StarCraft 2 Coop Retrospective 

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.

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

>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.

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.

great quality but the music drowns you out a bit too much in some moments tbh.

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.

Well made. It s a shame this didn t get popular

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.

I’m a mengsk main, and honestly I don’t care about lore, it’s coop

I love seeing people talk about coop. Thank you.

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.

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

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.

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 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!

Despite his problems, Mengsk is actually my favorite commander simply because he's the closest to Command & Conquer in Starcraft we'll ever get.

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.

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'm a few years too late, but just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this video.

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'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.

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!

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)

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

I heard there were supposed to be selendis who’s commanding the golden armanda , and we never heard from this ever

Man you are super underrated, this is such a good all in one sc2 guide, great job man

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!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

another Nova enjoyer gigachad

I needed this video to see what to spend my money on. Not alot of beginner coop guides that explain comanders.

I am NOT watching a 3 hour video but holy moly, what I did scroll through looked great man.

Thanks for putting this together. It helps to wrap my brain around all the possibilities.

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!

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!

This is really, really well made! You have the potential to do great stuff my man, don't quit.

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 !

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

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.

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

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)

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)

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.

I love coop, why I still play the game honestly

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

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!

you got my sub for this in depth vid good stuff man

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.

"White man was here" "How can you tell?" "3 hour essay video" Jokes aside man, this is nice stuff, thank you!

Well-made video! I really loved the music being fitting to the commander!

32:19 Literally the one protoss unit that can solo anything you throw at them.

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!)

Great video ! You really put in the work and I hope this vid gets picked up by the algorithm.

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.

(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

Stukov is Terran. They are called infested terrans, they spawn scv’s, build buildings, and have no morphed units.

Surprised you didn't mention the secret mercenary enemy wave type that can appear if you replay a Miner Evacuation Brutal+ level where they send HERCs at you Also I have a friend who plays Dehaka exclusively with P3. He doesn't like any of the prestiges so he just leaves Dehaka in his base and plays normal Dehaka but now with a cool skin

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

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.

I approve of this video, yes

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.

This started me playing co-p[ in 2023 so great job

Still proud of part & parcel ❤️

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

42:57 "These roaches are worthless," he says, while two roaches kill *an immortal* because of how good the vile strain is

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.

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

also Propogators are an instant end game and re match.

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 awesome! Thanks so much for putting this together! Wow!

Good video 👍 I really like the campaign so it's weird that I never cared About Co-Op. Maybe I should give it a try

I think its really funny how you could just... combine Abathur P1 and P3.. because the higher essence cap builds into the higher requirement for P3 without just making either of them bottom tier. You can go into both niches or specialize into one like P3 intended while not locking you out of P1 Instead a thing they couldve done instead for P3 would be specialization into Symbiotes. giving them to your regular units (or even your allies) instead by building a unique structure, that attaches the symbiote to that unit at the cost of not automatically giving you a symbiote for getting an ultimate evolution unit

My only complaint is that the audio of the music is often too loud and I can barely hear you.

I found out about this video so late. I haven't played Starcraft for 2 years and it's great to remember all this. By the way, I completely disagree with the opinion about Mengsk, or rather about his army. This is my favorite commander, but I don't remember the low health problem of the army, anyone other than me solved offensive bunkers (not that ability), because your marines can also build like Swann, and buildings can be destroyed by getting their full cost back. also with artillery 4-5 next to the army with the cover of bunkers - this is a quick advance on Mengsk on the map without losses, because you can always sell buildings

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

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.

