"Amon will stop at nothing to destroy you. Even in death, his minions strike back at you with a final, devastating gambit. Keep your distance as you dispatch your foes, or you might join them in defeat."
Aggressive Deployment: Additional enemy units are periodically deployed onto the battlefield. Self Destruction: Enemy units explode and deal damage to nearby player units upon death. Alien Incubation: All enemy units spawn Broodlings upon death.
- (maybe not?) the bombs probably deal % of life. They destroy even 620 hp mutas with their splash. - the bombs have little timer, so it's possible to pull back sometimes
Mutalingbling might be the worst by far.
I think it's stupid broodlings explode too. The timer is a great thing because you can micro.
This is the most difficult mutation I played as of now. I imagine Abathur is good here because of his global heal. I played Artanis on freaking Normal mode and it was quite tough, ally had his expansion destroyed few times so I had to defend after that. I used Dragoons at first but they can't deal with the explosive swarm. Then I thought of just spamming Phoenixes - it's good to kill air units but even with micro those explosions will give them a hard time. Axelots are good for taking aggro and dealing with broodlings.
It's all about stuttershootig (?), the micro thing where you move units and stop so they shoot and then move and shoot repeadedly. No idea what to build as Artanis but I can see why Raynor is good.
I tried twice this morning and beat it both times. Though my first time was probably lucky, because I was Raynor and had an Artanis ally (who went zealot dragoon), so it was stupid easy. I pretty much stayed max the entire time after the third wave of shuttles, on infantry, and the enemy was protoss air. I got vikings later on. I pretty much went into base-destroying mode. I imagine Railgan's mech style works very well against mass ground, like roaches, though I really wonder if it works well against mass air. (You'd probably have to focus a lot more on vikings and make an ocean of turrets.)
The second time was Abathur with a Vorazun ally who went mass voids. Tuczniak, I don't know what you're talking about. It looks like the explosions do flat damage for sure; high biomass units seem to tank them way better than low biomass units. And I didn't lose a single ultimate unit that whole game (brutalisk or leviathan), despite the fact that I was terrible about microing my brutalisks, and I lost a ton of roaches. (I was more focused on microing my air army.) Maybe the explosion is proportional to the enemy you kill, but I certainly didn't get the feeling that it was a % of your unit's life.
When I read "units spawn periodically" I thought "oh boy, we have another Bad Weather on our hands". But it's just a pretty infrequent, small pack of units of the same composition that you're fighting that mission, and they always spawn near your army, so it's not really bad at all. The one most difficult part of this mission is that broodlings explode too.
It's indeed quite hard, lost once both with Abathur and Zagara. Zagara was very close, but the last wave was overwhelming: scourge could not even reach shuttles without being taken down first
On July 12 2016 01:47 Malhavoc wrote: It's indeed quite hard, lost once both with Abathur and Zagara. Zagara was very close, but the last wave was overwhelming: scourge could not even reach shuttles without being taken down first
Just use Raynor with mass Vulture and 3 Starports for Viking Production Spidermines make the whole thing a joke.
On July 12 2016 01:47 Malhavoc wrote: It's indeed quite hard, lost once both with Abathur and Zagara. Zagara was very close, but the last wave was overwhelming: scourge could not even reach shuttles without being taken down first
Just use Raynor with mass Vulture and 3 Starports for Viking Production Spidermines make the whole thing a joke.
I looked at your video, but you had ground waves, which makes the spider mine style much easier. Have you tried this method against air waves? This is where mech Raynor's style struggles more, since losing vikings is not nearly as forgiving as losing marines. You probably need to make an ocean of turrets. I'll try mech Raynor for both later on, but my suspicion is that mech is better for ground waves, and bio is better for air waves. (Which is fine, because you can just do the 3 CC opening, and then decide which route you want to go based on the first attack wave.)
This one again seems a cakewalk with Karax. I have +40%hp mastery, cannons just don't die when backed with shield batteries. Went straight to brutal and won first try. Teammate was Raynor and he was pretty good, although he lost whole of his army quite a few times and I held down all three points with cannon walls. Getting the Spear upgrades really helps in this one, esp. the stun and the lance flames.
I wonder which commanders are best at this mutation.. Karax seems to have gotten a mutation that fits him well, but can Raynor rival his pew pew with his mul(e) mul(e)? Perhaps Abathur has the most effective sequences? Or will Vorazun's wtfpwn op-ness propell her to the top once again?
