A Brief Protoss Campaign Unit Tier List
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- Опубліковано 30 кві 2022
- Sorry I couldn't go into much detail here, already had to pad it to get over the 10 minute mark.
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Zeratul sacrificed himself, not for Artanis, but to provide an excuse to make the nerazim units ridiculously overpowered. Alarak's ascendants just stole that ability in coop.
As almost all Tal'darim do. Their motto is "Why make it ourselfs, when we can steal it from our weakling bretheren, if we like it enough, and retrofit/"destructivly improve" it afterwards! And if you are too poor, just steal it and repaint it (and even that is optional)!".
Now we can make a run only using "bad" unit for all campaign, nice
Pretty sure any mission with voids only can be done with destroyers only... just takes more effort and longer.
@@hallymiao2825 yes that is true. I actually did a lotv with only meme units and I realised two things: dragoon is the worst unit in the game and mass destroyers can are far better then people think, they are literally just discount voids. And that is still a compliment
@@norberthiz9318 Part of why the Destroyer were so low on the list is because they are competing directly with the Void Ray, and honestly that's kind of goes for most of the things in C tier.
Would actually like to see a "worst unit variation only and not allowed to use the unit on a mission it's introduced in" rule.
Obviously only where applicable, but it's a pretty neat challenge. Redstone without Reapers, Kaldir without Hydras, Shakuras without DTs, etc.
@@DarkQuill so the line would be
Whirlwind Zealot
Dragoon
Mirage
Ascendant
Wrathwalker
Destryoer
reaver
you can finish the game with this set up no problems since spear of adun can just supplement them anyways
"You can make mass sentries and you can probably win with it."
Well I think we found your next challenge run.
I did that once. The mission you unlock the sentry I basically only built them. I won. And yes, I was playing on normal
Is it challenge for brutal difficulty? Or GGG can run on hard or normal?
Sadly I think for the "Can you beat [insert game] with only [insert unit]", you should have access to that unit from very start.
@@Misteri0123 Grant could do what he would do for the merc only run. Do both the 'starting' missions after Auir but in a different order. So he would do a video where he goes Korhal > Glacius > Shakuras. Then do another video afterwards where he goes Shakuras > Glacius > Korhal.
Nobody cares about the first 3 Auir missions anyway.
@@Misteri0123no, sure that she only way you can officially do it, but challenge runs where you have to mod in a unit early is able to make for interesting problems
Grant: I'm not gonna put anything into D-tier, they're all basically alright
Also Grant: *puts the Reaver into D-tier*
Jayborino: Yes, good, good...
as a fan of the reaver, i feel insulted... but it's still justified, since the reaver really isn't that great. even on normal difficulty, the reaver isn't really that great, and the only place i can see it being used is during the rite of ascension, but... yeah.
@@blackthrone6976 in Coop reaver IS good at killing me then when i can use him.
Cause: Aí don't pay for then.
@@samfire3067 even against stuff that you think Reavers will be good against such as infested maps, Reavers are still worse than hit scan Immortals lol
@@samfire3067Coop Artanis Reaver is quite good.
@@Aurega88 with Anti mecanical, units ligth are very fragil
8:10 The Dragoon in Legacy of the Void has 7 range, that's actually one of the perks the armory screen mentions when you select the Dragoon. In Co-Op, Artanis's Dragoon has 6 range, until you get the upgrade that gives it 8 range. This actually makes them quite viable in Sky Shield and other Terran missions because the 7 range outranges a marine's 6 in a bunker. The larger hitbox is still a problem of course.
That reminds me...
High templar also have 7 range. In the mission you get them, I noticed I could outrange the bunkers with HT. It was very funny to watch them slowly taking bunkers down while the rest of the army waits to kill the marines.
@@ernestoiparraguirre2745 Ascendants also have 7 range
It's quite dumb, but it was exceptionally amusing to see Grant take out Bunkers with Ascendants' auto attack
Well, at least they don't go into range of a Bunker while outranging it.
Same goes for Guardians, they're pretty solid because of that.
Im late, but dont the terran have the range bunker upgrade? So they basically have the same range as the dragoon while in a bunker
The high templar does restore shield once you've done their unlocking mission
It's their announced upgrade
Sentinel is the best Zealot variant not only in gameplay but in lore. Far fewer valuable Protoss are dying or emergency teleporting to the sickbay when you've got far more practical basic AI constructs doing the charging and tanking.
And their "mind" goes back to the.... whatever the purifiers store them in. I don't know
@@YRhandlesathing Still dragoons and immortals.
@@YRhandlesathing didnt the description for them say that they're A.I's with basic(for protoss) programing for fighting?
they're literally combat drones
@@alfonsocyrusjoshua9551 yes, but also every every "drone" can be loaded with "mind" of a stored characters stored in database.
@@AleksanderDrako The entry in the war room specifies that they don't host purifier identities, they are as much of a machine as a standard probe.
So far the C tier is "it doesn't have a hitbox" and "it has too much of a hitbox".
That probably says something about grants hitbox size preferences.
No hitbox-dies to sneeze in mass
Big hitbox-turning your army to movie thug where they attack the main character one by one while having so many men
It's not the size that matters! :p
For your awareness, the Avenger DT has a 60s cd, half of the sentinel (which has 120s)
While the other DTs are well... still superior, I find having 50supply of DT as a free attackwave with a 1 minute respawn time quite humorous
Yeah honestly I think people underrate the Avenger 60s is not long, it's great in quite a few situations. Though the shadow fury DTs are better, but not by a crazy margin.
Though I also REALLY like the Tal Darim destroyer so maybe I'm just bad haha.
