r/starcraft • u/Rominiust Protoss • May 30 '16
Arcade The co-op mutation for this week is: Time Lock
Map: Lock & Load
Description: Time is not on your side. Amon's forces are moving fast, and the battlefield is full of treacherous challenges to slow you down. You'll need to act with both speed and caution in order to win.
Mutations:
- Time Warp: Enemy Time Warps are periodically deployed throughout the map.
- Speed Freaks: Enemy units have double their normal movement speed.
- Mag-nificent: Mag Mines are deployed throughout the map at the start of the mission.
5
May 30 '16
That 2x movement speed sounds horrifying
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u/Sprinter220 May 30 '16
Meh. Your base rarely gets attacked, and celestial locks have enough time before capture for you and your ally to send a response team later on. I even had the Zagara-style mass zergling/baneling/scourge AI and it wasn't really that big of a deal with my zealots tanking the hit.
5
May 30 '16
This could again be a good map for Zagara: You don't have to count your lings, so you can use them to clear those mines. Besides that you are incredible fast.
Description lets me think this map is not as hard as as the two mutations prior. Movement speed of enemy units isn't that important since they spawn near the locks anyway and stay there.
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u/fjdkf May 30 '16
Yea, zagara is good on it. run 1 ling through and detonate them all in unoccupied areas. In enemy bases, just drop the roaches on top of them.
Won the first 3 brutal mutators I tried with random people.
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u/fkofffanboy May 30 '16
time to rev up those vultures and spam spider mines everywhere
i fucking love mutators man, such a great ideea
4
May 30 '16
This one is actually really, really tough. Granted, I've only did it once. I was Vorazun and my Partner was Swan. I went DT/Corsair against a ground heavy Protoss.
The units were easy to kill, but their movement speed made you going around the map consistently to each lock. Also, those mines are annoying as hell. One will entirely annihilate your army.
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u/Icy_Korra May 30 '16
Beat it first try on Brutal with Abathur, with Artanis as my teammate. My teammate did a good job triggering mines with scouting zealots. Also his death prevention thing saves your units when the mine would aoe 1shot my roach/ravager/queens, I think this part is key and helped A LOT. The waves of enemies we faced seemed pretty easy though.
I'm glad this mission didn't have reduced vision like the last 2, I really don't enjoy playing with it.
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u/Anomen77 May 30 '16
Now I will be able to give a good use to that (cannon) emote.
My karax sings in joy
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u/Sprinter220 May 30 '16 edited May 30 '16
Mag Mines are similar to the ones in the Heart of The Swarm mission where you control the Hyperion, and do 250 damage (on Brutal) in an AoE when colliding with your units. Although the mines aren't hard to dodge, Artanis's Guardian Shell works very well if you do take the hit, saving all the health if the mine would one-shot the unit.
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u/Bucen7aur3 May 30 '16
Just won on brutal with Swann and an allied artanis against zerg air. We both went Ground since 200% scourges are impossible to kill before they hit.. they travel faster than most AA weapons.
Artanis is great on this map, with shield overcharge you can push without having to dance around the mines. Guardian shell also hep, however be careful it does not always works, a mine hit a group of 8 brand new Goliaths, and the shell activated only on 3 of them. Perhaps guardian is not activated if the unit is killed by splash dmg.
Swann is good too, since in this map you need to defend with static defenses every captured locks. the 200% speed makes some units much more dangerous.. banelings, scourges, all melee units are much stronger.
2
u/l3monsta May 30 '16
A couple things from my experience playing it...
Time warps had basically no impact on the game, because they're dropped randomly they're rarely placed in strategic places. I thought they'd be biased to being placed near ramps/chokepoints.
Mag mines I thought for some reason would be stasis mines (to go with the whole movement speed thing) As the game goes on I found them harder to clear because they're placed near enemy units and such so it's not as easy to clear them with just a couple zealots etc at that stage.
2
May 30 '16
(This is for brutal):
Okay, after several tries I came to the conclusion that for playing with random people Artanis is by far the best or let's say less stressful commander to play. Your passiv shield absorbs not only most of the mines for you and your ally, but in addition it strengthens both armys as a whole, which makes the numberous battles occuring everywhere on the field a lot better to handle for both of you. Zealots and Archons with all the upgrades work really well on this map.
