Overview
Karax is a Protoss commander that specializes in mechanical units and powerful defensive structures. Tower defense is totally his thing, as his photon cannons can get some impressive upgrades. As for building an army, he can do it, but there is a huge drawback in that ALL of his units (except probes) cost 50% more resources than other commanders. This makes creating direct support to your ally rather difficult. Fortunately he has ways to cover for this in abilities.
Units
Sentinel: Karax's mechanical zealots. Can be upgraded to auto-revive every 2 minutes. Other than that, they are overpriced zealots to be honest. Emergency units are more of what I'd think of them. Even then, a photon cannon costs just the same, and is more durable. Once you get insta-build cannons, I can't see many situations where I would warp in sentinels instead - just bring a probe and proxy pylon your way into an attack.
Energizer: a sentry like unit that can give a speed buff to friendly units and structures as well as act as pylon power when in phasing mode. Gas intensive, but very useful as a support unit to units and defensive structures.
Immortal: Tough robo unit with the barrier ability to absorb hits. Can also be upgraded to gain the shadow cannon for a very long range, single target nuke.
Colossus: towering siege unit that resembles the campaign version with the upgraded ability to burn the area it attacks. Powerful, but very expensive.
Observer: because every race needs a detector.
Mirage: a variation of the Phoenix. Instead of gaining the ability to pick up more enemy units, it has more defensive capability in that it can avoid damage by phasing out for a short time.
Carrier: capital ship that can repair other mech units after being upgraded. Launches interceptors to attack its target. Like the colossus, very powerful and insanely pricey.
Photon Cannon: listed here since Karax's version is better with the ability to get some good upgrades on them (faster attack speed, better range)
Khaydarin Monolith: these impressive looking towers with crazy range and slow, but powerful strikes are available to Karax. Note that it alone is not a detector, but you should support them with photon cannons anyway.
Shield Battery: replenish the shields of any friendly unit OR STRUCTURE. Also gains a researchable ability to make a barrier for structures to absorb more damage.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- Orbital Strike (5 energy): resembles Artanis' ability, but is different in use. Karax's version has no cooldown, and costs 5 energy to fire once. Overall much more friendly to use, as it also does not bring up that annoying HUD. Can be upgraded later to stun anything it hits. Works great as your primary defense while you are still building up infrastructure.
- Solar Lance (50 energy): similar to the one in the campaign. Fire 3 lasers that sweep in a line where you can dictate where the laser sweeps. Not as impressive as the orbital strike, but can be upgraded for a damage over time as well.
- Chrono Wave (50 energy): increases production of all friendly structures by 200% for 20 seconds. Quite handy for speeding up upgrades or high build time units. Communicate with your ally on when best to use it.
Level Upgrades
1) Orbital Assault: orbital strike only costs 5 energy to use and has no cooldown, but fires only 1 laser. Let me rephrase this: you can spam lasers as long as you have the energy for it. Some strategies involve using this as your offensive tool to support your ally's army. This also means rushing upgrades for your energy too. I'll go into it later.
2) Spear of Adun: Chrono Field: grants you and your ally 15% increased production speed on all structrures. Makes both of you train things faster for free. Pretty nifty.
3) Khaydarin Monolith: unlocks the warp in of these defensive turrets. Powerful, but slow rate of fire. But the immense range is nothing to scoff at. Works against tough, lone high HP targets like ultralisks and capital ships.
4) Twilight Council Upgrade Cache: grants upgrades at the TC for your energizers. They can gain the ability to do a 2-minute mind control on mechanical units (afterwards they simply die), and increased energy regen (400% is a lot). Both are quite useful if you support your ally often with energizers.
5) Spear of Adun: Chrono Overload: Enhances Chrono Wave to boost production of all friendly structures by 500% for 20 seconds. Amazing if you can time it right with your ally. Be sure to communicate with your ally when to use it. Decent power spike for accelerating key upgrades.
6) Forge Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades for your cannons and batteries. Increased range, increased attack speed, and the shield battery ability to construct a barrier for structures. The cannon upgrades are very good to say the least. Another decent power spike.
7) Spear of Adun: Reconstruction Beam: Automatically repair 3 damaged mechanical units passively. Also works with allied mechanical units. So even a Swann ally would benefit a lot. Saves on building replacement army/structures.
8) Solar Forge Upgrade Cache 1: reconstruction beam can repair 4 mech targets at once, and an additional energy upgrade at the solar forge for extra energy regen for the Spear of Adun. The extra regen is quite useful for laser spam.
9) Robotics Bay Upgrade Cache: allows you to research the shadow cannon for Immortals (200 single target damage on anything) and allow Colossi attacks to set the ground of whatever they hit on fire. Both worked pretty well in the LotV campaign, and work well here too. You probably can't afford to make both at the same time though.
10) Spear of Adun: Purifier Beam: gives your a new calldown attack skill. Works like the one in the campaign - a big beam of death you can control or let loose automatically. A good wave clear skill.
11) Khalai Ingenuity: warping in pylons, photon cannons, khaydarin monoliths, and shield batteries is now instant. Wow. Huge power spike. You can optimize your build orders with instant pylons, and even more so with instant production of defensive structures. You can play games without ever making a single unit, and this helps do that tremendously.
12) Solar Forge Upgrade Cache 2: grants more research at the solar forge: your orbital strikes can stun, and your solar lance also sets the ground on fire for extra damage over time. The former is worth it for how often you will use that ability. The latter, well, not so much.
13) Spear of Adun: Purifier Protocol: your purifier beam moves a lot faster, and lasts 5 seconds longer. Sort of unnecessary, as it is quite powerful at baseline. Just makes it a little better at managing.
14) Fleet Beacon Upgrade Cache: grants upgrades to make your Mirages invincible for a moment after taking damage, and carriers to gain repair drones. The latter is amazing, even if carriers cost an arm and a leg to produce.
15) Unity Barrier: grants a 10HP barrier to any newly produced unit from you or your ally. This shield does not stack or regenerate at all. Er, I dunno what to make of this. It doesn't sound impressive, and works best with throwaway units, like marines or zerglings. A flat HP buff only that cannot be recovered once lost. Karax himself doesn't benefit much from it either. Strange.
Pointers
- Karax is mostly a defensive commander, who's strengths are in his defensive structures and abilities from the Spear of Adun. His armies are very expensive to create with that hefty 50% extra cost. It may be a little weird adjusting to his style of play.
- A lot of his power comes from the Spear of Adun, and you should consider rushing upgrades to it. Especially any upgrade that increases energy generation so you can spam lasers more often. You gain the ability to buff it as you level, so you may struggle at lower levels initially.
- If you like tower defense games, then you'll love this guy. His other main strength comes from this cannons. While Swann can build multiple types of turrets, Karax's cannons are the best defense so far in the game.
- Level 11 is a turning point for Karax, since warping in pylons and defense becomes a breeze.
- Usually I tend to rush getting upgrades for energy generation for the Spear of Adun. It's debatable whether that should go first or the cannon upgrades, because those are amazing as well.
- Following up on that, at some points you can forego producing units in the early and mid game. It's possible to just cannon up, support your ally with lasers, and slowly build up a deathball of carriers or colossi. Other times it may be better to build up energizers a bit earlier to support your ally too. Based on your strategy, you may or may not have the gas to do so (IIRC energizers are 175 gas a piece, so don't lose them carelessly).
- His power spikes really define him; it's hard to play on brutal if you don't reach certain milestone levels, especially 2, 6, 8, and 12.
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