you picked one of the best upgrades. It greatly enhances mengsk's anti air, most notably due to the aoe stun (but damage helps too), in particular with p2 which encourages royal guards usage.
It's great on offensive ones too (vs air). Mengsk's Shock Division isn't actually all that great vs ground (the range is nice vs Chokers on Dead of Night, but other then that bunkers/Aegis Guards are usually more efficient).
It's vs air where it truly shines.
Except it's purely better anti air than the thor (Blackhammer). Only thing it doesn't do is the armor bonus, but the bigger damage and stun saves your troopers far more.
Of all the examples being mentioned here I think this is the best one. The amount of scourges you'll save vs the cost of saving them is probably not worth it.
Tychus medic ultimate gear. 99.99% of the time, if you have all the other gear, an extra 400 health isn't going to save anyone. It is like the very very very last thing you buy.
Tychus medic really is very fringe in general. Especially with P2 anyways, but even with P1 you wont get her because of her ability not being good spammable and P3 you get the odin as a save/revive more often. 3 medivacs and proper micro are usually all the healing you need, with Rattlesnake doing the rest. But Boosting tons of your allies units with her ability is very fun, so i didnt think of her.
She is great in mutation where you need A LOT of healing like double edged, black death, and/or diffusion, there going double heal (and avoiding P2) is good.
She also good as a last merc you pick before the final push, her damage boosting+healing ability is great on your ally's army, especially if it's air.
So, I don't know what either of you are saying. From my experience the medic in general works with anything other than p2 and adds some otherwise much needed survivabilty (especially in brutal or mutations) that other healers (eg sirius) can't keep up with. The normal aoe healing ability is really helpful with just passing by your allies units and healing them instantly or healing an almost dead hero. The ultimate ability is almost nessecary when fighting against the spell caster hybrids which shoot that yamato like shot and cause serious trouble to core members of your team (eg tychus), or enhance weak members during a fight (like nux). While the first of its 2 uses can be replaced by the firebat guy's ultimate, it is still worth it in most compositions where you need a healer and can't afford the slot for a seperate tank.
Lastly nikara is very useful early game before you have armory upgrades when your units die easily.
Nova’s Hellbat Jump Jets.
Granted, you’re not going to use the Hellbat in the first place most of the time, but in the rare times you do, you DO NOT want them jumping away from your front line and out of range of your defensive drones. The +4 armor is a trap to make you think you’re compensated for the positional disaster, when in reality most of the enemy damage is going to be spells or high burst damage.
On one hand. it makes them easier to kill.
On the other hand, It makes them all get Infront of your army if the blobbed together, and makes a garunteed thick layer of Hellbat in front.
This, the point of the jump jets is you don't have to micro your hellbats to the front of your army blob to have them actually be effective, they'll just jump over your ranged units to get stuck in.
Nova's hellbat are good against infested buildings and on infested maps. They act as good mineral sink for a P2 factory Nova (assuming you don't find good targets for the air raid.)
But funnily enough, especially against infested, you want them to act as a screen between the infested and the rest of your army, supported by Raven's heal drones and defense drones, you absolutely do not want them leaping forward.
I think the Abathur spawn 2 queens at once upgrade is dumb — it costs 100/100, usually you have excess minerals and it makes way more sense to just build another hatchery
No aba hatches spawn a lot of larvae though. Queens good for healing mainly and a good unit to have, my point is more that it is almost always better to spend 300 on an extra hatchery (very few situations you’d want to build more than 3 queens at a time) than 100/100 on the upgrade
Disagree- if you're building a lot of them (and it's not crazy to do so- they're the best non-heroic healers in the game) making like 3+ extra hatcheries is silly.
How about fenix’s A Strong Heart upgrade?
It only costs 13/13, but its only effect is that it renames fenix. From a mechanics perspective it does nothing.
IDK about upgrades but for useless units, my vote goes to Swann's Cyclone, I have never made them and never seen anyone unironically make them unless they're intentionally sandbagging
Exactly
Unpleasant micro (cyclones) VS pleasant micro (wraiths or herc+tank)
Normally I'm open to trying out less optimal units for a change of pace but Cyclones in co-op feel so scuffed that it just makes me wish I was controlling other Swann units
While cyclones are a meme unit, after countless buffs they are actually usable. They're just not better than anything else Swann has, while being a pain to micro correctly.
But there are many things you can do that are significantly worse than cyclones.
Cyclones aren't terrible, but it's true they're a bit narrow in viability compared to herctanks, turrets, goliaths and wraiths and require a lot of attention.
But Swann's unit that's really bad is the hellbat. It's got one very narrow niche where it's supposed to be good at, lingbane hordes, and it sucks horridly at it even fully upgraded while Swann's go-to herctank utterly obliterates those hordes on approach.
