Mission 04 Smash and Grab

Alright, back to Starcraft 2 Walkthrough, onto the 4th mission: there is a choice here to go to either Agria or Monlyth, this is the Monlyth Mission, the agria mission is also easy but like i said previously firebats are pretty much useless without both of their bought upgrades and marauders are useful.

I don't think I mentioned but the second mission of the 2 that you do nets you mercenaries, which are powerful versions of certain units, they are the number one buy you should buy in the campaign, they are pretty much useful in every mission, the only ones that are questionable are the firebat mercs and perhaps the battlecruiser merc, because it isn't that useful in any of the final missions where you can use it..

However onto this mission, I'll just briefly explain the mission and what it introduces. Firstly this mission Introduces Marauders (obviously) and Research Bonus objectives.

Marauders are the backbone of any infantry army, they demolish armored units, this is amplified in multiplayer where marauders also have access to stimpack, making them very powerful in Multiplayer, they are also powerful in single player, especially if you know the enemy has alot of armored units or melee units (later), mostly they are a compliment to your marines in the campaign where you would rather go like 4 marines:1 marauder : 1 medic type armies in most missions, however on hard (note: not brutal) there are no air in this mission so you can go mostly marauders and be pretty good.

The second thing in this mission are the bonus objectives granting you research, you want every single bonus objective because a) you want to max protoss/zerg research asap as they unlock abilities/units/structures that are essential for making the campaign easier and once you max these you gain extra money from bonus research to unlock upgrades. If you want to do achievements and stuff I advise making sure the last playthrough you do nets you all the artifacts you want.

Right, onto the mission basically the mission format is that the zerg is racing you to get to the artifact, the zerg will send units over to attack your base occasionally, the protoss will not besides the first stalker attack. Essentially I think it takes the Zerg around 30-35 minutes to get to the artifact on hard, and around 25 minutes on Brutal, takes forever on normal and casual :P.

Basically, on Hard difficulty or easier you don't have to care about the zerg, you can max your army before pushing if you want and the Zerg won't reach the artifact before you do. On Brutal it's a little harder and you have to move out at around 100 or so food or the zerg will beat you to the artifact.

Firstly Mission Objectives

Main: Recover the Artifact

Bonus: Recover the Protoss Relics (4)

Achievements: Take 0 losses from the Artifact Guardians on Normal Difficulty

Finish the Mission in less than 15 minutes.

Ok to start with you are given 1 Command Centre, 5 scvs, 1 Refinery, 1 Barracks /w Tech Lab, 2 Supply Depots, 3 Marines and 1 Medic. Also you will get 4 marauders via drop-in (3 on Brutal), To start with pump scvs and marines and follow the build order below, remember these are rough guides, how much damage you take from zerg waves will affect your supply rounds, I'll make some comments on specific parts of the build after.

25-Supply Depot

27 - 2 Scvs in Gas*

33 - Supply Depot

39 - Supply Depot

47 - Supply Depot

50 - Barracks

54 - Engineering Bay

55 - Supply Depot

57 - Reactor, Stop Scv Production, Barracks, 3 Scvs in Gas

59 - Attack Upgrade, Bunker

63 - Supply Depot (continuous from now on), Tech Lab, Barracks, Turret

69 - 2nd Bunker

83 - Armor Upgrade

Macro out of your 4 barracks from now on, you don't need an addon on your last Barracks.

A few comments on this build order.. Firstly you may think that putting that putting 2 scvs in gas is actually too much, but 2 means you can build up gas to get upgrades earlier and can have continuous production later, you will definitly need to cut some marauders for marines early on for supply depots.

Your Barracks should be producing 1st: Marauders, 2nd: Marines, 3rd: Medics and 4th: Marines. Note: If you lose your first medic to a zerg attack, produce one immedietly from your 1st barracks or you are going to lose way too many troops.

When making your barracks load them with 4 marines and 1 marauder each, this is probably the most optimum barracks lay down until you get the last zerg research (discussed later)

Also note that you can probably stim on every engagement with your marines, stimming and letting your medics heal them back up can be very powerful. The key thing is, don't save stimpack, use it as much as you want to (you can use it in bunkers).

Last thing is that the turret is there to deal with the 2-3 mutalisks that come, it is optional on hard mode, but you need this on Brutal, perhaps a second and you want to position your first barracks like on the top of your ramp to the left and your second one behind this with the turret right next to it.

Right, depending on whether you want to do the hard achievement you have a leisure of when you want to push out, its nice to push out around like 100 supply if you don't care for the hard achievement, if you do care about the achievement you should move out at around 70-80 supply, you get a couple of auto-saves so if you are late just move out earlier and repeat.

Onto the actual walkthrough though: I am going to move out at around 100 supply, leaving both bunkers full with the above composition and have all 4 barracks rallied to my main force, firstly move down your ramp and grab the artifact there.. move to the west towards the zerg and push up the ramp, there are 2 spine crawlers that will attack you as you move up: attack-move micro works wonders here and just attack the crawlers as you move up the ramp. There is a spore crawler (anti-air) and an overlord here aswell, take them down if you want but not necessary.

Continue moving west and south. Do not go north into the zerg front lines, although you could perhaps take it out, I personally haven't tried and don't want to :D. Once you move off the zerg creep (the purple stuff on the ground) continue moving south till you see 2 cannons, 2 pylons and a lone stalker (3 on Brutal), attack-move micro through them and take the small path to your east and pick up the artifact. Then move back to your ramp.

