Coop SC2 is the best thing we've gotten out of the RTS genre since the time of WC3 custom maps. Loved it and I've sunk hundreds of hours into it, more than I ever did into Ladder. It's really too bad they abandoned it.
The devs for SC2 and WC3 have said their next game, Stormgate (by Frost Giant studios, ex-blizzard employees) will have an even more improved coop mode with even more focus on how commander abilities assist and synergize with Ally’s! I’m excited for that game :)
I think the author's portrayal of Mengsk was quite unfair. Unlike the majority of "defensive" heroes, his defenses are very flexible and very strong. You can slam a bunker anywhere on the map and immediately fill the area with bunkers which, in a lot of maps, is an essential part of the playstyle, the bunker is like a unit for Mengsk. The strongest unit in the game imo. Hell, sometimes I start building them during a fight. Thats part of the reason why his p3 is his strongest prestige. Because you can fill those bunkers with armed conscripts REALLY fast. Although I like 2 other prestiges too which is a testament to a good game design. His imperial witness isn't just a detector and energy generation unit. It's an ENERMOUS damage increase that is equivalent to a stim to the whole army. You need to use and micro it. His elite unites and conscripts are a good balance and they support each other. The only real splash damage threat to Mengsk are storms, to be honest, (and disruptors but they are busted vs anyone and anything) which are counteracted by ghosts that you SHOULD make vs everyone (maybe not Zerg so much) since they stun mech (so no tanks or colossus to burn through you), drain shields, drain energy so no storms and deal good damage to hybrids. The rocket is alright with an upgrade. And don't get me started on a Thor. This thing can wipe a whole fleet in overwatch BY ITSELF as long as anything is covering for it and a witness is deployed WHICH YOU SHOULD DO. And lore... You have Tykus, Zeratul and Stetman already. It's not a reach to think that Mengsk will team up with someone if he sees it's benefits. He is not spiteful, he is heartless. Also, fuck the lore if it prevents fun. It's co-op The thing I love with Mengsk is that he doesn't adopt a playstyle of some build in StarCraft. He plays a goddamn Warhammer 40k Soulstorm apocalypse mod imperial guard faction with bunkers, artillery, workers and... A lot of other things. And it's really good.
He also just massively undersold the Royal guards; like how the sky fury utterly ANNIHILATES most air-targetable objectives with its obscene anti-massive damage, or the Pride’s *AOE TRIPLE SHOT YAMATO*
@@Devestator2150I agree, royal guard is very strong, although I prefer Thors for air defense because they are cheaper than BCs and the Splash damage is way too strong even against hybrids. It's a real shame they stopped making coop. Mengsk was the last and arguably their best creation.
>Stukov 3 is very Lag Intensive You havent seen the absolute terror that is my brother packing his entire army into Banshees and throwing them at the enemy. Not even looking over there and my game just stops for three seconds.
@@TwilightMessiah ok you have not experienced mid maxed Stedman my dude. Blue field maxed lings. 200 supply running from one side of the map to the other in 5 seconds. As your frame rate just PLUMMITS. I have honest to God crashed ppl from the game when I send the ling ball into die.
@@TwilightMessiah combining swarm stukovs with cloak prestige zeratul and evolution ultimate is actually even worse, the game has massive issues constantly updating the buffs on so many units
@@Nikolai0169 Not at all, I got a 1080 and its all fine even when I play with commanders with huge units. I only had the issue on my old computer, there is also a map where you can preload every effect for better performance but its more of a hardware thing it seems
I like to think the reason Mengsk is working for the "good guys" now is because Kerrigan, being a telepath, peered into his mind and realized that Mengsk thinks hes doing the right thing. Either that, or Kerrigan realizes killing him might cause a civil war within the dominion and a "united dominion" is needed to battle Amon, like they did against the UED in Brood War. Then it's just a simple use of some diplomacy, maybe a little bit of telepathic knowledgedumps, to get him to realize that they're all dead if they don't stop Amon. Mengsk called Kerrigan a monster, a monster he created... but she freaking decapitated his dad, mom, and little sister. They made monsters of each other. I'd love to see a continuation of this alternate timeline where the dominion and zerg go to war again.
Hell, for Mengsk, since Kerrigan knew about Amon at the time she could have considered him a lesser evil. Y'know, "Better the devil you know" and all that jazz. Mengsk couldn't be the spearhead of the Dominion, he's proven too lenient with Mobius Corps, but having him draw from a smaller backwater sector of the Dominion with those guards loyal to him supporting him is a good narrative reason for him to be there. A simple case of "he faked his death"
just a few critiques i'd add: the audio mixing at times makes it very hard to hear you, one example being around 1:25:40. i dont know what program you used to edit this, but in certain programs like premiere theres a feature that automatically tunes the audio to deafen a certain amount until you stop talking (if you want the music to be apparent that is. the pepe emotes add a bit of character to your video, but they also take up quite a bit of the screen which makes it hard to focus on the video. i understand that the point is to take up a lot, but in my opinion downsizing them a slight bit would do wonders. overall though, this video so far is great! i love watching retrospectives, especially ones that are this long. it tells me a lot of love and care went into this, and you know what you're talking about. i'm looking forward to any other retrospectives you might create in the future (if at all). keep in mind, i typically watch my videos in bite sized chunks over the course of a few days if they're this long, so i'll continue to add to this list if i see anything else i'd add.
1:56:40 The siege tank - medivac combo is a reference to a scene in the Starcraft:uprising novel. Mengsk has a siege tank deploy in a hangar of his ship, and uses it to shell Duke's battle cruiser. This all happens in space. This is as dumb as it sounds.
That's one of those things that sounds amazing at first blush, but the instant you apply any scrutiny to it, the lack of physics makes your brain hurt.
@@MajorZero61 imagine sieging the tank on the hangar roof, so it can shoot down and out at the best angle 😁 it’s not that different from shooting a permanently mounted turret on a spaceship!
This video is perfect. I’m a GM Zerg ladder player- never knew how to get into Co-Op, was always a bit turned off from the structure and pacing of it, but now I feel pretty damn comfortable booting up a game and playing.
This is really well made. Congratz on getting so many good things at once. I was having a blast getting through those 3 hours and i was never bored. the only thing i could say quickly would be to make the music a tiny bit more quieter as some tracks took over and your voice faded into obscurity at times and became hard to listen to, but that is just a minor thing. Well done!
As an abathur main I find it enjoyable to micro early and get ur first brutal going, in my experience abathur is extremely good even before the first bruta due to nests and even the vile roaches are op because of the attack speed slow, generally however I use a spore crawler to bait units into nests fr enemy encampments and I ramp my economy, building only one roach at a time until I am fully saturated. Not to mention the ravager upgrades make the biles so op they can screen wipe quickly with a little rapid fire
I'm with you, early micro is the whole point of Abathur, but I do find it a bit ridiculous that outside of the first three commanders, Abathur is the only one given the: "Recommended for players of all skill levels" label when he so obviously isn't due to the immense micro he needs in the beginning. I can only speak for the first 12 commanders, but I'd say Raynor, Zagara, Abathur, maybe Karax, and definitely Stukov should have their "skill level" label reversed.
I’m amused by the video creator hating Abathur so much… at least he admitted he is powerful. I wouldn’t consider myself a great player, but I main Abathur/enjoy him a lot. On the 1v1 ladder, I consistently rank silver or gold, and my APM is around 65-70 (average sustained). StarCraft is like ADHD therapy - I have a hard time sticking to a strategy and managing lots of moving pieces at once (even though I can switch tasks quickly, it’s difficult to keep an eye on the minimap and countering enemy strategy, while also keeping up with economy & upgrades on my end), but the game is a good workout. With that said, I don’t find micromanaging the first ultimate evolutions of Abathur units to be difficult. Maybe I should have tried the “spine crawlers to clear the expansion base” strategy (I’ll try that next time I play!), but I treat that first Roach like a hero unit, giving it a control group of its own (and maybe a few backup units rallied to this hero) and the same for my hero Mutalisk. Most maps besides the one swoopisbird calls the hardest (and I agree!) are less hectic at the beginning, and having two groups of super tough units makes the late game easier to manage (at least, for me). I also think Swoop under-appreciated the Ravagers and teleporting Swarm Hosts… the former do indeed give the player a versatile “nuke” ability (once you have three brutalists, why not morph most of your other roaches into ravagers?), while the latter combine with the Brutalisk tunneling to give the player a good “panic” reaction option. Maybe it helps that I have a bias; I remember StarCraft Husky getting so excited about Abathur, it made me look at him and appreciate him in the campaign 😁
@@evshrug I have a feeling he doesn't know about rapidfire for ravagers. Not something a lot of newer players know about, but anyone who reads a guide or two will soon learn about rapidfire.
Abathur main here, personally I just lay down some toxic nest traps and let the opening attack wave wander into them, failing that, rushing 4/5 roaches and 2 queens should be more than enough to push any early game waves and areas you need to to get the biomass you need, just be sure to mend if your queen regen is falling behind. Micro a singular roach of your group to get all the biomass as quickly as possible and you'll have your brutalisk in no time, a single rushed brutalisk will pay off in dividends in the early game even on brutal and due to the fact their attacks cleave and they can't pick up biomass you can just send them to intercept attack waves alone to get started on your second and third. Leviathans are fantastic but they're honestly more a luxary unit than anything, something worth going out of your way to get but certainly not required, more times than not I just use them to supplement my anti-air anyway.
I love SC2 and WC3 so much, the lore, the units, the mechanics, but both my micro and macro are absolute trash and I don't feel like investing time and effort into improving those. Thank you for explaining more about the game for me!
I can’t seem to raise my average sustained APM above like 70… I just can’t maintain a strategy focus and click that fast at the same time (though obviously I can queue up a whole bunch of zergling production at once just like anybody else). The one thing I spent a little time learning that made the biggest difference in saving time and being more efficient: control groups. The first three for my main ground army, air units, and spellcasters (respectively), and then my hatchery on control group 4 (or command center/nexus to keep up with workers and base spells, but I actually find Zerg easier in this way because the hatchery is also where all army units are produced, so I don’t need as many control groups). I don’t use the control button to create control groups… I use shift, which adds the current selection to a control number (even if it is empty), so that my groups are updated even as my army grows/dies. I do use the control key if I make a mistake and need to reset a control group… but that doesn’t happen often. Sure, control groups were one more thing to learn (I started playing RTS games before control groups existed), one more thing to practice until they were part of my muscle memory, but it’s such a benefit that playing without them now feels like playing with a hand tied behind my back. I can double-tap my 1 key to center the camera view on my army to tell it to A-Move, single-tap 4 to select production and queue sometime up without having to scroll my screen away from my army, and then tap 3 to make sure to take advantage of spells even if I’m in the heat of battle (or to help the spellcasters break off, so they don’t run into the frontlines and die). If I was more advanced, I could use more control groups, but I feel like 4 is the most I can comfortably use without resetting my hand position or looking at the keyboard. I do feel like even these 4 help immensely with keeping me up on my macro and micro tasks, outperforming someone with higher APM that doesn’t use any control groups.