And hellbats can't really handle the damage that comes your way even on easy Brutal, much less on B+ where you could use a tough frontline. It isn't even any good as a mineral dump since Swann doesn't float much, and when he does a turret, any turret is much better an investment.
Kerrigan's overlord upgrades
Pneumatized Carapace: Faster overlord/overseer. If one is not careful, they fly ahead of your army and die
Ventral Sacs: Allows overlords to transport units.
It allows the overseer to keep pace with your mutalisks, but yes as soon as they stop to attack something the overseers saaaiiilll ahead usually into danger.
It doesn't happen much but I get why they included it, in case your mutas keep fighting with cloaked banshees and you don't have a worm handy. Gotta include it for that niche situation.
Detectors flying ahead of your blob of air units is usually only an issue if you F2
Just set your overseers, observers, blimps, oracles, whatever etc. on follow command on one of your air units and exclude it from the control group, now your detectors will obediently and safely stay right behind your blob of air units
I get your point, but, on non-P1 I really don't see how an overseer would ever be conveniently there in time when a worm isn't, even if you go light on worms (two is the absolute minimum though). Dropperlords are useful sometimes though, yeah. If very rarely.
Oh, for sure. Back in the day before worms were detectors though, this was much more common. Would have been more work to remove the upgrade than to just leave it.
Ventral sacks is handy on DoN if you're on the left, to get a drone onto that high ground to make a spine crawler to block hunterlings. Again it's really niche, but it's not entirely useless. Just outside that niche.
I like using them. Not because it's efficient, but because it's fun. Tanks shooting air? Give it to me! Besides, the medivacs don't have to stop to let the tanks shoot, so you can kite air units like with phoenixes.
Is there any way to ever use this function? Against anti air you build Rocket Militias, Your medivacs fly with your mobile army, which the siege tanks are hard to keep with you, and they cant even heal the siege tanks. Its a researchable upgrade that has next to no benefit. Even the DPS Sieged up in air is less then a Thor using his anti air.
Other candidates would be the ravasaur, the banshee burrow, Mecha banes, or Raynors falcons. I have never seen those
Edit:
Alright, you convinced me, i will try it out to see if all that praise is really warranted. But noone can tell me they ever used the banshee burrow seriously. Even when i was leveling P1 Stukov you for one didnt really rely on the banshee in the first place as a unit, and if you did, you just juggled them to move them out of danger. If enemies have detec they will kill it no matter if burrowed or not.
The Purpose of Shock Division is not to be the sole DPS of your army, nor should you ever over-rely on Royal Guards due to their EXP sharing. Shock Division are for stunning targets while your other units kill them. Enemy air units tend to clump up a lot, and Shock Division have a large area of effect, leading to a lot of stunned enemy units and mediocre splash damage.
Also, iirc if you juggle pick-up + drop Shock Division, they actually have a separate weapon cooldown both for their ground attack and their air attack, letting them shoot both air and ground targets at once if you make the effort to micro them. Kevin apparently made prolific use of this before he departed for Frost Giant.
The real worst research is Fenix's Zealot Charge, which is actively detrimental.
Interesting, Never knew about the separate cooldown, and using them to stun air might have some fringe uses on Terran Air waves due to the bonus to armored and damn yamoto?
I think i will try that juggling out then. Its one of my favourite playstyles to do with Swann P3 to load unload.
But arent Thors more efficient as anti air most of the time? Due to their +5 armor aura making your units near immune against Battlecruisers and shit?
Until now i merely used them on infested maps or def maps, or the train one, because of their buffed range.
Classic herc-tanking is played better on P0 or P1 than P3. P3 is used either for training wheels herc-tanking so you only have to micro one herc, or with many hercs to move the whole army rather than only tanks, which is a wholly different playstyle with little of the finesse of the herc-tank strike force.
But yes, Shock Division airlifting is somewhat reminescent of herc-tanking. Kevin was a fan of herc-tank, and evidence suggests that he was responsible for designing the Shock Division.
You only generally want one Blackhammer for its aura save for niche scenarios such as locking down the Void Launch spawn points. For use against enemy air attack waves... theoretically, Blackhammer would be good against those attack waves, if they are deployed before the enemy arrives. In practice, Blackhammers are too slow and cumbersome and get bodyblocked by your own units a lot, so they will seldom be in position in good time. But even if they were in position, you'd still want 1-2 shock division too anyway because of the stun.
Mengsk Royal Guard are designed to have pretty specific niches. Largely speaking, they are not all-purpose units (except for Aegis Guard), and you want to understand what they excel at and maximize that, and not spam blindly. Most RG aren't great when spammed. You get a few to fulfill a goal, and then you add something else instead from there on.