I like how not a single Aiur unit is above B tier
It kinda reflects the lore, they're decent, but they're so stuck in their ways where every other kind of protoss improves on them
Taldarim units are also mediocre, they just focus on raw damage but no defensive capabilities, basically glass cannons. While nerazim are op cuz they got both attack and defense for the same cost
@@FaeridaeCrawford and then there's the purifiers, which are just cool (also mechanical)
and that the first two units where just "Aiur, Narazeem, Purifier" and the third one was still basically the same, but with no Narazeem to knock them down, so they get to hang out with the Tal'Darim in b. XD
Isn't The Carrier an Aiur unit
@@shadowpriest2574 Yes, and the Carrier is in B
Spin lot has same dps as normal Zealot, but it's in 1 attack instead of 2. Making it good against zerglings and better then normal against high armor targets.
Doesn't that makes him get less from upgrades ?
Unless I'm tripping, I am almost certain they patched the Aiur Zealot for coop. Spinlot in campaign dealt half damage because of only having a single attack instead of two, still doing a base damage of 8. I distinctly remember having noticed that as I played and therefore proceding to never select that unit ever again because of it.
Edit: Okay so because this bothered me, I logged into the campaign to check the Zealot damage - it is 16.
However, according to the SC Wiki, "Prior to Patch 3.1, zealots both in Co-op Missions and the single-player campaign only dealt 8 damage with their normal attacks." Therefore I'm not going insane after all.
It also gets +2 from upgrades, not +1, I think?
Also, Dragoons have more range than Stalkers in campaign - 7 versus 6. It doesn't fix them but it does allow them to sit behind Immortals, which if running the Aiur ones can then synergize better
@@TheFreakEscape they do get +2 so they do more damage over all as 22-3 is 19 instead of 11-3 being 8x2 so 16.
@@redblackdg On regular zealots, both attacks get +1 per ugprade and -1 from enemy armor, that means you are literally doubling the value of enemy armor and halving the value of your own upgrades, even though they are doubled. It's actually very significant. By having only one attack, it brings the armor reduction back to normal and doubles the effectiveness of upgrades (or rather does not halve the effectiveness of upgrades).
Zealot swings, one attack connects for 11 damage - 3 armor = 8 damage, second attack is the same, equaling 16 total damage done. Whirlwind zealot swings, it does 19 damage -3 armor, for 16 damage. Sounds great, because that's the same right? Okay, but wait until a unit has more than 3 armor.
Zealot swings for 11-5=6 damage, swings a second time for 6 damage, 12 total. Whirlwind zealot swings for 19=5 damage for 14 total.
If a unit existed with 8 armor for example, normal zealots would do [11-8]x2=6 damage and whirlwind zealot would do 19-8=11! It scales exponentially badly for the regular zealot and any other unit with two weapons per hit.
using a 1-5 scale for the tiers (D=1, S=5) here is the averages for each of the factions in Legacy. I also went on the Wiki Order so I could double check which each faction belonged to, instead of Video Order.
Khalai: C, C, B, B, B, B, B, B, D, B= 2.6
Nerazim: B, B, A, S, A, S, S = 4.143
Purifier: A, A, A, C, A, B= 3.5
Tal'Darim: A, A, B, C, C, C, A=3
Nerazim are crazy strong. Honestly, the C and D tier units, I feel, have pretty easy fixes to make them at least B tier:
Zealot: don't make them stack on top of each other when they spin. You'll still cleave through enemy lines, you're just less vulnerable to AoE.
Dragoon: more range and slightly faster projectile speed. 8 would honestly be fine, but maybe they didn't want them being able to outrange bunkers, idk.
Mirage: Make it the Scout and give it an anti-light ground attack. Literally just a ball of stats that excels at cutting apart enemy infantry or sniping enemy assault ships, but is weak against smaller flier groups like mutas.
Ascendant: Should be A-tier as it is. Pair them with Sentinels and be amazed at what follows. Feed the Sentinels to your Ascendants liberally; they'll stay topped up and deal extraordinary damage to crowds if you spam PsiOrb with 6-8 of them, or they can delete scary singular targets.
Wrathwalker: Attacks AoE and let it pre-charge its attack, allowing it to fire the instant an enemy enters its range. The long wind up time that gets lost if its target dies mid-attack is problematic.
Destroyer: Make the chain do a flat amount of damage. The regular attack is.... fine, I suppose, though maybe up its damage slightly. That, or the attacks apply a DoT debuff.
Reaver: Honestly, an ability like a swarm host/siege tank where you can root it in place and it fires 2 scarabs at a time, maybe at separate targets or at slightly longer range, would instantly make it an A-tier unit. It'd be INVALUABLE as an addition to your defensive lines, arguably even moreso than the Colossus. Just let it also keep the regular ability to fire 1 scarab at a time normally while moving. And maybe make it move a little faster, while we're at it lmao.
Reaver scarabs arent stopped by gaps, grant.
They have no pathfinding, they are regular missiles in vanilla lotv and coop
Yeah, he's just thinking about SC1, which that is a problem in. Any amount of time with Artanis in coop shows the Reaver is a fairly strong unit.
@@syweb2 Artanis reavers can get upgrades to increase splash radius and scarab capacity.
Vanguard can be warped in if you choose certain ability on the Spear of Adun.
And campaign version of High Templar's Psi storm does restore shield by 50.
oh yeah i forgot about that, imagine juts warping in a bunch of vanguards and just annihilating any ground force, while DTs would do it better, its satisfying with the vanguard. Oh a reason the Vanguard is better then Nerazim Dt is that Dts dont do AOE.
