Does This Mutation Make Me Look Fat? Let's Play Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

[Thomas Cardew]

Raynor relies on hitting level 8 for orbital drops pods to front-line deliver units and strong macro play. He revolves around using a lot command centers to drop mules to fund his army. New players tend to skimp on production and harvest buildings. Conversely, experienced but poor players tend to tunnel on mining out the map and not on actually producing units or completing objectives. His call downs tend to need more micro.

Playing him wrong is easy. Playing him right is harder.

[Tvtyrant]

Is Raynor bad, or just the default "clueless noob" selection?

He's actively bad without prestiging. All of the free ones are ironically rather difficult to play well, I had to level Zagara to get a good enough grip on Kerrigan to play the higher difficulties.

[Thomas Cardew]

He's actively bad without prestiging. All of the free ones are ironically rather difficult to play well, I had to level Zagara to get a good enough grip on Kerrigan to play the higher difficulties.

I found Artanis and Kerrigan relatively straight forward. Artanis' call downs are basically straight out of his campaign and his warp in mechanic is self explanatory and automatic with 3 charges on each building. Even if you waste a couple hundred minerals on unneccesary pylons to spread out your base, it's not costing you that much. Compared to Raynor, where if you aren't semi-obsessively building CC and spamming mules on CD, you are most definitely doing it wrong and losing tens of thousands of mineral income.

Kerrigan is a bit tougher since she's micro-intensive and her units are relatively fragile until you hit critical mass. Newer players can also not appreciate amazing power of her worms, creep spread, and mobility. But her main army builds were again pretty straight forward with mass hydras or mass mutas.

[noob]

He's actively bad without prestiging. All of the free ones are ironically rather difficult to play well, I had to level Zagara to get a good enough grip on Kerrigan to play the higher difficulties.

Ironically Artanis was the only free coop commander I could play correctly: spam tons of dragoons then use a+click.(anything that involves any micro is impossible for me because my computer is a potato and stops being reactive as soon as there is like 300 units in the map)
But I am not playing brutal nor even brutal 995+ like the good coop commander players do.
When playing difficult even a non skilled raynor player can pull their own weight in fact it might be even possible to win difficult just by swarming the opponent with wikings.
Raynor units definitively seems to be the most underwhelming ones: they have far less ridiculous power ups relatively to the other commanders until you get the prestige that makes your marines super tough(at which point you can probably just be an A + click raynor with marines).

[Psyren]

Is Raynor bad, or just the default "clueless noob" selection?

I wouldn't call any of the commanders "bad" - more "bad in the wrong hands" - but Raynor has more hurdles to face than many of the others because he has a high skill ceiling but also a very high skill floor. The fact that he is probably the most likely commander to be chosen by a new player ("Hey, that's the human on the box/website! I'll use that guy!") only throws these hurdles into sharper relief.

Base Raynor's high floor is driven by a few factors:

1) His bio is easy to massacre and, if you don't plan ahead for it (sometimes even if you do), hard to replace due to the macro required. They are extremely low HP even with medics, move slowly, tiny sized, and tend to clump up because they're ranged.

2) His ground mech (vultures and tanks) are expensive and fragile. They only hit ground, so they won't be enough without the right army support. His tanks are also slow and he doesn't have Hercs to move them around.

3) His air is powerful but extremely slow to get out. Teching up to them means an ally willing to support you early game, and even once you have the requisite structures and resources, you've basically given up the mid-game as well. Don't get me wrong, a fleet of battlecruisers that can warp anywhere in the map is my idea of fun, but you sacrifice a lot to hit a critical mass there.

His prestiges go a long way to mitigate these weaknesses without the player having to play around them (the bio one especially). This lowers the floor for his play, but unfortunately lowers the ceiling as well.

[The Glyphstone]

How does Swann play on comparison, then? He's supposed to be for more experienced players, and being mech means he's obviously going to be much slower than a bio comp. Does that also make him more forgiving when he gets rolling? Plus laser drill.