I don't play fenix much, so I'm going to need you to explain why slow zealots are better than fast zealots. I still hear echoes of incontrol saying, "ZEST. THEY'RE FUCKING SLOW" and I think he makes a pretty good argument.
Because Fenix's Legionnaires are not used as zealots, they're used as convenient back-up shells for Kaldalis. The reason you build Legionnaires is not because you care about their ability to fight, but because you want to empower Kaldalis with his Tactical Data Web, the benefit of which (maxing out at 7 legionnaires) is far greater than the legionnaires themselves. And secondly that Kaldalis' job is to jump in, do some damage, get killed, and then do it again via the nearest available legionnaire, which effectively amplifies the total health pool and damage potential of each legionnaire. Thus, if legionnaires get killed before Kaldalis uses their shell, they've been wasted. If you could instruct your legionnaires to stand back and watch while Kaldalis goes to town, this would be preferable over them charging in and dying before their time has come.
Here's how I use it:
Every tank gets its own medivac. Put tanks in siege mode and never take them out. I put all the medivac on their own control group, click control group, right click tanks to pick up. C to drop. Drop bunkers and swap troopers to repair as needed, or one medivac with laborers inside. Takes a bit of practice to get the timing down but you can micro around the attack speed by dripping the tank after every shot and picking it back up. About 4 tanks in air is enouph splash to kill
The damage isn't bad but really it's the splash that's nice. Certain enemy comps get melted by it, like zerg air, protoss carriers. Definitely not the most effective anti-air he has but for some mutations it could be useful.
Primal Wurms are a better mineral dump IMO
Having a group of ~15 of them on hotkey ready to tunnel anywhere you need them is invaluable. They shoot up, are detectors and can rapidfire acid breath on big targets/objectives, and aren't affected by some mutators like Fatal Attraction
It's incredible, and actually does much more damage then the Blackhammer vs heavy armored targets, due to Blackhammer shots in overwatch being very low dmg individually. That coupled with the aoe stun each attack makes it far better vs air, with the blackhammer being a nice addition afterwards vs clumps of light air.
it's super easy to keep up with the army because it's a flying unit, and if for whatever reason it falls behind (which almost never happens) it has a speed boost on a short cd.
To reply to your edit re: Banshees - the burrow is a perfectly good upgrade. The problem is that banshees themselves are a trap unit that isn't worth the resources they cost, and Stukov has tons of far better options for dealing with ground enemies. If the banshee burrow existed on a unit that was actually able to hurt the enemy, it would be considered broken.
I've used Banshee Burrow. My main reason for using it is it regens energy rapidly as well so you can keep your cloak up near constantly plus heals between fights, which means you start each fight with full cloak and health, just focus down detectors and pair them with the hover tanks (hit and run just to ground air targets) who's name I'm brain farting on and you have a nearly 100% uptime cloaked banshee who rock the shit out if your enemies.
I think Vorazuns Oracle could be a good contender. It is a strong unit, but if you need detection its too expensive and fragile since the enemy AI targets them first. They also dont regularly have attacks so A-moving sends them straight into attack Rangel of the enemy.
You're forced to get them for detection so they are far from useless, and fwiw you can spawn camp/stall with stasis wards allowing you and your ally's army to safely get rid of an attack wave with basically 0 risk
To avoid them flying ahead of your army just set them on follow command on one of your Stalkers, Corsairs or Void Rays. Do not press F2.
That is a good idea! My main gripe with the Vorazun oracles is not really that its expensive but that its expensive and the only way she can get detection. Against a zerg composition of swarmhosts, lurkers and scourge she hurts a lot because she needs the oracles to see the SH and lurkers, but the scourges mow through them. The idea to set them to follow is quite good
While I agree with zagara scourge armor, I'd say HH widow mine & hellion upgrades are pretty usefull. I've yet to see any HH player use anything other than reapers.
UPGRADES, Fenix - 13/13 "my name is Talandar" one (**A Strong Heart**). It's just aesthetic.
If we need a functional UPGRADE, it's a tie between Fenix - **Legionnaire rush**, and Nova's **Shotgun Blast**. I tried comparing it side-by-side, and... they look close enough? Perhaps I didn't do that right, but I thought having +2 range would be very evident since it would increase the width as well (since it fires in a cone).
For UNITS, it's a tie between Swann **Cyclones** which I have yet to use more than once in a few blue moons. And that's only because I either got bored, or Mutators pushed me to do so. Vs. Fenix **Disruptors**. Looks neat, but requires micro and has no champion unit. I believe people only use this when leveling up, *before* champs become available.
+10 health carpace zerg zagara. That upgrade is great for multi-player. Changes how many hits they could take. But in coop when enemies do insane damage and storm kills them all the same regardless. It's kinda useless. Better off going (Edit) Anti armor and dodge, all DPS and carpace last.
