Description: Amon's forces have weaponized a particularly virulent strain of infestation. Their infested move at frightening speed and rapidly proliferate disease. Hallucinogens in their blood can cause hysteria in even the most stalwart warriors. Beat back the fear, and burn out the infestation.
Map: Dead of Night
Mutations:
Speed Freaks Enemy units have double their normal movement speed.
Black Death Some enemy units carry a plague that deals damage over time and spreads to other nearby units. The plague spreads to your units when the enemy unit is killed.
Won as Stukov, with a Swann partner. Stukov is really strong, especially for pushing (just bring some overseer for detection). But Swan can take care of all defenses alone: fire turrets are incredible, and with some added cannon turrets, it's all that you need during night.
Incredibly easy (but slow ^^) for a Karax+Swann combo. Your defenses are unbreakable and Karax simply moves an observer around while Swann's drill kills the infected buildings one by one, even during the nights.
I got the Karax Swann combo too. Repairing beam is easy mode for swann's turrets, while karaxx builds carriers, which survive disease thanks to their repairing bots. I also later build some science vessels for added healing and detection. Great combo, give also the added gas from the extractors, which karaxx really needs.
On April 03 2017 17:15 29 fps wrote: Swann is quite good with the auto healing turrets and free healing from vessels. Mass structures and tanks.
FYI: If your tanks/thors die and you revive them, they aren't plagued anymore.
Really? That was not what I've experienced. My Tanks stayed plagued even when in "destroyed" state. They even kept on losing health until they got definitely destroyed. Repairing them did not lift the plague either.
On April 03 2017 17:15 29 fps wrote: Swann is quite good with the auto healing turrets and free healing from vessels. Mass structures and tanks.
FYI: If your tanks/thors die and you revive them, they aren't plagued anymore.
Really? That was not what I've experienced. My Tanks stayed plagued even when in "destroyed" state. They even kept on losing health until they got definitely destroyed. Repairing them did not lift the plague either.
I checked again, and I realized that I made a mistake. Using the immortality protocol doesn't actually remove the plague... My bad.
However, I just usually keep one sci vessel near a group of tanks. It will keep all of them healthy enough.
As Swann, I got a Nova partner trying to live through the plague with the out of combat healing, but it did not seem to work enough (if at all.. does the unit goes "off combat" if under the plague?). He had to bring a lot of Ravens, and still we made it barely, because his army was always slim in numbers. I even added some early science vessels to help keeping his ravens and his few other mechanical units alive.
Stukov, Karax, and Swann are the three defensive carries and I imagine that the vast majority of successful combinations will include one of these commanders.
Stukov: The only commander that excels at both offense and defense. Bunkers out-heal plague and infested can ignore the mutator while clearing out everything.
Karax: The best defensive commander but struggles at offense. However, he's a solid anchor in combination with any other commander. Repair beam helps a lot versus plague, especially in the early game.
Swann: Slightly worse at defense compared to Karax, slightly better at offense. Good Herc micro is required to prevent your entire army from getting plagued, however.
Zagara: Very strong at offense as she can overrun defenses by herself. One of the better defensive commanders as well with her Bile Launchers.
Kerrigan: Queens can sustain Kerrigan indefinitely. Also, her Zerglings + Nydus clear buildings extremely fast as her creep regeneration negates the Black Plague. The trick is to clear units out with Kerrigan herself while transfusing all the way and use Zerglings to clean up the buildings.
Abathur: Mass Queens into Mutalisks works well as she can outheal the pleague. She needs a solid defensive ally, however.
Raynor:Marines+Firebats in Bunkers + Siege Tanks offers a fairly defensive base. Her calldowns let her clear the buildings. However, he's one of the slower commanders at clearing buildings.
Alarak: Alarak himself + Overcharge are your main tools to clear buildings with. Alarak can sustain himself by continously killing enemies. For defense, he can mass cannons and Ascendents. Again, one of the slower clears.