@@underfall2749 They technically don't aoe, but the DT button (DeleTe button) does hit everything in an area and usually kills it, meaning there is no real point in not calling it aoe. Vanguards are more a-movey tho
You can completly melt ANY ennemy ground unit with a few vanguard with energizers as support
Grant never takes that because he's addicted to autogas. He really sleeps on Warp Harmonization though.
@@VegetaLaunchedFinalFlash vanguards are also much tankier than nerazim DTs, and can be repaired by repair beam. Unfortunately, nerazim DTs just have so much more flat damage with their obscenely busted funny button it doesnt matter.
It's here at last! Random thoughts:
Off-topic, but one thing I never liked about LotV: how inconsistently loud the music is.
Centurion - Sometimes I forget this is a mineral-only unit. Its the Vile Roach of LotV, a powerful ability on a cheap unit. It's so satisfying to see your army crash into the enemy without micro and mass-stun 100 units.
Dragoon - Agreed. Who else thought the game was bugged when trying to warp-in an army of these? They. Are. So Fat.
Funfact: Vorazun in Coop combines all 3 Dark Templars. And further boosts them.
Vanguard: It's funny how their projectiles make a wimpy "phut" sound, but whatever they targeted (or was in the same continent as the target) explodes.
Mirage: This DID deserve D-tier. They don't just become invulnerable, but also untargetable, meaning the enemy will simply attack someone else. Why create a discount Phoenix when the Scout was right there?
High Templar: You know they did a good job making the units fun, when they buffed Psi Storm to hell, but despite that, the other unit choices are also fun. And it's so good they have an attack now, they no longer move into the enemy when you A-move your army.
Dark Archon: Forget Confusion, forget Mind Control, the best part is hearing the enslaved units chant in unison "W̢e̸͠ ͡͏a͟͠r̴̀e̴ ̨͜à̀s̕ ̨͢o̷̧n̵e.͟"
Destroyer: Don't know why, but I have an affinity for these. I could beat some challenging modded missions with mass Destroyer, but not with anything else, not even mass Void Ray. Random guess: they get exponentially better when massed (as in 180 supply) and for people like me who suck at micro (the lag they cause probably helps).
Guess I need to play around with Adepts and the Mothership more. They sound broken when used correctly.
With the destroyer getting better when massed.
They have the worst splash ability in the game. By far.
But it's still a constant splash ability, which means they actually scale, much like ripwave missile vikings or mutalisks.
So en mass, they can actually start to catch up with nerazim void rays. Not very quickly, and i don't entirely know how you can win with destroyers and not with nerazime voids, but they do catch up.
Also, as grant mentioned, adept shades make them do +5 damage, which has the potential to be obscenely good.
For the last mission in LOTV(normal campaign) I had the mothership protect an entire lane by themselves. Although this was on normal.
Oh god that music note: I had a headache when i finished the LOTV campaign and i couldnt hear half the dialogue because of that music
Playing the mothership correctly is very easy. You put that beautiful mom anywhere and she just kills stuff. When enemies clump up, you lance 'em. When they clump up big time, you flush them down the toilet and lance 'em. When your mom is low, you blink away and repair with the repair beam.
And on the mirages: it's weird how that unit has actually become immensely powerful in direct strike because of all the overkill going to waste
High Templar in legacy of the void does have the restauration ability, which does make him a lot better as you can trade the sentry for the havoc and energizer without worrying so much about recovery.
While I do love dark archon, high templear can be a cool and better reliable unit support to you composition and I believe the AI doesn't count it as a healer, this literally means that overaggressive composition can a good option for some missions. Definitely should be at A tier.
@@allhailderpfestor4839 the thing is with the psi storm and enough high Templar you can outheal the damage the enemies deal to you, even on brutal if remember correctly. This is why some overaggressive compositions are woth trying as you can, let's say dive into a enemy base with energyzer, stalker, sentinel and vanguard. You can use rush and blink with the stalkers and then psi storm around them so you minimize the casualties and inflict damage to the enemies while the back line sweep the rest.
I remember going to the purifier ship, and picking this composition except that I went with a havoc. Sometimes the purfiers forces are not (weirdly) enough to wipe out the zerg bases in brutal, so I push with them and melt the first base so I could take a extra expansion. The bad thing is that you might suffer a little in the early game depending of what units you choose from, but after that you can just wipe everything out of existence once (and this not even talking about with the spear of adun abilities).
It not the most op composition, but is one that is good, reliable and fun to try. Although, it definitely not a good one for salvation, in where Dark archon is a God.
The *Sentinel*
@@orangeshark2881 You are right, I forgot about that XD. Thanks for the correction, I always mix up some names.
@@endlesspie49 Your welcome :)
Dark Archon is still better.
0:00 Intro
1:00 Aiur Zealot
3:12 (Nerazim) Centurion
4:31 (Purifier) Sentinel
6:00 (Nerazim) Stalker
7:44 (Aiur) Dragoon
10:02 (Purifier) Adept
13:15 (Aiur) Sentry
14:13 (Tal'Darim) Havoc
14:54 (Purifier) Energizer
16:03 (Aiur) Avenger
17:22 Nerazim Dark Templar
18:40 (Tal'Darim) Blood Hunter
19:55 (Aiur) Immortal
21:00 (Nerazim) Annihilator
22:24 (Tal'Darim) Vanguard
23:55 (Aiur) Phoenix
25:08 (Purifier) Mirage
26:16 (Nerazim) Corsair
27:46 (Aiur) High Templar
30:05 (Nerazim) Dark Archon
31:39 (Tal'Darim) Ascendant
33:29 (Purifier) Colossus
35:49 (Tal'Darim) Wrathwalker
37:27 (Aiur) Reaver
38:58 (Nerazim) Void Ray
40:47 (Tal'Darim) Destroyer
42:52 (Aiur) Arbiter
45:28 (Aiur) Carrier
47:37 (Purifier) Tempest
48:53 (Tal'Darim) Mothership
51:55 Conclusion & Outro
Please remember to do the nova covert op campaign, not many people play it but it would still be helpful for those who are like me who grind achievements
Won't it be hard to do considering they all have at least 4 interchangable mods?
to this day i still dont know why people hated it, i played it and found it fun, well not all missions, i hated that one where we defend horner base in the snow
Agreed, though unit + upgrade combos are tricky to rate since going on one unit locks it out for others. Probably just takes that into account when rating things.