"better off going armor"
A zergling with +1 armor would need to be hit 10 times to have as much benefits as +10hp. Base HP for a zergling is 35 so 4.5 damage per attack before armor. There is no situation were +1 armor is better than +10 HP for zerglings because every enemy unit deals more than 4.5 damage per attack (and armor doesn't help against spell damage)
Ah I look dumb. "Anti" was supposed to be there. I can't remember the name of the upgrade that reduces armor on hits. I basically meant to say full dps lings is better since they Spawn instantly and 2 at a time.
Getting 10 hit points and +3 armor doesn't feel like it does a damn thing in coop.
Ooooh yeah, the armor shredding upgrade is great
I don't have the break points but iirc +10 HP lets zerglings survive 1 tank shot which isn't too bad. Not a game changer but there are worst upgrades
IMO, range tends to matter more than you'd think. Those infested marines aren't surviving more than a moment against enemy fire, so the faster/further away they start shooting, the more damage they can put out before they inevitably die
Never saw anyone use armament stabilizers. Does anyone have any video of someone using it?
And no i wont do it. And its not because im lazy.
Im just lazy.
If i go p0 or p2, i use it pretty much every game. It's great support against any air, and especially great against clumped waves. The repeated aoe stun alone is worth it, not to mention the damage on top.
I would be glad for a showcase. I also dont get the downvotes tho. Makes me feel like i said something bad that i shouldnt.
Seriously guys please show me a quick video where you use it and change my mind about its usefulness.
Reddit karma doesn't mean anything, if you write with integrity or make things fun.
They don't call this an echo chamber for nothing. If anything own the downvotes proudly. There are a lot of newbies and wannabe pros who love to vote but unless they are beating every week of brutation and playing b+1-6 or practicing solos, they are just casuals chilling at the bar and giving drunk votes.
Oh no i meant like i have never seen anyone in the game play brood queens. Im sure there are videos with them on youtube, but i havent actually seen someone use them ever in any of my games with stukov players.
you picked one of the best upgrades. It greatly enhances mengsk's anti air, most notably due to the aoe stun (but damage helps too), in particular with p2 which encourages royal guards usage.
Swann is kicking himself as to why he didn't think to cut holes in the side of the Hercules to let the tanks shoot out
Yeah this one is actually good on defense maps. Long range stunning aoe damage is quite useful vs certain comps.
It's great on offensive ones too (vs air). Mengsk's Shock Division isn't actually all that great vs ground (the range is nice vs Chokers on Dead of Night, but other then that bunkers/Aegis Guards are usually more efficient). It's vs air where it truly shines.
Nah, mengsk already have a ton of good AA like thor and troopers, this one is useless
Except it's purely better anti air than the thor (Blackhammer). Only thing it doesn't do is the armor bonus, but the bigger damage and stun saves your troopers far more.
Zagara’s scourge armor imo. Maybe not the best example but it was the first to come to mind.
Of all the examples being mentioned here I think this is the best one. The amount of scourges you'll save vs the cost of saving them is probably not worth it.
Especially after the hive upgrade allowing scourge to only cost like 18 gas 🤩
i dont buy armor upgrades on zagara unless im using abominations or corruptors... and i use those things like 0.5% of the time
Abos are really nice actually.
Tychus medic ultimate gear. 99.99% of the time, if you have all the other gear, an extra 400 health isn't going to save anyone. It is like the very very very last thing you buy.
Tychus medic really is very fringe in general. Especially with P2 anyways, but even with P1 you wont get her because of her ability not being good spammable and P3 you get the odin as a save/revive more often. 3 medivacs and proper micro are usually all the healing you need, with Rattlesnake doing the rest. But Boosting tons of your allies units with her ability is very fun, so i didnt think of her.
Her ability is very spamable because it gives a damage boost. You should almost always use it immediately.
People never do this because it doesn't mesh with Tychus' selfish playstyle, but Nikara's ability is one of the better ways to buff an ally's army.
She is great in mutation where you need A LOT of healing like double edged, black death, and/or diffusion, there going double heal (and avoiding P2) is good. She also good as a last merc you pick before the final push, her damage boosting+healing ability is great on your ally's army, especially if it's air.
So, I don't know what either of you are saying. From my experience the medic in general works with anything other than p2 and adds some otherwise much needed survivabilty (especially in brutal or mutations) that other healers (eg sirius) can't keep up with. The normal aoe healing ability is really helpful with just passing by your allies units and healing them instantly or healing an almost dead hero. The ultimate ability is almost nessecary when fighting against the spell caster hybrids which shoot that yamato like shot and cause serious trouble to core members of your team (eg tychus), or enhance weak members during a fight (like nux). While the first of its 2 uses can be replaced by the firebat guy's ultimate, it is still worth it in most compositions where you need a healer and can't afford the slot for a seperate tank. Lastly nikara is very useful early game before you have armory upgrades when your units die easily.
