Amon's armies are vast. An endless tide of his fanatical warriors washes over the halls of Ulnar, hell-bent on burning you to ash. Cut through them to get to the celestial locks, but beware: Amon's forces are dangerous even in death.
Map: Lock & Load
Scorched Earth Enemy units set the terrain on fire upon death. Void Rifts Void Rifts periodically appear in random locations and spawn enemy units until destroyed. Avenger Enemy units gain increased attack speed, movement speed, armor, life, and life-regeneration when nearby enemy units die.
Each Void Rift has 500HP, and their spawnings are signalled by a minimap ping on each Rift. However, the minimap marker for the Rifts is now gone. In its place is just the red dot indicator for enemy buildings in fog of war. The first Void Rifts spawn [very close to your base] . But as you capture more locks, the Rifts start to spawn further, often [behind enemy lines] . Units spawned from Void Rifts do NOT get the Avenger buff. Units that get the Avenger buff also grow in size to give players a visual indicator. Scorched Earth does not affect enemy units. All three mutators have been used before: Void Rifts - Bad Weather, Avenger - Temple of Pain, Scorched Earth - War is Hell Time stop delays by 20 seconds the spawn time of Void Rifts, as well as the spawn time of enemy forces that capture each lock. Units that spawn from Void Rifts do not drop biomass for Abathur. Mind-controlling/Reclaiming Avenger-buffed enemy units will cause them to lose the Avenger buff. Sniping the enemy's strongest units first will make the rest of the force relatively less strong when Avenger activates. A level 90 Raynor can have a 120-second cooldown on his Dusk Wings calldown. These may be handy for sniping Rifts.
Probably the toughest mutation yet. Couple things to note from when I played: -Units spawned from Void Rifts DO get the Avenger buff. -Rifts do appear on the minimap. I'm guessing SEA server might have some differences.
Swann and Karax again do well against Void Rifts. You cannot cannon push one main pathway or herc/tank snipe the shards though, so it is a lot tougher than Bad Weather.
I tried and failed with randoms a bunch this morning. The thing that makes this harder than Bad Weather is that the rifts spawn in hostile territory much sooner, so it's much harder to get a handle on them quickly. I'm thinking the ideal composition for this map is a heavily offensive player (like Zagara or Vorazun) to clear locks ASAP and a player like Swann or Karax to put turrets on the lock zones as quickly as possible. Though it requires a lot of coordination.
I think this may just be the first one I skip. o.o
I don't know, I can't handle it just randomly queuing. Even when I go Kerrigan and shut down the rifts, my ally kinda tends to stall out and I can't get anywhere. Could've just been some bad hero combinations, but it did not work out well.
Man, maybe wait a bit for everyone to get used to it before I try again? It just feels like such a waste of time to fail one of these. D:
This is the hardest one yet, worse than #4 bad weather even. Got together with a random and good Zagara player who went for baneling/scourge. I cycled through various commanders failing about 6 times (swann, karax, kerrigan, abathur) while my ally stuck with Zagara. I picked Vorazun and it got easier, as expected.
My ally Zagara did most of the brunt work, while I placed DTs all over the map, just waiting for the rifts to spawn and sniping them immediately. With the rest of my army I helped take over rough areas, defending, taking locks and so on. The rifts that spawn at the eastern most lock can become tricky, since they spawn right next to the lock. I did it by suiciding a few dts to be able to spawn the elite dts, so I could snipe those rifts as well.
I'm very busy it seems all game running my units into those flaming patches >< Rifts buried in enemy territory are toughest (as early as second round in my experience). Commanders with strong calldowns can snipe, hyperion perhaps the best since he can jump and kill more than one in a calldown. His marine units on burning ground a little less helpful. Artanis once again is a terrific supporting partner in a mutation. Units live long enough to kill avenger-buffed units, bursting the rifts are easier, surviving the aoe-on-death is easier. Pairing with Zagara/Kerrigan like is usually strong. Swann still strong because of Herc mobility to snipe rifts and the staying effects of the laser. Karax can defend emplacements all over the map. Vorazun still plays the game like she's doing battleship and the rest are doing chess.
Very fun challenge with the weaker commanders not paired with Artanis. It's incredibly easy to be drowning in a sea of units spread across the map and have to multitask the defense, the locks defense, and the attack. I've lost a couple when my ally got overwhelmed multitasking in at least three places for many minutes on end. On the tougher enemy spawns, you can't carry from behind.