@@MatheusHenrique-qh8qe mostly because of the story i believe, it's kinda like they whitewashing Nova. The gameplay and mission design is "mostly" fine.
@@allhailderpfestor4839 if this is "one" of the problems then i disagree, people are used to wait years for things like movies, series, manga, anime, etc... so a little wait for a full release of the campaign will not kill u, and u may "choose" to not play until the entire pack was released since from the begning people knew it was just 3 packs
Avengers, from what I read, actually only has a 60 second cooldown on their recall instead of the 120 that you mentioned. I think the reason why you thought it was 120 seconds is because the Sentinel's revive is 120 seconds, and you mixed the two unit's cooldown up and thought the Avenger also has a 120 second cooldown on their ability as well.
That goes to show how underused the Avenger is, that you don't even remember the cooldown of their one, singular ability is lol.
I'd say annihilator is S tier simply because it single-handedly removes the chunky aerial threats. Coupled with Nerazim DT, they are literally the only unit you need.
You can finish the campaign by spamming Nerazim DT and Nerazim Imm.
The arbiter really suffers from the campaign it's in. It doesn't really get a chance to shine.
I was doing the coop version of wings of liberty protoss edition with a friend and the arbiter is so good there. It's best mission being the dig which, we originally struggled with hard until I picked up the arbiter. The ability to freeze one group of enemies while you take care of the other is just massive. Made the mission so easy.
You don't really get a big moment like that for the arbiter in LotV
The arbiter is absolutely amazing on Salvation. It was my key to victory doing a no Spear of Adun run. The first few waves against Alarak and Karax don't have any detection so quickly popping out an arbiter means that you can slaughter those waves without losing any men or allied units. Even once they send detection, you just need to quickly snipe the overlords and the enemy waves get crushed. I had an awesome moment where one of the big zerg waves just ran against a wall of cloaked units and died without killing anything. The freeze attack is also useful. I would spam it on the golden armada allowing me time to clear up other attacks and regroup my forces to take them on.
my brother just spammed dark archons and nexus on the right side and throw some purifier zealots in my base
I just spammed ascendants and leech my brother's zealots to use all the time the orb and kill vanguards and colossi with super feedback
Tbh, the Adepts shades are just so beyond broken they should be S Tier. They make everything good. Even Destroyers do 18 dps splash with Adepts close by. Their beam ticks once every 0.3 if i'm not mistaken.
Also he said, S tier units have to work on their own without support
@@Luwi1996 They do work on their own. That's the stupid thing. You can do brutal with adepts only once you unlock them.
@@ragganmore6113 yes, some can. Some can beat the campaign zealots only. Maybe saying, that S tier units don't need (much) support to work at their best would be a better criteria
@@Luwi1996 Maybe i missunderstand. But by the criteria of "not needing (much) support to work" you enhance the statement that the adept is an S tier unit because it does not need any support to work. Quite the opposite, it also is one of the best support units in the campaign.
@@ragganmore6113 can u actually, they are very fragile and don't have any survivability skills like blink, u need to shade aggressively to take down stronger enemies removing that as an option for survival. The smaller hitbox also makes them more susceptible to aoe than stalkers. I agree that they're incredibly powerful support units but they can't possibly be an efficient core
Carriers combo well with mechanical army builds since the repair drones heal any mechanical units. This includes the purifier templar-further upping their survivability.
Also, the Spear of Adun can only heal three units at a time. So, carriers can be an important source of healing (and are also good if you want a different Spear of Adun ability for that passive slot).
I love how Ascendants are at the bottom here, but are kicking butt in the Perpetual Randomizer campaign. That heal aura was perfect.
man, this makes me wanna see a challenge in which you beat the campaigns with the C and D tier units
I've only just started watching you since the Brutal+ episodes (even though I've always been a big SC2 fan since early Husky days lol). Just wanted to say I am finding your vids fantastic, I especially love your subtle humour. You don't try too hard about it like 95% of youtubers out there but just adding the word "brief" to a 53min video somehow made me crack up
I replay all the campaigns a lot. So I have a very solid understanding of these units and I gotta say you absolutely nailed it. Even opened my eyes to a few things. Great vid man thank you
high templar does have plasma storm actually so maybe bump it up a tier in lotv.
Love your content, Grant. It's amazing how you come up with so much and it's always good
You're awesome
I would put the Destroyer in B simply for the "Rule of Cool". That unit just looks so nice and I am so happy that one of the prestige upgrades for coop Alarak lets to actually build them.
But on the other hand Void Ray is so OP that it overshadows that poor Tal'Darim knock-off ray.
I'm still annoyed that not ONCE did we get to use the scout in LOTV. It's literally in every. single. campaign. Why can't I use it?
Scouts as the Purifier unit would be cool IMO. Having an anti-armor flyer with a non-cooldown based anti-ground attack has its uses.
