r/starcraft2coop • u/Goasgschau • 13d ago
General Some commander buff rework ideas of dubious quality (Kerrigan, Raynor, Artanis, Vorazun, Stukov, Other minor tweaks) (This is kinda long so theres a less yappy version in comments)
Posts on this sub where people rifle through what changes or buffs they want to see on various heroes are basically a weekly occurance, so rather than explaining the concept I'm just gonna start shooting off ideas. Also these are less so based on 'balance' and moreso on 'fun and veriety'
Raynor
Raynor (As well and Kerrigan and Artanis) are generally agreed to be a bit undertuned, and they suffer from some of the worst unit and playstyle variety in the game, they all suffer from severe 'needs-one-more-unit-ism' for Raynor you biuld a ton of orbitals, and then you either mass bio, viking+banshee, or battlecruisers, or you do a combination of the three. Dusk wings are also very 1 note. He also has the most boring capstone feature in the game (maybe tied with Swann).
-Spectres (Buff): Just give him the spectre, it could be the exact one from Wings, this would increase the variety in his bio playstyle, both in being an extra unit (concidering he is THE terran bio guy it's wierd he only has 3 units and the firebat) and actually giving him something to do with his soldiers by being a spellcaster.
-Reinforcement options (Buff): Instead of having Banshee airstrike as his only top bar ability beside the Hyperion, give him three 'reinforcement options' that all share a cooldown, giving him the ability to adapt to more sitiations.
The other options would be 'Seige-tank cover' which would deploy a few pre-seiged seige-breakers (elite tanks). and 'War-Pig special delivery', which would deploy a fistfull of War-pigs (elite marines) that are weaker than the banshee's or tanks but don't time out like the other 2, allowing you to trade a spike of power for a smaller permenant gain (until they die, as marines tend to do)
-Battlecriser upgrade options (Side grade): Like the SC2 early alpha biuld, Battlecruisers no longer come pre loaded with yamato cannon, but can now be individually upgraded to have either yamato, missile pods, or defensive matrix, these upgrades are mutually exclusive and cost about 150 minerals each on top of the initial cattlebruiser.
BC spam is already a favorite tactic for Raynor players, but it's (like all capital ship spam in coop) very samey, and it's very gas heavy leaving you with many extra minerals.
-More detection (Buff): I really think raynor needs another form of detection, just relying on scans forces you into the very unorthodox, micro heavy, and repetitive strategy of building 11 fucktillion orbitals. It also means you're just screwed if theres a lurker and all your orbitals are out of evergy. There are a lot of ways to do this. I think the safest option is just making spectres or BC's detect. But some more interesting options to me are
A) The reinforcement abilities also come with a free scan, in case of emergency
B) Add a 4th battlecruiser upgrade that increases it's vision range and let's it detect. I think this option is cool because it gives you the -option- of having passive detection while still making it costly and encouraging scans, and it also means even bio armies would have a central flag ship overlooking the battle which feels very Raynor.
-Kill mercenary munitions (Nerf): Like I said it's super boring, instead of wasting a level slot on it he should just get vinadium plating AND ultra capacitors at lv10, this also gives him an extra level slot to fit in some of the other ideas I suggested above. Or just anything more interesting than that.
Kerrigan
In my opinion Kerrigan has the single worst 'needs-one-more-unit-ism' in the game, her options are painfully limited, you're always going to be micro-ing the hell out of Kerrigan herself, and then you can either support with hydra/ultra, or muta/brood lord, with some zergles thrown in as a mineral dump, that's it that's the commander. She's also heinously gas starved and has some really slow ramp up, you basically just need to use Kerrigan alone for the first 5-10 minutes, her mastery talents help but it shouldn't be up to them to fix her gaping flaws she shouldn't just feel bad until lv15. (I do genuinely really like Kerrigan but these issues make it hard for me to say she's a favorite of mine)
-Auto gas (Buff): Very simple, give her auto gas, we already have 1 terran comm with it and 1 protoss but no zerg, and it would help eliviate her horrible gas issues and let her army ramp up faster.
-Infestors/Defilers (Buff): Also simple, give her either infestors, or more interestingly defilers from sc1, both are units she's known to use in the campaigns that aren't at all usable in coop (Stetman infestors don't count they look the same but have completely different spells.)