Ok, once you are back at your ramp you can start to push east, take out the units and the pylons first, taking these down powers down the cannons and they no longer attack. The golden rule is that taking down 1 cannon is quicker than 1 pylon, but 1 pylon is quicker than 2 cannons. Continue moving across the bridge where you will run into a new unit: the sentry, they forcefield you on the bridge, take down the pylons to the north and south of the bridge and then kill the sentries (On Brutal there is a High Templar here who storms your units, move them out of the storm and then kill him asap when the storm ends). Once this is done take down the powered-down cannons and the continue moving east around the path.

You should get to some protoss force at the bottom of the ramp consisting of some stalkers and zealots and cannons, take them out (on Hard mode there are 2 void rays here, stim your marines and take them out asap). There is a small path to the west, go down it and take out the 3 cannons and pylon located here, remember snipe the pylon first after the forward cannon and grab the relic.

Up the ramp is a Protoss base, attack move up there and demolish the force, you will see the sentries other moves here: Hallucination and Guardian Shield, you should focus on the Sentry first so your ranged attacks do more damage to the rest of the protoss army, take out the units first and then the cannons and then the probes (workers) and then the nexus then the rest of the buildings (on Brutal there are archons (and hallucinated archons) up here, they do lots of damage to your infantry so focus them down first).

Once the base is down there is the main bridge to the artifact and to the east of that is a small path with 2 pylons and a relic down here, just go and grab it and then go to the bridge, the sentries again forcefield you off. This time they have stalkers that hit past the forcefields which you can barely hit, snipe off the sentries then charge across the bridge and take out the stalkers.

Now depending on whether you want to do the achievement or not stop or just charge ahead to the artifact with your force. If you want to do the achievement, leave all your marines outside of the artifact area and take only your marauders and medics. When you go over the green thing the GUARDIANS will activate, they are basically reskinned colossii meaning they do aoe damage to your units, hence why you want to leave the weaker marines out of your force if you want to do the achievement, just choose the furthest left statue and surround it with your infantry and focus it down, then the south one and then the east one. If you want the achievement remember to pull back marauders/medics taking damage so they don't die.

Otherwise just attack-move to victory and watch the cut-scene. I was sure the dropship would get shot down since it showed it and had kerrigan saying I WONT UNDERESTIMATE YOU NEXT TIME, but alas it didn't (spoiler?).

When you get back to the ship you should have 110,000 credits and gain access to the mercenaries. Like I said earlier: YOU WANT THESE, hire the marauders for 30,000 leaving you with 80,000.

You now have access in the armory to Marauder tech

You Have 2 upgrades for Marauders:

Concussive Shells - The Marauders' attack now slows the Enemy (note it is in an area around the target unit and not just the target unit) (70,000)

Kinetic Foam - Increases the life of Marauders by 25 (90,000)

Concussive shells makes marauders so useful in a marauder/medic/marine ball in the campaign and so you should upgrade this without question, unless you want to skip marauders completely, if you do I would get the Combat Shield upgrade for Marines for the extra hp, Personally I like marauders in my ground army and they are very useful until you get 25 zerg tech.

Discussion: Because marauders are slow (relatively) to marines/medics a marine/medic ball is almost always more effective in the campaign because it is more mobile, however throwing a marauder or 3 in there to slow melee units definitly pays off. Marines and Medics are the backbone of any army really and adding Marauders means you have a low gas-usage compared to other options, you don't need the extra life on marauders but the aoe slow is soooo useful in balls.

Personally my strat will be a Medic/Marine/Tank/Vessel Army on most generic maps, with the mercenaries mixed in of course. However Marauders are very good till you get tanks and science vessels so I recommend getting these upgrades, and you will get the marauder mercs most games so you might aswell grab this upgrade imo, but getting faster combat shield is just as fine, I will get both.

Please note my strat above isn't that viable in multiplayer because you can't get medics and vessels in multiplayer, Marine/Tank is a reasonable strat, but it requires good macro and micro to pull off, the most similar strategy in multiplayer are MMM (Marines, Marauders and Medivac) armies, which is probably the easiest strategy to pull off, but I won't comment too much on multiplayer, just note it is far more viable in multiplayer because marauders gain stimpack.

Patrol Quest Hub (Durotar)

Ok, so before we get onto the actual quest feedback and whatever I am going to talk about Druid level 8, first a little pic to explain some stuff :D.

Ok, so you get Cat form at level 8, by the way this is AWESOME, it allows druids to try out both Balance and feral before having to specialise, this is super important imo considering that choosing your specialisation is meant to be a big deal and being able to try out both "flavours" of the class before choosing it, is important.

Secondly though, I'm going to talk about cat form for Trolls, the first time I saw screens for the troll cats I thouught "LOL!" they looked seriously dumb looking in my opinion. Actually seeing them in-game has made me seen that they do fit in, although their models need some work for one major reason

They look pretty much like Night elf Cats with a mane+tusks, I'd kinda like if they modelled them a little differently so they don't look like re-skinned night elfs, I'd also like it if they toned down the colors a little, not too much, but at the moment they seem a bit too ott that could certainly put people off wanting to be feral imo.

On to the actual questing then like firstly, I like the interactions of this quest, like you head up to the quest guy and they are like THE GUY U NEED TO HAND THE QUEST INTO IS UPSTAIRS, I mean that sort of stuff is so useful to people, especially a newer player who might just be looking at the map for a guide and not reading the quest text.