Hi let me say it got some helpfultext below. Original message: Um I never get why people no matter in what games see it as a (negative) duty to improve or grind... Just do the things taht you love in the game, and you will improve over time. (Have fun hackn slashing enemies? Great and meanwhile you get loot! Next time you get more, and at some point you have even rare things. Just play the stuff thats fun in such game, such as different characters or builds and not the same just because others say it's the best. This is the natural way of games, but communities got too serious at some point. *For starcraft:* *Be it a tower defense* -> great for beginners to get versed with basic controls but also features. *A Moba map* -> great for intermediate players to get quicker with their camera etc. Or *Play an Easy commander,* such as Tychus or Zeratul -> great for players not being good in macro, Zeratul even micro (except the hero). *Play the campaign* It's really one of the most fun ways to enjoy yourself similar to coop if you have no ambitions to compete (ladder/versus) and you get better automatically, because at some point it will get bored and you will raise the difficulty to keep it interseting or try other races/commanders which again gives you more knowledge and skill (it's good to know what others struggle with for instance) The point for you is, you don't play them on purpose you just play them for fun, and then you get better at it automatically. That's really how most got gud. They are curious and or bored. Or I struggle with hitting an ability? A quick change in the hotkey layout. And a week or day or month later another one, and so on. Play vs AI on lower difficulties is also rather fun if you are newer, exploring the races and stuff, i.e. Mono unit strategies, (Hot tip: Each unit alone , mass it) or simply you dont want to get raped. It can also be quite cozy and nice to just play the macro (vs AI) similar to what people like when playing the settlers for instance, which the AI allows. (Because they do not cheese; no rush-cheese or macro- or tech-cheese) Hot tip: Play it with a friend it's really the best. I always loved it. Of course summarized the very blunt but good tip is "play on easy?" or rather said lower difficulty that you are comfortable with. Or raise it if it got uninteresting. Last but not least "bad" is always subjective. If you play the game not very often, you can be "good" for what you do. Don't compare yourself with pro gamers or such, though it can be cool to see what they can do. It motivates people and that's the fun for them. I personally stopped watching high play because I have more fun trying my own things.
@@matteoooo4791 the hilarity is that WC3 original is better then reforged, and they even gutted the original in a patch that they deleted audio files just so you'd have to download reforged.
Note that Raynor P2 is still an option for Bio players, since it doesn't affect Barracks at all. When you get the Afterburner upgrade, you can have mech units that are about 30% more powerful than normal in bursts (outside BCs who have a capped attack speed)
Few things i'd like to point out personally Kerrigan's p2 is a glass-cannon playstyle that incentivizes high agression. Due to the fury stacks expending when you cast an ability, spending into the attack speed mastery helps alleviate the downtime between casts. This is massively important since her p2 electricity *stuns* enemies on hit, and can hit a single unit multiple times if others aren't near, helping you deal with air hybrids and other beefier units with ease. Zagara p3 is the most noteworthy of the prestiges (imo) since it allows her hero unit to actually do work compared to the other ones present in the game. Her deep tunnel is on a ridiculously short cooldown and can be used globally even in the fog of war, allowing you to do some cheesy shit you wouldn't normally be able to. Her reduced cooldown and higher energy regen lets you spam baneling barrage more often which, coupled with the baneling dmg mastery, lets you take down enemy bases and structures with ease. Frenzy is on a minute cooldown which means you can spam it as often as you wish after you spawn the hunter killers, which is useful for fast bursts of damage. With this said, the cost increase in her army isn't all that important since you can play with zagara much more aggressively, allowing your free banes to stack while you weaken enemy fortifications, allowing for clean encounters with little to no While abathur's playstyle is absolutely centered around early biomass collection, you can more often than not use the mines to lure out enemy units near entrenched positions. Every map (and based on race) has specific spots where it is most optimal. With that said, its not unlikely to get your first brutalisk out after the first wave arrives, if you're using mines correctly (and based on enemy composition) Stukov's brood queens, while very niche, are a useful addition to your army due to the fact they can provide easy detection and sight radius, burst single-target damage and most importantly fungal growth which, to my knowledge, can stop the yamato charging animation, among other things. Fenix p2, in my personal experience, is a glass-cannon sort of playstyle. You can play it similarly to how you'd play regular fenix, since his units are simply cheap enough to warrant that playstyle. Since p2 massively increases the buff on the data-web, the hero units are where you'll have the most power in (and having shells dying in battle will give them that increased buff). Namely, Kaldalis and Talis get the most benefit, with kaldalis reaching a maximum of +90 aoe damage on his basic attack (which is x2, btw). Coupled with attack speed mastery and the avenger protocol, Kaldalis' dps can reach (i kid you not) roughly 1085 dps. To my knowledge thats the single highest dps a unit can achieve in co-op With Dehaka, his first prestige does *not* make your units deal the explosion effect. They merely receive the tag bonuses of the devoured units, in the psionic unit's case its the 50% cooldown reduction. Dehaka's p1 is meant to fortify your army by giving it extra attack speed, dmg to armored, healing and, most importantly, the extra armor and thorns effect from devouring massive units. Dehaka's p3, while INITIALLY, might seem like you'll suffer from the 'abathur problem', is actually a massive buff to dehaka's entire gameplan. While, yes, you'll have to split essence among 2 units, your early game is radically increased in strength, allowing you to be even more agressive. On maps like Oblivion Express, you can easily go to the right-side base in order to farm essence off of higher-tier units (such as infestors, archons, battlecruisers, etc.) Furthermore, due to the second dehaka also having the buffs from his lvl14 and his mastery, you can put one point from zweihaka into roar instead of leap, allowing you to have a much safer early game while you level both of them together. Since early levels in dehaka don't require much essence, you can easily get both of them to level 3~4 before the objectives spawn in. The most important thing about dehaka's p3 isn't that theres two units, but rather 2 sets of abilities to cast. You can devour units much more frequently, have the wave roared as long as you need it to be and also have even more charges of the fire ability, giving you an overall higher dps and wave clear. With stetmann's masteries, the upgrade cost reduction only affects weapon/armor upgrades' COST. Compared to kerrigan's expeditious evolutions mastery, which reduces cost and time of all upgrades, stetmann's upgrade cost reduction isn't worth it. While the stetelite cooldown mastery might initially seem better, with smart positioning of stetellites you'll never really need it. The structure morph rate on the other hand is massively important since, with enough points, you can get the Super Gary upgrade *as soon* as stetmann spawns, which is a massive boost in power (especially if playing p2) Mengsk, while absolutely a villain and hated by 2/3rd of the cast, would make perfect sense to be fighting along (some) of the commanders when you consider how starcraft 1 played out. On multiple occasions you had multiple factions that hated eachother working together, such as when Kerrigan allied herself with Zeratul in order to stop the UED, or when the UED, Mengsk and Artanis allied themselves to stop Kerrigan. Mengsk being a villain and working with Kerrigan to fight off against amon is much more in line with how sc1 was written, opposed to sc2's "good vs evil" style of writing. Something i thought is worth pointing out is that sky furies while pretty niche against air comps, are ABSURD against massive targets like hybrid behemoths and massive objectives, like the trains on Oblivion Express and void thrashers. At rank 3 their grounded attack vs massive has a dps of almost 120, which is really good. The pride of augustgrad's stats are mostly unimportant, since its most important tool is its yamato cannon. The noteworthy aspect of it is that it deals *aoe* damage, unlike every other of its kind in the game. At R3, the yamato cannon will target 3 targets, dealing the full 300 aoe damage on 3 spots in an enemy wave, absolutely erasing any enemy wave for free
I love playing Mengsk and i like how Blizzard went the extra mile and somewhat contextualized how Mengsk would behave during the End War when you listen to his speeches that play from the zeppelins. Sounds a lot like he is royally fucking pissed for being tricked into creating the Hybrids by Narud.
They also nerfed Zeratul, and then mostly un-nerfed him. This was the game mode was what kept me interested in SC2. I used to check the SC2 Co-op Forums daily. Usually several times a day. Still disappointed that Han and Horner were combined into 1 commander, and that we never got so many of the other characters as commanders, like Tosh, or Selendis. They could have kept this going to years longer if the corporate morons hadn't decided RTS was a dead genre, and also ruined Reforged while they were at it.
SC2 as such isn't even close to dying. .The eSports scene still pulls in tons of viewers and the game still sports a player counts that other, actually dead RTS only could dream of. Hell, i'd even say that SC2 is more popular than AoE 2 Multiplayer...
Gotta say, this was a really excellent video. You were very informative, clearly have an excellent understanding of the meta, and your humor was never overdone.
Great video. Glad to see the community keeping starcraft alive. This gave me some good ideas about which commanders I want to level and how high. Probably kerrigan next, then maybe alarak.
I'm glad this popped up on my timeline. My go to was Karax and MASS TOWERS. Or I should say Probius with mass towers. Trivialises many maps. What was also interesting was how General Davies got patched in her map. Apparently when that map first came out, she wouldn't shut up and it was really distracting.
Selendis really got shafted throughout SC2: Her presence in Wings of Liberty is either you killing her ship or her dipping if you choose to help her. She doesn't appear in HOTS. And in Legacy of the Void, the campaign that should have her as a main character, she ends up getting controlled by Amon and is only seen at the beginning and end of the campaign. And when it comes to Co op, she was less prioritized by canonically dead characters and STETMANN the minor character in WOL of all things (nothing against Stetmann though). Shame there wasn't more to her as it seemed like they intended to make her an actual proper Protoss character in SC2
You can play Selenbis in Nexus co-op on the arcade. I should warn you there are commanders that are op as fuck and it has a map that really hard. Oh and you can learn how to use commanders in the proving grounds mode/map.
@@bobbyferg9173 Are you referring to her not appearing in Heart of the Swarm campaign or Heroes of the Storm since she was supposed to be the next hero there before they stopped content completely.
I think the author's portrayal of Mengsk was quite unfair. Unlike the majority of "defensive" heroes, his defenses are very flexible and very strong. You can slam a bunker anywhere on the map and immediately fill the area with bunkers which, in a lot of maps, is an essential part of the playstyle. His imperial witness isn't just a detector and energy generation unit. It's an ENERMOUS damage increase that is equivalent to a stim to the whole army. You need to use and micro it. His elite unites and conscripts are a good balance and they support each other. The only real splash damage threat to Mengsk are storms, to be honest, (and disruptors but they are busted vs anyone and anything) which are counteracted by ghost that you SHOULD make vs everyone (maybe not Zerg so much) since they stun mech, drain shields, drain energy so no storms and deal good damage to hybrids. The rocket is alright with an upgrade. And don't get me started on a Thor. This thing can wipe a whole fleet in overwatch BY ITSELF as long as anything is covering for and a witness is deployed WHICH YOU SHOULD DO. And lore... You have Tykus, Zeratul and Stetman already. It's not a reach to think that Mengsk will team up with someone if he sees it's benefits. He is not spiteful, he is heartless. The thing I love with Mengsk is that he doesn't adopt a playstyle of some build in StarCraft. He plays a goddamn Warhammer 40k Soulstorm apocalypse mod with a imperial guard faction with bunkers, artillery, workers and... A lot of other things. And it's really good.
@@BoxCoxbuilding 15 earthsplitter ordnances filled with conscripts & imperial witness support while spamming contaminated strike every 20 seconds is one of my favourite strats (Im capped at level 5 btw)
ANyone gonna talk about how SCII just kinda dropped this absolute gem, that NO OTHER RTS has even tried to emulate, WE NEED MORE CO-OP RTS GAMES also if your playing dehaka, try the mass Wyrm spam...they are insane, an army of tanky units that all have deep tunnel means raynor can just scan, your whole army pops into existance on the base, and then you spam calldowns... absolute degeneracy
I watched this video in chunks, but I understand if you don't have the time. If you want you can find specific sections where he talks about a specific commander, map, or mutation.