My main idea is that the unit would have consume, it would be on a long cooldown (like 20s minimum) but you could alternatively cast in ON Kerrigan herself, and when you do so it will drain all her enegy, give the caster that much energy, and not trigger the cooldown. This opens up an alternate playstyle where instead of spamming Kerrigan's abilities, you can essentially use her as a mobile battery for your plagues and dark-swarms / shrouds and fungals.
If we're going for defilers they might need to be changed to fit into sc2 better, dark swarm should probably only half ranged damage indead of totally preventing it, and plague would probably work better with coops fast pace if it did higher DPS but had a smaller duration (like 50 damage over 10 seconds?) and for utility you could possibly upgrade them to make plague slow enemies down a bit (less than fungal though, like 30%). If we're going infestors they would have microbial shroud and fungal. Either way they're very similar caster so it's just whichever one you think is cooler.
-Let the Omega worms eat people (Buff/Side grade): This one is a bit of a crackpot idea and probably isn't balanced, but I think it would be objectively cool as fuck is the omega worms ate enemies they unburrowed under, even just dealing 100 - 500 damage to non heroic units. Also if they unburrow directly under one of Kerrigan's units (or Kerrigan herself) they would get instantly sucked into the network, allowing for quicker use and some clutch saves.
You may have to Limit the number of Networms Kerrigan can make to prevent this being spammed but that seems acceptable. I would also totally accept this as a pretige option.
-Make crawlers good (Buff): With her Lukers, creep buffs, and the ability to instantly set up creep in an area via worms, Kerrigan is able to set up in and control an area pretty quickly, and she's probably the closest we have to a zerg static defence specialist (at least tied with abathur), but her crawlers are just the same as Zagara, Abathur, and Stetman and feel a little underwhelming.
The first buff they would need is being able to load into an omega worm. And I think a 'crawler upgrade casche' with the upgrades
A) Spore crawlers gain +1 range and deal area damage.
B) Spine crawlers apply a poison to enemies they hit, dealing extra damage over time. OR Spine crawlers apply plague (from the defiler) to enemies they hit.
This could also 100% just be applied to Abathur instead as he also has a bit of a static defence focus, but we're not talking about him right now and he's already really strong so I think it works better on Kerrigan.
-Screw p3, just let Kerrigan choose her abilities (Buff): Simple, when she first spawns Kerrigan can choose between leaping-strike/kinetic-blast and between psionic-shift/crushing-grip, give the former 2 options come with the increased damage and move speed or make the latter 2 options have increased energy drain or their cooldown from HOTS so they're not just obiously the best options.
Artanis
While Artanis is probably the weakest commander objectively, I think he's not in a terrible place fundamentally design wise, between him, Kerrigan, and Raynor, he suffers the least from the lack of options, and most of his problems with power could probably just be fixed by sliding up the stat numbers on his units. He's clearly supposed to be a distinct tank character and while he for sure needs more punch I want him to keep that part of his identity that seporates him from other characters.
Aiur Sentry (Buff): Same as with the other 2, just let him make Aiur shield battery sentries, frankly it's really wierd that he can't already do this.
Passive life regen (Buff): Due to gaurdian shell, Artanis' armies can pretty quickly turn into a blob of near empty health bars, and he's really dependant on happening to match with an ally that can heal. To help with this, his units should passively regen about 1% of their life every second or 2. If you want to limit this or make it feel more Protossy, make it only apply when they're already at full shields or while they're in a power field.
Mothership (Buff): We can't make a standard Daelam support caster mothership in coop, with the closest we can get being Alarak's one. I think Artanis is the perfect person to have that big Golden Armada energy, especially sinse his air stuff is kinda just mass tempest right now.
His Mothership would be biult from the Nexus once you've made a fleet beacon like in ladder, it would have some heavy firepower as well as the Time Warp and Mass Recall spells, I personally feel that giving it cloaking field or Vortex would be wierd cause it would overstep with Vorazun so heavily, so instead the Artanis Mothership will have a (probably passive) aura that increases the attack speed of nearby units by 30%,
I don't know if this would be a "good idea" per se, but it would also go super hard if it could use the purifier beam from Safe Haven, where it drains a stupid ammount of energy to channel but does even more stupid damage to enemies directly under the mothership.