Secondly this quest is awesome, but it does contain a fundamental flaw, I'll come onto this later because you only think of this flaw after doing the subsequent quests, but its cool you use your quest item, the spyglass 4 times and it shows you the 4 next areas you are going to be questing in, you are then sent to go help these people, similar to the zuldrak patrol, you have to complete their 4 quest hubs to complete this over-arching quest, I personally loved that zuldrak quest hub (although I hated the zone due to that shitty abomination quest... grrr).

So yeh you are shown where you need to go for this quest and then are sent out to help the 4 people you saw in the like "cut-scenes".

The first guy you are shown is Raggaran so I obviously went to him first.

He is like RAWR QUILLBOAR ARE ANNOYING ME HATE U KILL ALL MUST DIE etc, so you go out kill some quillboar and he is like ARALWRRLARHALRAR KILL EVEN MOREE!!!!!, so you go and kill more. There is a rare here, as shown in my picture and he is actually REALLY strong, his enrage is like so... powerful I killed him but he killed me at the same time, personally I feel he is a little too powerful for an area you are hitting at level 8, also some of the quillboar here tend to multi-aggro so perhaps spreading them out a bit wouldn't go amiss.

I dinged level 9 here though, and after killing those final set of stuff he is like AHH I FINALLY CALMED DOWN and tells you to leave before he turns back into the hulk or w/e he is trying to impersonate.

Next I went to the hut..

and here is what I realised a fundamental flaw of the spyglass quest. It shows you the 4 locations in like the worst quest Order Possible, this quest here is like ESCORT ME TO RAGGARAN, and I'm like I've just been there... seriously?... really the spyglass quest NEEDS to show the areas in the optimum quest order, which imo is probably, almost, the reverse of the order it actually shows Farm->Hut->Raggaran->Bridge, for the most optimum quest order, I suppose at Raggaran you could go north to the quillboars and escort her on the way back, but the south west quillboars are much nearer so unless you knew this quest was going to be this than you would naturally go south west.

This quest though is actually a really awesome escort quest, you barely fight anything other than a few raptors on the way and maybe a few crocolisks (Can't remember) but the old orc is like CBA SWIMMING GIVE WATER WALKING BUFF, and she gives u one (it's especially powerful because melee attacks don't cause you to lose the buff like water walking/levitate) and then she's like AHHH SPRAINED MY ANKLE and is like RAWR I'M THRALL LIKE POWERFUL and summons a cyclone to lift her to raggaran, pretty damn awesome if you ask me. Obviously I was kinda annoyed that I had already done the Raggaran quests but ye, I moved on to the bridge quests..

Ok, so this troll guy is like I WISH I WAS A MEMBER OF DEHTA or w/e they are called on wow and asks you to chase off some birds into the barrens (which is ironic because the orc girl in the barrens later tells you to kill them (Spoilers? D:)) but the mechanics of this quest are cool, you attack them and at around 30% health they run away to the barrens, pretty cool.

You then get asked to kill this raptor thats gone rabid or something, this is also the first time they show you their new PORTRAIT TO DO WITH QUESTS thing, and tbh I wish all quests had this feature, its so nice immersive and helpful, its a great summary of the quest text, gives u a great visual stimulii to help on the quest and yeh, it's just a great addition, I really hope this gets put on most quests tbh. Anyway you kill this raptor (he does nothing special, a bit disappointing :() and thats the end of that hub, so onto the last area.

And she is like YO GO COLLECT 250!!!!!!!!! teeth to make this necklace for my lost son. Whilst this is cool, immedietly I am like WTF 250?!?!?!, but actually thinking about it now its actually adding some realism to wow, It would be kinda weird to kill say a crocodile in real life and only be able to take 1 tooth per kill, here you are collecting around 30 or so per crocolisk, which is realistic and so immersive (again props to the little portrait thing). This quest also nets you the typical 8-slot bag that you get in every starting zone now.

After this you go back and hand in the patrol quests, I also Magically dinged here unlocking talent specialisation to me (I think this should be separately pointed out when you ding along with the talent points. I took some nice screenshots of the masteries stuff, I might have already posted about it so I'm going to check, but a few summaries on this quest hub I LIKE these ways of spicing up generic kill/gather quests, they give you a sense of progression and are having an over-arching quest I just feel adds to the immersion of the kill quests.

:D

Razor Hill

Ok, so FINALLY I got my ass in gear after orgasming over starcraft 2 (it's awesome btw :D) I finally finished the next 2 areas of durotar pictures/write-up. Haven't uploaded vids for the previous one, for a few reasons: 1) I live in the UK so my upload speed is horrible, 2) my computer sucks so rendering takes forever and 3) I really don't have the time for some strange reason, got so much to do at the moment etc.

Ok, so basically I'm going to write up both the Razor Hill and the Patrol quest hubs today, along with a write-up on the Druid Specialisation choosing stuff at level 10, bear in mind that this data is already a couple of beta builds out of date, probably a few bugs have been fixed since I played through this and stuff but yeh I'm still going to bung my feedback here because I think it's valuable personally.

Lets get on with Razor Hill anyway, although you haven't seen the video (COS I'M LAZY) you get taken from Sen'jin to Razor Hill on a wolf with this amusing grunt who is like "YOU SMELL FUNNY" in a peon voice, it amused me greatly :D, anyway we get to Razor Hill and they are like..