For Kerrigan, you are missing out on so much situational power if you aren't building 4 or even more Omega Nydus Networks. Their ability to provide vision for other commanders, as well as transport instantaniously anywhere on the map... I often build 7 to 9 to spam them as they can stall attack waves tremendously with their 1k hp!
i remember telling my allies to use my worms and that was the 1st they heard of it being shared. I also got a nasty message from a partner right before I used a worm to tank an attack wave long enough to respond.
Okay, rant time: -14:27 As a Dehaka main, I must simply object. (Kerrigan is really strong tho, I just suck at properly using her assimilation aura and creep spread, praise Stukov). -YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A STUKOV BUILD A BROOD QUEEN BEFORE? They're his best detection. I usually build 4 to 6 of them and just leave them hovering over my barracks. After holding A for several seconds, I select the queens and spam Ocular Symbiote so the whole squad has detection. No overlord management required, don't even have to look at the enemy base anymore, it just auto-erases from my map. Infest Structure is pretty good for stalling if you need to buy time to return or build up a defense force, basically a mini panic button; kinda nice to combine with a single missile turret to defend against ghost nuke attacks on brutal. Sukov p2 is the single best way to lag out a game hands down. It works best with bunkers (the Troopers produced by bunkers are like the Marines, but don't take any supply, so it's free loading permanently). Aside from crashing games, it is absolutely a meme build, would only recommend with a premade for funsies. -1:19:03 there is no better answer to ghost nuke than sudden tower (keep in mind, Dehaka's buildings cost supply as well, so you can't afford to tower your base up). Hot take: Dehaka's p2 is actually garbage and p3 is far and away the best pick, but requires inhuman micro to make it work (I used to main it non-stop and got it to work, but after I stopped playing for a while, it was tough to get back into). P3 makes his early game way better, and there should be enough essence on the map to level them up once they get going, the main drawback is the sheer amount of micro required to get it done (switching between two casters CONSTANTLY, not just portioning out the essence). Very niche, indeed. -Zeratul's Avatars are funny. The Avatar of Essence doesn't unlock devolution until commander level 14, so before then, the Avatar of Form is the clearly superior one (imo, Essence is pretty useless without devolution). After that, the table COMPLETELY flips and Essence is the only one that ever matters. -Mengsk's move speed also helps resource collection, I believe. I put one on my base first (for Mandate generation of course), then also my ally's base, then both our expansions. And of course two in the army (I leapfrog them one over the other, maintaining a constant buff zone where possible). This doesn't work for F2 abusers, tho. -I'm pretty sure Scythe of Amon is objectively the hardest map for all reasons stated. I don't think it's even a matter of opinion. Yes, Cradle of Death is hard, but I think you said it best: "it is a very busy mission." It's not as casual as most missions and requires constant attention and busy work, but I still think Scythe is harder. Overall, great video. Always nice to see Coop getting some love :D
@@dragonqueenniisan4122 You don't have to wait if you don't want to, but you usually don't need detection any earlier anyway. The nice thing is it eliminates the need for overseers to follow your army at all. Your army itself is the detector. It lasts for several minutes, longer than your army does (but still a long time if you put it on an ally should they fail to get decent detection). Plus your queens can contribute to base defense with fungals and even one shotting big targets with spawn broodling. It ultimately comes down to preference I guess, but I like the queens better.
I have to make an argument for Mengsk tanks being arguably the best ones. Seeing that they can easily shred anything with their high dps and slow down hoards with their micro stun on each shot
Hot take: 40:01 getting to the 1st brutalisk as abathur isn't that bad, utilizing nests could be tricky, but it rewards player's knowledge of the map, which is a good thing imo on the note of stopping the progress of your army and focusing on aquiring enough biomass for your mutas - i see this as just a sidequest no make your army stronger, but i guess i can understand why you would find this annoying. but then - why would you play abathur if you don't enjoy his main mechanic side note, Ravagers + queens are actually really strong (especially with P1)
watching the clip that "soured his opinion on the commander" even tho I know it is only 10secs I have to wonder where his first 2 queens are by the 6 min mark?
Honestly feel you on all of that. I'd argue queens have more use on base abathur as healers and backup brutas for if somehow one of them die. For a base abathur I useally make the 3 starting roaches. Micro them while doing macro threw the hotkeys. Get the early brutal and just PUSH. Make 6 queens as backup. When those are done you should have all 3 brutas. From there spek into 4 overseers and the rest mutas. If you lose any of the former units replace them. And keep producing mutas. As for p1 if that's essanse Horder. That's the one I bassicly run with at all times. If your cheep and tanky roaches die. Whatever you lose no biomass from there deaths. The ability for an army to have 125% att speed and life steal is just far to powerful to pass up for 3 broken units and 3 tanky air units. And entire army of demigods is far better then 6.
I will not stand for this Corsair Slander! Y’see, neutron flare does aoe damage. When paired with Black Hole, that allows you to just shred enemies : You negate their armor and clump em together! You will never see something melt faster than a group of corsairs hitting air units in a black hole. For Karax : Put the Shadow Cannon key on Rapid Fire. That’ll fix the micro issue For Fenix P2 : Listen, once you see Kaldalis 3 shot hybrids you can’t go back, it’s just too good. He gets up to 100~ damage per strike with 81 of it being AoE it’s insane. And that’s just him : all of the heroes get fucking crazy. For P1, the Arbiter can be spammed, so it’s effectively base Fenix but better. H&H : The Hellion has the best on Death Effect of em all, giving you like 75% attack speed. Always get some in your armies.
I will never forget the moment I fell in love with Corsairs in SC1. I forget exactly what I was doing, but I was dicking around with Corsairs for some reason, and when I watched a group of them melt a pile of stacked Carriers, I realized "huh, these guys are just aerial Zerglings, except with AoE as well." The only reason I tend to use Stalkers for anti-air unless it's Void Launch or a heavy air comp is they do cost a ton of gas, and Vorazun is already strapped for gas as it is.
@@MajorZero61 that is fair, they are gas heavy. I do not mass all that many of them : 5-10 are usually fine combined with black holes to kill everything. Can’t use them + Void Rays tho.
Coop mode is a genius idea, even casual players will be tempted to play because multiplayer PvP is too menacing I wish we could see Tosh as coop commander :( Oh well at least Mengsk is really OP
Been looking for a video like this, earned a sub ! Your breath of knowledge is both comprehensive and your experience with the the co-op mode is plain to see. Keep up the good work !
Found this gem in my recommended feed a few days ago, got time to watching it and glad I did! Me and my buddy played the absolute crap out of Co-op when it launched I really wish it became even more popular and supported. Thank you for the content!
6:55 "With all that addressed... let us *quickly* assess all the commanders" >Talks about commanders for the next 2 hours straight LOL Very good video!!
I was thinking the same thing here xD They're pretty great en mass. I assume he's just talking about taking a while to reach that critical mass, but the same could be said for any capital ship rush.
@@bendystrawz2832 Yeah i've seen plenty of Vorazun players mass Void Rays, but they take awhile to setup so you'd have to carry them early game first. I'd say mass Carriers would be easier with Fenix since he doesn't need Tech requirements.
@@RickySama240 Mass carrier is nonsense for Fenix. It's rockslapping. At the very least, if they want to do mass carriers,any fenix player should just make talis + adepts with her debuffs on the enemies.
This was a lot of fun to watch! Thank you for the time and effort I’m sure it took. I really don’t think that Abathur’s mines require an “intimate knowledge of the map and enemy attacks,” but rather only require a passing familiarity with both. Like, sure you’re not going to get 100% optimal value on the hardest mutations if you don’t place them in exactly the right place, but there’s so much room for great value below 100% optimal value. Maybe I’m just not a high enough level player or whatever, but a lot of the Abathur critiques just feel rather shallow or overly focused on maximum value at maximum difficulty, when so much of the game will be played with neither of those. Vile roaches and queens do so so much work early, and while the mines do require some attention, as long as you’re not trying to get 100% optimal value out of em, they don’t need to take that much attention.
25:20 _"but static [defense] still sucks, so whatever"_ The moment video earned its like. (Just to be clear: yeah static defenses are extremely cost-effective units, but coop scenarios (even the defense ones) universally reward mobile armies way more than they reward sitting in a well-protected corner. That said, once your pop is maxed static defenses are amazing, so have at it!)
Thanks for that video, very instructive! Thing that bothered me throughout the entire video is that the background music is just slightly too loud, makes it hard to hear you are saying
Just because you are bad at Abathur P3, does not make it bad prestiege, especially if you know the unlimate secret - your Deep tuneling ninja Brutalisks counter everything (Immortal/reaver included). Air units are unnessesary, just mass brutas + queens is ultimafe F2 deathball combo. With full mines+double biomass assension (1-2-1) you can often get full tab+ (24+) at the end of longer maps (my record is 42 at the gas harvesting map). You can even donate expansion to your ally, P3 is very eco friendly. P.S. And you can force land Vikings first attack wave by spawning fresh Toxic nest so that they land to attack it, prefferably on pre-made minefield.
i have yet to see any abathur p3 work, ever usually ive already cleared most of the map by the time ally gets more than 5 brutalisks, with that being the reason he gets them in the first place
32:19 - imo Void Rays are a late-game transition unit. You never start out with them unless it's certain build comps or you know your teammate can handle everything early on. But mass them enough on mid-late game when bigger, chunkier units start appearing and they will melt everything. They are one of two units Vorazun has that can attack both air and ground (Dark Archon is a spellcaster, so I don't count it). And they also get a range bonus the longer they fire, making them better than Stalkers in prolong engagements. They are also the best antiarmor comp she has. Only real downside is the lack of cloak and mobility, but with some micro and/or a good team, that is easy to bypass. I will admit that they do get very easily trashed by certain mutations, but the same can be said for almost every unit comp. Also, as someone who watches Comp games, I remember the days when mass Void Ray was the cheese strat for Protoss. They are terrifying in decent to good hands.
Coop is way more fun than regular multiplayer. I had infinite time when SC1 was new (though battle net was pretty awful pretty fast after release) to get good. Now I'm old and it's fun not having to deal with people who have perfected rushes and have 2,000 clicks per second.
RTS has always been more fun as PvE for me than PvP and this game mode was how i managed to drag my friend into the genre. He still isnt the biggest fan but, playing casual, its approachable for him and he likes Alarak because hes more a MOBA player (dota 2 moreso)
I could be wrong but Mensk seems like a throwback to Command and Conquer with cheap and expendable infantry rifleman/rocket trooper, the three star leveling mechanic, garrisonable buildings, and Doom weapons. Also as an Abathur main you dissing limitless....well I took that personally. I Routinely finish games with 15-20 Ultimates. I think my record was like 32 Brutalisks.
(haven't finished the video yet) BUT gotta say about the Vorazun Corsairs not doing DMG thing corsairs deal AOE DMG to balance it and pair it with her Black hole that reduces enemy defense and the BC's and Carriers will die. great content btw mate this is the 1st video i watched from you and it's amazing i loved how you talked about Zagara
Looking at mengsk, you can tell he takes a lot from other commanders and combines quite a few gimmicks into his playstyle These include: Spear of adunen top bar ability’s Expendable units like zegara Expensive nova units A smaller range version of laser drill Orbital drop pods from raynor The level up system from dehaka An ability to speed up and buff units like stetmen And replaceable units due to the dropped weapons sorta like alarak with his supplicants Just something I found interesting about mengsk, there’s probably more I don’t even know Very interesting video by the way
@@swoopisbird3117 thanks for your effort, really made rewinding and finding sections much easier! I have to admit… I have ADHD, and at one point I fell asleep while watching this (just because of length, not the quality of content: you are a dynamic and funny presenter!), but I was able to go back and watch the pieces that were fuzzy to me and watch the whole thing!