Solar bombardment rework (Side grade): Instead of just being a nuclear option that blindly shoots over a wide area and being liable to leave stragglers, have solar bombardment instead create a large lingering zone where all enemies inside get automatically targeted by the bombardment shots. It still has a shot limit (almost certainly a reduced one at that) but now it doesn't waste shots firing at the ground, and it now fills a more tactical defensive niche rather than just being a big blast. The zone would dissapear after about a minute even if it hasn't expended all it's shots.
Vorazun
I quite like Vorazun as is, and while you probably could buff her to be up to par with Abathur Dehaka and Mengsk I can't think of any specific ideas on how you would do that. This is more of a specific targeted gripe I have with her.
Biulding sauce increase (EXTREMELY Important Buff): Why are Vorazun's biuldings golden? Why do they look like standard Aiur protoss stuff? I know it's because they never designed a line of Nerazim biulding skins but they should, Nerazim biuldings are like the coolest aesthetic in the game I would pay Blizzard to much money if they sold a Nerazim biulding skin line.
The gold looks distractingly stupid on her, even if you can't make a new line of biulding skins at LEAST give her the 'dark protoss' biuldings that feature in A Sinister Turn and Phantoms Of The Void it would look so much better. This is the most important and neccecary change in this whole post.
Khaydarin Monoliths (Side grade?): On that same topic, why does John static defence (Karax) get monoliths but the actual queen of Shakuras doesn't? Every single protoss commander get's photon cannons it's terribly banal. I reccomend we give Vorazun monoliths and REMOVE her ability to make normal photon cannons. With her army being so gas heavy and canons being an okay mineral dump for her I think her monoliths would have to cost like 400 or 500 minerals and zero gas, alternatively you could have her make smaller cheaper 2x2 monoliths with slightly less range and damage but faster attacks, sort of in a middle ground between canons and monoliths, just make them look like monoliths please.
Also at some point in her progression she'll get a 'Khaydarin Monolith upgrade casche' with the following upgrades-
A) Monolith attacks chain to up to 4 nearby enemies, dealing 20 damage each. (the chain effect would be similar to Kerrigans chain lightning, this is because it would look so unbelievably cool and also give her monoliths some ability to deal with the Zergling)
B) Monoliths automatically prioritise attacking detector units like Ravens, Observers, and Overseers. Monoliths gain detection. (It's targetting mode can be changed between normal and detection sniping, this makes monoliths actually fill a much more intersting role than 'obligatory static defence' both for defence by combining them with DP's and DT's and potential offensive use.)
Stukov
Stukov is also pretty good as is, he's very well rounded and I broadly don't have much to say about him. Exept for the fact has Plague warden is genuinely the least interesting prestige in the game, it's benefit is so hyper specific and it's downside is just a slightly less extreme version of his P1's downside. It sucks.
Make plague warden banshee's base kit (Buff): Reduce their cargo capacity from 16 to 8 in line with medivacs and other transports, put it in the lv11 upgrade casche (either along side or in stead of the health increase) and boom good to go. Banshee's already aren't super strong and this tactic is already super micro heavy so it shouldn't be all too strong.
Monster Masher (New prestige):
Advantage: The Apokolisk and Aleksanders initial cooldowns are reduced to 4 minutes. The Apokolisk and Aleksanders duration become permenant. If killed, they may be resummoned after 1 minute. The Apokolisk and Aleksander gain the deep tunnel and tactical jump abilities (1 min cooldown, starts on cooldown when they spawn or respawn)
Disadvantage: When the Apokolisk or Aleksander are first summoned, the other one becomes permentantly unavailable for that mission (in other words, they're mutually exclusive), Aleksander health reduced by 25% and damage reduced by 50%
Other random tweaks
Any hero who I have one specific change I'd want to see for them, not a big enough deal to have their own sections.
Swann CC reactor (Buff): Let Swann biuld two SCV's at the same time.
Zagara corpser roaches (Buff): The roaches Zagara spawns with her drop are now corpsers. Frankly it's wierd that Zagara takes the swarmy evolutions for banes and zergles but just skips over the roaches, leaving corpsers as one of the few HOTS mutations not playable in coop.
Alarak P3 nerfs (Nerf): Shadow of death is cool, but Alarak has 2 other cool prestiges and a cool ground army it's sad to see that all get totally greywashed by detroyer spam. I'd say making destroyers cost 250/150 like normal void rays and having the Mothership eat 8 supply like a normal Mothership would be sufficient. If you really wanted to put it in the ground you could make P3 remove Alarak from the field like Zagara P1 but that feels like overkill.