Ok.. so the Humans from Northwatch Hold in the Barrens invaded Durotar and we need you to take them out.. theres also this amusing Goblin, I'm not sure if Gail Nozzywigg is meant to be a reference to some slut/wag or something but I find her comments amusing like STAY AWAY FROM MY MEN, cos we all know that troll female is obviously the girl all the guys want etc.

Anyway you go to Tiragarde Keep and kill a bunch of guys and collect treasure, pretty generic quest really, I like how the marksman put Hunters mark on you. I would have liked the named guy to be a bit more special considering he flex's his muscles and does some hero leap at you whilst saying stuff, (I know error texts are ftl D::) but actually all he does after that is melee you, which is kinda a disappointment would have loved to see some whirlwind or Mortal Strike or something from him to be a more iconic warrior.

Nothing much to say about the quests though, they are nice and simple and really quite functional and explain why Tiragarde is still under alliance control even though the cataclysm like fucked it over.

I also Dinged in this area as shown by the Pics :)

After that you hand in and we get a new bunch of quests..

They explain that the cataclysm has washed up a bunch of elementals and that his worthless Orcs he sent out there haven't reported back. Also the goblin girl is like "IM NOT FINISHED WITH YOU MISS TROLL SLUT #23" and sends you on another gathering quest. You arrive in the area and there are Orcs littered over the place, if you click on one you get a quest to save 4, my grief here is that the quest should really be flagged or it should be an auto-quest when you enter the area, I prefer the latter as it makes you feel like a more righteous hero than choosing to help or not, but regardless.

When you click on the soldiers they follow you around and help you kill elementals for a bit, the say is a bit confusing and implies you have to defend them, but you don't they actually follow you and fight for you whilst they recover.. seems a bit anti-recovery to me but regardless. The elementals do an awesome Tidal wave animation at you, which took a long time to screen shot correctly, you don't see it if you are near them so you have to be at range, I'd prefer it if it wasn't targetted (the animation) and worked like typhoon so everybody could see it, cos it is fricking cool.

After that you head back and hand in. I didn't include it here but you get the generic GO TO YOUR CAPITAL CITY AND LEARN HOW TO USE FLIGHT MASTERS quest, which are of course useful and give you a nice overview of the rest of Durotar, but they are a little side-tracky so I won't include them here.

Yes this is a little short as an area really, I was tempted to include the follow up to this, which is to investigate a Demon infestation in the north, but I actually did this after the Patrol Missions, not realising this quest was a one-off before leading to a new area. Ideally you should do this quest before doing the Patrol Missions and then doing Patrol Missions and then the North of Durotar, but yeh that was a little erroneous on my part.

Patrol Quests are next up :)

New Cataclysm Launcher O:

Ok, so new cataclysm Launcher is here, not particularly liking how I'm going to have to re-install my beta client :(, but regardless.. just going to comment a little about it.

Reminds me of pretty much every other major MMO installer, which basically allows you to play asap and then downloads the minor stuff you don't need, like I particularly remember lotr online when I tried it out once, after around like 15 minutes or so of the download I was able to go into game, create a char and do the tutorial type area, I always thought this was a nice touch so you weren't just sitting there waiting to download/install the game. It's also nice how they will install and download at the same time instead of downloading then installing hopefully streamlining the process a little.

I am not sure if this kills alternative download links: probably not but ye it can only be a good thing.

Gonna try and get up the Durotar thing later, might be only thing I do though D:.

Cataclysm Beta Masteries

Ok, I am not sure entirely how many of these masteries were changed from the original versions but I am going to comment on each specifically, obviously I will say more for classes I am actually familiar with but ye I'll try to be fair.

Deathknights:

Blood - Each time you heal with your Death-Strike Ability you gain 50+x% of the heal as an absortion shield

This is clearly a lovely mastery for blood dk tanks, as of now they (and druids) would be very much sponge tanks without this sort of mechanic either through talents or this mastery bonus. I personally like the feel of this mastery, it feels very akin to blood and well ye it feels like a lovely tanking bonus

Frost - Increases Frost Damage done by 20+x%.

I feel like this is a really lacklustre mastery, it doesn't really have a cool gimic or change the way the class behaves and is just basically +20% damage you gain at lvl 75, which doesnt sound fun to me at least. I personally feel like if they tied it into weapon damage and make it feel dual wield-esque that it would be much more awesome.

Unholy - Increases damage done by your diseases by 20+x%

This is a little better than the frost mastery, it at least makes diseases much more important and may change gameplay somewhat, it also feels unholy, although I feel like an increase to pet (ghoul+gargoyle) should also be baked into the mastery to feel completely unholy-esque.

Druids:

Balance: Increases the Bonus Damage from Eclipse by 12+x%

Definitely a good mastery, makes proccing eclipse that much more needed when levelling as well as the new eclipse mechanic just being plain cool.

Feral : Increases damage absorbed by Savage Defense by 32+x% and increases your cat-form bleeds by 20+x%

Another good solid mastery that enhances the essence of cat damage, same with the bear mastery with a similar description to the blood mastery behind why this is good.

Resto: Increases Healing from hots by (20+x)*y%, where y is a number based on how much hp the target has, (y gets bigger the lower hp the target has).

This is a lovely healing mastery, it obviously brings out the strength and say "perk" of being a druid healer and also gives them new mechanics that they are more powerful the lower the targets are, overall a very nice mastery.