Swann seems to be the best pick here. Spamming perdition turrets everywhere takes care of any errant broodlings (and is also one of the only ways to beat zergling waves), spamming missile turrets takes care of air waves, and tanks clean up most spawns before they get to you. He also gives a lot more gas so allies can build better AA. Herc micro is very much recommended early. Raynor is also fairly good, but has a tougher early game with only bunkers and marines to defend. Rushing for vultures is tough because you won't have upgraded/buildable mines to hold off spawns. Explosions also damage mines so I'm not sure how well they'd do against zerglings. Abathur does fairly well, but I think they've fixed the spawns for him to only be adept/sentry/immortal or zerglings, which puts him at a significant disadvantage. If you get to the endgame muta ball you'll still wreak everything, but you'll want to micro a bit more than normal to avoid explosions. Artanis does very well here, pheonix take take of any air while whirlwind zealots make short work of the broodlings on the ground. Swann/Artanis is one of the strongest combos. Karax struggles a bit early on (and just dies to zergling waves almost immediately) but has a good endgame. Mirage/Sentinel works but isn't as good as Pheonix/Zealot. Swann/Karax is probably the easiest way to beat this mission. Zagara struggles early game as well, since lings and banes don't have a lot of HP and get destroyed by the explosions. Scourge are fairly squishy too and can be tough to land hits with. Kerrigan also has a tough first wave but can deal with enemies just fine once her cocoon pops. Hydras and mutas die really fast to explosions though. Vorazun doesn't ramp up nearly fast enough to defend the first few waves, so she will need a partner to carry the first few minutes. Explosions hurt DTs and Corsairs even when cloaked so you'll generally end up with only shields on most of your units. You can easily find yourself sending units that still have the 60 second recall cooldown active into battle and losing them. Easily her toughest mutation yet, especially against Terran. The AI will always send more detectors than normal against Vorazun, but the Ravens sent to detect can also seeker and put turrets down, making her a liability in the early game.
Overall the toughest waves to beat are zergling waves, which kill most commanders outright. Zergling/baneling/aberration/scourge/viper is the toughest of those, with a lot of damage and debuff potential. Swann with turrets in front of tanks is the best counter I've found.
Kerrigan shouldn't die more often than in normal missions due to her jumping and dashing trough and away from enemies to avoid explosions. But relying on her alone is a bad idea in most cases let alone here. I don't see anything she has being effective... Would probably need someone to carry her while she spreads Omegas and creep. Mutalings clump and die fast, zerglings will be almost useless, hydralisk are too slow to dodge, ultralisks too expensive to mass but probably the only thing that can survive here :/ Lurkers would be nice for ground AI if the explosions wouldn't kill them like everything else. I find it odd btw, that explosions damage air units x_x
How would you estimate the difficulty compared to past mutations?
I guess I'll give it some more tries.. If people here can do it, then *I* should at least be able to beat while still clearing the whole map and cover it in creep pff >.>
But seriously now, I'm determined to beat it on Brutal as Artanis but I just lose stuff too fast to replace it, tried the Phoenix/Zealot - zealots were meant to die anyway but air micro must be super careful to preserve units, I lost them to a tiny mistake T_T
Edit Guess what I just found out! Mastery level is shared to all lvl 15 commanders! Excuse me, I feel a sudden urge to slap myself.
I actually struggled quite a bit with Swann. I'm 1/3 with him, and the third one I only won by changing my strat and spamming turrets. But I got none of the bonuses, and I was able to get the bonuses with Raynor, Abathur, and Kerrigan (2 out of 3 bonuses with Kerrigan). He certainly doesn't feel like the best commander to me, but maybe I'm playing him wrong. Raynor feels like the best to me (although that might change in tomorrow's patch).
Here's the thing about this mission. Commanders that can warp in or drop in units are at a huge advantage. Enemies teleport to where you have combat units. For Artanis and Raynor you can easily make sure that that's never in your base. Guys like Swann, on the other hand, can get their base wrecked pretty easily if they have enough units rallied in their base. Zerg commanders should almost never have warpins in their base because you generally add eggs to your army, so that army units run outside immediately. But for commanders that rally units the normal way, do yourself a favor and find a way to rally them outside the base, so that if the AI wants to wreck your rally, they don't take out half your base with it. Having them explode all over your production and SCVs is no fun.
Well, I generally rally right in front of the middle conduit. With missile turrets in front and perditions all around your tanks you're pretty safe from spawns, and you generally don't have to look away once you've gotten your production going so you can save any tanks that would otherwise get fried with hercules. Making missile turrets with some perditions on the sides is enough to take care of any shuttle waves that come by and calldowns take care of the rest. I've been winning every game with Swann this way. You definitely don't want to rally inside your base though, that's just asking for trouble.