Update to Wrath of the Tal'darim mission packs 1 and 2.
If anyone's interested in skeleton stats: 40hp with 1 armor, 10 damage per attack with 1 attack speed. Basically whenever a unit dies spawn a zealot that takes 3x damage from colossi.
Without a detailed changelog I can only guess at the full extent of the changes, but some are:
Increase in early-wave difficulty in mission 1.
Attack wave no longer hits your base a minute after rift spawns, giving your time to deal with it.
Heavy increase in base defenses in mission 2. You will not be able to break the bases very easily, and not without crippling your late game changes, given:
Probes can no longer move while collecting Terrazine
Slight decrease in minerals in main base mission 2 (i think)
Heavy difficulty increase in mission 2. Late-game Attack waves can be around 25-40 supply worth of units.
Immortals have barrier no longer. This is an early-game nerf for you (where you will be stealing most immortals you see), but a late-game buff for the enemy.
Attack waves in mission 1 aren't increased late-game to compensate for this.
AI can still use the Void Ray's active ability though.
This bug might have been in the previous version, but I hadn't noticed it: stealing a void ray in the "void ray" wave after terrazine #3 is collected doesn't get rid of the minimap circle.
My thoughts:
Mission 1 got too few changes for a replay to be worthwhile imo. Still can clear everything off of 1 base. Mission 2 got significant difficulty upgrades, and while geyser defenses/spawns are still weak compared to attack waves, I think this is a big step in the right direction. You should replay mission 2 if you are looking for an additional challenge, because you will receive it.
I didn't mention this before because I was picking up units from bases, but I do like how attack waves in 2 are designed, giving you tools that you really want to get through the mission. Colossi to deal with skeletons, immortals to deal with literally everything with an "armored" tag, and void rays to do some damage to everything. (and you can pick up a dark archon if you hit the south geyser followed by the west geyser).
Something I noticed is that when a carrier dies (there is now some in the enemy bases) each interceptor will spawn 3 skeletons as well. Would be fun if that can be worked in without worrying about Ras'gul stealing one, just a massive wave of skeletons as a bunch of (heroic?) carriers die.
What happened to the "Recent updated thread" esction? Where i can see threads with that got the latest posts? Is it still here? If not i hope it will come back
You can subscribe to forums/threads and see updates in your notifications so that acts as a "recent thread" thing.
Okay I know I'm posting again, but this is likely the last post until a major update/another review. I've been replaying mission 4 to see how it works since my previous vid was just throwing small groups of units into a meat grinder.
Here's a video of a zealot/ascendant strat for mission 4:
Note: this is my second success with this strategy after a total of 8-10 failures, so it's not very easy to pull off. I don't feel like that is a bad thing tho, I'm absolutely fine with losing, and losing even more if I have extremely limited my unit comp. 75% of my losses were to North generator (which I hit second) and the remaining 25% were to South (which I hit third).
It's much harder to pull off this composition with mission 4 due to 2 major things.
Heavy splash damage (vanguards, collossi, destroyers) eat through zealots, take 2 mindblasts to kill, and there are a fair number of them by the generators. Partially counteracted by the +25 shields zealot which on a 1hp 50 shield zealot means +50% increased survivability, which is really good value. I seriously doubt I could have pulled off that video without it, if you're looking for a good place to nerf.
Low mobility means that it takes longer to respond to attacks, and it's hard to reinforce/disengage. Countered by that even end-game attacks will lose to 8 zealots and 4 ascendants.
I think mission 4 is pretty well done in regards to difficulty. However, it's not made clear which generator you should attack first. Via rewatching my vid, I find difficulty to be East < West/North < South, which is hard to understand by the minimap given how close the South generator seems to the base compared to the north and west generators.
I'd just like to say that while it's not clear given all I've written, but the good in these missions far outweighs the bad. I cannot wait for mission pack 2 to be released and hope for improvements to the few weaknesses of mission pack 1.
I decided to do a run of Temple of the Damned (on brutal of course) with only zealots/ascendants, just to gauge how powerful ascendants are.
Here's the vid:
Please note that cannons could be placed to slow down units so you don't get caught off guard by an air attack.
I think the main thing that makes Ascendant's op is the base macro combined with the energy refill. The ability to refill an ascendants energy (guaranteed 2*200 damage) and get a 50 hp zealot for 100 minerals is absolutely nuts. Plus you spend 150/150 to warp in a full energy ascendant and a 75hp zealot.