Hunters:

Beastmaster: Increases damage done by pets by 20+x%

Again, rather generic mastery but overall expected, perhaps I would like to see another go for the throat type mastery thrown in there like your pets also gain a 10% chance to gain 20+x focus on a hit, or something like that. I don't play a hunter but I think that would be cool

Marksman: Grants a 16+x% chance on ranged attack to automatically fire a shot that hits for 80% of a normal attack.

Again, nice mastery, obviously en-corperating wild quiver into this talent but it does get across what marksmanship is all about in my opinion so it is a good mastery.

Survival: Increases Elemental damage by 20%.

Personally I think this is a good/bad mastery, although this is more to do with survival playstyle than the mastery itself, this is a good mastery for the spec (although boring) but I feel like survival should be about tracking and traps more than about shots than it is today, it would be awesome to see a spec that was all about trap launcher and traps especially, I know black arrow is meant to facilitate this but with the introduction of trap launcher i feel like that should become a signature ability of the survival hunter.

Mage:

Arcane: Increases the amount of damage done by the mage by (12+x)*y% with y based on how much mana the mage has unspent.

Whilst I actually love this talent and it feels very arcaney to have to manage mana within your spec, not to go oom but to maximise damage, I just feel its going to be hard to balance unless it has a minimum point like, say once you get to around 60% mana it always does 6+x% damage or something, so that stuff like Evocation and Mana gem give you significant damage boosts but you can balance the mage about having this consistent damage buff up say 70% or whatever it works out to be time.

Fire: Causes your non periodic Spells to do 10+x% extra damage over 4 seconds.

Again this is just Ignite, but it's a cool way to basically add 10% extra damage to a class, even if it will always work out less than that unless it ends up double dipping on encounters like Blood Queen lanathel etc.

Frost: Causes victims of your Frostbolt to take 12+x% increased damage from your spells

Again another unique way to staple frostbolt as a signature move and to just add damage % to a class, I don't know if this has a timer or not on live not sure if it needs one or not.

Paladin:

Holy: Causes your heals to place a shield on the target absorbing 8+x% of the amount healed

Personally, I love this mastery, it's great to see valanyr encorperated into a Holy Paladin, I always felt that having only 1 class bring definitive absorbs is too much of an imbalance to balance, but having a Paladin have a reliable absorb aswell as this mastery means that Holy Paladins have a good damage reduction. I always felt shamans would get this sort of mastery over a Holy Paladin, but I do like this mastery alot.

Protection: Increases your chance to block melee attacks by 16+x%

A bit generic, I always saw that with wrath you wanted to make like Druids the BIG ARMOR TANK, Warriors the block less but block for more tank and Paladins the BLOCK ALOT but for less tank, this sort of confirms that. Bit torn on how I feel about it, 16% seems quite a large baseline amount though tbh.

Ret: Increases all Holy Damage Done by 20+x%

Again, really generic and imo doesn't get what the Retribution Paladin class is about, I personally feel it should be your Judgement increases holy damage done by 20+x% since thats the staple move of the retribution paladin imo, but yeh not exactly game or decision changing. Although I DO NOT LIKE how a paladin without this mastery and zealotry is losing 40% of their damage until they get it.

Priest:

Discipline: Increases the potency of your absorption spells by 20+x%

Nice healing mastery, Definitely encompasses what the discipline class is about and well yeh theres not much more to say about it, good generic mastery

Holy: Your Direct healing spells also heal the target for 10+x% over 6 seconds

Again a nice mastery, fits in with the healing class and is a much nicer way of showing the player 10% extra healing, it also gives priests more arsenal than just renew as a hot.

Shadow: You have a 10% chance for SW;P and Mind Flay to Grant a Shadow Orb, which increases the damage of Mind Blast and Mind Spike by 20+x%

Personally I feel like there should be more of these type of masteries, stuff that are really integral to the playstyle of the class and are fun, diversifying the classes more than they are today. This mastery is one of the best on the beta tbh and I hope some of the +20% generic masteries get reworked to something like this.

Rogue:

Assasination: Increases your poison damage by 20+x%

Nice mastery, outlines that assasination is about poisons and ye is just a good mastery, bit generic but good.

Combat: Your Main hand attacks have a 10+x% chance to trigger an extra off-hand attack

Again, nice mastery fits in well with the rogue class and with the combat spec in general

Subtlety: Increases the damage of your finishing moves by 20+x%

Staples subtlety as the spec that has the high finishing moves, which is definitely a good thing, considering hardly anybody plays subtlety at the moment, having it become the spec which hits the hardest is only a good thing.

Shaman:

Elemental: Grants a 20+x% chance for your Lightning Bolt/Lava Burst/Chain Lightning to send out a second similar spell causing 60% of the damage.

Very nice mastery, sure it's just a remake of elemental overload but that talent was awesome and having it become a mastery is definitely a great thing.

Enhancement: Increases your elemental damage by 20+x%.

Again, really generic I'd personally like something that staples Dual Wield with the mastery rather than just a generic +DAMAGE modifier.

Restoration: Increases your direct healing spells by (20+x)*y%

Similar mastery to the resto druid, but tbh they are good masteries that affect gameplay somewhat and it gets across that shaman are somewhat masters of direct healing, which is good.

Warlock:

Affliction: Increases all periodic shadow damage by 13+x%

Good generic Mastery, gets across that affliction is all about periodic damage, as an aside to this, I would like some way for dots to be more effective when questing at low level at least, they always seem far too wasteful and mana burning, a way of transferring dots to another target like rogues were/are getting for combo points would be really nice.

Demonology: Increases damage done by your demon and in Metamorphisis by 12+x%.