Nova: Nova can hold off large waves of enemies herself, but she's a bit lacking in pushing power. Ravens can outheal Black Plague, but her expensive units really do not enjoy it.
Vorazun: Dark Pylons are MVP here as they offer Vorazun a great defensive option. However, plague completely prevents Vorazun from using Dark Templar and her other options aren't great at dealing with anything without extensive help from an ally.
Artanis: I'm not really sure who's worse between Artanis and Vorazun. Artanis can mass cannons, but outside of that he really doesn't have any great tools to deal with this mutation at all.
Did this one as Stukov with a friend playing Karax, no big issues really. I hate getting black plague in the mineral line though, that is the main thing to look out for.
this one was pretty fun. plague makes sci vessels as swann hilariously retarded if you a move a lot. got overly aggressive late with a karax partner and lost most of our main to multiple stanks. won with his carriers + my sci vessel and flew a factory to the last few buildings to laser them lol
Strange... the first time I did this today I'm pretty sure neither mutator was working. Played it again tonight with the same comp... I was nova, partner was Stukov and I got destroyed over and over again... ravens running out of drones and losing my whole army.
Luckily the Stukov partner was on point and able to solo things for the most part with me just helping out on defense.
the first two times I played this, raptor lings jumped in my mineral line during the first night and plagued everything. A few hours later, I did not see raptor lings ever again. Strange
On April 04 2017 15:29 29 fps wrote: the first two times I played this, raptor lings jumped in my mineral line during the first night and plagued everything. A few hours later, I did not see raptor lings ever again. Strange
Yeah, happened to me a couple of times too. So I started planting a single turret near the mineral line; it happens very rarely, however.
Talking about rare things, a couple of times I also noticed nydus worms just outside the base (releasing protoss units - lol). I'm not sure if I just stumbled upon them out of "luck" in a couple of games, or if they actually spawn just sometimes.
You don't always get the same combination of special units. I think you get either raptorlings or observers, plus either infestors or boomers, plus either stanks or nydus worms.
Plus the enemy still has a race that will send attack waves once or twice and will have units stationed around the infested camps. This is why you saw protoss units coming out of a nydus worm.
can confirm that vorazun is completely useless. started and my partner said he'd/she'd attack while i defended. i defended all 4 entrances to the base as karax for 5 nights (night 6 i think something dropped behind my canon line or something. i stopped paying attention) while my partner killed i think a total of 30 buildings or something...
On April 03 2017 22:19 monk wrote: [*]Kerrigan: Queens can sustain Kerrigan indefinitely. Also, her Zerglings + Nydus clear buildings extremely fast as her creep regeneration negates the Black Plague. [*]Raynor:Marines+Firebats in Bunkers + Siege Tanks offers a fairly defensive base. Her calldowns let her clear the buildings. However, he's one of the slower commanders at clearing buildings.
Not sure how you tested this, but all of Kerrigans units die from the Black Plague, even on creep - pretty quickly. Even Kerrigan herself simply dies without transfuses, even with her regeneration upgrade and while constantly killing stuff (the additional carapace doesn't work vs the Plague). The only way I find her playable is mass-Broodlords, because they can keep the zombies away and only the broodlings get infected. And even then a good ally is nessessary to keep you both alive until you have a critical mass of Broodlords.
Raynor has a similar problem, no matter how much punch his bunkers can take initially, since you cannot repair them (repairing SCV get infected instantly and once they are they eat up all your income just from reparing themselves forever. I had 20 SCV mining + Mules and my mineralcount was exactly 0 from like 10-15 repairing SCV). So the bunkers WILL fall pretty quickly when under attack. Without either Karax (RepairBeam), Swann (repairing SCV) or Abathur (MendHealing) I find him absolutely unplayable. Even Medics are pretty useless, they are dry in less than a minute from the constant healing. Ant the calldowns... well, they are way too ineffective for really destroying lots of buildings.
But maybe I play them the wrong way. I love Swann the most for this Mutation because his defenses are absolutely reliable in every situation and you can still support your ally greatly in the offense on which he can totally focus on (Vessels, Drill, Bots) .