As much as I would love to have seen Emperor Valerian, Arcturus makes sense especially as his kit is concerned being a villainous "disposable basic forces backed up by super heavy elite units" for the Terran faction, somewhere between Raynor and Zagara in the "we have reserves " way of playing with WMDs. If they were going to do Valerian properly you'd almost be better playing him like Zeratul where he can strengthen his army by integrating it with ancient alien tech while also focusing on unit survivability, basically splice a similar artifact mechanic with Arcturus's royal guard unit promotion. Arcturus and Stukov were probably my two favorite commanders, but they were all really fun and I absolutely loved Co Op mode.
This is like the ultimate co op guide and I actually wanted to find a video about all the comanders to better understand which to play so thanks. It was definitely a pretty long video but informative 👌. I am not sure why you didn't continue with this kind of content though
I kinda disagree on a point with zagara and about half of what was said about vorazun. Zellots are a wonderful tradeoff for DT's. When most missions your massing only stalkers and just blinking into there army and getting free point blank shots in. And the dark pylon comments. While there not powerful on there own. There powerful when combined with other commanders when you consider vorazuns passives. The emergency recall can save artanis's paper ball. Ranors fleshy ball of nonsense. Zerg players can get a boost from it but unless your abathur there really not helpful to Zerg outside of the health Regen bonus. Pylons can take momentary focus off of an army to the pylon itself if there's no detection. And if not that it gives a noticeable damage bonus to everything within the stealth field inside.
@@AuStistic_Lemurr well I mostly just play Dehaka so I wouldn't personally know much about some of the other commanders. Plus I don't own any other than Dehaka so I can't try maxed out versions of all the commanders to compare without paying more.
@@edgeless5 a fair stance. for myself i own and have maxed all of them. while I haven't unlocked P2-3 on all of them, iv gotten p1 with a majority. while getting P3 with a handful of them. like alarak and stukoff. as I saw those and wondered to myself how fun that would be.
Wait just a minute. Was this planned by Blizzard? To have the layer running around with Dank Archons and _mindcontrolling_ -Overlords- _Overseers?_ Well, this seems like the ultimate form of respect towards og BW AI. "Where did all my Overlords go? Oh, there they are. Uhhh, I can't click them? Oh. _Oh."_
Watched the entire thing. An impressive video for sure but kind of perplexing how it was named. I wouldn't call this a retrospective as much as I'd call it an in depth overview. In other words its more of a video explaining what Co-op is and does rather than giving an analysis about it. Check out "Breath of the Wild - Not Enough Zelda" by Joseph Anderson for what I think might be considered a true retrospective. Would have been nice criticisms of co-op like: "why are all maps essentially 2 base only", "why are there no imbalanced-power maps (e.g. one player gets 2 bases, the other gets 1)", "why do so few of the maps take actual teamwork when the mode is called co-op", "why can you not ban maps like you can in ladder", "why are maps so copy-paste from the campaign", etc. .. Or ideas like maps where one player farms money while the other fights, maps where one player defends while the other attacks (which exists already but is not really forced). This video was a really good way though to learn the commanders that I've yet to play, or refuse to play out of distaste for their mechanics. I think the design of the newer commanders (stetman, tychus, dehaka, mengsk, and zeratul) have lost the essence of what makes the game 'StarCraft' (build base, expand, upgrade units, micro for a small bit of extra value). I'm surprised you mentioned Mengsk's place in Co-op lore-wise but didn't mention how Stetman being a commander playing on the map in which he called the commanders to come to makes absolutely no sense in terms of lore.
Stetman got new dialogue when he’s a commander on Mist opportunities. It’s contextualized in the mode as Gary’s birthday so Stetman comes back to Bel’shir to celebrate it by getting more gas
Mist Opportunities actually has a way to speed up a little. One bot can be lost, and if you let die the bot that comes last (which goes far most north-east geyser) you can save almost a minute of time. Not much, but something. Sometimes you instantly win by losing that bot. However, this means that you aren't allowed lose bot before which might be hard in some circumstances at the first or second to last bots wave.
Inpersonally really like the brood queen especially for the ability to grant ervery unti bonus Range an detector abilities. Its super useful on siegetanks and ist always a good addition to your partners army
I really only play SC2 once every 8 months to relive HotS but this put me in the mood to try coop. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any matches and having to buy commanders is really offputting. Thanks for the vicarious enjoyment however!
That's super weird... I find matches in no more than 5 seconds consistently. Maybe US West is where it's at or something. You also don't have to buy commanders... You get at least 3 for free which will give you literally 10s of hours of playtime while leveling. If you like it enough and think other COs seem like fun, go for it. Nothing is making you though.
P2 Stukov is unironically OP. Pick up all your infested via banshees. Locate the enemy. Click unload. Win. Reload your banshees and move on. Literally a click to win evolution
I play co-op all the time, but my computer is a complete piece of crap so I only normally get a couple frames per second until there's a lot of units, then it slows down to a crawl and I can do nothing.
This was a veryy informative video. I've played Co-op mode for years now and sadly Blizzard no longer supports the game with new content. I only wish they would add in Tosh as a co-op commander since he one of my favorites during Wings Of Liberty campaign.
The way I hear it, most of the developers left Blizzard and created a new studio, Frost Giant, where they are developing a new RTS game called Stormgate. It will have a dedicated Coop mode that was carefully considered from the start to be an improvement on StarCraft II’s mode! I’m really looking forward to a fresh game!
Creo que la razón de que Mengsk es un comandante aliado es porque, de hecho, se ha aliado varias veces con Raynor, Kerrigan y los Protos durante Starcraft y Starcraft: Brood War. Siendo un villano que sabe cuándo es necesario aliarse para combatir un mal que lo amenaza también a él.
wrong 1st in SC2 Mengsk wanted to kill Kerrigan just as much Kerrigan wanted to kill him same logic goes to Raynor and 2nd I'm pretty certain that WOL (wings of liberty) takes place 3 to 5 years after brood war I highly doubt especially after all this death and destruction after 5 years or so he would let this go especially knowing A he can indirectly control the zerg and B he already has what raynor has militarily speaking
I just went back to play Coop again, I'm still a noob at SC but it is really fun. There are many interesting and different commanders, now they DiabloIII-ified it so there are prestige levels, 4 classes for the commanders, brutal+ and it works for replayability. The only downside is that I have to pretend that it wasn't made by blizzard and that some of the elitist players can be toxic, (I've been matched with a guy 3 times in a row who quit because I dared playing on brutal at lvl 4, even though I am winning most of my games but nwm). Luckily they are a small minority, most people were chill and competent.
God please people stop thinking Raynor P3 is battlecruiser only. The very example here is on an infestation map, Banshees are so, so much better than Battlecruisers, you need like, what, 10 vikings at best to deal with air, and you can defend with ease with the banshee and turn bases to dust quickly. Battlecruiser are tough but they are not fast dps units. In compo like air zergs with lot of scourges you will just see your battlecruiser being shred and wait like an imbecile to be rebuilt when you can snipe them with vikings without too much casualities and quickly replaced them after. Battlecruisers are usefull and strong in some situation but if you play P3 with your calldowns, you should be able to solo brutal at higher level by starting making banshees and vikings depending on enemy comp and only later slowly switch to battlecruiser. Also you are supposed to have a lot of orbital commander center to spam mules for mineral and repairing your fleet
1:50:53 well, Myst Opportunities is arguably just helpibg Stet with his Terrazine addiction. Sure Amon wants it for some reason but Stet only cares because he WANTS HIS DRUGS.
overall this was a fantastic video, only critique I have is the music would get too loud at times and was hard to listen to what you were saying. I still play coop every once in awhile it's a great game mode to hop on and play for a little bit
Mengsk exists because Blizzard played DOW Ultimate Apocalypse and went... "yeah, we admit that we ripped it off. Let's go all in and make an Off Brand Imp Guard Army."
Coop SC2 is the best thing we've gotten out of the RTS genre since the time of WC3 custom maps. Loved it and I've sunk hundreds of hours into it, more than I ever did into Ladder. It's really too bad they abandoned it.
The devs for SC2 and WC3 have said their next game, Stormgate (by Frost Giant studios, ex-blizzard employees) will have an even more improved coop mode with even more focus on how commander abilities assist and synergize with Ally’s! I’m excited for that game :)
@@evshrug
Its a shame that SC2 is over and WC3 is destroyed :c Even if they make a new game im gonna miss the lore of Warcraft and Starcraft alot...
Add me amd carry me. What server you on?
@@bobzombie2710you don't need a carry for co-op...
@@flashbackfrank8781 I know I don't NEED one, but it's less work if I have one.
I think the author's portrayal of Mengsk was quite unfair. Unlike the majority of "defensive" heroes, his defenses are very flexible and very strong. You can slam a bunker anywhere on the map and immediately fill the area with bunkers which, in a lot of maps, is an essential part of the playstyle, the bunker is like a unit for Mengsk. The strongest unit in the game imo. Hell, sometimes I start building them during a fight. Thats part of the reason why his p3 is his strongest prestige. Because you can fill those bunkers with armed conscripts REALLY fast. Although I like 2 other prestiges too which is a testament to a good game design.
His imperial witness isn't just a detector and energy generation unit. It's an ENERMOUS damage increase that is equivalent to a stim to the whole army. You need to use and micro it. His elite unites and conscripts are a good balance and they support each other. The only real splash damage threat to Mengsk are storms, to be honest, (and disruptors but they are busted vs anyone and anything) which are counteracted by ghosts that you SHOULD make vs everyone (maybe not Zerg so much) since they stun mech (so no tanks or colossus to burn through you), drain shields, drain energy so no storms and deal good damage to hybrids. The rocket is alright with an upgrade. And don't get me started on a Thor. This thing can wipe a whole fleet in overwatch BY ITSELF as long as anything is covering for it and a witness is deployed WHICH YOU SHOULD DO. And lore... You have Tykus, Zeratul and Stetman already. It's not a reach to think that Mengsk will team up with someone if he sees it's benefits. He is not spiteful, he is heartless.
Also, fuck the lore if it prevents fun. It's co-op
The thing I love with Mengsk is that he doesn't adopt a playstyle of some build in StarCraft. He plays a goddamn Warhammer 40k Soulstorm apocalypse mod imperial guard faction with bunkers, artillery, workers and... A lot of other things. And it's really good.
He also just massively undersold the Royal guards; like how the sky fury utterly ANNIHILATES most air-targetable objectives with its obscene anti-massive damage, or the Pride’s *AOE TRIPLE SHOT YAMATO*
@@Devestator2150I agree, royal guard is very strong, although I prefer Thors for air defense because they are cheaper than BCs and the Splash damage is way too strong even against hybrids. It's a real shame they stopped making coop. Mengsk was the last and arguably their best creation.
@@BoxCox He was just kinda fundamentally broken, and if you need air defense, you get rocket troopers
god i love that mode so much
a shame that gabriel tosh will never see the light of the day as a co-op commander
Yeah it's a shame we never got to see him and Spectres in there
nexus coop has him (custom co-cop mode mod) haven't tried but you might enjoy
How the hell did I find you here?
>Stukov 3 is very Lag Intensive
You havent seen the absolute terror that is my brother packing his entire army into Banshees and throwing them at the enemy. Not even looking over there and my game just stops for three seconds.
Lord of the horde Stukov + scourge queen Zagara = no fps
Thats all I use is Stukov.
@@TwilightMessiah ok you have not experienced mid maxed Stedman my dude. Blue field maxed lings. 200 supply running from one side of the map to the other in 5 seconds. As your frame rate just PLUMMITS. I have honest to God crashed ppl from the game when I send the ling ball into die.