Would making all heroic units invincible to mind blast prevent mass ascendant strats? I don't think so, as I am floating 3k minerals by the time the first hybrid gets here, minerals that can be spent to deal specifically with those heroic units. The change in strategy would be to mindblast the frontline units instead of the hybrid, and let some fresh (non-sacrificed) zealots take care of it. You can see at 16:32 that 11 fairly weak zealots charge off on the left side to confront a hybrid and 10 seconds later, I look back to see it mostly dead (under 200hp) at the cost of 9 of them. With better micro and units in better health, it should be easy to take it out without much waste.
Of course, heroic immunity would mean that the last wave from the right would steamroll your base, but all the structures that you've put there should delay it for more than long enough.
Maybe look into limiting gas somehow by reducing or removing one or two vespene geysers. As the largest gas cost/unit, ascendant strategies will be the hardest hit by vespene income reduction (or reduced vespene gained during a game)
Edit: of course I don't know how strong the boss is, so it could easily eat up a ton of zealots before it goes down.
I've played through the first 3 missions so far. Yes the first mission is pretty easy, but then again, it's the first mission. It's a nice introduction to Ras'Gul and his abilities.
I disagree that being a "first mission" is a reason to make it easy on the player. The Mar Sara missions of WoL are not easy on brutal at all.
The 2nd mission is harder than the first, but as the mission progresses, you start to ball out of control. I don't see this as an issue at all since most macro maps follow this trend. The enemy attacks your base frequently enough that you definitely have to respond or set up a lot of cannons. Cannons will die so fast to enemy destroyers and collosi so they serve mostly to delay. If I remember correctly, the first 2 and the last terrazine extraction points had a good amount of enemies warping in to defend them. For the remainder, I don't recall any forces warping in, so they were pretty easy to take. I would just make sure there are at least some enemy forces warping in once you start the extraction. I also noticed that the probe could move once the extraction starts and if you move it back to the extraction point, it resets the timer.
The real question is "How quickly do you ball out of control" though. Imo, you do it way too early at seventy or so supply, especially since that you're given two bases. And just because "most maps do it" doesn't mean it's a good thing either. Defence-wise you could set up an "early-warning system" via a pylon placed below the ramp and one very far to the east of your base. The attack waves aren't incredibly strong either, so it may be possible to split your army as in mission 1, maybe have your immortals stay at base, given the armored nature of the waves.
The 3rd mission is not easy at all. The enemy attacks from multiple directions and sends quite a few hybrid at you. I lost the first time I played it as I wasn't prepared for one of the air attacks that went straight for Ras-Gul.
Losing via a sudden curveball (i.e. the sudden introduction of more attack waves) doesn't mean it's difficult. I do note that it is "The best mission from a difficulty standpoint in my opinion." And hybrid die really easily to ascendants, given that they always attack from the same side except for one.
This is my review of WotT pack one. The experience that I'll be basing my review off here:
(note: mission 3 and 4 weak vids)
The story is interesting, if straightforward. Clear goal for the entire pack, and for mission. Clear characterization of Ras'Gul. A small lore issue where Ras'Gul refers to Alarak as the "First Ascendant". Alarak's ascent up the chain was likely much more recent than Ras'gul's exile.
The maps are designed well, from Awakened Evil's Narrow corridors for high tornado coverage, to the depleted terrazine geysers in Echoes of Death, to the two-pronged map putting the battle in the center in mission 4.
I think the hero units abilities/cooldowns are designed well, and the attack waves in mission 1 and 2 prevent him from being absolutely oppressive. The no-supply mind control thing may be a bit much in mission 2 where you can get 4-6 supply units very easily from attack waves.
Gameplay:
The missions seem to be a little too easy.
Going in depth about the first and second missions. Most of these are my opinion, so you may disagree.
Attack waves were just weak in mission 1, where you could hold with around 20 supply worth of zealots while your army of 25-50 units just a-move around the map. They do not scale with size as your army scales.
Defences in mission one were very weak. Most of my losses were to enemy bases, which just killed off my numberless zealot meatshields. Most battles consisted of deciding which unit to mind control and just watching.
Base defences in mission 2 were much better, given the narrow ramp up to the base. Since I had a large amount of extra-high tech units, I won't speculate about how good the terrazine defenses were.
Tornado's didn't do much, they were too easy to avoid rather than something you had to dictate engagements around
In the same vein, poor resource limitations. I could make a huge amount of units before the base is mined out in both 1 and 2 (while 3 and 4 were timed, so it didn't matter as much)
Mission 3 was a high micro for high reward mission focussed on ascendants, but they made the 1k hp boss trivial. Good focus on multi-pronged attacks with just enough spacing to kill the valuable units before the next wave showed up kept the mission fast-paced and kept my APM up. The best mission from a difficulty standpoint in my opinion.