[noob]

How does Swann play on comparison, then? He's supposed to be for more experienced players, and being mech means he's obviously going to be much slower than a bio comp. Does that also make him more forgiving when he gets rolling? Plus laser drill.

It is slower but not incredibly so because he gets to skip barrack and have a gas production boost and faster scv production.

[Tvtyrant]

How does Swann play on comparison, then? He's supposed to be for more experienced players, and being mech means he's obviously going to be much slower than a bio comp. Does that also make him more forgiving when he gets rolling? Plus laser drill.

Swann has two common builds. One is basically Raynor's Bioball, but using Goliaths with healing Science Vessels. He can double build Goliaths and his can shoot air and ground simultaneously, so it works pretty well.

Alternatively he builds massive teleporting transports and micros dropping and picking up tanks in siege mode. This mode is more work but extremely powerful, basically drop, fire, pick up, drop, repeat as a kiting move that can instantly teleport anywhere on the map.

The drill is one of the weaker commanders, but it requires no micro so it doesn't have the Kerrigan effect where you are teleporting your armies in and out while also microing her own abilities.

[Thomas Cardew]

Alternatively he builds massive teleporting transports and micros dropping and picking up tanks in siege mode. This mode is more work but extremely powerful, basically drop, fire, pick up, drop, repeat as a kiting move that can instantly teleport anywhere on the map.

Typically with some Thors for anti-air, although you can get by with just his autobots against some comps. Also worth noting the micro goes down as you snowball. He's got some pretty fast expand times since he can use his turrets to clear rocks for free and cooperatively build structures to rush out a CC. He gives both his ally and himself free extra gas, +2 per extractor so typically +16.

The drill upgrades to have 2 substantial nukes. First is a line fired from the laser, the second is a freely deployable nuke. Both are capable of taking out waves but the angles on the laser can be trickier.

He's one of the other turtling commanders with really strong turrets. On some maps you can forgo an army, or just use a couple siege tanks with SV as spotters.

You can also do a mass wraith build. They get 300% laser/100% missile damage when moving plus 20% dodge when cloaked. Stutter step them like marines and you can melt stuff. His science vessel give detection and free healing to keep everything topped off.

Most commanders have at least some trouble if they get behind. Losing your army hurts (shoves Zagara beyond the curtain) as does getting your mineral line wrecked. Swann is one of the better ones for contributing while behind. You're always giving your ally gas. Your drill has 2 strong nukes. Your battle bots can help cover an ally, or clear a secondary on their own.

[Psyren]

Swann has a similar ceiling to Raynor but lower floor. "Mass Goliaths" is something even newer players can wrap their heads around, plus he has ARES and laser stuff to not be completely carried through the early game - but where he can run into trouble is the midgame on attack maps when his spells are on cooldown/not built yet, he doesn't have a critical mass of goliaths yet, and his defenses aren't particularly useful. Examples of this are Malwarfare and Scythe of Amon where you might end up needing a bit of help from your ally to get to that lategame deathball.

[The Glyphstone]

Is Swann dependent on his Payload Director prestige for the HercTank comp? That 60 second cooldown on the teleport seems a long time in combat. Otherwise, he certainly seems like a better entry-level Terran commander, at least among the freebies.

On-topic...Votes so far:
3 for Crunchy Blast, 1 for Leaping Strike
3 for Chain Reaction, 1 for Psionic Shift
3 for Overlords, 1 for Extractors
2 for Banelings, 1 for Mend
3 for Twin Drones.

2 for Skygeirr Station

2 for Lurkers, 1 for Impalers

A few people didn't vote in all categories, so the counts aren't exactly 1 for 1, but it seems like we're still getting a rough consensus.

[Thomas Cardew]

Is Swann dependent on his Payload Director prestige for the HercTank comp? That 60 second cooldown on the teleport seems a long time in combat.

Swann is arguably best without any prestige.