Edit: Abathur - neither Transfuse nor Mend Healing seem to work on allied units when they have the Plague, is this intentional? I was unable to keep an allied Kerrigan or Zagara alive, when I hit "Mend" their HP did not go up, they kept dying to the plague. Kerrigan even died amongst 20 of my Queens which were constantly transfusing everything.
On April 03 2017 22:19 monk wrote: [*]Kerrigan: Queens can sustain Kerrigan indefinitely. Also, her Zerglings + Nydus clear buildings extremely fast as her creep regeneration negates the Black Plague. [*]Raynor:Marines+Firebats in Bunkers + Siege Tanks offers a fairly defensive base. Her calldowns let her clear the buildings. However, he's one of the slower commanders at clearing buildings.
Not sure how you tested this, but all of Kerrigans units die from the Black Plague, even on creep - pretty quickly. Even Kerrigan herself simply dies without transfuses, even with her regeneration upgrade and while constantly killing stuff (the additional carapace doesn't work vs the Plague). The only way I find her playable is mass-Broodlords, because they can keep the zombies away and only the broodlings get infected. And even then a good ally is nessessary to keep you both alive until you have a critical mass of Broodlords.
Raynor has a similar problem, no matter how much punch his bunkers can take initially, since you cannot repair them (repairing SCV get infected instantly and once they are they eat up all your income just from reparing themselves forever. I had 20 SCV mining + Mules and my mineralcount was exactly 0 from like 10-15 repairing SCV). So the bunkers WILL fall pretty quickly when under attack. Without either Karax (RepairBeam), Swann (repairing SCV) or Abathur (MendHealing) I find him absolutely unplayable. Even Medics are pretty useless, they are dry in less than a minute from the constant healing. Ant the calldowns... well, they are way too ineffective for really destroying lots of buildings.
But maybe I play them the wrong way. I love Swann the most for this Mutation because his defenses are absolutely reliable in every situation and you can still support your ally greatly in the offense on which he can totally focus on (Vessels, Drill, Bots) .
Edit: Abathur - neither Transfuse nor Mend Healing seem to work on allied units when they have the Plague, is this intentional? I was unable to keep an allied Kerrigan or Zagara alive, when I hit "Mend" their HP did not go up, they kept dying to the plague. Kerrigan even died amongst 20 of my Queens which were constantly transfusing everything.
I'm not sure what you're doing wrong either. Kerrigan can live indefinitely with about 5-10 Queens of support. Zerglings never die to Plague, because Plague is %based and Kerrigan's Creep Regen is #based.
I never had huge problems with Bunkers dying either until around night 4-5. Perhaps you're not supporting them with Tanks enough?
On April 08 2017 09:03 monk wrote: Zerglings never die to Plague, because Plague is %based and Kerrigan's Creep Regen is #based.
Oh Jesus... that explains a lot. I intentionally avoided building "low hp units" because I was under the impression the plague would work like the BW-plague from the Defiler, like an Acid or something that drains x life per second. After looking how fast Lurkers, Broodlords or Ultralisk die, I thought Zerglings would simply melt away in seconds. Thanks for the clarification, it makes a lot more sense now!
Crushed it as Stukov + Karax. I was 87 Stukov, ally was 83 Karax. It didn't even feel like a mutation. We won in about 20 minutes with full bonus. Zzzzzzzz. Although maybe that combo makes it zzz =P
So yesterday evening my kid woke up crying. I left the keyboard (playing Stukov lvl 90 with a random level 13 Karax) thinking it usually takes only a minute to comfort my son. For some reason, it took much longer this time. In any case, I got back and we're still alive. I had made a lot of bunkers already beforehand and this time I really noticed the benefits of many bunkers, because bunkers generate free units. At the end everything was mined out and I could still empty all the bunkers and send wave after wave of zombie civilians and marines until the map was cleared. My zombies did something like 325k damage in total.