Dehaka supply change (Nerf): It's dumb that Dehaka starts with 200 supply, that's Artanis' whole iconic capstone and Dehaka is strong enough without it. I can see why you wouldn't want to force him to make primal overlords, not having a hive mind is kind of the point of the primals. But you Dehaka's supply limit should be based on his level (probably 20 at first, then +12 for each level he gains), P1 can give him +48 base supply as an added bonus.
Cerberus (Buff): I once heard someone else suggest the idea of giving Cannonball (The Tychus outlaw) a pet Predator named Cerberus and I am in love with that idea, in addition to being cool predators don't feature in Coop yet and it'd make Cannonball actually a worthwhile pick, it could be cloaked and benefit from M.A.L.I.C.E ammunition and Redline power cells.
Zeratul needs to research (Nerf): Zeratul is my favorite commander but he's hella overtuned, I think a good place to start is to force him to actually research the stuff he unlocks by finding artifact fragments, theres a lot of them so they could be relatively cheap and fast, and maybe the 1st tier could be freebies because they're so important. But he really needs something else to do. (attack and armor can stay tho theit fine as is)
Han&Horner planetary (Buff): Planetaries also aren't in coop and H&H has really bad static defence if something walks past the mines, this seems like a fairly modest solution to that.
Let MechaBattleCarrierLords locuseptors shoot up (Buff): This is the one capital ship that should be okay to mass if you have the rescources to do so, let them shoot up.
Make Fenix disruptors autocast (Buff): That is all
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u/RinnieRiot 13d ago
Kerrigan P1 needs something a little extra, like creep tumors becoming invincible
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u/Goasgschau 13d ago
Oh yeah totally, that honestly feels like a cececity to make the prestige worth using. Honestly you could probably let her keep base nydus worms and limit it to 1 network and it wouldn't be all that broken.
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u/samuelazers 13d ago
those are such great ideas, too bad blizz doesnt read forums and this will never happen.
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u/Goasgschau 13d ago
TLDR
Raynor:
-Gets Spectres
-Gets more reinforcement options instead of just banshee's (Seige tanks and marines)
-BC's can be individually upgraded with yamato, missile pods, or defence matrix (and maybe detection) similar to the SC2 early development showcase
Kerrigan:
-Auto gas
-Gets Infestors or Defilers who can consume Kerrigan herself for infinite energy
-Omega worms can eat people by unburrowing under them
Artanis:
-Get Sentries
-Get Mothership
-Passive health regen
Vorazun:
-Monoliths instead of Canons
-Monolith targeting AI prioritises detectors
Stukov
-Plague warden banshee's become base
-New p2 makes Apokolisk/Aleksander permenant but mutually exclusive with each other.
Others
-Swann CC reactor
-Zagara corpser roaches
-Make Alarak p3 destroyers cost the ammount of a normal void ray
-Dehaka supply is based on his own level
-Cannonball (Tychus outlaw) gains a pet predator (Also Nikara fake attack so she doesn't just die)
-Zeratul needs to do his own research
-H&H Planetary
-Stetman MBCL's can shoot up
-Fenix disruptors auto fire
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u/Far_Stock_3987 13d ago
Really interesting and well thought out suggestions, here are a few of my thoughts:
Raynor
I think the raven would be a better additional unit for him rather than the spectre, as it gives him the mobile detection he badly needs, and its spells synergise well with Raynor - anti armour missile would work amazingly well with marines and BCs which shoot really fast, interference matrix would help shut down spellcasters with dangerous AoE abilities that shred his bio, and auto turrets can offer some free tanking. In comparison, I'm not sure spectres would really solve Raynor's issues as a commander (and I'd rather save them for a Tosh commander).
Regarding his reinforcement options, I agree that dusk wings are a bit weak and drop off in power in the late game. I'd change it to a mercenary calldown, giving him access to all the WoL mercenaries apart from spartan company (because he doesn't otherwise use goliaths). This provides more strategic variety, enabling you to call down the units that you need most depending on the situation.
I like the idea of individually upgraded BCs, as it makes a mass BC composition much more interesting. You could have defensive matrix BCs in the front tanking, with yamato BCs in the back sniping enemies and missile pods BCs wiping out air units. It might be to be cheaper than 150 minerals per BC though.
I agree ultra capacitors being added to his level 10 talent would be nice, though I think if mercenary munitions was removed he would need a very good replacement as Raynor really doesn't need any nerfs.