Artanis knows that they're crap because he used to fly one
"brief"
Need an enemy tier list or threat dossier for each campaign now!
I mean if you have carriers and recomstructive beam, they just don’t really ever die, so the enemies target firing them doesn’t often matter. But yeah, if you had to choose between carriers or Void Rays and a Mothership, it’s not even a competition.
Exactly, you always something to accompany void rays, Carriers and TM can't be together but void rays and TM yes, it's best unit combo you can have in campaign and in every mission if possible, with this combo you could do even All in both Sky and ground together
So the thing about Wraith Walkers, at least based on my using it in co-op, is it works great as a "Hybrid Buster" unit, doesnt matter what hybrid unit it is, if the hybrid shows up, you bring your wraith walkers in and delete them. The idea you need to have when using them is basically a walking Yamato Cannon Launcher.
Dark Archon has won me some of the harder missions on Brutal solely because of confuse. Using it on important units that can do AoE especially, watching them merk their own frontline instead of taking you down. Dropping a confuse on a couple ultralisks and then a few hydralisks immediately after? Watch that 80 pop Zerg army suddenly just implode upon itself while your probe scoots out to restore the one photon cannon that died in the conflagration.
I will note an overlooked characteristic of the wrathwalker is that is can also fire on the move. They're a bit better in co-op though because there's an upgrade to make the charge faster. I also really like the destroyer because they may take more mass to be effective than the void ray but they can be very strong en masse from that chain. I know they're unpopular but I used mostly destroyers on the last levels on hard and they did swell. Also they sound AWESOME!!!
One more note when I intitially played the campaign I was stuck on the last protoss mission until I decided to use the arbiter and I used recall. I set an arbiter to every entrance and would recall my forces in a chain to where they were needed. Granted I'm not that great but it helped me alot.
I think the best mission for the arbiter in LOTV would have been the carrier-mission. The ability to fly around to different platforms, put stasis on the defenders, and then instantly transport your troops using recall to quickly take out any detection and then destroy the rest while being cloaked once stasis wears off would have been awesome rather than another capital-ship mission with low resources. Or heck, go behind enemy lines somewhere, use recall on a drone to build a pylon, and start warping in troops right there. Otherwise, watching these tier lists, it really shows how shafted transport-type units got in starcraft 2. There are very few missions (outside of a few cheesable spots) where loading a ton of dropships with troops and using it to bypass enemy defenses or attack vulnerable infrastructure is a good strategy. I mean sure you can do it, but it is usually not necessary and you are better off spending the resources on just getting some more troops. The medivac and Hercules are usually only useful on the mobius missions or crazy challenge-runs, I am pretty sure there is no transport unit in HOTS, and the arbiter is only available in the last couple of missions in LOTV where its transport ability is almost worthless outside of maybe moving your troops around really quickly in Salvation. It was actually something I appreciated about Maw of the Void Nightmare edition. It quickly became apparent that it would be a brutal slog fighting my way through the Taldarim to get to the vault so I instead used my battlecruisers to yamato cannon the photon cannons and observers and then used my hercules to ferry the dark templars around to destroy their ability to produce more units and kill their troops until their defenses were weakened enough that I could drop the dt's onto the vault and destroy it with no risk of detection. The hercules was great there due to being able to withstand the enemy attacks long enough to get them where they needed to. It took a long time, but I had an absolute blast.
I kinda want to see a Brutal+ playthrough using just C and D tier stuff now...
Edit: He made a claim at 39:18 that I now to see Grant backup as well; using just Nerazim DT, DA or Voids, can you beat all of LotV?
Well you can't do any of the starting missions, so...
can be done on deathless brutal iirc. sticksbender did that
He pretty much did void only in deathless, once he got them. Unsurprisingly, it worked.
Me: Wow, new tierlist!
Me, 5 second later: ONE HOUR?! This os going to be amazing!
I will die on the hill that critical mass Destroyers will shred damn near anything. It has gotten my stupid ass through Rak’shir, The Host, and Salvation several times, and I will always love it for that.
It's not optimal by any means but it can definitely work.
Sounds like someone just volunteered to do a Reaver Fever run
The High Templat in the War Council have the Plasma Surge ability and restore 50 Shield over 4 seconds. Its insane especially if you use Archons as frontliners. But its incredibly Gas Hungry as a Strategy and Protoss suffers from a lack of gas already :P
I literally JUST watched his other tier lists from months ago last night and was looking for this one... he knew
First time I played the last mission of the protoss campaign I thought I would get the wrathwalker for the big tough targets and the destroyer for the smaller more numerous targets. I didn't understand why I kept losing.
If anyone is curious who the strongest Protss Faction is here's the breakdown.
Khalai: 10 Units
S-0
A-0
B-7
C-2
D-1
Nerazim: 7 Units
S-3
A-2
B-2
C-0
D-0
Tal'darim: 7 Units
S-0
A-3
B-1
C-3
D-0
Purifiers: 6 Units
S-0
A-4
B-2
C-1
D-0
Really should have to be said the Nerazim are the top tier as there are only 3 S tiers and all are Nerazim. Add the fact they have nothing below B and that 5 of their units are the best for their category and they are the clear winners by a lot.
With 4 As and the only two Bs the Purifiers are a respectable but still distant second. Tal'darim are just a step behind them with a few more middling Units. Their stuff was ok but almost always outclassed by something else.
Dead last and not even close is the Khalai with a lot of middling Bs, no A or S ranks and the only D. Really surprising they would be this bad overall, I know they are typically the vanilla choice of each option but this is still pretty bad.