Excellent generic Mastery again.. not much to be said other than I wish we had more shadow priest esque masteries :).

Destruction: Increases fire damage you deal by 10+x%

More boring generic mastery but I suppose its good for its purpose

Warrior:

Arms: Grants a 16+x% to your melee attacks to trigger an extra melee attack for 50% of the damage.

Awesome Mastery, a little repeated across the classes but it definitely suits all the classes it was given to and especially arms, also nice for the old sword spec to get a return, hopefully this doesnt get a massive internal cooldown D:.

Fury: Improves abilities that cause you or require you to be enraged by 80+x%.

Really awesome mastery: gets across what the fury spec is all about being like RAWR DAMAGE!!?!?!?!, also like how it will benefit stuff like blood craze and frenzied regeneration aswell, which is kinda sweet

Protection: Increases your chance to block and to critically block by 10+x%

I feel like Critical block should be the mastery on it's Own, although I believe thats bad wording of the mastery and actually you only can critically block with the mastery, which is much nicer tbh. A good mastery if critical block is only available with it, otherwise dull and generic.

Overall I think there are far too many generic masteries at the moment, personally I don't like seeing those pure +% things, they are dull and I feel like, well if everything is meant to do +20% damage or w/e anyway why not just bake it into the talents instead of making a level 75 20% MORE POWERFUL than a level 74, obviously the less generic talents may have a similar effect but its a more fun way, something that staples the rotation or SIGNATURE MOVE of the class should really be the mastery

I do have to say that all the healing masteries are good, I don't mind that some are a little generic they are functional and healers should have more PROCY/FUN masteries that provide rng to healing, there isn't a place for that in healing in my opinion.

Mission 03: Zero Hour.

Ok, Basically this mission attempts to teach you about Base Defense (frankly I think it does a bad job at that because it is easier to just macro up a force). Basically there are a few things you are introduced to on this mission 1) Turrets, 2) Engineering Bay (UPGRADES!!!!!) 3) Bunkers, and 4) Reactor add-on.

Turrets are sort of Obvious, on most missions you don't need them, they are cheaper than bunkers and, more powerful, most of the time you don't need detection in your base. The main thing this mission tries to teach you is that turrets=good against Mutalisks (the flying zerg units) but it does a bad job at explaining it in my opinion since 4 mutalisks take down a turret and the ai barely sends any against you, unless you are going for the DON'T LOSE ANY STRUCTURES achievement it is not worth making any more, and even so it probably isn't as well positioned bunkers are more versatile against the waves the ai sends against you. I think they should have put burrowed roaches in this mission to teach people that turrets give detection, but yeh thats a different story. Basically if I were to take anything from this mission into multiplayer its that Turrets=Detection against cloaked/burrowed units.

Engineering Bay enables you to make missile turrets so you are granted one on this mission. This is where you get your Upgrades, these are important and remember that 1 armor means your units take 1 less damage per hit and 1 attack means your units do 1 more damage per attack. Whatever mission you are doing you should always try to get upgrades, depending on what type of army you are constructing.

Bunkers, these are the core of Terran Defense: They provide your infantry complete immunity to attacks whilst the bunker is up. Basically its like adding 350 hit points to your marines, definitly a good thing. You can also salvage bunkers so basically as long as they don't die to enemy attacks they are free so they are almost always worth it.

Lastly we have the reactor addon. Now you can add-on a reactor to your Barracks (and later factories/Starports). This enables you to produce 2 units at a time at said Barracks, however you can only produce units that don't require a tech lab (Marines, Medics (with the purchased upgrade), Vultures, Hellions, Vikings, Medivacs) Note that Medics and Vultures aren't available in Multiplayer. The point about a reactor is that you have to give up 50 seconds of unit-producing time to make double the amount of units. With a barracks this evens out after 100 seconds, with a Factory and Starport this evens out over a longer period of time. Remember that you don't HAVE to make a Reactor or a Tech Lab, 2 barracks produce units just as fast as 1 barracks with a reactor!

Ok, with the new stuff out of the way lets get the Mission Objectives out here..

Mission Objectives:

Main: Hold out for Extraction (20 minute timer)

Bonus: Rescue the Rebels (3)

Achievements: Complete Mission without Losing or Salvaging a Single Structure on Normal

Destroy 4 Hatcheries on Hard

Ok a few comments first: I am going to do a strategy that is good for both completing the mission on hard and can do the achievement on hard difficulty, this involves purposfully salvaging bunkers and is no good for those wanting to do the normal achievement.My advice is if you want to do this achievement, just do it on normal, make around 3-4 bunkers on the left entrance and 2-3 on the right entrance and have 2 scvs at each end of the base. Have a small mobile force to engage each side appropriately.

Right. So to start things off you are given 4 Bunkers, 16 marines, 1 command centre, 1 engineering bay, 4 turrets, 3 depots and 5 scvs.

Firstly do a standard opening, make an scv from your command centre, a marine from 1 of the barracks, and reactor the second barracks, hotkey your command centre and barracks.