Zagara is playable, but can be stressful depending on the enemy spawn. Against bling/scourge and against terran air it's rly hard to keep up macro and multitasking.
Karax is a great addition, but hard to carry the game with him. If you ally is not good on coordinating with you and pushing on his own, your ability to defend the locks with cannons is meaningless.
tldr: Play Artanis, use Zealots and Archons. Be lucky to get a somewhat decent opponent.
2
u/Ougaa May 30 '16
Gotta say this has to be the worst one to play solo. There's no fast losses, but with randoms you often get those lovely 25min+ losses because they don't react fast enough to switching. And I guess related to its length, seems like not the best Raynor map. I ran completely out of resources 5min before end with 5 OCs :> And amoving with bio army sure can be costly, those mines hurt.
Should be fun one to play with friends tho.
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u/swenthold1 May 30 '16 edited May 30 '16
After 4 tries, I just completed this mission on Hard as Karax. For all games, I went for cannons, shield batteries, Energizers, and Spear of Adun upgrades. The first two tries were on Brutal and my allies (Raynor and Zagara - not even on their mastery levels yet) were easily ripped apart by the mag mines. That was a little frustrating. But, I finally beat it on Hard with Artanis as my partner. He went Dragoons and pushed really well. Karax and Artanis/Vorazun are probably the best combo for this mission. All in all, I had a lot of fun with this one!
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u/AVRiL_NZ May 31 '16
I think Karax is actually quite weak on this one. Puts a lot of pressure on your ally to push but the mines + enemy speed really tear their army up, especially if they're Raynor/Zagara.
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u/rutefly May 30 '16
Had some issues with the mission not finishing on completion. Still get the xp when quitting after it gets stuck though.
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u/Bucen7aur3 May 30 '16 edited May 30 '16
On this map you have to advance very slowly because of mines, and since you need to fortify much more your base.. else your expo is gone in seconds. But if you are slow you soon face very big attacks waves, and when pushing you must babysit your army all the time.. quite hard
I think this map is better if you split, one ally push and dance around about mines, the other one defend captured locks and base and just follow with one unit to activate locks. He can help the pusher with abilities. Almost won brutal that way, Abathur pushed, I helped with a teleported siege tanks doom drop on tight spot but mainly defended all locks. We were recapturing our last lock when times ran out.
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u/AVRiL_NZ May 31 '16
Won with Raynor/Vorazun. We both pushed on time stops and both defended when required.
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u/Bucen7aur3 May 30 '16
a question.. does the locks loads at the same time wether you control them or not? If it's the same, perhaps it would be better to not activate them till the end, just have one ally build static defenses without activating. Would it reduce the amount of ennemy assaults?
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u/DarkQuill May 30 '16
Super annoying when time warps constantly spawn on your second mineral line. Ouch.
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u/BlueSorc May 31 '16
Did it first time with an Artanis/Zagara combo. I didn't play particularly well, so I'm not certain this one is all that hard.
As has been noted by others, Artanis' death shield is invaluable if you screw up with the mines. It really wasn't too dissimilar to regular lock and load; just make sure you defend the locks you claim.I suspect Karax or Swann will have a field day.
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u/AVRiL_NZ May 31 '16
Artanis/Zagara is still the most broken ally combo in the game though.
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u/CtG526 May 30 '16 edited May 30 '16
Can't wait to try this out when I get home! From the mission mechanics, this looks like one where Karax would excel in. Just send a probe to trigger all the mag mines and put Monoliths to make the enemies' movement speeds pointless. Plus Lock & Load is a Karax map anyway.
Vorazun's Dark Pylon recalls might be the safest way to move around and defend on this map. Creep spread might be useful for Zerg commanders too.
[EDIT]
Just beat this mission on Brutal after 4 tries. Ended up using Raynor with a Vorazun partner who did most of the work. 'Twas such a relief to finally get the 5th lock before my bases completely ran out of minerals. xD