I'm not going to say much about Path to Power as I dislike hard timed missions like that, and whatever I say would be heavily biased by that. That said, defences were tough and set up well, and attack waves were powerful enough to be a threat (with my poor strategy it is tough to tell how strong they would have actually been). However, it does seem that once I crossed the 150 supply mark I started to steamroll.
However, Path to Power seems to have an issue where minerals aren't placed close enough to the nexus.
I'd be more than happy to try out some silly strategies for 3 and 4, like a no-stalker run of mission three, if anyone is interested in optimum strategies/cheese strategies/unexpectedly powerful builds.
Mission two currently has a bug where after the mission "starts" after the cutscene it fades to black and starts again. This causes enemy attack waves to double, making the mission incredibly hard.
The point is that I feel brutal waves don't punish poor micro (you may disagree, considering this is mission 1).
Not only is it a mission 1, but you also have to keep in mind that becoming familiar with a map can make even a challenging map quite simple. I believe that a map's difficulty should be intended for those playing without having any prior knowledge of the map.
Given the save feature, you can quickly become familiar with a map by a poor engagement. Plus I wouldn't say that it takes much to "become familiar". It doesn't take an extraordinary mind to expect banelings coming for you and planning via slight marine spread/good focus fire, which would more than make up for missing those mineral packs.
I didn't understand what you meant with more banelings to connect
I know it's a bit late, but I decided to demonstrate what I mean with a video where I with two additional challenges:
No bonus unit
No focussing units (in macro half), can only a-click the ground.
tl;dw: beat the mission, moving out after the 4 banelings wave (critical mass of marines prevents the banelings from doing much damage). The point is that I feel brutal waves don't punish poor micro (you may disagree, considering this is mission 1).
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Same, have
assimilatedadjusted to the white.0
Have you tried "scan and repair" SCII on the battle.net app?
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Update to Wrath of the Tal'darim mission packs 1 and 2.
If anyone's interested in skeleton stats: 40hp with 1 armor, 10 damage per attack with 1 attack speed. Basically whenever a unit dies spawn a zealot that takes 3x damage from colossi.
Without a detailed changelog I can only guess at the full extent of the changes, but some are:
My thoughts:
Mission 1 got too few changes for a replay to be worthwhile imo. Still can clear everything off of 1 base. Mission 2 got significant difficulty upgrades, and while geyser defenses/spawns are still weak compared to attack waves, I think this is a big step in the right direction. You should replay mission 2 if you are looking for an additional challenge, because you will receive it.
I didn't mention this before because I was picking up units from bases, but I do like how attack waves in 2 are designed, giving you tools that you really want to get through the mission. Colossi to deal with skeletons, immortals to deal with literally everything with an "armored" tag, and void rays to do some damage to everything. (and you can pick up a dark archon if you hit the south geyser followed by the west geyser).
Something I noticed is that when a carrier dies (there is now some in the enemy bases) each interceptor will spawn 3 skeletons as well. Would be fun if that can be worked in without worrying about Ras'gul stealing one, just a massive wave of skeletons as a bunch of (heroic?) carriers die.
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You can subscribe to forums/threads and see updates in your notifications so that acts as a "recent thread" thing.
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Okay I know I'm posting again, but this is likely the last post until a major update/another review. I've been replaying mission 4 to see how it works since my previous vid was just throwing small groups of units into a meat grinder.
Here's a video of a zealot/ascendant strat for mission 4:
Note: this is my second success with this strategy after a total of 8-10 failures, so it's not very easy to pull off. I don't feel like that is a bad thing tho, I'm absolutely fine with losing, and losing even more if I have extremely limited my unit comp. 75% of my losses were to North generator (which I hit second) and the remaining 25% were to South (which I hit third).
It's much harder to pull off this composition with mission 4 due to 2 major things.
I think mission 4 is pretty well done in regards to difficulty. However, it's not made clear which generator you should attack first. Via rewatching my vid, I find difficulty to be East < West/North < South, which is hard to understand by the minimap given how close the South generator seems to the base compared to the north and west generators.
I'd just like to say that while it's not clear given all I've written, but the good in these missions far outweighs the bad. I cannot wait for mission pack 2 to be released and hope for improvements to the few weaknesses of mission pack 1.
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I decided to do a run of Temple of the Damned (on brutal of course) with only zealots/ascendants, just to gauge how powerful ascendants are.