After this salvage all 4 bunkers and move all your marines to the high ground just in front of your barracks, macro up your army following the guide below,

22 Reactor (1st Barracks)

26 Barracks

31 Depot

37 (1st Rebel callout) Depot

48 Depot

51 Refinery

52 Tech Lab

56 Depot

64 Depot

66 (2nd Rebel callout)

72 (stop scv Production) Depot (constant depot production after this)

75 Reactor (3rd Barracks)

83 Skip 1 round of Medics to get Armor Upgrade

85 move out with around half your force and save 1st and second rebel groups (not if doing achievement)

98 Barracks

110 Reactor (4th Barracks), Attack Upgrade

120 Move out to gain last force (this is when you want to move out and get the other 2 forces if doing the hard achievement)

From then on its just macroing out of the 4 barracks and keeping your units on the ramp. You might think you want to add a 5th barracks but you don't, certainly not reactored anyway.

Now, this mission is actually only hard if you rely on barracks and only make marines for the barracks you make, and the fact you end up splitting up your army, which is never really good when doing a mass defend operation.

The Idea behind the hard achievement is you move out at around the 9 minute 30 mark, right before you hear the third guy, leave around 10 marines at home and a medic and take everything else with you sweep around the first 2 rebel camps and then to last rebel camp, attack-move microing everything. Once you get to the last camp, get whatever you made from your barracks during that time and regroup, now go west of the 3rd rebel group and there is a zerg base, attack-move micro till most of your forces are up the ramp, and take out the 3 hatcheries, all whilst making more and more units from your barracks. Once the base is taken out move out of there back to the third rebel site. (Note: if your force got totally overwhelmed here it means one of 3 things 1: you forgot to upgrade, or 2: you moved out too soon3:lost too many forces going to save the rebels. I would advise saving before you plan on moving out, if it's an utter disaster, wait another couple of rounds of marines/medics and then move out. As long as you are taking out the hatcheries before 3 minutes left you won't completely die.

Once you have taken out those 3 hatcheries, continue to macro up an army till around the 3-4 minute left mark, after that you can either leave some force behind (if you actually want to complete the mission) or send everything you have to the north of the 3rd rebel camp and basically focus down 1 hatchery. Once you have done this you are granted the achievement immedietly, Note: that I was able to complete the mission AND do this achievement following the above strategy, I got completely overrun at the end and surrounded the artifact with my scvs so it wouldnt get killed and just made it, but still it is tricky to do this achievement and finish the mission, if you want to guarentee getting the achievement just mass-suicide your army.

Another note about the normal achievement: DO NOT build anything around the original bunker on the east bridge, specifically to the south west of that bunker, a nydus worm pops up during the cut-scene and if you have a building there it is automatically destroyed and you lose the achievement.

Hopefully you completed mar-sara missions and got onto the Hyperion and earned yourself the Adjutant Portrait.

A few notes about the campaign proper at the end of this: 1) I will tell you which upgrades are the best and list what you get and when, 2) Same goes with Research. 3) I highly recommend talking with everyone whenever you see a label on them, one because you can learn more about the story and two because you can get a few extra achievements.

After this mission you have access to the armory and the bridge, basically you can upgrade Medics, Bunkers and Marines.

I'll list the Upgrades here.

Marines : Stimpack - At the cost of 10 hp the Marine gains a 50% increase in attack speed and movement speed (50,000)

Combat Shield - Marines gain 10 hp (60,000)

Medics: Stabilizer Medpacks - Medics Heal 25% faster and for 33% less energy (105,000)

Advanced Medic Facilities - Medics can be trained without a tech lab (60,000)

Bunkers: Neosteel Bunker - Bunkers can hold 2 additional People (50,000)

Projectile Accelerator - Units inside the bunker gain 1 additional range (40,000)

From the first 3 missions you get 100,000 so you can get 1-2 upgrades here.

Stimpack is definitly the first thing you should upgrade, along with the Neosteel Bunker upgrade. Stimpack is great for alot of things, fast re-inforcing, massive damage. You can also use stimpack inside a bunker, which is definitly a good thing.

The extra bunker spaces is just a nice addition to base defense and useful in both the next 2 missions.

Next 2 mission options are available, personally I do smash and grab first for a few reasons 1) Firebats are pretty terrible without both of their upgrades, 2) Marauders are soooooo good and useful for the evacuation mission, 3) There may or may not be a bug where you replay this mission and continue to get protoss artifact benefits and money (it works when you are maxed on zerg/protoss artifacts and can get infinite money via it). If it does work then I recommend breezing through that specific mission on casual and max out protoss artifacts and get enough money to get full upgrades, I'll confirm and deny this in the post about it.

NB/ Durotar write up will be done tomorrow, first 3 missions took around 4 hours to write so don't really have time.

NB2/ If said bug exists in last paragraph I will still continue to do the campaign without it, and recommend upgrades based on that, regardless the campaign is obviously much easier with the protoss upgrades early along with every upgrade.

NB3/ OH YES MASTERIES POST, will do that before going to bed :D

Mission 02: The Outlaws

Onto the Second Mission: which basically covers Base and unit production, again this mission is pretty simple but here are a few habits that are good to practice for the basics of Macro in the game.

1) Hotkey your Command Centre, on pretty much every mission involving base construction you want to constantly produce scvs till you have around 2.5 per patch and 3 per gas, after that you can stop making scvs if you don't plan on expanding. I usually hotkey my Command Centre to 5, and try to get used to the hotkey for producing scvs. Just try and remember to press Hotkey->S every 15 seconds or so, if you want to cut down on the multi-tasking then just queue up scvs and do it every 45seconds to 1 minute, but remember doing this means you are going to be 100-200 minerals short of what you could ideally be.