The first is meh. Upgrading the drill is less useful than the abilities outside of specific shennagins like Vorazun's black hole.

Second is good for turret play, but you're already gas hungry if you're building units. Nice for defense maps, bad for aggressive maps.

As for the third, you shouldn't be losing hercs and there's more than enough time between waves to use the teleport. It's not a combat jump but a get in position for the next fight tool. Changing the cooldowns means the drill abilities don't synchronize with attacks as nicely.

[Psyren]

HercTank was his main brutation comp even before prestiges became a thing. Personally I like the reactivity of his top bar too much to go with Payload Director over base Swann - but I can see it being more powerful in the right hands.

For me, Swann is one of the few where I prefer the base commander over all the prestiges - two of them mess with my favorite part of him (his top bar) and the last one pushes him into pure defense, which he is already one of the strongest commanders at.

[Winthur]

Raynor is a strong commander with immense pushing power and a variety of builds to either replace bio or compound it. His weakest prestige is Backwater Marshal due to taking away his MULEs in favor of a dubious benefit that still dies a lot. His weaknesses are comps with a lot of AoE, but you can muscle through those by just being inhumane. He's also a powerful spawncamper if you know where enemies spawn. His levelling curve is pretty solid because he's basically your standard macro Terran at level 1, if you know how to make OCs or Barracks you shouldn't have too many problems handling Brutal. The first 4-5 minutes require you to build up and use Dusk Wings and Hyperion to clear the map (use starting Dusk Wings to clear Rocks for Hyperion) and contribute. Raynor is not very resilient to a lot of mutators (many mutators shred bio forces) although he's a decent choice against some difficult ones (Heroes from the Storm and Propagators, as he can spawn-camp them with Spider Mines, and a critical mass of hitscanners is even good against Speed Freaks Propagators). p2 is a straight upgrade to p0 in many regards if you can micro, and p3 is a new style that is also good. Don't overrate MULEs - they are great and you want 5-8 OCs, but you don't want to skip SCV saturation in favor of MULEs and on most maps you don't need more than 8 OCs. Seriously don't sleep on your cooldowns, a lot of people save Dusk Wings / Hyperion "until an emergency" and make the mission take longer or screw up their early game contribution, just use them. This goes for every commander, but Raynor's first 4-5 minutes are ideally oriented around turtling until you get your eco out (3-4 OCs and a saturated expansion, 5-6 Barracks to plant Tech Labs / Reactors on), and your CDs do enough damage. I've seen a youtube "guide" to Raynor that breaks expansion rocks with an 8 minute Battlecruiser (!!!) and doesn't use Hyperion for the entire game, "saving it" constantly until the scenario is, in fact, over. Don't be that Raynor.

Swann is fine but one of the slower commanders in the game. Don't make Hellbats, Swann is exceedingly mineral starved in the early game and you need to make those minerals count, Hellbats being his worst, most redundant unit. No, I don't care if you think co-op Hellbats are "good against zerg or infested comps" - they really aren't, you have Tanks and flaming turrets, and your hellbats will die without contributing at all*. Expand early with Blaster Billies on the rocks instead of using Hellbats (they suck) or Tanks (they come too late) to break rocks. Once your SCVs can multibuild, use that a lot, especially for making your expansion CC. The standard HercTank playstyle has been a staple since before prestiges and you can use it any time, and it also lets you contribute early because once you get your Hercules, it can spot for your Laser Drill, as well as gradually carry a stream of Tanks inside, letting you poke at encampments while you build up. Don't overrate gas drones, their effect isn't high enough that you should build them as one of the first things in your build order (unless you have maxed Vespene Drone mastery, which I consider generally worse than the faster Drill build up) and they make your rough start slower; build them when you are comfortably seated and ignore allies spampinging their autorefineries and assimilators, people in public queue cannot even make use of the extra gas because they float resources like crazy. You can always Salvage your buildings for a full refund, so if you have to defend a wave by yourself (Rifts to Korhal comes to mind, wave reaches the base before most hero commanders get out), plant a Flaming Betty / Blaster Billy on the choke, park a few SCVs to repair it, and salvage it afterwards. You can also Salvage buildings you don't need anymore, like after defending the shuttles on Miner Evacuation.