The Dragoon: bringing back SC1 pathing.
Dragoon movement made me switch to zerg in sc:bw
If I recall from your zealot-only run, the aiur zealots were really effective against the hybrid due to all of them being able to just blend him into oblivion. They also wasted their spin-attack on flying units and have the issues with aoe damage, but they can murder hybrid insanely-well.
@@syweb2 It has been a long time, but I do remember Grant showing the zealots wasting their spin while passing under air units they couldn't actually hit. I think that was part of the reason why the Legacy of the Memes the aiur zealots would fly up with their spin to hit air units.
Say what you want, I will always build mirages even if only to hear that smooth, smooth voice
"A brief protoss campaign unit tier list"
*Looks at the video length*
Huh, so that's what brief means to Grant
So I had a thought like this for the swarm host for HoTS, but I think it also applies to the tempest here. I In multiplayer, the reason to go for swarm host or tempest is that they have the potential to be very efficient. The Tempest can pick things off from long range, while the swarm host can siege with free units. But they both pay for this efficiency potential by being rather bad in a straight up fight.
The problem is that in campaign, efficiency doesn't matter nearly as much. Because the enemy can keep rebuilding forever. They don't mine out the map like an opponent does in multiplayer. I wonder if one way to encourage the kind of slow, methodical, pick-apart and drain of resources style that units like the swarm host and the tempest lend themselves to in multiplayer would be to give the enemies resource caps in the campaign. The enemy will rebuild if you destroy their units or buildings, but only a certain number of times, or only a certain amount of resources worth. And maybe this only applies to defensive structure. So attack waves would keep coming forever, but defenders wouldn't rebuild forever.
something that (unless i missed it) grant didn't directly mention about the adept is that unlike in multiplayer it hits air. I didn't use it in my first run because i assumed it was like in multiplayer and i would lack AA.
Yeah u missed it
>longest
>brief
Love you grant
Interesting analysis! I'd be curious to know which version of a unit you would prefer for the ones that you put on the same tier. Say you're loading into a completely random LotV mission where all the immortal options would normally be unlocked, but you don't know which mission - would you pick the Annihilator or the Vanguard? If you couldn't pick the energizer, would you pick the sentry or havoc? Or would you have no reason to prefer one or the other or just pick according to whim? Would also like to know which you'd choose for a random mission in HotS for Vile vs. Corpser and the swarm host evolutions (if you were forced to build some) and Raven vs. Science Vessel in WoL. I think those are all the ones that compete that you put on the same tier, so if you clarify those things we could do a personal challenge run like "pick all the units Grant thinks are the worst!"
(Also if you're looking for more tier list ideas, I'd be interested to see a tier list for WoL armory/mercenary investments, to see which options you think give the most value for your money, as well as Spear of Adun and Kerrigan ability tier lists.)
I remember using the arbiter on Templars charge (mobieus/hybrid mission) to disable the final base and recall to defend if I had to.
Also on that mission I learned, that the lotv carrier is really bad at focusing targets. More than once my carriers were being shot at by marines, vikings and goliath, while half of my intercepters were busy killing random supply depots and barracks.
Sadly I didn't know how strong the void ray is
I could stand to hear more
You should do a tier list of Spear of Adun abilities!
The Tal'Darim: "We live to kill."
The Nerazim: "That's cute."
"Order me to war" is S tier
Energizer will always be S tier. You cannot change my mind. I'm surprised Grant didn't place it in S tier, seeing how his face glows up talking about the Energizer
Energizer is one of my favorite units overall
It's very good, but is only a support unit. One cannot win the games with only energizers unlike real S-tier units.
@@user-zh5kg2op4h I mean if we're judging by massive damage and power the Vanguard would easily be SS tier by now. But imo S tiers should include things that just provides the sheer amount of utilities ie Nerazim Void Rays that has the damage, mobility, tankiness and Energizers that provides free stim, matrix overload, mobile pylon, 24/7 reinforcement. All in all Energizers should be S tier
i know that this is not related to the video but this is something that was wandering for my mind.
You will do Heart of the swarm nightmare edition and Legacy of the void Nightmare edition? or that will be created by your decendants
I would put motheship in S tier hands down best unit u can have it will outlass other All other units in equal resource and it doesn't matter you can have one, one combo that most wish would work is carriers + void rays but with TM it works
High templar has a base form, then an upgrade with shields recharge in campaign. Making it a lot better and you can have heal and energizers. Also adept shade is on cooldown, not energy
I found it rather amusing that all the units from the Conclave era ended up in the bottom half.
I remember my first playthrough of LotV, the mission The Host gave me such a hard time, it was the only mission I had failed on more then once, by the 10th restart I switched over to the NZ Dark Templar. 9 of them, 4 shadow cannon Immortals ( mainly for the anti air) and a few stalkers just cleared out every attack wave. The Dark Templar alone pretty much wiping out all the ground forces gave me such a big shift in mood. I went from frustration to pure delight. It was at that point they became my favorite unit in LotV. NZ Dark Templar are what I would dub SS tier.
Let's gooo, NCO now :))) It's gon' be a short one, so could touch on Nova's equipment a bit?
Not sure. The units have equipment.
Dark Archon confusion is outstanding stuff. Instantly stops Baneling waves. Turns Ultralisks into Zergling chow. Use on a pack of Phoenixes to have them sit there levitating their own army.
Wiki doesn't say if the campaign version affects heroic units or not, but still super powerful. Most of the time this is better than Mind Control, because deleting waves of enemies is usually better than getting one Tempest or one un-upgraded Carrier.
