets by a significant amount in terms of movement and attack speed. Makes roaches very A-move friendly
15) Biotic Leech: Your units can heal every time they attack for 1% of their damage per stack of biomass. Doesn't sound really amazing, but it's free of charge.
Pointers
- Toxic mines augment any defense early on, and can later be used to spread creep anywhere you can see. Abathur will even remind you to use them if you have 5+ charges. Don't forget that your queens can still drop creep tumors - and those don't even cost energy. Work on your creep spread!
- Based on your strategy, you may not need a ton of gas early on. Roaches do not cost gas, and later on, ravager costs aren't extremely gas intensive. Even if you want to focus on air units, try to saturate your mineral lines before taking your expansion's geysers.
- Units that have biomass will grow in size and even start glowing. Keep this in mind if you want to rush to an ultimate evolution. Some builds do not have your massing a ton of roaches; you can simply make a few and focus collecting on those few to reach brutalisk evolutions faster.
- Speaking of biomass, they are dropped when an enemy dies regardless of if you participate or not. If there are any enemy waves that split between your base and your ally's, you might wanna check where your ally fought to see if you can get some free biomass.
- Practice micro with your units. Burrow damaged roaches, move low HP units away before re-engaging, etc. Keeping units alive is very important, especially if you are only building a few units to save money while acccessing an ultimate evolution.
- From my experience I only get gas starved if I go with a heavy air play. Even then, spare minerals should go to roaches if your supply is good.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Protoss and the Archon/Chargelot/Immortal combo
This seems to be the new go-to strategy for Protoss in ZvP. I do tend to run into this more and more.
Protoss open with a few phoenix to harass mineral lines and snipe wandering overlords. This will force a few spores at each base, and possibly hydralisks. Then transition into this strong combination of units and push after getting 3-4 archons.
Zealots will take care of lings and deal upfront damage with charge.
Archons can take a lot of punishment while dealing a lot as well.
Immortals are similar but are more against roaches and ultralisks.
Overall it's a very strong composition right now:
Zerglings can be dealt with by zealots and archons.
Roaches get owned by immortals. Ravagers can force them to move though.
Hydras are too squishy.
Mutas are warded off by archons.
Ultralisks can be countered by immortals.
If they sprinkle in a warp prism it can get pretty dicey.
There are counters to this. Good positioning of zerg units can do well, so where the battles take place is crucial. If zerglings can get to immortals it's not as rough. If you throw in more types of units, you can expect the Protoss too as well:
Lurkers could do well, but you need to snipe observers. Surviving phoenix can lift them, and immortals are tough enough to kill them straight up. Protoss can also respond with disruptors.
Brood Lords do work well too, but are at the very end of the tech tree, and I'd expect the Protoss to be at the end of their tech tree too. That means tempests can be added to snipe your brood lords.
Infestors can help obviously, but how much is not really known; I haven't seen or used infestors against this comp yet. Usually, HT's are added into the protoss comp, and they can feedback any caster you bring. Not to mention storming your army to soften them up as well.
Vipers could be useful in pulling immortals/archons into your army, but that's about it. Nothing in that composition is required to be stationary, so blinding cloud may not be appropriate.
So for now, this seems to be a focus point for mid/late game ZvP. How would you handle this?
Protoss open with a few phoenix to harass mineral lines and snipe wandering overlords. This will force a few spores at each base, and possibly hydralisks. Then transition into this strong combination of units and push after getting 3-4 archons.
Zealots will take care of lings and deal upfront damage with charge.
Archons can take a lot of punishment while dealing a lot as well.
Immortals are similar but are more against roaches and ultralisks.
Overall it's a very strong composition right now:
Zerglings can be dealt with by zealots and archons.
Roaches get owned by immortals. Ravagers can force them to move though.
Hydras are too squishy.
Mutas are warded off by archons.
Ultralisks can be countered by immortals.
If they sprinkle in a warp prism it can get pretty dicey.
There are counters to this. Good positioning of zerg units can do well, so where the battles take place is crucial. If zerglings can get to immortals it's not as rough. If you throw in more types of units, you can expect the Protoss too as well:
Lurkers could do well, but you need to snipe observers. Surviving phoenix can lift them, and immortals are tough enough to kill them straight up. Protoss can also respond with disruptors.
Brood Lords do work well too, but are at the very end of the tech tree, and I'd expect the Protoss to be at the end of their tech tree too. That means tempests can be added to snipe your brood lords.
Infestors can help obviously, but how much is not really known; I haven't seen or used infestors against this comp yet. Usually, HT's are added into the protoss comp, and they can feedback any caster you bring. Not to mention storming your army to soften them up as well.
