Monday, January 18, 2016

Vorazun (EZtoss mode)

Overview
Vorazun is a Protoss commander who focuses on Shakuras-designed units (unsurprisingly).  A combination of striking from the shadows and the spear of adun arguably make her the strongest commander in the game right now.  Even at level 1, she is probably the best option for tackling brutal difficulty missions with proper ability usage.

Units
Centurion: the "dark" zealot.  Initially works like a standard zealot, but can be upgraded later to be a lot more potent at the front lines.

Stalker: similar to the ones in multiplayer.  Can also research the ability to gain shields over time after blinking.

Dark Templar: a lot better than their multiplayer counterpart.  For one, they cost less gas, and also gain some abilities that IMO are just broken.  You can win missions by only spamming these units due to the Shadow Fury ability.  After researching it, DTs can attack all enemy units/structures in a small area by blinking around and slashing them.  It's crazy to watch a legion of DT just wreck whole waves or bases with this ability alone.

Corsair: somewhat similar to the campaign version, but also get an upgrade later for free cloaking.  Sort of OP when massed up; they synergize quite well with certain upgrades.  You can research the disruption web ability which stops any enemy from attacking underneath it.  Very powerful ability, as it lasts a fairly decent time and has a respectable radius.  If you are skilled enough you can take it off autocast and do it manually to get the most out of it.

Void Ray: the other unit you can mass up and tear every enemy down with, especially with upgrades.  Yes, there are some builds where you can rely ONLY on making these, and using calldowns to handle initial defenses.

Oracle: Vorazun's detector.  Don't need to use an ability like revelation or whatever; the unit itself is the detector.  If not for that, I'd say it's more of a fluff unit.  It does have the stasis ward ability which could be useful in delaying enemy waves.

Dark Archon: ground spellcasters.  You don't morph them from combining DT, you just warp them in as normal units.  Very gas intensive, but are rather powerful.  Besides their own attack, they also have some nasty spells like mind control and confusion.  A few in your army helps a lot, but can be focused on since they are not cloaked.

Initial Traits and Abilities
- Deploy Dark Pylon (25 energy): drops down a dark pylon anywhere with vision.  It provides supply and a free cloaking field to anyone near it.  It also has the ability to recall your forces after leveling up a bit.  A bit crazy as it gives you a lot of mobility.  Plant one at key locations can you can bounce around the map.

- Black Hole (25 energy): creates a black hole anywhere with vision that traps all targets within it while it is on the field.  There is no cooldown on this ability it's ridculous.  Any AoE will decimate anything caught in it.  It is so versatile of an ability and I can't understand how it is so cheap to use.

- Deploy Shadow Guard (50 energy): spawns 2 (4 after leveling) Shadow Guard units that last for 60 seconds.  They are essentially beefed up DTs with all abilities unlocked.  They alone can clear the initial wave of any enemy, and can also clear rocks afterwards (or before hand).

Level Upgrades
1) Shroud of Adun: your DT have enhanced shields and cost less vespene gas.  Basically, her DT are tough cookies.  This is just the beginning.

2) Spear of Adun: Orbital Assimilators: your assimilators no longer require probes to harvest gas.  Insane power spike.  You can quickly get 4 gas up and save on probe production with this, funding gas for everything else.  Huge power spike for sure.

3) Shadow Legion: using the Shadow Guard calldown ability spawns 4 units instead of 2.  Doubling the effectiveness of an already powerful skill.  As if she wasn't OP already.

4) Twilight Council Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades at the TC to allow your zealots to stun targets and stalkers to recover shields after blinking.  Both are pretty good, but not really needed either when your composition is mostly DT or VRs.

5) Dark Archon: allows you to warp in Dark Archons once you get a Dark Shrine.  Excellent support casters that can confuse enemies into attacking their own units.  Later gets upgrades to be even more effective.

6) Dark Templar Upgrade Cache: unlocks researchable abilities for your DTs.  Now DTs can blink and disable structures for a limited time.  I didn't mention their shadow fury ability earlier - this doesn't require a level up, and turns DT into killing machines.  Both abilities are gravy at this point.

7) Veil of Shadows: increases shield regeneration of cloaked units by 400%.  This affects units in a dark pylon's radius, helping Protoss allies too.  Seems like a "win more" trait.