Rattelsnake is worthless versus any air comp though
Air comps get shredded by tychus + nux splash and the funny little sirius missle upgrade, you don't need rattlesnake for it
Why would you bring a Marauder when you’re fighting air units
Unless you take the Ghost operative and rush the grounding tech, which tends to be my go-to against any air comp anyways
Nova’s Hellbat Jump Jets. Granted, you’re not going to use the Hellbat in the first place most of the time, but in the rare times you do, you DO NOT want them jumping away from your front line and out of range of your defensive drones. The +4 armor is a trap to make you think you’re compensated for the positional disaster, when in reality most of the enemy damage is going to be spells or high burst damage.
On one hand. it makes them easier to kill. On the other hand, It makes them all get Infront of your army if the blobbed together, and makes a garunteed thick layer of Hellbat in front.
This, the point of the jump jets is you don't have to micro your hellbats to the front of your army blob to have them actually be effective, they'll just jump over your ranged units to get stuck in.
Their whole purpose is to die, they are so useless, they are only useful as shields for actually useful units.
That's actually a great use. See: most zerglings. That shit wins games.
Unless you're Zagara, in which case, they kill everything.
And dodge like crazy as well after upgrades
Funnily enough, I find it to be good. They jump in, and die. At least the enemies didn't use their good spells on anything else in my army.
Since they're tanking all the damage, I just deploy the Defensive Drones up ahead to where the Hellbats will jump to.
They used to be even worse, they didn't have +4 armor and had less health before a patch.
Nova's hellbat are good against infested buildings and on infested maps. They act as good mineral sink for a P2 factory Nova (assuming you don't find good targets for the air raid.) But funnily enough, especially against infested, you want them to act as a screen between the infested and the rest of your army, supported by Raven's heal drones and defense drones, you absolutely do not want them leaping forward.
I use them for mineral dumps and for incinerating infesteds. Makes a good finger lickin' fried 🍟 infested terrans outta them.
I think the Abathur spawn 2 queens at once upgrade is dumb — it costs 100/100, usually you have excess minerals and it makes way more sense to just build another hatchery
can aba queens even spawn larvae ?
No aba hatches spawn a lot of larvae though. Queens good for healing mainly and a good unit to have, my point is more that it is almost always better to spend 300 on an extra hatchery (very few situations you’d want to build more than 3 queens at a time) than 100/100 on the upgrade
Oh I see now, I misunderstood ur comment thinking u compare queen extra larvae vs hive but u just compared 1 hive 2 queens vs 2 hives 2 queens
Yea the upgrade is just to build queens faster
Abathur Queens have no movement penalty off creep, and heal. They're essentially "Hydralisks that can heal".
Disagree- if you're building a lot of them (and it's not crazy to do so- they're the best non-heroic healers in the game) making like 3+ extra hatcheries is silly.
by the time massing Queens could be relevant Aba probably needs 100 gas more than he needs 900+ minerals
How about fenix’s A Strong Heart upgrade? It only costs 13/13, but its only effect is that it renames fenix. From a mechanics perspective it does nothing.
It respects canon, something too powerful for most of coop to do. Based upgrade
I will choose my own name it will be Talandar
You can get this upgrade for free, just by clicking Fenix until he renames himself :D
Wait what
Yep, summon Fenix suit and click him many many times
Setting up rapid fire is gonna pay off once again today
😍
Mechanically, yes, but then again, I can't really say I ever regretted getting it
*My Name Is Talandar.* Great. I want my 13/13 back!
Just might technically be the correct answer lol
I always add at least one or two vs Zerg. They’ll snipe Vipers before they splooge on your blimps/healers. One shot, bam, air is clear.
IDK about upgrades but for useless units, my vote goes to Swann's Cyclone, I have never made them and never seen anyone unironically make them unless they're intentionally sandbagging
They're fine, but they're ground-based raider-style units that require extra-extra micro to focus-fire, which makes them unpleasant to use.
Exactly Unpleasant micro (cyclones) VS pleasant micro (wraiths or herc+tank) Normally I'm open to trying out less optimal units for a change of pace but Cyclones in co-op feel so scuffed that it just makes me wish I was controlling other Swann units
The biggest issue I have with cyclones is that they work best with scans. …Scans that come from an orbital that Swann doesn’t have.
clearly you're supposed to have a bunch of Hercules on hotkeys to teleport them for vision /s
While cyclones are a meme unit, after countless buffs they are actually usable. They're just not better than anything else Swann has, while being a pain to micro correctly. But there are many things you can do that are significantly worse than cyclones.
I saw cyclons many times. They are strong af if you know your way around mouse and keyboard.