2) Hotkey Barracks/Factories and Starports. Obviously the game hasn't introduced you to Factories or Starports yet but you should hotkey your barracks in this mission at least. Again Remember Hotkeys, Marine is A and Medic is E (these are very useful to know because you can probably win around 80% of missions with just these 2 units). I usually hotkey my Production facilities all to the same hotkey and use tab to cycle through the different buildings, but it can be beneficial to say have all barracks on 1 key, all factories on another and all starports on another.

3) Supply, The number in the top right corner is supply: you can have a max of 200 and it is increased by 8 per supply depot you make and 11? per command centre. I personally struggle alot with being supply capped, but you want to get into a good habit of making depots before you get "supply blocked", ie you have minerals to produce units but you can't make them because you don't have the available supply. Remember Scvs take 1 supply and marines also take 1 supply, so you want to be making depots around 3 supply before you get capped (IE 32/35) adding an additional 2 supply per barracks, so if you have like 3 barracks you want to be making you supply depots pretty much 1 after the other (ie 7 in advance).

4) Optimising your Resources. In-game what you want to do is keep your money low (especially in multiplayer, but in singleplayer it is useful too) If you see your money spiking and you are not supply capped and are producing from all of your structures you should put money into more unit producing structures. For this first mission I'll just say when I was spiking (supply number) and produced my next unit producing structure, for clarity, and will continue to do so, hopefully after a few missions you will see when to do it yourself without further guidance.

5) Finally, Upgrades are awesome, if you get an engineering bay then I would upgrade as soon as possible, perhaps skipping a round of units once you hit around 50 food or so, In the early missions you only have access to +1 attack/ +1 armor but later on you can get +3 attack/+3 armor for all the different types of units you get.

Remember if you want to ensure success in the campaign and you are not on a timed mission amass the biggest force possible before moving out to be safe, this is similar but different to multiplayer, in multiplayer the opposing enemy is also making units so waiting till you have 200/200 army isn't always the smartest thing to do.

OK.. onto the actual mission after the lengthy talks about macro basics, I'll be frank and say most of those aren't needed for the campaign, especially on normal difficulty and probably not on hard either but they make a big difference and really help the transition to multiplayer. Oh I also would say that if the gameplay speed is set to "normal" or "fast" in options->gameplay, set it to faster asap: this is the speed at which multiplayer is played at and overall it is better to learn the game at this speed. If you are having difficulty with a mission because you fell behind with your multi-tasking by all means put it down to normal speed or so but its really better to learn at faster than learn at normal and be thrown off by the faster paced multiplayer if you want to go into that.

First off the Mission Objectives.

Main: Destroy the Dominion Base

Bonus: Rescue the Rebels

Achievements: Collect all cash drops on Normal Difficulty

Complete the Mission in Under 15 minutes on Hard Difficulty.

Now off the bat I will say that you can probably do both achievements in 1 run but its harder to do both, I'll simply do the Normal achievement because well its easier to write a walkthrough for that, but the strategy for the Hard Difficulty is the same you just move out much earlier.

Ok, off the bat you are given a Command Centre, 8 scvs, a Barracks, 6 marines and a supply Depot. Firstly train an scv from the Command Centre and put all your scvs on minerals (select them all and right click a mineral patch). Then Select your Barracks and train a Marine. Select your command centre and right click on a mineral patch so that all your scvs go on minerals and then hotkey both your command centre and your barracks and "macro" up your army.

A few check off points:

17 Supply Depot

24 Barracks

25 Supply Depot

31 Refinery

32 Supply Depot

36 Supply Depot

37 Tech Lab

38 Barracks

45 Supply Depot

49 Barracks

50 Stop Making Scvs

53 Supply Depot (Constantly Make New Depots From this point on with 1 scv)

60 Barracks (last Barracks)

Basically you want to constantly make medics with your tech labbed Barracks and marines from all the others. If you aren't going for the timed mission just wait till you get to around 170 supply army and move out, if you are going for timed you should move out at around 50-60 food and remember to constantly produce from your barracks whilst attacking.

You should have a maxed 200/200 army just when your resources run out if you did it like this, onto the actual stuff in the mission, just north of your base are 2 cash rewards, a gas and a mineral. There is nothing to the right on the road so head west. You will come to a path that heads up to the north. Go up there to kill 3 marines and collect 3 mineral cash rewards. Go back to the road and continue west until you are forced to go south, go down here and kill the pathetic force trying to kill the rebel outpost and move onto the green sign on the floor. You gain an extra barracks, which you don't need and a couple of depots and like 4 marines and 3 medics, if you were maxed you are now oversupply, which is only a good thing :). There are 2 mineral and 2 gas cash reward scattered around the rebel base (that's the last of them), after that continue on the dirt track towards the dominion base. You will be greeted by a couple of Hellions, these are very good against your light infantry, but you should easily walk over their force. Moving further along you will see a bunker, just attack it, attack-move micro helps here but with a 200/200 army its not needed (or indeed 210/200). Just move into the dominion base and wipe everything out.

Just a note: if you find yourself at a 200/200 max army, if you don't have limited resources then you should just throw down a extra unit producing structures so that if your army gets whittled down you can get it back up to 200/200 much faster.

Doing this mission timed is harder because you have to push out that much faster, but it isn't that hard, just push out at around 50-60 food and continue to make marines/medics and rally them to your army (select your barracks and right click them on your army) This is much easier if you have hotkeys setup, you can simply press your barracks hotkey (6 in my case) and press E A A A, to make 3 marines and 1 medic without having to go back to your base.

On to the last mission (actually a little tough)