I would say Destroyer is at least a B tier since you can mass build them and they will obliterate groups of enemies. In the campaign there are lots of opportunities for a pack of Destroyers to burn through chunks of enemies unopposed, whereas in Co-op with the prestige unlocked, if you were to go mass Destroyers only they would get shredded to bits.
The high templar in lotv does restore shield, you could check this in the war council
I personally think the mothership is S tier for all the reasons you said and with air damage upgrades it gets insane bonuses like the vanguard thanks to those 6 attacks it has. Arbiter I believe is C tier because lets be honest, you only get it for two or three missions, by then the selections you have are already in place and you have your broken strategy so you will likely never select it. Stasis is really good yes but the chances you'll actually use it are low since it'll be shot down rather quickly. It is just better to get void rays which as you said can solo when maxed. I agree with the rest of the tier list.
you mentioned immunity to ghost snipe when discussing the purifier zealot, and that made me think. are there ANY enemy ghosts in legacy of the void except random void-shade spawns in the first slayn mission and the aiur mission that got adapted into scythe of amon? i'm pretty sure moebius only builds spectres.
also, it is CRIMINAL that you put the destroyer in C-tier when you put the hellion in D-tier in wings of liberty.
EDIT: doesn't the blood hunter's stasis ability work on any target, similarly to zeratul's? i've mixed them into normal armies in the past and manually casted their ability to just remove things like siege tanks and colossi from engagements. also, the high templar in campaign restores shields with its psionic storm; artanis in co-op buffs his archons, which retain their high templar spells.
I'm pretty sure you are right that all the Terran enemies use spectres, not ghosts.
The Havoc increase damage by 30%, not 15%, and it's range is 7, if I remember well, which mean that if you use Adept with it, the Adept will advance farther than the Havoc. It's great to annihilate strong unit like hybrid FAST, especially since it cumulate with the Adept -5 armor for insane damage.
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The Blood Hunter isn't limited to detector, it can also neutralize an ultralisk, thor or something else for a few seconds, but the auto-cast (there is a auto-cast in coop at least, I don't remember for campaign) focus on detectors.
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Ennemy unit continue to attack the Mirage even when their ability is active, so they can soak up tons of damage for free, including the blast ability from hybrids (I think it's the destroyer?). Supposing constant fire, they are imune to damage 40% of the time (2 second everey 5 seconds), and you can use them to pull the ennemy anti-air units. No need to spam them, just put a couple in your army, it's enough to tank the fist few shots, and I find myself actually using them far more often than the Phenix. Still prefer the Corsair though.
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High templar have the shield regeneration on it's psy storm in the campaign too, so they are very good at maintaining your zealoth alive
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Whrathwalker can shoot while mooving, which is very important in my opinion as with it's long range, you can shoot at the enemy from affar and retreating while they pursue. It synergize well with the Vanguard that cover it's weakness to swarms of enemies like zerglings (splash ground), with the Stalker as it's also a Hit&Run unit that favor retreating assault, and with both the Energizer (the attack goes from 3 sec to 1.5 + extra mobility) and the Havoc (give it an insane range).
"Brief." *looks at video length* You and I have different definitions of brief.
Now I'm waiting Brutal+ LotV with C-tier units and reaver only :-)
Personally I would bump up Havok to A-tier, and Energizer to S-Tier
While you cant win by massing energizers, You can get a lot of value out of a few of them. As support units, their power scales with how powerful all your other units are, which in this campaign is very powerful.
Havoks range is very nice, its biggest flaw is that the havoks own range isn't so great, they often get targeted down, energizers on the other hand cast on allies instead of enemies so you don't need to put them in enemy range at all.
Everything else is spot on
Nerazims once again proving they are the best Protoss
thank god, background music
IIRC on LotV release, Aiur zealots were bugged to do the standard 16 damage in 1 attack, but they only got +1 from upgrades instead of +2 (regular zealots would get +1x2). Got patched quickly though, I think. Having a single attack slightly helps with armor, I guess.
4:30 its 2+ zealots, pretty hard to compete with that
Some stats:
Aiur: 6 B tier, 2 C tier, 1 D tier
Nerazim: 3 S tier, 2 A tier, 2 B tier
Purifier: 4 A tier, 1 B tier, 1 C tier
Taldarim: 3 A tier, 1 B tier, 3 C tier
So an overall ranking of:
1st: Nerazim
2nd: Purifier
3rd: Taldarim
4th: Aiur
The to lowest Nerazim Units are in B tier and they are the two most basic units =)
And arguably Stalker could be A-tier, it's really skill dependent.
Would say Reaver was rated to low
High templar upgraded version simply has shield restoration on psi-storm. I can't remember how much it restores though.
Has there been a Coop commander for playing through the campaigns mod yet?
HT does restore shields in campaign, pretty sure. And the reaver's scarab is a projectile, so it doesn't have to path properly.
All Mirage as anti air is kind of interesting in that the enemy will usually try to "burst" down the first thing most of their units can fire at in range as the groups naturally meet, leading to the Mirage soaking a lot of shots for the one tic of damage it takes. They then rotate to the next Mirage and repeat and with enough Mirages they can end up cycling back to earlier ones within those 5 seconds easily, meaning a Mirage will only die as fast as the one hit it takes every few seconds. On average, given random AI shooting and all and assuming no micro, micro will extend it. This ended up with something silly like 5 Mirages could tank an enemy air attack wave for 30+ seconds before losses.
Tried it out for my first crack at "no unit losses" in Templar's Charge and it seemed OK to hold enemy attack waves while the Carriers painfully slowly swept the map. Then I didn't get the 10th anni achievement, read up about how buggy it is with the Spear of Adun, got Void Rays first and did it with them and not using anything from the Spear just to be thorough and not even risky Interceptor deaths, though I read they don't count. But after one 30+ minute save-scum slog...