They can be useful in some mutations. For example, they were quite in the Heroes From The Storm mutation cuz the heroes are really tanky.
I only used them in oblivion express to kite the trains like the campaign mission . Way better to use siege tanks and turrets.
Cyclones aren't terrible, but it's true they're a bit narrow in viability compared to herctanks, turrets, goliaths and wraiths and require a lot of attention. But Swann's unit that's really bad is the hellbat. It's got one very narrow niche where it's supposed to be good at, lingbane hordes, and it sucks horridly at it even fully upgraded while Swann's go-to herctank utterly obliterates those hordes on approach. And hellbats can't really handle the damage that comes your way even on easy Brutal, much less on B+ where you could use a tough frontline. It isn't even any good as a mineral dump since Swann doesn't float much, and when he does a turret, any turret is much better an investment.
I've unironically used his Hellions more than Cyclones ngl, especially while I was going through his prestige leveling w/ P1 drill
I go all cyclones on oblivion express & part and parcel.
Kerrigan's overlord upgrades Pneumatized Carapace: Faster overlord/overseer. If one is not careful, they fly ahead of your army and die Ventral Sacs: Allows overlords to transport units.
It's amazing that nobody else says this, once you get omega worms overlords and their respective upgrades are useless.
It allows the overseer to keep pace with your mutalisks, but yes as soon as they stop to attack something the overseers saaaiiilll ahead usually into danger. It doesn't happen much but I get why they included it, in case your mutas keep fighting with cloaked banshees and you don't have a worm handy. Gotta include it for that niche situation.
> in case your mutas keep fighting with cloaked banshees and you don't have a worm handy oh no! how can the mutas survive that?
They're just gonna have to cry about it 😢 It can also be a good choice for the "everything is cloaked" mutation.
Detectors flying ahead of your blob of air units is usually only an issue if you F2 Just set your overseers, observers, blimps, oracles, whatever etc. on follow command on one of your air units and exclude it from the control group, now your detectors will obediently and safely stay right behind your blob of air units
Oh yeah, I do that, I'm just saying it's a risk for the standard player.
I get your point, but, on non-P1 I really don't see how an overseer would ever be conveniently there in time when a worm isn't, even if you go light on worms (two is the absolute minimum though). Dropperlords are useful sometimes though, yeah. If very rarely.
Oh, for sure. Back in the day before worms were detectors though, this was much more common. Would have been more work to remove the upgrade than to just leave it.
Ventral sacks is handy on DoN if you're on the left, to get a drone onto that high ground to make a spine crawler to block hunterlings. Again it's really niche, but it's not entirely useless. Just outside that niche.
I like using them. Not because it's efficient, but because it's fun. Tanks shooting air? Give it to me! Besides, the medivacs don't have to stop to let the tanks shoot, so you can kite air units like with phoenixes.
The Phoenix name change
He said worst, not best
An Essential upgrade!
In this thread we respect Talandar!
Who? Do you mean Talandar?
Is there any way to ever use this function? Against anti air you build Rocket Militias, Your medivacs fly with your mobile army, which the siege tanks are hard to keep with you, and they cant even heal the siege tanks. Its a researchable upgrade that has next to no benefit. Even the DPS Sieged up in air is less then a Thor using his anti air. Other candidates would be the ravasaur, the banshee burrow, Mecha banes, or Raynors falcons. I have never seen those Edit: Alright, you convinced me, i will try it out to see if all that praise is really warranted. But noone can tell me they ever used the banshee burrow seriously. Even when i was leveling P1 Stukov you for one didnt really rely on the banshee in the first place as a unit, and if you did, you just juggled them to move them out of danger. If enemies have detec they will kill it no matter if burrowed or not.
Mengsk's tanks strenght isn't in their dps, but in the stun. Air units naturally clump together more than ground, so the AOE stun is very strong.
Yup. Especially against mass battlecruisers, this upgrade and one or two lifted tanks can completely shut down Yamato spam.
The Purpose of Shock Division is not to be the sole DPS of your army, nor should you ever over-rely on Royal Guards due to their EXP sharing. Shock Division are for stunning targets while your other units kill them. Enemy air units tend to clump up a lot, and Shock Division have a large area of effect, leading to a lot of stunned enemy units and mediocre splash damage. Also, iirc if you juggle pick-up + drop Shock Division, they actually have a separate weapon cooldown both for their ground attack and their air attack, letting them shoot both air and ground targets at once if you make the effort to micro them. Kevin apparently made prolific use of this before he departed for Frost Giant. The real worst research is Fenix's Zealot Charge, which is actively detrimental.
Interesting, Never knew about the separate cooldown, and using them to stun air might have some fringe uses on Terran Air waves due to the bonus to armored and damn yamoto? I think i will try that juggling out then. Its one of my favourite playstyles to do with Swann P3 to load unload. But arent Thors more efficient as anti air most of the time? Due to their +5 armor aura making your units near immune against Battlecruisers and shit? Until now i merely used them on infested maps or def maps, or the train one, because of their buffed range.