Vipers could be useful in pulling immortals/archons into your army, but that's about it. Nothing in that composition is required to be stationary, so blinding cloud may not be appropriate.
So for now, this seems to be a focus point for mid/late game ZvP. How would you handle this?
Sunday, January 31, 2016
High Diamond Low Masters (ahem)
Yeah, it's an old, overused statement from back in the day, but it's rare that I can get into dimaond league so quickly after a new season starts. And this came with a patch that nerfed vipers a bit.
I still struggle against a Terran a lot, though my promotion came from a ZvT. Pretty entertaining too: fending off some hellbat/banshee pressure into fighting off early SkyTerran with a crapton of corruptors with hydralisk support surprisingly.
The game immediately placed me at the top of my division too. Don't think that really translates into easy masters.
I still struggle against a Terran a lot, though my promotion came from a ZvT. Pretty entertaining too: fending off some hellbat/banshee pressure into fighting off early SkyTerran with a crapton of corruptors with hydralisk support surprisingly.
The game immediately placed me at the top of my division too. Don't think that really translates into easy masters.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
The state of ZvZ (as of January 2016)
Each mirror matchup seems to have its own set of complaints (TvT is all about tank drops, PvP is disruptor ping-pong). But ZvZ is an entirely different beast in my opinion on how ridiculous it can be. Right now it is almost a coin-flip matchup where early scouting doesn't help and ling/bling wars reign in the early game even more so than HotS and WoL. The matchup in its entirely isn't bad, but I'll sound off on the negatives first.
Because each match begins with 12 workers instead of 6, this means build orders can be executed faster. Notably, the 13/12 is a powerful opener in any ZvZ matchup. If you drone scout to find this, you cannot react fast enough to properly counter-build; you will have most likely already put down your pool or hatchery. At best you'll have to fly overlords in their general direction to see if any rush is coming.
Following this of course is ling and bling micro. Because agression/rushing/whatever you want to call it is prevalent in this map pool, you'll have no choice but to micro your zerglings in every engagement, as well as proper baneling micro to either avoid a huge detonation from your opponent, or not to detonate one of your own to 1-2 enemy lings. Separate your lings and blings into different control groups at the minimum.
OL placement is pretty key too. Usual places include just outside your opponent's ramp, or common pathways to your base. They'll only be in danger of ravagers and mutas for the most part. Queens can shoo off overlords that float too close to a base.
If you can get past the ling/bling stage, the matchup can diversify a bit. Some will get a "safety" roach warren for a few defensive roaches to plug up a choke point against future ling aggression. Others may just focus on mass roaches with some ravagers. The other, older option is mutalisks. Mass mutas was a thing in WoL, then died down in HotS, and is now making a comeback. This is mainly due to changes with the spore crawler. Right now they do bonus damage to biological units, but not as much as the HotS days, so they won't 3-shot mutalisks. While solid counters in the infestor and viper exists, teching to them in a muta vs muta war is incredibly difficult; maintaining a mutalisk flock is very gas intensive, and if your opponent finds out you are slowing down muta production at any time they can just fly in and kill you outright. ZvZ tends to be very snowbally in general, with muta wars being the biggest culprit. The lone expection of slowing down muta production for something else is for the +1 flyer carapace upgrade, because it affects every part of the muta's glaive worm attack.
Upgrades of course are very important too. +1 range attack will allow roaches to kill a zergling in 2 hits. This will ensure the end of the zergling rush phase of the game (not that zerglings can't be useful afterwards; run-bys are still very potent). As mentioned earlier, +1 flyer carapace has huge benefits in mutalisk wars. Speed upgrades for any unit doesn't even need to be mentioned on their importance.
After entering the mid-game, roach compositions can start to include lurkers for zone control. Hydralisks seem like the natural answer to mutalisks for Zergs that prefer to stay on ground, but you need a lot of numbers. They are still just as flimsy as ever, and can still be countered by flanking banelings. Making them to get to lurkers is a different story. Because of their long range they do create positional play in ZvZ matches where both players go this route.
If games get to the late game, ultras are basically the end-all of ground forces. 8 armor really toughens them against all ground units (they deal with Terran bio rather handily, and they have much better DPS than a typical zerg ground force). Mass air could still work, but you have to watch for vipers, because parasitic bomb can absolutely wreck your flock if you don't pay attention even with the impending nerf. Brood lords are still very good as long as you don't require them to fly across the whole map to do some damage.
ZvZ starts off as a blind knife fight in a telephone booth, but has the potential to become very engaging. Thankfully, Blizzard has rescinded on making any nerfs to spore crawlers so ZvZ doesn't return to muta vs muta all the time.
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