Doesn't really raise them out of C tier but given how damage and army engagements work in Starcraft it is a surprisingly resilient passive.
A "brief" tier list : proceeds to make the longest of the three tier lists xD
I start to understand why I had problems completing LotV on Easy. I was using only C and D units because they look cool ! And never tried to learn spear of adun abilities.
Now an upgrades ranking !!
i always got a kick out of the wraithwalker with the energizer. get some zelots to soak and a mass of them can erase everything
Day 1 of asking for Firebats only WOL. Now that would be a show! Also, I loved the deep insight into the unique abilities. I had no idea adepts were so strong.
That's impossible for s few reasons, you can't get them until a certain point, missions that require taking on air or armour wouldn't be possible and any mission that's time sensitive wouldn't be possible either
^ And they deal less DPS than the Sentinel, much less the Raptor Zergling. Plus they cost gas so that's like -10 supply on a maxed out army, and you'll need more Tech Lab Barracks to mass them unless you're giving up Orbital Strike.
@@JJJBunney001 You could really consider the first three missions a tutorial, and you can grab firebats as your first real mission. But I don't think firebrat only have a prayer of winning any mission after that one. Can they even win Evacuation?
"and can't warp in like a nerazin dark templar"
that hability that gives you the capability of warping in everything:what i am to you?
After all unit tires I belive they made units having sc1 map design in mind with all the clifs and islands on the map that you usually need to take ... I would love a sc2 remake on the campaigns...
(while I know no one is reading this I still wanna leave my opinion)
I think the Ascendent was underrated, I did a couple missions where I used it heavily, and I had Mindblast on rapidfire hotkeys. if you can do that, a clump of ascendent can shred almost everything at extreme range, plus they have psionic orb which when spammed can compete with psi storm(because the damage from multiple orbs can stack) and can be done to a much larger area at moderately higher range, meaning they have great play into both tanky single target units like Hybrid and mass swarms of units like zergling.
in addition, due to having their sacrifice ability, if you build a bunch of say, Sentinels they can repeatedly sac the sentinels to constantly keep at high energy, and then the sentinels will just respawn.
at one point I did a gateway only units run, and the ascendent single handidly carried several missions on it's own due to the extreme damage, safety(due to high rage) and rechargability they have over high templar and dark archons. now, I don't think their S-tier by the standards this video set, but they should at least be B-tier if not A-tier
Or just use dark templar and blanket them fools in the ground XD
Being able to pick and choose between, in some cases, wildly different units to suit the needs of each mission, is something that I wish someone could implement in mods for WoL and HotS.
Nova covert ops next? all those nova loadouts and unit upgrades have alot of potential.
"Unfortunately unlike the Dark Templar, Vanguards can't be warped in."
~laughs in Warp Harmonization~
Now I kinda wanna see a unit tierlist for WoL real scale
I love the purifier zealots. You get Kaldalis in the co-op version with Fenix, that THING is insane. AoE slashes, and when he dies, he gets uploaded to another body, and starts charging from miles away. Soon as he gets close he just minces my enemies, and it keeps getting better with each death. On his final death he's like the Shy Guy SCP, absolutely destroying Hybrid all by himself.
Ascendants may be "C tier" in terms of combat effectiveness, but I personally sill love these guys for how fun they are to play with. "Press F to instantly delete an enemy unit" is SO satisfying to use, when you have a few dozens of them
Hello Grant, can we have Sentry only run when you mentioned it, brutal of course :D thanks
About Annihilator, there's another thing, once it LOCKED its shadow cannon onto something (AIR or GROUND)(locking range is pretty far), you might as well MOVE IT BACK (even if the target is OUT OF RANGE or OUT OF SIGHT!), it will continue firing at the target!
It got quite some potential for because of this.
One might even beat Into The Void mission with ONLY Annihilator & Colossus WITHOUT LOSING A SINGLE UNIT/STRUCTURE because of Shadow Cannon ability:
The point of having 2~4 Colossus is to deal with LOTS OF SMALL GROUND UNITS (zerglings/marines/hydralisks/zealots/etc, annihilators SUCK against them), Annihilators are the powerhouse & will do the rest
1 shadow cannon to kill banshees/mutas/vipers/tanks
2 shadow cannons to quickly snipe Immortals/broodlords/overseer, ESPECIALLY IMMORTALS (EASY to lose units if not kill them quickly enough)
3 shadow cannons to snipe carriers (BCs if casted Time Stop ability) or that weird thing that spawn void entities
Laser ray to kill Battle cruisers because BCs will Yamato if getting any close (note, NO UNIT LOSS)
5~6 shadow cannons to kill shard
In everyone of these cases, once LOCKED, KEEP MOVING BACK to safety!!!
Yeah its mazing at taking objectives, due to amount of missions where you have to kill single targets around the map it is really effective. Just takes care of every objective with one valley if you have few of them.
Playing WoL Protoss Edition made me appreciate the Destroyer a lot more. A fleet of them can solo either All In on brutal with zero micro (just Time Stop Kerrigan). If they take 80 shots or whatever to kill a zergling I sure didn't notice. In my playthrough they melted attack waves in seconds. There's just no mission for them in LotV besides the Colossus intro mission, and they share their niche with all the other Protoss AoE while the Void Ray and Arbiter have unique advantages.
Wrathwalkers have an awful overkill problem. The fact that is fires while moving is almost a hindrance because it makes it that much harder to optimize where and when they shoot.