Did it on brutal at average mastery levels ~50 against zerg. I massed void gays as Vorazun while my random Karax ally massed tower defenses and sent an observer to each lock. Once we reached critical mass we spammed Spear of Adun abilities and killed everything that came our way (including some big endgame waves), becoming best buds in the process. This is one co-op replay I wish I could save lol
I think it's easy to call this the hardest one yet. It's one that you absolutely cannot carry if ally doesn't do their part in early game. Like 10-15 tries in and I never made it even 10mins in. And knowing how the map plays out, this one might actually remain hard til the end unlike most previous ~hard ones.
I really start feeling Vora & VRs could indeed be the way. Got pretty far with that once.
What really annoys me most about this map is the lag it brings to my computer. So many unnecessary enemy units in the enemy main bases really slows this map down. Not to mention that when waves of units come from the rifts, it's even harder to defend and come back.
Argh. I just want to do it once as a challenge. If there's someone else like me who can generally carry brutal mutation and wants to join, I'd like to unite forces for pre-made. I just can't do it with lottery of random queue where most people aren't suited to beat even the easier brutal mutations without carrying.
vorazun (dt corsair with a few DA to MC fat carriers) and karax (leap-frogging cannons --> defending the left, mid, and bot right locks with cannons) worked for me. Dark pylons to cover the cannons. Time stop for pushing/clearing multiple rifts/clearing rifts in enemy territory. Took just one try (although we failed many times with other combos). Got really close as Zagara once, but ran out of steam.
The cannons and monoliths need to cover a huge area. Eventually, some rifts will stay, but you'll have enough cannons to not have to worry too much about them.
I also suggest putting a spore crawler/turret/cannon in the back of your natural and main in case a rift behind a lock spawns a void ray/muta. More if the enemy is toss with phoenixes.
How do you think I should split the points for Karax on the unit cost reduction vs structure HP? I'm at about 70 mastery and have 22-23 points to spend.
On August 31 2016 00:59 GamerJatt wrote: How do you think I should split the points for Karax on the unit cost reduction vs structure HP? I'm at about 70 mastery and have 22-23 points to spend.
Everything into structure HP. Don't make units on this one, just spam support powers and defensive/offensive cannons.
Yes that's what I tried just now but I still lost. Maybe I should just concede against Zerg AI? Zerglings/banelings/aberrations were impossible to hold against even with a cannon wall.
What a rough mission. I only did it on Hard and won at like 98%, but my partner was also Kerrigan trying to play solo Kerrigan until they tech to ultras, so it was a bit rough early on pushing locks. I don't think I will venture into Brutal on this one. When you finally kill the last rift, and move to get a lock, and four more suddenly appear, it's madness. Making and sending out observers later on as Karax to nuke the rifts helps quite a bit so your partner doesn't have to go back or risk getting your defenses bombarded by more units.
I've beaten this mutation with the 5 strongest commanders for this mutation atm and this is my ranking so far:
Karax: The king of this mutation, the most consistent strategy seems to involve lots of static defense with a gas dump for Monoliths, Energizers, and Observers. The Observers are great at getting in vision to snipe down rifts.
Vorazun: All of Vorazun's calldowns are extremely helpful here. Shadow Guard kills rifts, Dark Pylons teleport units and and cloak static defense, and Time Stop pauses the Rift Spawn timer.
Swann: Great static defense and overall defensive ability. Can push more easily than Karax and provides precious gas for his allies, buti gas is not as important on this map since mineral-heavy static defense is key as well.
Kerrigan: Kerrigan can kill all the early-game rifts, and Ultra/Queen/Hydra is very strong late-game in combination with Nydus Worms.
Zagara: Does extremely well early on, but you can definitely feel her petering out. She needs to be carried in the last few minutes of the game.
I haven't tried the other 3 commanders, nor have I seen anyone attempt the other 3, but I'm guessing they end up somewhere along the lines of Artanis/Raynor/Abathur in that order.
Haven't attempted this at all but shouldn't Abathur be pretty damn good on this map or do the void rift units not give biomass? I feel like early game that could be a free stream of biomass and eventually your units will heal so much it won't matter.