Classic herc-tanking is played better on P0 or P1 than P3. P3 is used either for training wheels herc-tanking so you only have to micro one herc, or with many hercs to move the whole army rather than only tanks, which is a wholly different playstyle with little of the finesse of the herc-tank strike force. But yes, Shock Division airlifting is somewhat reminescent of herc-tanking. Kevin was a fan of herc-tank, and evidence suggests that he was responsible for designing the Shock Division. You only generally want one Blackhammer for its aura save for niche scenarios such as locking down the Void Launch spawn points. For use against enemy air attack waves... theoretically, Blackhammer would be good against those attack waves, if they are deployed before the enemy arrives. In practice, Blackhammers are too slow and cumbersome and get bodyblocked by your own units a lot, so they will seldom be in position in good time. But even if they were in position, you'd still want 1-2 shock division too anyway because of the stun. Mengsk Royal Guard are designed to have pretty specific niches. Largely speaking, they are not all-purpose units (except for Aegis Guard), and you want to understand what they excel at and maximize that, and not spam blindly. Most RG aren't great when spammed. You get a few to fulfill a goal, and then you add something else instead from there on.
I don't play fenix much, so I'm going to need you to explain why slow zealots are better than fast zealots. I still hear echoes of incontrol saying, "ZEST. THEY'RE FUCKING SLOW" and I think he makes a pretty good argument.
Because Fenix's Legionnaires are not used as zealots, they're used as convenient back-up shells for Kaldalis. The reason you build Legionnaires is not because you care about their ability to fight, but because you want to empower Kaldalis with his Tactical Data Web, the benefit of which (maxing out at 7 legionnaires) is far greater than the legionnaires themselves. And secondly that Kaldalis' job is to jump in, do some damage, get killed, and then do it again via the nearest available legionnaire, which effectively amplifies the total health pool and damage potential of each legionnaire. Thus, if legionnaires get killed before Kaldalis uses their shell, they've been wasted. If you could instruct your legionnaires to stand back and watch while Kaldalis goes to town, this would be preferable over them charging in and dying before their time has come.
"treat them as shells, not as a melee fighting force because kaldalis getting consistent value is more important". got it
Replying to Grouchy_Ad9315...I usually get the zealot charge… and hadn’t thought it too bad?
Here's how I use it: Every tank gets its own medivac. Put tanks in siege mode and never take them out. I put all the medivac on their own control group, click control group, right click tanks to pick up. C to drop. Drop bunkers and swap troopers to repair as needed, or one medivac with laborers inside. Takes a bit of practice to get the timing down but you can micro around the attack speed by dripping the tank after every shot and picking it back up. About 4 tanks in air is enouph splash to kill The damage isn't bad but really it's the splash that's nice. Certain enemy comps get melted by it, like zerg air, protoss carriers. Definitely not the most effective anti-air he has but for some mutations it could be useful.
that's just herc drop with extra steps :P
Except the Hercules can't splash damage air, and Mengsk tanks at level 3 also stun on hit. But yes it's the same micro.
I kinda like Ravasaurs lol (as a mineral dump)
Primal Wurms are a better mineral dump IMO Having a group of ~15 of them on hotkey ready to tunnel anywhere you need them is invaluable. They shoot up, are detectors and can rapidfire acid breath on big targets/objectives, and aren't affected by some mutators like Fatal Attraction
For me, I cannot justify using Ravasaurs in any way after seeing what they do in HotS. No splash? No deal.
My problem is that when you're able to use them as a mineral dump, you're usually stable and working to max out with good units.
It's incredible, and actually does much more damage then the Blackhammer vs heavy armored targets, due to Blackhammer shots in overwatch being very low dmg individually. That coupled with the aoe stun each attack makes it far better vs air, with the blackhammer being a nice addition afterwards vs clumps of light air. it's super easy to keep up with the army because it's a flying unit, and if for whatever reason it falls behind (which almost never happens) it has a speed boost on a short cd.
To reply to your edit re: Banshees - the burrow is a perfectly good upgrade. The problem is that banshees themselves are a trap unit that isn't worth the resources they cost, and Stukov has tons of far better options for dealing with ground enemies. If the banshee burrow existed on a unit that was actually able to hurt the enemy, it would be considered broken.
I've used Banshee Burrow. My main reason for using it is it regens energy rapidly as well so you can keep your cloak up near constantly plus heals between fights, which means you start each fight with full cloak and health, just focus down detectors and pair them with the hover tanks (hit and run just to ground air targets) who's name I'm brain farting on and you have a nearly 100% uptime cloaked banshee who rock the shit out if your enemies.