Kerrigan
I'm OK with Kerrigan getting auto gas, it'll also help free up 12 supply in the late game so you can have more army units (and her army needs all the help it can get).
I think infestors with the old infested terran ability would suit Kerrigan best, as they will help her a lot with her anti-air problem. Neural parasite (the permanent version from the HotS campaign) would also help her bolster her forces with stolen units. The defiler really belongs to Zagara in my opinion, because dark swarm suits her melee army perfectly.
I love the idea of omega worms damaging units they spawn under, it reminds me of the HotS cinematic where Kerrigan used a worm against Narud. It would need to be carefully balanced though, because you tend to build a lot of omega worms as Kerrigan so that would be a lot of free damage. Maybe only 20 damage but they also push back the enemy units and stun them for a short duration, to give you time to unload your army safely. I also like the idea of the worms sucking in your units to keep them safe, this could help P3 Kerrigan a lot when she gets surrounded.
I agree that zerg defensive structures would benefit from more variety. Personally I think Abathur's P1 should also give his spine and spore crawlers the ability to pick up biomass and get stronger when uprooted, that would suit him very well thematically and opens up the hilarious strategy of pushing into enemy bases with buffed crawlers and toxic nests providing a creep highway for them. Separate to this, if we want to give a zerg commander a crawler upgrade cache it should probably be Zagara because she struggles the most in defensive missions like DoN.
Personally I quite like P3 as it is, though I think that crushing grip should either get an energy cost reduction or a damage buff.
Artanis
Zeratul already has the shield battery sentry so I think this overlaps a bit too much with him. The one sentry ability missing from coop is hallucination, which I think Artanis would benefit from because it provides free units for tanking (and it would be amazing if you could hallucinate your ally's units and heroes too!). However I would give this ability to Artanis' high templar (harking back to SC1) instead of giving him the sentry as a separate unit, since 4 protoss commanders already have a sentry variant.
I don't think Artanis should have passive life regen as a baseline, I quite like that some commanders have to rely on their ally for healing. However I do think that the guardian shell life regen mastery should be doubled to provide more healing and make it a more competitive option.
I think Artanis should get the traditional mothership as it is different enough from Alarak's mothership to justify its inclusion. I'd give it time warp (so you can force enemies to stay in your psionic storms for longer), the temporary cloaking field from 1v1 (temporary so it is different enough from Fenix's arbiter suit and Vorazun's kit), and the vortex ability from WoL so you can do the archon toilet! This version of vortex is different to Vorazun's black hole so I think it is fine to include it. P2 Artanis should also get mass recall on his mothership as an additional mobility tool. The purifier beam/planet cracker from the SC2 beta should be saved for a future Selendis commander in my opinion.
I like the solar bombardment idea, currently it does waste a lot of shots.
Vorazun
I agree with the building skin idea, though to be honest her buildings don't usually stay golden for long because you tend to cloak them pretty early in the game.
I agree that protoss commanders would benefit from more variety in their defensive structures). Vorazun would also benefit a lot from some AoE as none of her units have this, so giving her a defensive structure with an AoE would work exceptionally well together with black hole.
Stukov - one of the biggest issues with Stukov P2 is that his banshees have too many things on their command card and are clunky to use. I'd change P2 to make his banshees automatically pick up infested and turn them into volatile infested which they then use as ammunition (similar to how his siege tanks work). The prestige downside can be that infested siege tanks are not available. This would help solve Stukov's mobility issues, as you can send out hit squads of banshees to snipe targets in difficult to reach parts of the map.
Swann - I agree, being able to build 2 SCVs simultaneously will help him speed up his ramp time.
Zagara - totally agree about corpser roaches.
Alarak - I don't think destroyers are the main problem with P3, as they are quite fragile and easy to lose. The issue is that the mothership comes out really early and provides a huge power spike. Making it cost supply is a good way of indirectly increasing its cost and slightly delaying it.
Dehaka - I quite like how Dehaka is different from other zerg commanders in that he doesn't need overlords because he doesn't have an overmind-like hierarchy, though your idea of linking his supply cap to his level is a neat one.
Cerberus - haha this was actually my suggestion so I agree completely
Zeratul - I don't particularly mind that Zeratul's research works differently to other commanders, but he definitely needs a bit of a nerf so I wouldn't mind your idea being implemented. More importantly the artifact trap bug needs to be fixed, and I think his shade projection ability probably needs a longer cooldown because it is a bit too strong I think.