I disagree with your opinion regarding Abathur's units. You did mention the units but you didn't mention the synergy that Abathur's units have. For me at least, the reason why Abathur was given the Vile Roach mutation and not the Corpser is due to the slow it gives with the natural tankiness that Roaches have. Roaches are essentially Abathur's bread and butter. With sufficient number of Roaches, you will have enough that can tank an entire enemy wave while debuffing them. At this point this is where the actual offensive units come into play, the Ravager and the Swarm Queens. Abathur is the only one that has access to Swarm Queens which makes sense due to the auto-heal that these units do. Roaches will be able to tank and debuff the enemies, with Swarm Queens behind them keeping them alive, as well as dealing additional dps. If the Swarm Queens have high Biomass numbers too, they will have increased attack speed which allows them to have an even higher dps while keeping everything alive. So, imagine that, a unit that has high armor, has long range, has decent dps, and heals everythig which allows the Roaches to stay alive, while the Roaches are tanking and slowig down both the Attack Speed and Movement Speed of enemy units. And beside the Swarm Queens are the Ravagers. The upgrade to the Ravagers' biles are the key offensive tool for Abathur which applies even on any prestige. Biles hit air and land units too, which can also allow them to be anti-air, and it works as anti-air in my opinion because the AI in coop doesn't really micro to dodge the Bile's trajectory. If you take the Bile upgrades that allow it to gain a wider area of effect and higher damage, you will nuke the wave in an instant. If you have P1, you can essentially get this strat dialed up to 11 because the Roaches get even tankier and the Swarm Queens and the the Ravagers fire even faster. Even without evolution, having an entire army with each unit st 500+ hp is definitely strong. So, that means, even without the ultimate evolutions, you have a very tanky frontline that can slow down the enemy units' attack and movement speeds, a group of support units that heals high dps keeping the frontline alive while, and a group of nuke units that can clear the wave. This isn't even taking into consideration the Vipers and it disabling cloud which works in conjuction even more with the Slow debuff that Roaches have and the Biles from Ravagers, the Swarm Hosts, the Nydus Worm which turns into an Omega Worm if your ally is Kerrigan, the Mutalisks and its two evolutions which are high dps units as well, and, if placed well, Toxic Nests. Due to Toxic Nests as well, Creep is more easily spread. You can place it outside of creep which is a very strong tool for pushing and making sure your units can respond and move to places way more easily. A lot of players usually ignore creep spread in Coop but it still does give you a lot of value because it still does buff Zerg units (movement speed and regen) if they are standing on creep. And additionally, as for the Roach micro to collect Biomass, I found it easier to have the Tunnelling Claws for it. Have the Roach buried and it will be able to swim through the terrain, avoiding unit collision and making the Roach undetectable unless there are detectors which makes collecting Biomass easier. Abathur is also probably one of the few commanders that can do a one-base run due to how resource efficient his units are. This is even exaggerated at P2 because Swarm Hosts will have an even higher value due to the buff on the Locusts and the Deep Tunnel ability will be shared to Roaches and Ravagers, making them more mobile than usual. As for P3, well, having the potential to turn every unit into Brutalisks and Leviathans doesn't really need further explanation. If all else fails, you have Mend panic button that stacks three times. By design, Abathur is the Defensive character for Zerg just like how Swann is for Terrans and Karax is for Protoss, not to say that defensive is the only strat as to how you can play them and the prior commanders can't be played defensively either. Abathur isn't necessarily like Zagara or Kerrigan where the units are more straightforward and you can easily send wave after wave of army units. The strength in Abathur is mainly focused on the unit synergies and having a good line of units to push with by making sure that that line of units is beefy as hell.

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!

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

while watching the abathur part i watched an abathur just clear everything in my game XD

Hey, P2 Abathur player here Relying on ultimate evo is a crutch. I literally intentionally micro to avoid capping anything and when I get them theyre on another hotkey and thrown in a base where they cant die and cant clutter my primary control group. Abathur is broken as fuck for two reasons: Ravagers+Rapid Fire hotkeys. Not the most new player friendly but once someone finds literally any sc2 content that mentions it it just sends the character to the moon. With bile radius+damage you nuke down waves with painful ease. And then deep burrow to tele crossmap the global control and damage is the highest in the game. Thank you for coming to my tedtalk.

wish we got more co-op commanders like tosh, hanson among others along with more mission packs like nova's

Laying into Abathur like that without any idea of how to use corrosive bile is why I'm in the comments section. But I have no words to share, only shame.

I am glad Mengsk made it as a coop commander. I don't care about the lore behind it or smth, especially since blizzard clearly said that coop isn't cannon (i mean if you want to nitpick everything, then why don't we talk about the temple on shakuras being there if the whole shakuras exploded in lotv) and just the fact how cool of a character Arcturus makes any deviation worth it. To replace him with Valerian would be blasphemy.

It’s good. Try it. Just to skip to the recommendation. Give it a chance! All the commanders are free up to level 5. 3 commanders are free up to level 20.

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.

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

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.

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."

would be good if you had chapters in the video for each commander, thx

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

Yes yes, very fine

While I like your overview, I hard disagree with Fenix P2. Not that it's an acquired playstyle, it definitely is (and it's my main commander). I disagree that it's worse. P2 Kaldalis is the strongest unit in the game, able to 1v1 a brutalisk, and can clear whole games vs ground comp by himself. The other champions aren't quite as good, but they're all powerful and easily replicable if they die. Warbringer melts ground swarms, Mojo same for air swarms, etc. The trick is to JUST have Fenix and his champions fighting (with an observer and maybe some conservators if you feel like microing), and keep the non-champion units (aka spare suits) nearby but out of combat. Once you learn P2 Fenix, he's IMO one of the strongest commanders in the game, although he does have the weakness that some mutations hard counter him (like a lot of prestiges). He feels a LOT like Tychus, but you just don't care if a champion dies because they come back (stronger because of avenging protocol)! Edit: The biggest trick to learn for Fenix P2 is that if you put Fenix and the champions in a control group, the champions stay in the control group even if they die. So if Kaldalis dies, for example, just press the control group button and he's selected again, getting fallen champions back in the fight easily.

To be fair at 46:45 your ally is probably yelling at you for only having 4 roaches at 7mins.