@@TwilightMessiah combining swarm stukovs with cloak prestige zeratul and evolution ultimate is actually even worse, the game has massive issues constantly updating the buffs on so many units
@@Nikolai0169
Not at all, I got a 1080 and its all fine even when I play with commanders with huge units. I only had the issue on my old computer, there is also a map where you can preload every effect for better performance but its more of a hardware thing it seems
Well made. It s a shame this didn t get popular
true
Didn't get popular... yet
Just got recommended to me, so here's hoping
The algorithm is a strange thing, it may still blow up!
Tfw it's now a 25k viewed video.
Still too low, though. This stuff is amazing.
I like to think the reason Mengsk is working for the "good guys" now is because Kerrigan, being a telepath, peered into his mind and realized that Mengsk thinks hes doing the right thing. Either that, or Kerrigan realizes killing him might cause a civil war within the dominion and a "united dominion" is needed to battle Amon, like they did against the UED in Brood War.
Then it's just a simple use of some diplomacy, maybe a little bit of telepathic knowledgedumps, to get him to realize that they're all dead if they don't stop Amon.
Mengsk called Kerrigan a monster, a monster he created... but she freaking decapitated his dad, mom, and little sister. They made monsters of each other.
I'd love to see a continuation of this alternate timeline where the dominion and zerg go to war again.
Hell, for Mengsk, since Kerrigan knew about Amon at the time she could have considered him a lesser evil. Y'know, "Better the devil you know" and all that jazz.
Mengsk couldn't be the spearhead of the Dominion, he's proven too lenient with Mobius Corps, but having him draw from a smaller backwater sector of the Dominion with those guards loyal to him supporting him is a good narrative reason for him to be there. A simple case of "he faked his death"
great quality but the music drowns you out a bit too much in some moments tbh.
Hit me up with a reply if you would like some headphone recommendations; it’s much easier to hear narration separated from music!
I love seeing people talk about coop. Thank you.
I’m a mengsk main, and honestly I don’t care about lore, it’s coop
just a few critiques i'd add:
the audio mixing at times makes it very hard to hear you, one example being around 1:25:40. i dont know what program you used to edit this, but in certain programs like premiere theres a feature that automatically tunes the audio to deafen a certain amount until you stop talking (if you want the music to be apparent that is.
the pepe emotes add a bit of character to your video, but they also take up quite a bit of the screen which makes it hard to focus on the video. i understand that the point is to take up a lot, but in my opinion downsizing them a slight bit would do wonders.
overall though, this video so far is great! i love watching retrospectives, especially ones that are this long. it tells me a lot of love and care went into this, and you know what you're talking about. i'm looking forward to any other retrospectives you might create in the future (if at all).
keep in mind, i typically watch my videos in bite sized chunks over the course of a few days if they're this long, so i'll continue to add to this list if i see anything else i'd add.
Audacity is a free program that does similar audio editing.
at around 5:30 it gets really bad, i can barely hear the person talking
One thing that really annoys me about Han & Horner is that the upgrades to Horner's units just makes them look like Han's units.
me too, sometimes i dont upgrade them just because of that
@@majdavlk649with the cheaper horner units, i just build mass horner without upgrades and carriers
1:56:40 The siege tank - medivac combo is a reference to a scene in the Starcraft:uprising novel. Mengsk has a siege tank deploy in a hangar of his ship, and uses it to shell Duke's battle cruiser. This all happens in space. This is as dumb as it sounds.
That's one of those things that sounds amazing at first blush, but the instant you apply any scrutiny to it, the lack of physics makes your brain hurt.
@@MajorZero61 imagine sieging the tank on the hangar roof, so it can shoot down and out at the best angle 😁 it’s not that different from shooting a permanently mounted turret on a spaceship!
Not quite.
It was a desperation move; Duke was about to board him.
This video is perfect. I’m a GM Zerg ladder player- never knew how to get into Co-Op, was always a bit turned off from the structure and pacing of it, but now I feel pretty damn comfortable booting up a game and playing.
This is really well made. Congratz on getting so many good things at once. I was having a blast getting through those 3 hours and i was never bored. the only thing i could say quickly would be to make the music a tiny bit more quieter as some tracks took over and your voice faded into obscurity at times and became hard to listen to, but that is just a minor thing. Well done!
As an abathur main I find it enjoyable to micro early and get ur first brutal going, in my experience abathur is extremely good even before the first bruta due to nests and even the vile roaches are op because of the attack speed slow, generally however I use a spore crawler to bait units into nests fr enemy encampments and I ramp my economy, building only one roach at a time until I am fully saturated. Not to mention the ravager upgrades make the biles so op they can screen wipe quickly with a little rapid fire
I'm with you, early micro is the whole point of Abathur, but I do find it a bit ridiculous that outside of the first three commanders, Abathur is the only one given the: "Recommended for players of all skill levels" label when he so obviously isn't due to the immense micro he needs in the beginning. I can only speak for the first 12 commanders, but I'd say Raynor, Zagara, Abathur, maybe Karax, and definitely Stukov should have their "skill level" label reversed.
I’m amused by the video creator hating Abathur so much… at least he admitted he is powerful. I wouldn’t consider myself a great player, but I main Abathur/enjoy him a lot.
On the 1v1 ladder, I consistently rank silver or gold, and my APM is around 65-70 (average sustained). StarCraft is like ADHD therapy - I have a hard time sticking to a strategy and managing lots of moving pieces at once (even though I can switch tasks quickly, it’s difficult to keep an eye on the minimap and countering enemy strategy, while also keeping up with economy & upgrades on my end), but the game is a good workout.
With that said, I don’t find micromanaging the first ultimate evolutions of Abathur units to be difficult. Maybe I should have tried the “spine crawlers to clear the expansion base” strategy (I’ll try that next time I play!), but I treat that first Roach like a hero unit, giving it a control group of its own (and maybe a few backup units rallied to this hero) and the same for my hero Mutalisk. Most maps besides the one swoopisbird calls the hardest (and I agree!) are less hectic at the beginning, and having two groups of super tough units makes the late game easier to manage (at least, for me). I also think Swoop under-appreciated the Ravagers and teleporting Swarm Hosts… the former do indeed give the player a versatile “nuke” ability (once you have three brutalists, why not morph most of your other roaches into ravagers?), while the latter combine with the Brutalisk tunneling to give the player a good “panic” reaction option.
Maybe it helps that I have a bias; I remember StarCraft Husky getting so excited about Abathur, it made me look at him and appreciate him in the campaign 😁
@@evshrug I have a feeling he doesn't know about rapidfire for ravagers. Not something a lot of newer players know about, but anyone who reads a guide or two will soon learn about rapidfire.
Abathur main here, personally I just lay down some toxic nest traps and let the opening attack wave wander into them, failing that, rushing 4/5 roaches and 2 queens should be more than enough to push any early game waves and areas you need to to get the biomass you need, just be sure to mend if your queen regen is falling behind. Micro a singular roach of your group to get all the biomass as quickly as possible and you'll have your brutalisk in no time, a single rushed brutalisk will pay off in dividends in the early game even on brutal and due to the fact their attacks cleave and they can't pick up biomass you can just send them to intercept attack waves alone to get started on your second and third. Leviathans are fantastic but they're honestly more a luxary unit than anything, something worth going out of your way to get but certainly not required, more times than not I just use them to supplement my anti-air anyway.
I love SC2 and WC3 so much, the lore, the units, the mechanics, but both my micro and macro are absolute trash and I don't feel like investing time and effort into improving those. Thank you for explaining more about the game for me!
Dude I feel you, love the game but can’t be bothered to improve my micro and macro skills
I can’t seem to raise my average sustained APM above like 70… I just can’t maintain a strategy focus and click that fast at the same time (though obviously I can queue up a whole bunch of zergling production at once just like anybody else).
The one thing I spent a little time learning that made the biggest difference in saving time and being more efficient: control groups. The first three for my main ground army, air units, and spellcasters (respectively), and then my hatchery on control group 4 (or command center/nexus to keep up with workers and base spells, but I actually find Zerg easier in this way because the hatchery is also where all army units are produced, so I don’t need as many control groups). I don’t use the control button to create control groups… I use shift, which adds the current selection to a control number (even if it is empty), so that my groups are updated even as my army grows/dies. I do use the control key if I make a mistake and need to reset a control group… but that doesn’t happen often.
Sure, control groups were one more thing to learn (I started playing RTS games before control groups existed), one more thing to practice until they were part of my muscle memory, but it’s such a benefit that playing without them now feels like playing with a hand tied behind my back. I can double-tap my 1 key to center the camera view on my army to tell it to A-Move, single-tap 4 to select production and queue sometime up without having to scroll my screen away from my army, and then tap 3 to make sure to take advantage of spells even if I’m in the heat of battle (or to help the spellcasters break off, so they don’t run into the frontlines and die).
If I was more advanced, I could use more control groups, but I feel like 4 is the most I can comfortably use without resetting my hand position or looking at the keyboard. I do feel like even these 4 help immensely with keeping me up on my macro and micro tasks, outperforming someone with higher APM that doesn’t use any control groups.
Play on easy?
Hi let me say it got some helpfultext below. Original message: Um I never get why people no matter in what games see it as a (negative) duty to improve or grind... Just do the things taht you love in the game, and you will improve over time. (Have fun hackn slashing enemies? Great and meanwhile you get loot! Next time you get more, and at some point you have even rare things. Just play the stuff thats fun in such game, such as different characters or builds and not the same just because others say it's the best. This is the natural way of games, but communities got too serious at some point. *For starcraft:* *Be it a tower defense* -> great for beginners to get versed with basic controls but also features. *A Moba map* -> great for intermediate players to get quicker with their camera etc. Or *Play an Easy commander,* such as Tychus or Zeratul -> great for players not being good in macro, Zeratul even micro (except the hero). *Play the campaign* It's really one of the most fun ways to enjoy yourself similar to coop if you have no ambitions to compete (ladder/versus) and you get better automatically, because at some point it will get bored and you will raise the difficulty to keep it interseting or try other races/commanders which again gives you more knowledge and skill (it's good to know what others struggle with for instance)
The point for you is, you don't play them on purpose you just play them for fun, and then you get better at it automatically. That's really how most got gud. They are curious and or bored. Or I struggle with hitting an ability? A quick change in the hotkey layout. And a week or day or month later another one, and so on. Play vs AI on lower difficulties is also rather fun if you are newer, exploring the races and stuff, i.e. Mono unit strategies, (Hot tip: Each unit alone , mass it) or simply you dont want to get raped. It can also be quite cozy and nice to just play the macro (vs AI) similar to what people like when playing the settlers for instance, which the AI allows. (Because they do not cheese; no rush-cheese or macro- or tech-cheese) Hot tip: Play it with a friend it's really the best. I always loved it.
Of course summarized the very blunt but good tip is "play on easy?" or rather said lower difficulty that you are comfortable with. Or raise it if it got uninteresting.
Last but not least "bad" is always subjective. If you play the game not very often, you can be "good" for what you do. Don't compare yourself with pro gamers or such, though it can be cool to see what they can do. It motivates people and that's the fun for them. I personally stopped watching high play because I have more fun trying my own things.
@@matteoooo4791 the hilarity is that WC3 original is better then reforged, and they even gutted the original in a patch that they deleted audio files just so you'd have to download reforged.