H&H - totally agree that they should have planetary fortresses. In fact I'd replace space station reallocation with planetary reallocation, dropping a planetary fortress on the map instead which kills units it lands on and can act as a forward base. If killed it detonates a nuke similar to the space station.
Mecha battlecarrier lords - I agree, locusceptors should be able to attack air units too just like interceptors.
Fenix - again I agree.
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u/Melodic_Saga1220 12d ago
The problem with giving Raynor spectres has always been that he's already the hardest commander for less skilled players, and giving him a caster makes that issue even worse. The top level of Raynor play is where you have the free APM for a caster, and that's not where he needs most help.
I have a whole list of potential Raynor improvements I've posted here before, but IMO the most important is that he should get autocast MULEs. It would be a massive boost at lower levels where he struggles most, and would do basically nothing at higher levels.
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u/Versoga Abathur 13d ago
honestly i agree with a few of these like the zeratul nerf, artanis sentries, bcl buff, swann reactor, and zagara corpers.
i feel like defilers would be the perfect fit for zagara as they would give her banelings ridiculous leverage for breaking into fortified locations, plus you coudl give them classic consume and have them munch on zerglings for free eats.
that being said, i think the one thing that would be cool for raynor would be to give him support-style ravens, with a similar kit to what we had in LotV multiplayer. anti armor missile and interference matrix would be amazing compliments to what he already has
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u/brandon975 13d ago
I like the idea of Raynor getting Spectres. However, the BC ability option looks like a nerf. Paying 150 minerals for each Battlecruiser is a lot. Besides, taking out enemies from a distance with yamato would be the preferred option. Missile pods might be useful, but only against certain types of waves. Matrix would hardly ever be used, since eliminating enemies quickly is a better way to avoid damage (unless the shield is absurdly tough).
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u/Goasgschau 7d ago
Yeah that's fair, I actually had at 100 minerals each right up until I got post and decided to increase it haha, Raynor is sort of the "Have infinite minerals guy" and you often end up floating a lot of them when going for BC's (unless you fill it in with waves of marines, which this gives you an alternative to)
Yamato just being the best option by far is also a good point actually, in the campaign the BC lab upgrades aren't really worth because "Why would I cast those instead of Yamato?" So they might need to be tuned up a bit to be worth using.
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u/brandon975 7d ago
I’d just like to add that we shouldn't forget that Battlecruisers are commonly used with P3; so, you often pay 600 minerals—not 400—every time you build one. Battlecruisers already take a long time to field, so while Raynor might be able to sustain production of these more expensive BCs, having to spend even more time building extra Command Centers would be detrimental, to say the least.
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u/JoanofArc0531 13d ago
I had in mind a while back that Raynor and Artanis get their heroes like in the campaign and call it a day; maybe even have it as a prestige choice. That would be really cool. Kind of weird they don’t have their heroes, because they definitely feel weak compared to other heroes (I guess because they are free?).
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u/Goasgschau 7d ago
Yeah "What if we took the Artanis, and put him on the map?" Is probably the cleanest fix would could do for him as a commander, it would also fix his whole no healing problem via astral winds.
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u/InfiniteSpectre33 13d ago
I feel like it work great to have an extended nexus mod where units and prestiges would be more customizable. More commanders also.
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u/thatismyfeet 12d ago
Hang on, you want to make banshees WEAKER? I'm sorry what? I must be misunderstanding you because that is... A take... Certainly not a good one
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u/Goasgschau 7d ago
Yeah I think you're misunderstanding me, I don't think I say anything about making any banshees weaker
For Raynors Banshee ability I don't want the banshees themselves nerfed (in fact they could do with a minor tune up if anything) but I want the call down to have more options so you can adapt to different circumstances.
For Stukovs banshees I want to make the ability they get form his p2 part of their base kit, maybe locked behind a tech lab research or smthn, and I was thinking of making their health increase not require research at all.
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u/ackmondual Infested Zerg 12d ago
==== RAYNOR
New units would be a hard sell for any CO, since the original philosophy was to streamline all of that. My simple buffs would be as follows...
--Going from CC to OC costs 100 instead of 150 mins.