Swann doesn't have a prestige that is a straight upgrade to him - p1 is very good at dealing with mass transport waves (common on Scythe of Amon, Temple of the Past and Miner Evacuation), mass air that clumps up, and great if you have a spotting unit granting vision to an incoming wave, not so good at pushing and burst damage. P2 is entirely turret oriented and there are strats that let you push with turrets, in fact, plus the gas penalty is still not too bad with builds like Mass Wraith, but it can still be rather awkward to pull off. P3 is leaning very hard into HercTank comps and I think it takes a lot more micro to outpace a casual p0 HercTank user that uses Concentrated Beam and Pulse Cannon every cooldown.

*There is one commander who has decent Hellions/Hellbats, and their main purpose is to die to buff the rest of their units. It's Han and Horner. Otherwise, co-op Hellions/Hellbats are trash. Not making them will instantly make you a better player. The last player I saw making Hellbats in co-op was Nova on a Lock and Load mutation who saw a Propagator that had her Polarity on it, promptly dropped a Hellbat charge on top of them, and I was forced to watch in slow motion as she A-moved the Hellbats into the Propagator, and they all happily jumped to become a mustard jelly. Nova Hellbats suck too, even if you aren't completely birdbrained.

[Lord Torath]

On-topic...Votes so far:
3 for Lurkers

Whoops! I meant to vote for Impalers, not Lurkers. Impalers have the longer range and high damage; lurkers have the shorter range and lower-but-area damage.

[Techwarrior]

I'm going to vote for Mend and Impalers. All other votes go with the current popular vote.

Loving the LP, just wish I had more time to comment and keep my eye on it.

[Morgaln]

Here are my votes:

Tier 1:
Kinetic Blast
It hits air units, which makes it far mor useful than Leaping Strike


Tier 2:
Chain Reaction
Less micro-intensive, although Psionic Shift lets you escape surrounds.

Tier 3:
Automated Extractors
Less drones meens quicker saturation and bigger armies.

Tier 4:
Spawn Banelings
Easily the best of the three

Tier 5:
Twin Drones
Very useful for quick saturation and again, bigger army.


Impaler Strain
You'll probably not use them anyway, but if you do, anti-armor is more important than crowd control, as you'll always have the bigger crowd anyway.

Skygeirr Station
Yay, Stukov!

[Psyren]

@Winthur: I agree with pretty much everything you said, and it underscores my own points. 5-8 OCs for example is a best practice, but nothing in-game really trains newer players to do that other than running out of energy on the two they make naturally. And for Gas Drones, for me personally it's worth a slight dip in efficiency to get them on allies early just to avoid any appearance of not being a team player or any toxicity. (As you get bonus gas from the allied drones too, so there's no real reason to drone your own refineries first instead of theirs, and it just signals your willingness to actively cooperate - that TY goes a long way.)

[russdm]

I am surprised that people are suggesting getting automatic extractors for vespene gas but are not suggesting getting the 25% speed increase. If I recalled from my play when I did, the auto extractors had a time limit, like a count of time before you would get the gas, like every 20 seconds for example (if the extractors give you some gas, it takes you 20 seconds to get another amount of gas; i don't know what the actual time between when you get gas added in is). That means getting the gas speed increase is worth it.

Drones faster is also good but if I recall, there are only so many workers you can have on gathering minerals before you should be expanding to a new base. Otherwise you will have a few drones not doing anything.

Since base expansions still need to get creep in for making buildings, don't you still have to wait for your hatchery to be made? Or can your overlords do the creep dropping like how they did in wings of liberty?

