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.
No comments:
Post a Comment