Note that Raynor P2 is still an option for Bio players, since it doesn't affect Barracks at all. When you get the Afterburner upgrade, you can have mech units that are about 30% more powerful than normal in bursts (outside BCs who have a capped attack speed)
Few things i'd like to point out personally
Kerrigan's p2 is a glass-cannon playstyle that incentivizes high agression. Due to the fury stacks expending when you cast an ability, spending into the attack speed mastery helps alleviate the downtime between casts. This is massively important since her p2 electricity *stuns* enemies on hit, and can hit a single unit multiple times if others aren't near, helping you deal with air hybrids and other beefier units with ease.
Zagara p3 is the most noteworthy of the prestiges (imo) since it allows her hero unit to actually do work compared to the other ones present in the game. Her deep tunnel is on a ridiculously short cooldown and can be used globally even in the fog of war, allowing you to do some cheesy shit you wouldn't normally be able to. Her reduced cooldown and higher energy regen lets you spam baneling barrage more often which, coupled with the baneling dmg mastery, lets you take down enemy bases and structures with ease. Frenzy is on a minute cooldown which means you can spam it as often as you wish after you spawn the hunter killers, which is useful for fast bursts of damage. With this said, the cost increase in her army isn't all that important since you can play with zagara much more aggressively, allowing your free banes to stack while you weaken enemy fortifications, allowing for clean encounters with little to no
While abathur's playstyle is absolutely centered around early biomass collection, you can more often than not use the mines to lure out enemy units near entrenched positions. Every map (and based on race) has specific spots where it is most optimal. With that said, its not unlikely to get your first brutalisk out after the first wave arrives, if you're using mines correctly (and based on enemy composition)
Stukov's brood queens, while very niche, are a useful addition to your army due to the fact they can provide easy detection and sight radius, burst single-target damage and most importantly fungal growth which, to my knowledge, can stop the yamato charging animation, among other things.
Fenix p2, in my personal experience, is a glass-cannon sort of playstyle. You can play it similarly to how you'd play regular fenix, since his units are simply cheap enough to warrant that playstyle. Since p2 massively increases the buff on the data-web, the hero units are where you'll have the most power in (and having shells dying in battle will give them that increased buff). Namely, Kaldalis and Talis get the most benefit, with kaldalis reaching a maximum of +90 aoe damage on his basic attack (which is x2, btw). Coupled with attack speed mastery and the avenger protocol, Kaldalis' dps can reach (i kid you not) roughly 1085 dps. To my knowledge thats the single highest dps a unit can achieve in co-op
With Dehaka, his first prestige does *not* make your units deal the explosion effect. They merely receive the tag bonuses of the devoured units, in the psionic unit's case its the 50% cooldown reduction. Dehaka's p1 is meant to fortify your army by giving it extra attack speed, dmg to armored, healing and, most importantly, the extra armor and thorns effect from devouring massive units.
Dehaka's p3, while INITIALLY, might seem like you'll suffer from the 'abathur problem', is actually a massive buff to dehaka's entire gameplan. While, yes, you'll have to split essence among 2 units, your early game is radically increased in strength, allowing you to be even more agressive. On maps like Oblivion Express, you can easily go to the right-side base in order to farm essence off of higher-tier units (such as infestors, archons, battlecruisers, etc.) Furthermore, due to the second dehaka also having the buffs from his lvl14 and his mastery, you can put one point from zweihaka into roar instead of leap, allowing you to have a much safer early game while you level both of them together. Since early levels in dehaka don't require much essence, you can easily get both of them to level 3~4 before the objectives spawn in. The most important thing about dehaka's p3 isn't that theres two units, but rather 2 sets of abilities to cast. You can devour units much more frequently, have the wave roared as long as you need it to be and also have even more charges of the fire ability, giving you an overall higher dps and wave clear.
With stetmann's masteries, the upgrade cost reduction only affects weapon/armor upgrades' COST. Compared to kerrigan's expeditious evolutions mastery, which reduces cost and time of all upgrades, stetmann's upgrade cost reduction isn't worth it. While the stetelite cooldown mastery might initially seem better, with smart positioning of stetellites you'll never really need it. The structure morph rate on the other hand is massively important since, with enough points, you can get the Super Gary upgrade *as soon* as stetmann spawns, which is a massive boost in power (especially if playing p2)
Mengsk, while absolutely a villain and hated by 2/3rd of the cast, would make perfect sense to be fighting along (some) of the commanders when you consider how starcraft 1 played out. On multiple occasions you had multiple factions that hated eachother working together, such as when Kerrigan allied herself with Zeratul in order to stop the UED, or when the UED, Mengsk and Artanis allied themselves to stop Kerrigan. Mengsk being a villain and working with Kerrigan to fight off against amon is much more in line with how sc1 was written, opposed to sc2's "good vs evil" style of writing.
Something i thought is worth pointing out is that sky furies while pretty niche against air comps, are ABSURD against massive targets like hybrid behemoths and massive objectives, like the trains on Oblivion Express and void thrashers. At rank 3 their grounded attack vs massive has a dps of almost 120, which is really good.
The pride of augustgrad's stats are mostly unimportant, since its most important tool is its yamato cannon. The noteworthy aspect of it is that it deals *aoe* damage, unlike every other of its kind in the game. At R3, the yamato cannon will target 3 targets, dealing the full 300 aoe damage on 3 spots in an enemy wave, absolutely erasing any enemy wave for free
Didnt even mention that dehaka P2 is by far his strongest prestige, and just try to argue his free 8k summon that returns damage to enemies
I love playing Mengsk and i like how Blizzard went the extra mile and somewhat contextualized how Mengsk would behave during the End War when you listen to his speeches that play from the zeppelins. Sounds a lot like he is royally fucking pissed for being tricked into creating the Hybrids by Narud.
They also nerfed Zeratul, and then mostly un-nerfed him. This was the game mode was what kept me interested in SC2. I used to check the SC2 Co-op Forums daily. Usually several times a day.
Still disappointed that Han and Horner were combined into 1 commander, and that we never got so many of the other characters as commanders, like Tosh, or Selendis.
They could have kept this going to years longer if the corporate morons hadn't decided RTS was a dead genre, and also ruined Reforged while they were at it.
Microsoft might decide to restart development on SC2
@@durshurrikun150 Source?
@@DarckArchon I said might, meaning that they could do it if they get to control it, but it is not certain.
SC2 as such isn't even close to dying. .The eSports scene still pulls in tons of viewers and the game still sports a player counts that other, actually dead RTS only could dream of. Hell, i'd even say that SC2 is more popular than AoE 2 Multiplayer...
@@Donnerbalken28 Oh, Sc2 isn't dead for sure, it's still played to hell, I myself play from time to time.
Man you are super underrated, this is such a good all in one sc2 guide, great job man
Gotta say, this was a really excellent video. You were very informative, clearly have an excellent understanding of the meta, and your humor was never overdone.
Great video. Glad to see the community keeping starcraft alive. This gave me some good ideas about which commanders I want to level and how high. Probably kerrigan next, then maybe alarak.
I'm glad this popped up on my timeline. My go to was Karax and MASS TOWERS. Or I should say Probius with mass towers. Trivialises many maps.
What was also interesting was how General Davies got patched in her map. Apparently when that map first came out, she wouldn't shut up and it was really distracting.
I heard there were supposed to be selendis who’s commanding the golden armanda , and we never heard from this ever
Selendis really got shafted throughout SC2: Her presence in Wings of Liberty is either you killing her ship or her dipping if you choose to help her. She doesn't appear in HOTS. And in Legacy of the Void, the campaign that should have her as a main character, she ends up getting controlled by Amon and is only seen at the beginning and end of the campaign.
And when it comes to Co op, she was less prioritized by canonically dead characters and STETMANN the minor character in WOL of all things (nothing against Stetmann though).
Shame there wasn't more to her as it seemed like they intended to make her an actual proper Protoss character in SC2
You can play Selenbis in Nexus co-op on the arcade.
I should warn you there are commanders that are op as fuck and it has a map that really hard.
Oh and you can learn how to use commanders in the proving grounds mode/map.
@@bobbyferg9173 Are you referring to her not appearing in Heart of the Swarm campaign or Heroes of the Storm since she was supposed to be the next hero there before they stopped content completely.
Despite his problems, Mengsk is actually my favorite commander simply because he's the closest to Command & Conquer in Starcraft we'll ever get.
I think the author's portrayal of Mengsk was quite unfair. Unlike the majority of "defensive" heroes, his defenses are very flexible and very strong. You can slam a bunker anywhere on the map and immediately fill the area with bunkers which, in a lot of maps, is an essential part of the playstyle. His imperial witness isn't just a detector and energy generation unit. It's an ENERMOUS damage increase that is equivalent to a stim to the whole army. You need to use and micro it. His elite unites and conscripts are a good balance and they support each other. The only real splash damage threat to Mengsk are storms, to be honest, (and disruptors but they are busted vs anyone and anything) which are counteracted by ghost that you SHOULD make vs everyone (maybe not Zerg so much) since they stun mech, drain shields, drain energy so no storms and deal good damage to hybrids. The rocket is alright with an upgrade. And don't get me started on a Thor. This thing can wipe a whole fleet in overwatch BY ITSELF as long as anything is covering for and a witness is deployed WHICH YOU SHOULD DO. And lore... You have Tykus, Zeratul and Stetman already. It's not a reach to think that Mengsk will team up with someone if he sees it's benefits. He is not spiteful, he is heartless.
The thing I love with Mengsk is that he doesn't adopt a playstyle of some build in StarCraft. He plays a goddamn Warhammer 40k Soulstorm apocalypse mod with a imperial guard faction with bunkers, artillery, workers and... A lot of other things. And it's really good.
@@BoxCoxbuilding 15 earthsplitter ordnances filled with conscripts & imperial witness support while spamming contaminated strike every 20 seconds is one of my favourite strats
(Im capped at level 5 btw)
@@mignonne_ gets even better if you unlock him 😉
@@BoxCox I'm poor
ANyone gonna talk about how SCII just kinda dropped this absolute gem, that NO OTHER RTS has even tried to emulate, WE NEED MORE CO-OP RTS GAMES also if your playing dehaka, try the mass Wyrm spam...they are insane, an army of tanky units that all have deep tunnel means raynor can just scan, your whole army pops into existance on the base, and then you spam calldowns... absolute degeneracy
Red alert 3 has a co-op campaign
I am NOT watching a 3 hour video but holy moly, what I did scroll through looked great man.
I watched this video in chunks, but I understand if you don't have the time. If you want you can find specific sections where he talks about a specific commander, map, or mutation.
For Kerrigan, you are missing out on so much situational power if you aren't building 4 or even more Omega Nydus Networks. Their ability to provide vision for other commanders, as well as transport instantaniously anywhere on the map... I often build 7 to 9 to spam them as they can stall attack waves tremendously with their 1k hp!
Agreed the free omega worms are the best part of Kerrigan's kit imo
i remember telling my allies to use my worms and that was the 1st they heard of it being shared. I also got a nasty message from a partner right before I used a worm to tank an attack wave long enough to respond.
He is on many commanders, it's his personal retrospective simply. A bit negative on things he doesn't fancy, but he does it on all really.
I'm a few years too late, but just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this video.
Okay, rant time:
-14:27 As a Dehaka main, I must simply object. (Kerrigan is really strong tho, I just suck at properly using her assimilation aura and creep spread, praise Stukov).