8) Spear of Adun: Event Horizon: reduces the armor of units in a black hole to zero.  Just a fluff upgrade.

9) Dark Archon Upgrade Cache: research the ability of mind control and to spawn on the field with full energy.  Makes warp in casters a lot stronger and gives them even more utility to steal big, powerful units.  The former is quite useful, and the latter is somewhat useful, but more gravy since DTs and VRs can usually handle anything that comes their path.

10) Spear of Adun: Time Stop (300 second cooldown): grants you the ability to freeze and reveal all enemy units and structures for a 20 seconds.  Another OP ability to add to her checklist.  Kerrigan's lesser version was already pretty good, but Vorazun's version is map wide and does not require any positioning to use.  It even gets another upgrade at level 14!  Like WTF seriously?

11) Dark Pylon: Recall (60 second cooldown): unlocks the ability for dark pylons to recall forces to it.  Basically, you can call back your forces to any place you have a dark pylon. Theoretically it is super useful, but isn't truly necessary in the current mission map pool, except for Lock and Load where you can quickly defend different locations at a moment's notice.

12) Fleet Beacon Upgrade Cache: unlocks upgrades for stargate units at the fleet beacon.  Corsairs can be permanently cloaked; VRs get a range boost with their damage boost when firing for a longer period of time, and units caught in a stasis ward from oracles can be attacked while stunned.  The first upgrade is nuts, not just because they are cloaked, but another level upgrade later gained.  The VR upgrade is also really nice; it served me well in the campaign, and continues to do so here.

13) Spear of Adun: Emergency Recall: cloaked and burrowed units that take fatal damage are instead teleported back to your main structure (e.g. Nexus).  DTs and corsairs just got a lot more cost efficient.  It includes burrowed units; so Lurkers can benefit from this as well.  Somewhat of a power spike.

14) Spear of Adun: Chronomancy: reduces the cooldown of time stop by 60 seconds, so you can use this OP ability more often.  Great.  Can't say much about it.

15) Strike from the Shadows: 25% damage boost to all friendly cloaked and burrowed units.  A nice top level skill to round off this ridiculous commander :P

Pointers
- She is listed as a commander for experienced players, but I feel like she is the most powerful commander by far.  Even at level 1 she can tackle brutal difficulty without much issue.

- As soon as you reach level 2, you'll probably go with heavy DT compositions and notice you are mineral starved most of the time since DTs only cost 75 gas a piece.  Doesn't seem to hold true for corsair or VR compositions.  In any case, you can incorporate getting 2 (even 4 if you take the geysers at your expansion BEFORE clearing the rocks) assimilators quickly to take care of any gas resource issues.

- My build usually goes 14 pylon, 14 gateway, 14 2x assimilator.  Yes, I go with 14/21 probes on minerals, optimal saturation of a mineral line before your first pylon lol.  Of course this is assuming you are level 2+.  If you are still at level 1, you'll just have to go 14 pylon 15 gateway 15 or 16 assimilator.  When I go DT I try to rush to the DT shrine for the shadow fury upgrade because of how broken that ability is.

- If I build zealots it is because I have extra resources due to trying out an unusual build or macromanagement slip-ups.  Stalkers for emergency anti-air, though dark archons can do nicely in that role.  Mass DT is the prime choice of strategy for Vorazun users for a good reason.

- I always save my initial 50 energy for Shadow Guard.  Use it right when the first wave of enemies appear to clear rocks, then kill off the wave.  If you have spare time, you can use them to break the rocks at your ally's expansion.  If you coordinate well with your ally, you can also use this to guard against waves with a VR build.  Save up 400 minerals too for when you clear your expansion's rocks.

- DT/Sair was a powerful composition in Brood War, and it holds true here as well.  7-8 corsair for d-web, and DTs handle the rest.  If you need more anti-air just make more corsairs or get dark archons.

- Void Ray based comps can also work too.  You just have to ensure you can survive to that point with Shadow Guard or with your ally's help.  Don't have to rush to the Fleet Beacon, but you should eventually save up 300 minerals and 200 gas for it.  VRs do not manually activate their increased damage buff like in multiplayer; it functions like the classic version of focusing on a target for periods of time to get the damage buff.  Even with a VR comp, get 6-8 corsairs to shut down any ground-to-air threats.

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