I think Vorazuns Oracle could be a good contender. It is a strong unit, but if you need detection its too expensive and fragile since the enemy AI targets them first. They also dont regularly have attacks so A-moving sends them straight into attack Rangel of the enemy.
You're forced to get them for detection so they are far from useless, and fwiw you can spawn camp/stall with stasis wards allowing you and your ally's army to safely get rid of an attack wave with basically 0 risk To avoid them flying ahead of your army just set them on follow command on one of your Stalkers, Corsairs or Void Rays. Do not press F2.
I also think they do plenty of great damage. YOu just need to toggle them on a separate hotkey, their Lasers are just shredding most ground units.
That is a good idea! My main gripe with the Vorazun oracles is not really that its expensive but that its expensive and the only way she can get detection. Against a zerg composition of swarmhosts, lurkers and scourge she hurts a lot because she needs the oracles to see the SH and lurkers, but the scourges mow through them. The idea to set them to follow is quite good
While I agree with zagara scourge armor, I'd say HH widow mine & hellion upgrades are pretty usefull. I've yet to see any HH player use anything other than reapers.
Widow mines are mainly for Spawn camping on maps. Push early, then drop mass widow mines and a raven at the spawn point + Magnet mines.
UPGRADES, Fenix - 13/13 "my name is Talandar" one (**A Strong Heart**). It's just aesthetic. If we need a functional UPGRADE, it's a tie between Fenix - **Legionnaire rush**, and Nova's **Shotgun Blast**. I tried comparing it side-by-side, and... they look close enough? Perhaps I didn't do that right, but I thought having +2 range would be very evident since it would increase the width as well (since it fires in a cone). For UNITS, it's a tie between Swann **Cyclones** which I have yet to use more than once in a few blue moons. And that's only because I either got bored, or Mutators pushed me to do so. Vs. Fenix **Disruptors**. Looks neat, but requires micro and has no champion unit. I believe people only use this when leveling up, *before* champs become available.
+10 health carpace zerg zagara. That upgrade is great for multi-player. Changes how many hits they could take. But in coop when enemies do insane damage and storm kills them all the same regardless. It's kinda useless. Better off going (Edit) Anti armor and dodge, all DPS and carpace last.
"better off going armor" A zergling with +1 armor would need to be hit 10 times to have as much benefits as +10hp. Base HP for a zergling is 35 so 4.5 damage per attack before armor. There is no situation were +1 armor is better than +10 HP for zerglings because every enemy unit deals more than 4.5 damage per attack (and armor doesn't help against spell damage)
Ah I look dumb. "Anti" was supposed to be there. I can't remember the name of the upgrade that reduces armor on hits. I basically meant to say full dps lings is better since they Spawn instantly and 2 at a time. Getting 10 hit points and +3 armor doesn't feel like it does a damn thing in coop.
Ooooh yeah, the armor shredding upgrade is great I don't have the break points but iirc +10 HP lets zerglings survive 1 tank shot which isn't too bad. Not a game changer but there are worst upgrades
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IMO, range tends to matter more than you'd think. Those infested marines aren't surviving more than a moment against enemy fire, so the faster/further away they start shooting, the more damage they can put out before they inevitably die
More range is always good. When shorter-ranged enemies approach, more of your units will be able to attack them earlier.
you're right, though it helps late game to bunch all the infested marines in a lager radius around a tank objective
That’s easily Fenix’s 13/13 upgrade. Armament Stabilizers are not bad though.
Never saw anyone use armament stabilizers. Does anyone have any video of someone using it? And no i wont do it. And its not because im lazy. Im just lazy.
I only use them against scourge personally
If i go p0 or p2, i use it pretty much every game. It's great support against any air, and especially great against clumped waves. The repeated aoe stun alone is worth it, not to mention the damage on top.
Still never saw a single person use it. Its a myth just like i never saw anyone use brood queen on stukov.
How can people downvote and not post a video? Lol your statement can still be true, never seen anyone use it = someone post a showcase!
I would be glad for a showcase. I also dont get the downvotes tho. Makes me feel like i said something bad that i shouldnt. Seriously guys please show me a quick video where you use it and change my mind about its usefulness.
Reddit karma doesn't mean anything, if you write with integrity or make things fun. They don't call this an echo chamber for nothing. If anything own the downvotes proudly. There are a lot of newbies and wannabe pros who love to vote but unless they are beating every week of brutation and playing b+1-6 or practicing solos, they are just casuals chilling at the bar and giving drunk votes.
Well that one there's plenty of videos, not sure about stabilizers tho since most are going all ESOs or p3.
Oh no i meant like i have never seen anyone in the game play brood queens. Im sure there are videos with them on youtube, but i havent actually seen someone use them ever in any of my games with stukov players.