-YOU'VE NEVER SEEN A STUKOV BUILD A BROOD QUEEN BEFORE? They're his best detection. I usually build 4 to 6 of them and just leave them hovering over my barracks. After holding A for several seconds, I select the queens and spam Ocular Symbiote so the whole squad has detection. No overlord management required, don't even have to look at the enemy base anymore, it just auto-erases from my map. Infest Structure is pretty good for stalling if you need to buy time to return or build up a defense force, basically a mini panic button; kinda nice to combine with a single missile turret to defend against ghost nuke attacks on brutal. Sukov p2 is the single best way to lag out a game hands down. It works best with bunkers (the Troopers produced by bunkers are like the Marines, but don't take any supply, so it's free loading permanently). Aside from crashing games, it is absolutely a meme build, would only recommend with a premade for funsies.
-1:19:03 there is no better answer to ghost nuke than sudden tower (keep in mind, Dehaka's buildings cost supply as well, so you can't afford to tower your base up). Hot take: Dehaka's p2 is actually garbage and p3 is far and away the best pick, but requires inhuman micro to make it work (I used to main it non-stop and got it to work, but after I stopped playing for a while, it was tough to get back into). P3 makes his early game way better, and there should be enough essence on the map to level them up once they get going, the main drawback is the sheer amount of micro required to get it done (switching between two casters CONSTANTLY, not just portioning out the essence). Very niche, indeed.
-Zeratul's Avatars are funny. The Avatar of Essence doesn't unlock devolution until commander level 14, so before then, the Avatar of Form is the clearly superior one (imo, Essence is pretty useless without devolution). After that, the table COMPLETELY flips and Essence is the only one that ever matters.
-Mengsk's move speed also helps resource collection, I believe. I put one on my base first (for Mandate generation of course), then also my ally's base, then both our expansions. And of course two in the army (I leapfrog them one over the other, maintaining a constant buff zone where possible). This doesn't work for F2 abusers, tho.
-I'm pretty sure Scythe of Amon is objectively the hardest map for all reasons stated. I don't think it's even a matter of opinion. Yes, Cradle of Death is hard, but I think you said it best: "it is a very busy mission." It's not as casual as most missions and requires constant attention and busy work, but I still think Scythe is harder.
Overall, great video. Always nice to see Coop getting some love :D
Why wait for an airport to get a detector when you have Overseers?
@@dragonqueenniisan4122 You don't have to wait if you don't want to, but you usually don't need detection any earlier anyway. The nice thing is it eliminates the need for overseers to follow your army at all. Your army itself is the detector. It lasts for several minutes, longer than your army does (but still a long time if you put it on an ally should they fail to get decent detection). Plus your queens can contribute to base defense with fungals and even one shotting big targets with spawn broodling. It ultimately comes down to preference I guess, but I like the queens better.
I am mostly an F2 abuser, but I can easily leap frog with witnesses.
I have to make an argument for Mengsk tanks being arguably the best ones. Seeing that they can easily shred anything with their high dps and slow down hoards with their micro stun on each shot
Stukov's tanks would like a word with you
They look bleh though
Hot take: 40:01
getting to the 1st brutalisk as abathur isn't that bad,
utilizing nests could be tricky, but it rewards player's knowledge of the map, which is a good thing imo
on the note of stopping the progress of your army and focusing on aquiring enough biomass for your mutas - i see this as just a sidequest no make your army stronger, but i guess i can understand why you would find this annoying.
but then - why would you play abathur if you don't enjoy his main mechanic
side note,
Ravagers + queens are actually really strong (especially with P1)
watching the clip that "soured his opinion on the commander" even tho I know it is only 10secs I have to wonder where his first 2 queens are by the 6 min mark?
Honestly feel you on all of that. I'd argue queens have more use on base abathur as healers and backup brutas for if somehow one of them die. For a base abathur I useally make the 3 starting roaches. Micro them while doing macro threw the hotkeys. Get the early brutal and just PUSH. Make 6 queens as backup. When those are done you should have all 3 brutas. From there spek into 4 overseers and the rest mutas. If you lose any of the former units replace them. And keep producing mutas.
As for p1 if that's essanse Horder. That's the one I bassicly run with at all times. If your cheep and tanky roaches die. Whatever you lose no biomass from there deaths. The ability for an army to have 125% att speed and life steal is just far to powerful to pass up for 3 broken units and 3 tanky air units. And entire army of demigods is far better then 6.
I will not stand for this Corsair Slander! Y’see, neutron flare does aoe damage. When paired with Black Hole, that allows you to just shred enemies : You negate their armor and clump em together! You will never see something melt faster than a group of corsairs hitting air units in a black hole.
For Karax : Put the Shadow Cannon key on Rapid Fire. That’ll fix the micro issue
For Fenix P2 : Listen, once you see Kaldalis 3 shot hybrids you can’t go back, it’s just too good. He gets up to 100~ damage per strike with 81 of it being AoE it’s insane. And that’s just him : all of the heroes get fucking crazy.
For P1, the Arbiter can be spammed, so it’s effectively base Fenix but better.
H&H : The Hellion has the best on Death Effect of em all, giving you like 75% attack speed. Always get some in your armies.
I will never forget the moment I fell in love with Corsairs in SC1. I forget exactly what I was doing, but I was dicking around with Corsairs for some reason, and when I watched a group of them melt a pile of stacked Carriers, I realized "huh, these guys are just aerial Zerglings, except with AoE as well." The only reason I tend to use Stalkers for anti-air unless it's Void Launch or a heavy air comp is they do cost a ton of gas, and Vorazun is already strapped for gas as it is.
@@MajorZero61 that is fair, they are gas heavy. I do not mass all that many of them : 5-10 are usually fine combined with black holes to kill everything. Can’t use them + Void Rays tho.
Coop mode is a genius idea, even casual players will be tempted to play because multiplayer PvP is too menacing
I wish we could see Tosh as coop commander :(
Oh well at least Mengsk is really OP
Been looking for a video like this, earned a sub ! Your breath of knowledge is both comprehensive and your experience with the the co-op mode is plain to see. Keep up the good work !
This is really, really well made! You have the potential to do great stuff my man, don't quit.
This is by far the best review I've seen on all the commanders, not to mention an amazing overall look at the gamemode itself. Great work!
Found this gem in my recommended feed a few days ago, got time to watching it and glad I did!
Me and my buddy played the absolute crap out of Co-op when it launched I really wish it became even more popular and supported.
Thank you for the content!
Thanks for putting this together. It helps to wrap my brain around all the possibilities.
6:55 "With all that addressed... let us *quickly* assess all the commanders"
>Talks about commanders for the next 2 hours straight LOL
Very good video!!
32:19 Literally the one protoss unit that can solo anything you throw at them.
I was thinking the same thing here xD They're pretty great en mass. I assume he's just talking about taking a while to reach that critical mass, but the same could be said for any capital ship rush.
@@bendystrawz2832 Yeah i've seen plenty of Vorazun players mass Void Rays, but they take awhile to setup so you'd have to carry them early game first. I'd say mass Carriers would be easier with Fenix since he doesn't need Tech requirements.
Major problem with mass rays. Any air aoe JUST HURTS. It's fun but gawd damnnnnnn
@@RickySama240 Mass carrier is nonsense for Fenix.
It's rockslapping.
At the very least, if they want to do mass carriers,any fenix player should just make talis + adepts with her debuffs on the enemies.
As an Abathur fan every single one of your critiques cuts deep and is 100% true. I can only select the commander if I feel like microing a bunch.
This was a lot of fun to watch! Thank you for the time and effort I’m sure it took.
I really don’t think that Abathur’s mines require an “intimate knowledge of the map and enemy attacks,” but rather only require a passing familiarity with both. Like, sure you’re not going to get 100% optimal value on the hardest mutations if you don’t place them in exactly the right place, but there’s so much room for great value below 100% optimal value. Maybe I’m just not a high enough level player or whatever, but a lot of the Abathur critiques just feel rather shallow or overly focused on maximum value at maximum difficulty, when so much of the game will be played with neither of those. Vile roaches and queens do so so much work early, and while the mines do require some attention, as long as you’re not trying to get 100% optimal value out of em, they don’t need to take that much attention.
I needed this video to see what to spend my money on. Not alot of beginner coop guides that explain comanders.
The TL;DR of this video- Local man asks you to make what you will of things while trying, poorly, to hide his crush on a female ghost.
another Nova enjoyer gigachad
you got my sub for this in depth vid
good stuff man
25:20 _"but static [defense] still sucks, so whatever"_ The moment video earned its like.
(Just to be clear: yeah static defenses are extremely cost-effective units, but coop scenarios (even the defense ones) universally reward mobile armies way more than they reward sitting in a well-protected corner. That said, once your pop is maxed static defenses are amazing, so have at it!)
I love coop, why I still play the game honestly
Well-made video! I really loved the music being fitting to the commander!
Yes yes, very fine
Thanks for that video, very instructive!
Thing that bothered me throughout the entire video is that the background music is just slightly too loud, makes it hard to hear you are saying
P2 zeratul is god tier on Dead of Night, especially if you do the box glitch that makes all Fragments spawn next to the sensor.
Just because you are bad at Abathur P3, does not make it bad prestiege, especially if you know the unlimate secret - your Deep tuneling ninja Brutalisks counter everything (Immortal/reaver included). Air units are unnessesary, just mass brutas + queens is ultimafe F2 deathball combo. With full mines+double biomass assension (1-2-1) you can often get full tab+ (24+) at the end of longer maps (my record is 42 at the gas harvesting map).
You can even donate expansion to your ally, P3 is very eco friendly.
P.S. And you can force land Vikings first attack wave by spawning fresh Toxic nest so that they land to attack it, prefferably on pre-made minefield.
i have yet to see any abathur p3 work, ever
usually ive already cleared most of the map by the time ally gets more than 5 brutalisks, with that being the reason he gets them in the first place
32:19 - imo Void Rays are a late-game transition unit. You never start out with them unless it's certain build comps or you know your teammate can handle everything early on. But mass them enough on mid-late game when bigger, chunkier units start appearing and they will melt everything. They are one of two units Vorazun has that can attack both air and ground (Dark Archon is a spellcaster, so I don't count it). And they also get a range bonus the longer they fire, making them better than Stalkers in prolong engagements. They are also the best antiarmor comp she has. Only real downside is the lack of cloak and mobility, but with some micro and/or a good team, that is easy to bypass.
I will admit that they do get very easily trashed by certain mutations, but the same can be said for almost every unit comp.
Also, as someone who watches Comp games, I remember the days when mass Void Ray was the cheese strat for Protoss. They are terrifying in decent to good hands.
48:27 Meanwhile my noob ass playing Aba p3 having at least 10 to 25 Leviathans at the end of every game. 😂😂😂
Coop is way more fun than regular multiplayer. I had infinite time when SC1 was new (though battle net was pretty awful pretty fast after release) to get good. Now I'm old and it's fun not having to deal with people who have perfected rushes and have 2,000 clicks per second.
RTS has always been more fun as PvE for me than PvP and this game mode was how i managed to drag my friend into the genre. He still isnt the biggest fan but, playing casual, its approachable for him and he likes Alarak because hes more a MOBA player (dota 2 moreso)
I could be wrong but Mensk seems like a throwback to Command and Conquer with cheap and expendable infantry rifleman/rocket trooper, the three star leveling mechanic, garrisonable buildings, and Doom weapons.
Also as an Abathur main you dissing limitless....well I took that personally. I Routinely finish games with 15-20 Ultimates. I think my record was like 32 Brutalisks.
Great video ! You really put in the work and I hope this vid gets picked up by the algorithm.