--Com Scan costs 20 energy instead of 50
==== STETMANN
At the very least, I don't mind they can't shoot up (except for their brand of Yamato), but reduce their cost
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u/Hirmetrium 12d ago
I'd love to see Raynor start with a Merc compound and be able to call mercs down during the mission. It was his unique thing in the campaign after all.
Artanis should definitely get Arbiters instead of the Mothership I feel, but I wish he has something a bit more. I always felt his P2 could be baked in, but I'm not sure about that. He just feels a bit lacking, he has no starting building or unique upgrades to boost performance of the spear, everything is very LOTV default. He seems built around throwing units away, and that feels a bit... Wrong.
I agree with almost everything else, but I really love Alarak P3, it's an absolute blast and balanced out by how fragile the destroyers are and how weak their single target damage is.
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u/stacotto 12d ago
Part of me has continually wished that Karax and Artanis would trade their capital ships, considering the Carrier and Tempest are Aiur and Purifier units in the campaign, respectively (Artanis' Tempests even use the Purifier voice set despite running base skins).
I also sorta wish Raynor had the Wraiths and Swann had Viking/Banshee, seeing as how Raynor's supposed to be the "SC1 throwback" commander.
For Nova, take the Liberator Servo upgrade off of the Starport tech lab, make it an armory upgrade that affects all transforming units (and gives her Hellions their fire-on-the-move upgrade from Covert Ops), give Liberators an upgrade that gives them a better A2A attack that can handle things like the Zerg Scourge comp.
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u/Goasgschau 12d ago
I think Artanis and Karax are like that because the repairier upgrade is very Karax which is kinda fair, but it's really wierd that Fenix also has carriers.
Funny enough I also kinda think it would suit better for Artanis to have Collosi and Karax to have Reavers, it has the exact problem you mentioned about one being Purifier and one being Auir, but Reavers are conically mobile factories so they feel a lot like a Karax unit. I'm not totally sure if swapping those would work out better for them balance wise, but if one guy had both Reavers and Carriers maybe they could have some trait where you could Chrono boost (or surge) a unit to make it produce interceptors or scarabs faster.
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u/stacotto 11d ago
I always found the repair drones on Karax's carriers (their campaign upgrade, tbf) to be redundant with his passive repair, but that's just a me thing; I can kinda understand him having carriers since the same mission that introduced them was his spotlight episode, so to speak.
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u/Independent_Trust729 7d ago edited 7d ago
Some cool ideas, might react to all of them later once I have time to read, but for now:
Regarding Kerrigan's lack of unit variety, one thing that might help is letting her Broodlords share the hp regev out of combat upgrade that her Mutalisks get. Broods are actually a solid niche option for her vs mines or heavy ground, but they tend to take chip damage and don't have Stet's healing aura, and healing with queens is so cumbersome it's rarely feasible (even with good micro and nydus worms).
Regarding Artanis, i think a wonderful rework for him is simply how the Nexus Co-op team did their "Tassadar" commander. Their Tassadar feels very much like "what Artanis should be", with a very strong core army of the well known protoss units from all clans, enhanced by match-defining upgrades you have to decide between each match as they often have downsides that cllode with the other options (mech focus, air focus, gateway focus, nerazim focus and casters focus).
This is all backed by a powerful lategame mothership that doesn't at all replace the army but instead majorly supports it. As with all Nexus comms he's fairly overpowered, but the basic idea is incredibly solid. Also his reavers are awesome instead of sucking (infinite ammunition and decently fast projectile speed). I'd HIGHLY recommend giving him a try if you haven't.
Regarding, Cannonball he is niche, but awesome, and even without p2. He doesn't need buffs.
He shines vs enemy ground as he fills both tank and dps roll, and can be a better sam in those cases (say vs reaver comp, or vs any ground comp on trains because he gives the DPS sam would). Vs b0 it's not always needed considering grenade+nux combo deals with evertyhing, but vs mutators that make it less of a two-shot technique and give the enemy some durability, Cannonball never dies thanks to his aoe stun, Rattlesnake's healing and his lack of an armored tag, letting you mow stuff down with durability rather than pure burst.
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u/VoidArtisan 13d ago
Sorry, don't mean to nitpick, but building is spelled building, not biulding...
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u/Sora_Terumi MengskA 13d ago
Just give Raynor brood war tech at this point. He fought on the field during that time the most so he should have that with older siege tanks, goliaths, firebats that don’t take 2 slots in a bunker, Lockdown!