[Psyren]

Zerg don't really need any buildings in an expo except hatcheries/extractors, which don't need creep. Turrets are nice if you expect that base to be repeatedly attacked during the mission, but you can also make those at home and walk them over, or just wait for the hatchery to pop out and make a bunch of them simultaneously.

[russdm]

Heh.

I remember from the first game about how every zerg base to destroy would have all of the buildings in them even if the zerg were all one team (same brood) and how funny it was. More buildings just to blow up.

I am more used to playing terrans the most who needed all the different buildings to make units.

Making some nuke silos and using ghosts to exploit the dirt nuke glitch was always fun and building wraiths to torment the enemy after taking out their units to detect the cloaked wraiths. Watching some protoss zealots run away from the wraiths was always funny.

The dirt nuke glitch: the nuke terran ghosts use didn't destroy buildings ever, but would leave them in the red area of damage always and did little to anything around. However if you set the nuke to hit the ground next to the building, it would blow up the building and surrounding buildings too up to a distance and all the units too.
It was a weird thing.

I feel like the twin drone is solely useful to making the drones be only worth a half so you could get more other units built but useless otherwise. If you need it for getting them out as workers then you were failing in doing the timing wrong and making new drones as soon as you were getting the 50 minerals.

[Winthur]

I feel like the twin drone is solely useful to making the drones be only worth a half so you could get more other units built but useless otherwise. If you need it for getting them out as workers then you were failing in doing the timing wrong and making new drones as soon as you were getting the 50 minerals.

you saturate bases faster and take fewer Overlords in your initial build order, so Twin Drones is strictly superior if you are planning to roll over the campaign with roach / hydra

[The_Snark]

Yeah, twin drones are really good for jump-starting your economy and hitting full worker saturation really fast. There's a tiny bit of anti-synergy with Automated Extractors, but it's not that big a deal and I can easily understand wanting both just for the sheer convenience.

Vespene Efficiency does give you more gas overall, but I usually don't find myself that constrained by gas when playing as Zerg, unless I'm going for an air-heavy army or something wacky like mass swarm hosts.

[Keltest]

Yeah, twin drones are really good for jump-starting your economy and hitting full worker saturation really fast. There's a tiny bit of anti-synergy with Automated Extractors, but it's not that big a deal and I can easily understand wanting both just for the sheer convenience.

Vespene Efficiency does give you more gas overall, but I usually don't find myself that constrained by gas when playing as Zerg, unless I'm going for an air-heavy army or something wacky like mass swarm hosts.

I do think, given the very quick mineral boom youll get with twin drones, Vespene Efficiency will help you tech up faster, and get important units built quicker. If nothing else, its more income, which means you can suffer more casualties and rebuild them faster, and generally have more room for error.

Also, if you ever go muta ball, more gas is better.

[The Glyphstone]

I do think, given the very quick mineral boom youll get with twin drones, Vespene Efficiency will help you tech up faster, and get important units built quicker. If nothing else, its more income, which means you can suffer more casualties and rebuild them faster, and generally have more room for error.

Also, if you ever go muta ball, more gas is better.

I mean, there is the small problem that Twin Drones and Vespene Efficiency are both in the same tier...

[Keltest]

I mean, there is the small problem that Twin Drones and Vespene Efficiency are both in the same tier...

Oh. Yeah. Oops. Still, i stand by my statement. It would be nice to have both.

[russdm]

Yeah I might not have known about that. I have not played Heart in a while and don't remember all the various bits. Have to get back to playing again.

Personally from my experience and recollection, the game does well for setting up good options for your units and stuff for Wings and Heart but it is mixed in Legacy and you don't have a sense of how you would play with the Protoss and stuff so picking Spear of Adun things feels like having to guess what you might end up needing or not.

None of the options for the unit evolutions have a feel that one is superior to the other enough to make one option just bad outright.

Like making jumping zerglings or getting 3 at once zerglings. Both of those picks can equally work out and so they are just tweaked by how you want to run and play your Swarm of Zerg.