Here's the vid:
Please note that cannons could be placed to slow down units so you don't get caught off guard by an air attack.
I think the main thing that makes Ascendant's op is the base macro combined with the energy refill. The ability to refill an ascendants energy (guaranteed 2*200 damage) and get a 50 hp zealot for 100 minerals is absolutely nuts. Plus you spend 150/150 to warp in a full energy ascendant and a 75hp zealot.
Would making all heroic units invincible to mind blast prevent mass ascendant strats? I don't think so, as I am floating 3k minerals by the time the first hybrid gets here, minerals that can be spent to deal specifically with those heroic units. The change in strategy would be to mindblast the frontline units instead of the hybrid, and let some fresh (non-sacrificed) zealots take care of it. You can see at 16:32 that 11 fairly weak zealots charge off on the left side to confront a hybrid and 10 seconds later, I look back to see it mostly dead (under 200hp) at the cost of 9 of them. With better micro and units in better health, it should be easy to take it out without much waste.
Of course, heroic immunity would mean that the last wave from the right would steamroll your base, but all the structures that you've put there should delay it for more than long enough.
Maybe look into limiting gas somehow by reducing or removing one or two vespene geysers. As the largest gas cost/unit, ascendant strategies will be the hardest hit by vespene income reduction (or reduced vespene gained during a game)
Edit: of course I don't know how strong the boss is, so it could easily eat up a ton of zealots before it goes down.
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I disagree that being a "first mission" is a reason to make it easy on the player. The Mar Sara missions of WoL are not easy on brutal at all.
The real question is "How quickly do you ball out of control" though. Imo, you do it way too early at seventy or so supply, especially since that you're given two bases. And just because "most maps do it" doesn't mean it's a good thing either. Defence-wise you could set up an "early-warning system" via a pylon placed below the ramp and one very far to the east of your base. The attack waves aren't incredibly strong either, so it may be possible to split your army as in mission 1, maybe have your immortals stay at base, given the armored nature of the waves.
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This is my review of WotT pack one. The experience that I'll be basing my review off here:
(note: mission 3 and 4 weak vids)
The story is interesting, if straightforward. Clear goal for the entire pack, and for mission. Clear characterization of Ras'Gul. A small lore issue where Ras'Gul refers to Alarak as the "First Ascendant". Alarak's ascent up the chain was likely much more recent than Ras'gul's exile.
The maps are designed well, from Awakened Evil's Narrow corridors for high tornado coverage, to the depleted terrazine geysers in Echoes of Death, to the two-pronged map putting the battle in the center in mission 4.
I think the hero units abilities/cooldowns are designed well, and the attack waves in mission 1 and 2 prevent him from being absolutely oppressive. The no-supply mind control thing may be a bit much in mission 2 where you can get 4-6 supply units very easily from attack waves.
Gameplay:
The missions seem to be a little too easy.
Going in depth about the first and second missions. Most of these are my opinion, so you may disagree.
Mission 3 was a high micro for high reward mission focussed on ascendants, but they made the 1k hp boss trivial. Good focus on multi-pronged attacks with just enough spacing to kill the valuable units before the next wave showed up kept the mission fast-paced and kept my APM up. The best mission from a difficulty standpoint in my opinion.
I'm not going to say much about Path to Power as I dislike hard timed missions like that, and whatever I say would be heavily biased by that. That said, defences were tough and set up well, and attack waves were powerful enough to be a threat (with my poor strategy it is tough to tell how strong they would have actually been). However, it does seem that once I crossed the 150 supply mark I started to steamroll.
However, Path to Power seems to have an issue where minerals aren't placed close enough to the nexus.
I'd be more than happy to try out some silly strategies for 3 and 4, like a no-stalker run of mission three, if anyone is interested in optimum strategies/cheese strategies/unexpectedly powerful builds.
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Mission two currently has a bug where after the mission "starts" after the cutscene it fades to black and starts again. This causes enemy attack waves to double, making the mission incredibly hard.
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Are you the creator of "The Viacre"? Loved chapter 2.
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I know it's a bit late, but I decided to demonstrate what I mean with a video where I with two additional challenges:
tl;dw: beat the mission, moving out after the 4 banelings wave (critical mass of marines prevents the banelings from doing much damage). The point is that I feel brutal waves don't punish poor micro (you may disagree, considering this is mission 1).
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Apparently you can "thank users" but I guess that's a function that is not working as well.
Paste isn't working either, and hyperlink text colour is a very tiny change, if someone links a url like this you can easily skip over it.
I may get used to the layout, but the functionality is disappointing me right now.