Overview
Kerrigan is a Zerg commander that has a direct role in coop as a unit, similar to how the campaign in Heart of the Swarm. You build up an army like usual, but she is a unit you control and is the cornerstone of your forces. She can't solo everything like in the campaign, but there is a noticeable drop in power of your forces if she is killed.
Units
Kerrigan: Hero unit you control. Automatically hatches from your main hatchery after a certain amount of time elapses from the start of the mission or after being killed. Possesses abilities for direct combat:
- Leaping strike: self-explanatory; she leaps towards a target area for big damage. You can do two of these in a row at full energy.
- Psionic Shift: dash through a straight path, damaging everything in your way. Preferable against masses of weak units, like marines and zerglings. Again can be used twice in succession at full energy.
- Assimilation Aura (120 second cooldown): creates a large aura around her, where any enemy unit that dies within it will leave behind resources you can pick up. The amount of minerals or gas left behind varies based on what unit was killed. Quite useful for boosting reinforcements after an engagement or starting up an expansion or upgrades sooner.
- Immobilization Wave: gained after reaching a certain level (will describe later).
She also has several passive abilities that are either researched while in a mission or gained through leveling.
Zergling: basic cannon fodder unit that is hatched in pairs. You'll be relying on them early on, and even later as a quick means of bolstering your forces. They die quick, but they can do a large amount of DPS when unchecked. They can get upgrades to make them very powerful as your level.
Queen: a unit that provides macro mechanics and base defense. They function like their multiplayer counterparts, but also gain enhanced creep tumors after a certain level.
Hydralisk: your main source of anti-air other than Kerrigan herself whenever you choose to compose a ground army. They can also serve as the backbone of your forces.
Lurker: an assault unit that burrows to attack. I don't think they are quite the same as their multiplayer counterparts, but they are still pretty good at defending positions.
Mutalisk: your flying general purpose unit. Can morph into broodlords once you get a greater spire. I seldom make these, as base harassment is not something you do on these types of missions. They are pretty fast though.
Ultralisk: large, hulking melee assault units. They can take quite a punch, and do free AOE damage with each attack. They can also be the main backbone of an army late in a mission when supported by hydras or zerglings.
Brood Lord: long range air-to-ground flyers. They are best for besieging bases, but you rarely do that in these missions. In missions where you need to capture and hold an area they could be useful, but they come in at the end of the tech tree.
Overlord (OL)/Overseer: here for completeness sake. A source of detection mainly. Just make a couple of overseers to follow your forces around.
Initial Traits and Abilities
- You get to control Kerrigan herself; that's about it. She'll gain extra powers as you level.
Level Upgrades
1) Mutating Carapace: gains temporary life as she attacks. Reminds me of her passive ability from Heroes of the Storm. Also allows her to auto-resurrect if killed at your main hatchery.
2) Immobilization Wave (300 second cooldown): Kerrigan leaps into the air, then stuns all enemies in a large radius. It's a pretty good ability which is gained very early in leveling. A perfect way to begin an engagement, especially after leaping into the fray. I would consider it to be a power spike, but I would have liked it even more if it wasn't for another certain commander who has the same skill, but is map wide and can be used more frequently...
3) Ravage: doubles Leaping Strike's damage and range. Kerrigan can cover a lot of ground quickly with this, and it allows her to OHKO more units.
4) Spawning Pool Cache Upgrade: allows research for 2 new zergling upgrades. +10 life goes a long way for a zergling, and the armor removal is really good for late game engagements.
5) Unlock Lurker: allows you to morph lurkers from hydralisks after morphing a lurker den from a hydralisk den. I personally don't use lurkers, but I know they can be very useful in defensive missions.
6) Hydralisk/Lurker Den Cache Upgrade: grants the ability to research +20 life for hydras, the frenzy ability for hydras (think stimpack with no downside), and a +3 range upgrade for lurkers (12 range is crazy). A good power spike for those hydra based compositions.
7) Malignant Creep: gives friendly units an attack boost while on creep and 200% more health regeneration. It also allows creep tumors to spread creep faster and farther - it is quite noticeable.
8) Omega Worm: allows a nydus network to create enhanced versions of nydus worms which do not cost anything and deploy units faster. It also allows allies to use them. Very useful in missions where you need to be at different places quickly, but not absolutely necessary in any mission.
9) Kerrigan Cache Upgrade: unlocks traits for Kerrigan that can be researched in an evolution chamber. She can gain a "chain lightning" effect on her basic attack, and reduce cooldowns by 20%. A big power spike even if the former ability was not included.
10) Fury: Kerrigan's attack speed increases as she does consecutive attacks. You gain a 10% speed increase each time, with a max of 60%. You lose it if she does not attack for 5 seconds.
11) Spire Cache Upgrade: Allows mutalisks to do double damage to armored targets, and a big buff to brood lord speed. Nice, but not necessary. The former helps against capital ships quite a bit.
12) Zergling Evolution: Raptor: your zerglings are not permanently enhanced to jump cliffs and leap towards targets. Essentially, they can charge and scale cliffs now. Oh, and addition damage. Power spike for sure.
13) Ultralisk Cache Upgrade: unlocks extra traits for evolution at the ultralisk cavern. Burrow charge lets them get to their target without derping around your army, and the life drain trait helps with sustaining them.
14) Ultralisk Evolution: Torrasque: grants ultralisks the ability to respawn free of charge after death automatically after a certain time period. This can only happen once every so often, so don't send them on suicide missions. This just helps with maintaining ones that fall while in battle.
15) Queen of Blades: simply makes Kerrigan a lot stronger since you can use abilities more often with faster energy regeneration. Also makes it easier to get the achievement for Leaping Strike kills.
Pointers
- If you liked the feel of how HotS missions played, you shouldn't have much trouble adjusting to Kerrigan's playstyle. You have a Hero unit surrounded by your normal army tearing through your enemies with some skills from the HotS campaign and other new ones.
- A standard opener can be 13 OL 15 gas 15 pool. The spawning pool builds quicker than in multiplayer, and the early gas can go to ling speed.
- Usually you'll have to make a few sets of lings to clear out rocks at your expansion site, and either help with initial defense or clearing the rocks of your ally's expansion. They can help Kerrigan later in the mission. She can usually tackle the 2nd and possibly 3rd wave of enemies alone.
- Once you get to Lair tech, be sure to have 1 or 2 overseers at some point, especially if you have a Terran opponent. For some reason they love to have banshees or ghosts sneak into your base can cause havoc. You could also have spore crawlers, but if you are getting nuked they may not be in range to detect them.
- For the most part, you should rally your army to Kerrigan, but keep in mind what path they take to get to her.
- Coop is a great place to practice creep spread. Once leveled, your creep spread is easy and can spread very fast around the map, or at least to main parts of the map.
- Do not forget about her long-cooldown abilities. Both are very key to survival, as one gives you resources to expand your tech/army, and the other can save a bad engagement, or initiate a good one.
- IMO she doesn't have any OMG power spikes as she levels like other commanders, but there are some levels that make life a bit easier, notably at level 2 and 12. Both help with initial defenses.
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