I approve of this video, yes
(haven't finished the video yet) BUT gotta say about the Vorazun Corsairs not doing DMG thing corsairs deal AOE DMG to balance it and pair it with her Black hole that reduces enemy defense and the BC's and Carriers will die. great content btw mate this is the 1st video i watched from you and it's amazing i loved how you talked about Zagara
Looking at mengsk, you can tell he takes a lot from other commanders and combines quite a few gimmicks into his playstyle
These include:
Spear of adunen top bar ability’s
Expendable units like zegara
Expensive nova units
A smaller range version of laser drill
Orbital drop pods from raynor
The level up system from dehaka
An ability to speed up and buff units like stetmen
And replaceable units due to the dropped weapons sorta like alarak with his supplicants
Just something I found interesting about mengsk, there’s probably more I don’t even know
Very interesting video by the way
He says kerrigan is the strongest hero unit in co'op... Dehaka?
He vovered that. Short verson. Dehaka has to level up first.
My only complaint is that the audio of the music is often too loud and I can barely hear you.
i wish every RTS has this Mode .... it"s just so many fun
Update: They just released another balance patch. It's not dead yet
Stukov was always my favorite. The Infested Terrain aesthetic was so cool and helped make up for how badly they fucked him over in HOTS.
would be good if you had chapters in the video for each commander, thx
had to look up how, got it up :)
@@swoopisbird3117 thanks for your effort, really made rewinding and finding sections much easier! I have to admit… I have ADHD, and at one point I fell asleep while watching this (just because of length, not the quality of content: you are a dynamic and funny presenter!), but I was able to go back and watch the pieces that were fuzzy to me and watch the whole thing!
42:57 "These roaches are worthless," he says, while two roaches kill *an immortal* because of how good the vile strain is
As much as I would love to have seen Emperor Valerian, Arcturus makes sense especially as his kit is concerned being a villainous "disposable basic forces backed up by super heavy elite units" for the Terran faction, somewhere between Raynor and Zagara in the "we have reserves " way of playing with WMDs. If they were going to do Valerian properly you'd almost be better playing him like Zeratul where he can strengthen his army by integrating it with ancient alien tech while also focusing on unit survivability, basically splice a similar artifact mechanic with Arcturus's royal guard unit promotion.
Arcturus and Stukov were probably my two favorite commanders, but they were all really fun and I absolutely loved Co Op mode.
This is like the ultimate co op guide and I actually wanted to find a video about all the comanders to better understand which to play so thanks. It was definitely a pretty long video but informative 👌. I am not sure why you didn't continue with this kind of content though
I kinda disagree on a point with zagara and about half of what was said about vorazun. Zellots are a wonderful tradeoff for DT's. When most missions your massing only stalkers and just blinking into there army and getting free point blank shots in. And the dark pylon comments. While there not powerful on there own. There powerful when combined with other commanders when you consider vorazuns passives. The emergency recall can save artanis's paper ball. Ranors fleshy ball of nonsense. Zerg players can get a boost from it but unless your abathur there really not helpful to Zerg outside of the health Regen bonus. Pylons can take momentary focus off of an army to the pylon itself if there's no detection. And if not that it gives a noticeable damage bonus to everything within the stealth field inside.
@@AuStistic_Lemurr well I mostly just play Dehaka so I wouldn't personally know much about some of the other commanders. Plus I don't own any other than Dehaka so I can't try maxed out versions of all the commanders to compare without paying more.
@@edgeless5 a fair stance. for myself i own and have maxed all of them. while I haven't unlocked P2-3 on all of them, iv gotten p1 with a majority. while getting P3 with a handful of them. like alarak and stukoff. as I saw those and wondered to myself how fun that would be.
@@AuStistic_Lemurr yeah some of them I have definitely thought about buying because I like them but I am not much of a spender I suppose
I use the Dark Archon from Vorazun to take over Overseers from the enemy. They arent faster than my units and actually do their job well
Wait just a minute.
Was this planned by Blizzard? To have the layer running around with Dank Archons and _mindcontrolling_ -Overlords- _Overseers?_
Well, this seems like the ultimate form of respect towards og BW AI. "Where did all my Overlords go? Oh, there they are. Uhhh, I can't click them? Oh. _Oh."_
@@The-jy3yq Would be funny. But it also helps with my DTs to not get murdered by the attack Waves. So maybe its also intended that way.
Still proud of part & parcel ❤️
Very cool map but was who’s idea was it to make General Davis the announcer, because I don’t like her. She whines a lot
2:32:00 Fun fact, Mengsk nuclear strike can one shot the void slivers, trivializing the mission.
Fun fact 2 pretty much all destroy obective missions dont get to exist v. Earthsplitters.
This is awesome! Thanks so much for putting this together! Wow!
Watched the entire thing. An impressive video for sure but kind of perplexing how it was named. I wouldn't call this a retrospective as much as I'd call it an in depth overview. In other words its more of a video explaining what Co-op is and does rather than giving an analysis about it. Check out "Breath of the Wild - Not Enough Zelda" by Joseph Anderson for what I think might be considered a true retrospective. Would have been nice criticisms of co-op like: "why are all maps essentially 2 base only", "why are there no imbalanced-power maps (e.g. one player gets 2 bases, the other gets 1)", "why do so few of the maps take actual teamwork when the mode is called co-op", "why can you not ban maps like you can in ladder", "why are maps so copy-paste from the campaign", etc. .. Or ideas like maps where one player farms money while the other fights, maps where one player defends while the other attacks (which exists already but is not really forced).
This video was a really good way though to learn the commanders that I've yet to play, or refuse to play out of distaste for their mechanics. I think the design of the newer commanders (stetman, tychus, dehaka, mengsk, and zeratul) have lost the essence of what makes the game 'StarCraft' (build base, expand, upgrade units, micro for a small bit of extra value).
I'm surprised you mentioned Mengsk's place in Co-op lore-wise but didn't mention how Stetman being a commander playing on the map in which he called the commanders to come to makes absolutely no sense in terms of lore.
Stetman got new dialogue when he’s a commander on Mist opportunities. It’s contextualized in the mode as Gary’s birthday so Stetman comes back to Bel’shir to celebrate it by getting more gas
To be fair at 46:45 your ally is probably yelling at you for only having 4 roaches at 7mins.
wish we got more co-op commanders like tosh, hanson among others along with more mission packs like nova's
I kinda want to just say lore be damned and have characters from SC1 like DuGalle, the Overmind, or Aldaris just to see what they could do with them.
Mist Opportunities actually has a way to speed up a little. One bot can be lost, and if you let die the bot that comes last (which goes far most north-east geyser) you can save almost a minute of time. Not much, but something. Sometimes you instantly win by losing that bot. However, this means that you aren't allowed lose bot before which might be hard in some circumstances at the first or second to last bots wave.
This started me playing co-p[ in 2023 so great job
Inpersonally really like the brood queen especially for the ability to grant ervery unti bonus Range an detector abilities. Its super useful on siegetanks and ist always a good addition to your partners army
Incredible video hope this gets a lot of views and likes
Whats the song for Alarak's segment? That song is sick.
Warhawk song from the first mission in nova covert ops
@@_Ferin Found it, it's "Cue 5" from Nova Covert Ops.
Thank you!
I really only play SC2 once every 8 months to relive HotS but this put me in the mood to try coop.
Unfortunately I can't seem to find any matches and having to buy commanders is really offputting. Thanks for the vicarious enjoyment however!
That's super weird... I find matches in no more than 5 seconds consistently. Maybe US West is where it's at or something.
You also don't have to buy commanders... You get at least 3 for free which will give you literally 10s of hours of playtime while leveling. If you like it enough and think other COs seem like fun, go for it. Nothing is making you though.
P2 Stukov is unironically OP. Pick up all your infested via banshees. Locate the enemy. Click unload. Win. Reload your banshees and move on. Literally a click to win evolution
To make scythe of amon easier, i tend to snipe last shard first if my commander allows it (Raynor for example can do that)
as mengsk I snipe it with on the go ESO (earthsplitter ordinance)
"White man was here"
"How can you tell?"
"3 hour essay video"
Jokes aside man, this is nice stuff, thank you!
I play co-op all the time, but my computer is a complete piece of crap so I only normally get a couple frames per second until there's a lot of units, then it slows down to a crawl and I can do nothing.
This was a veryy informative video. I've played Co-op mode for years now and sadly Blizzard no longer supports the game with new content. I only wish they would add in Tosh as a co-op commander since he one of my favorites during Wings Of Liberty campaign.
The way I hear it, most of the developers left Blizzard and created a new studio, Frost Giant, where they are developing a new RTS game called Stormgate. It will have a dedicated Coop mode that was carefully considered from the start to be an improvement on StarCraft II’s mode! I’m really looking forward to a fresh game!
@@evshrug Will see! I haven't researched much into Stormgate yet, but i do miss the old developers from Blizzard!
Creo que la razón de que Mengsk es un comandante aliado es porque, de hecho, se ha aliado varias veces con Raynor, Kerrigan y los Protos durante Starcraft y Starcraft: Brood War. Siendo un villano que sabe cuándo es necesario aliarse para combatir un mal que lo amenaza también a él.
wrong 1st in SC2 Mengsk wanted to kill Kerrigan just as much Kerrigan wanted to kill him same logic goes to Raynor and 2nd I'm pretty certain that WOL (wings of liberty) takes place 3 to 5 years after brood war I highly doubt especially after all this death and destruction after 5 years or so he would let this go especially knowing A he can indirectly control the zerg and B he already has what raynor has militarily speaking
I just went back to play Coop again, I'm still a noob at SC but it is really fun. There are many interesting and different commanders, now they DiabloIII-ified it so there are prestige levels, 4 classes for the commanders, brutal+ and it works for replayability.
The only downside is that I have to pretend that it wasn't made by blizzard and that some of the elitist players can be toxic, (I've been matched with a guy 3 times in a row who quit because I dared playing on brutal at lvl 4, even though I am winning most of my games but nwm).
Luckily they are a small minority, most people were chill and competent.
this is an amazing video! you shouldve devided this to multiple videos tho, since long videos usually dont get on algorithm
God please people stop thinking Raynor P3 is battlecruiser only.
The very example here is on an infestation map, Banshees are so, so much better than Battlecruisers, you need like, what, 10 vikings at best to deal with air, and you can defend with ease with the banshee and turn bases to dust quickly. Battlecruiser are tough but they are not fast dps units. In compo like air zergs with lot of scourges you will just see your battlecruiser being shred and wait like an imbecile to be rebuilt when you can snipe them with vikings without too much casualities and quickly replaced them after.
Battlecruisers are usefull and strong in some situation but if you play P3 with your calldowns, you should be able to solo brutal at higher level by starting making banshees and vikings depending on enemy comp and only later slowly switch to battlecruiser. Also you are supposed to have a lot of orbital commander center to spam mules for mineral and repairing your fleet
1:50:53 well, Myst Opportunities is arguably just helpibg Stet with his Terrazine addiction. Sure Amon wants it for some reason but Stet only cares because he WANTS HIS DRUGS.
overall this was a fantastic video, only critique I have is the music would get too loud at times and was hard to listen to what you were saying. I still play coop every once in awhile it's a great game mode to hop on and play for a little bit
Mengsk exists because Blizzard played DOW Ultimate Apocalypse and went... "yeah, we admit that we ripped it off. Let's go all in and make an Off Brand Imp Guard Army."
Yeah, I agree, but somehow Mengsk's army just looks and acts cooler, than the Imperial Guard... No! Commissar! Do not shoot me!
What music is played when Alarak's Discussion Starts?
It was a music cue from nova ops ruclips.net/video/p5DOzmkcfVg/видео.html
I would love to see CtG react to this, not because he’s wrong about any of this but he needs more long form content about general SC Co-Op