There were some better picks for Wings, that the Units ought to have but that was making the most of your limited funds. The samples that Stettman was working with give you picks and the ones that were bad or not worth getting was a little clear there.

I don't recall feeling that way in playing in Legacy or being able to tell.

Think that Blizzard may have worked to tweak the options to make it so that both were pickable and you didn't feel dumb for going with one over the other.

Unless I remember things most loosely and some are just simply too worse. Been off not playing the game for a bit while though


A last note: given that there is the expansion of Nova's and her being a ghost, I think that I would want to see having our intrepid reporter playing a role. Maybe tagging along with Nova. Be interesting to see what snark could happen between Nora and Nova. Oh the possibilities....

[Thomas Cardew]

Personally from my experience and recollection, the game does well for setting up good options for your units and stuff for Wings and Heart but it is mixed in Legacy and you don't have a sense of how you would play with the Protoss and stuff so picking Spear of Adun things feels like having to guess what you might end up needing or not.

...

There were some better picks for Wings, that the Units ought to have but that was making the most of your limited funds. The samples that Stettman was working with give you picks and the ones that were bad or not worth getting was a little clear there.

I don't recall feeling that way in playing in Legacy or being able to tell.

Legacy had its must pick solar powers. Chrono surge was laughably better than pylon deployment or the ridiculously over priced pylon with 4 units. Solar Lance was just straight up better than orbital bombardment. The other powers were a little more balanced/ playstyle dependent but those two were too good.

The units were more of a mixed bag. Some like the centurion were just obviously better. Others were situationally good. They really rewarded you knowing the level in advance or replaying missions.

[Keltest]

Legacy had its must pick solar powers. Chrono surge was laughably better than pylon deployment or the ridiculously over priced pylon with 4 units. Solar Lance was just straight up better than orbital bombardment. The other powers were a little more balanced/ playstyle dependent but those two were too good.

The units were more of a mixed bag. Some like the centurion were just obviously better. Others were situationally good. They really rewarded you knowing the level in advance or replaying missions.

Pylon deployment has situational use in allowing you to create on-site power fields for warp ins, and more importantly is pretty incredible utility for its 0 solarite cost. I agree that the pylon with units upgrade is not worth the 50 solarite at the top of the tier, but Chrono Surge has the 25 solarite opportunity cost, which could be going into a different tier of powers instead, such as the aforementioned solar lance.

Otherwise, most of the abilities in a single slot are intended to be direct improvements over (or at least generally better than) the lower ones, reflecting their increased expense. Solar Lance isnt intended to be competitive with Orbital Strike, its just a flat upgrade with a higher cost. They arent all intended to be equal choices to suit your playstyle, but a way to allocate a resource to a given task.

[Thomas Cardew]

Pylon deployment has situational use in allowing you to create on-site power fields for warp ins, and more importantly is pretty incredible utility for its 0 solarite cost. I agree that the pylon with units upgrade is not worth the 50 solarite at the top of the tier, but Chrono Surge has the 25 solarite opportunity cost, which could be going into a different tier of powers instead, such as the aforementioned solar lance.

Otherwise, most of the abilities in a single slot are intended to be direct improvements over (or at least generally better than) the lower ones, reflecting their increased expense. Solar Lance isnt intended to be competitive with Orbital Strike, its just a flat upgrade with a higher cost. They arent all intended to be equal choices to suit your playstyle, but a way to allocate a resource to a given task.

Situational uses yes, and useful for when you accidentally supply locked. But it generally paled in comparison to immediately saturating your mineral and expansion lines on the first cast, then popping off several upgrades on the second. You could also always bring energizers for warp in fields after a very early mission.

The passives were genuine options, the base defense was great for certain maps, auto gas, and tech warp in were genuine play-style choices. Same for your choice of nukes, although I always found time stop to be the best. Chrono surge and Solar lance were just so strong even compared to the upper tier talents.