Post your TS replays and strategies here!

Jack's Cwazy cwazy mutant build:

(works best with a stunner on your team)
First civ into minerals.
Get attack upgrades, and rush top. Nowadays people often ignore top for mid, so while an ally stalls mid you cap top.
Civ from capping goes to minerals, and you continue to get attack upgrades.
Run mid and help out with stalling and/or capping; feed as possible. Soon after you have 6 attack upgrades, you'll get another civ; don't put this on minerals, save it for level 2. Keep using minerals for attack upgrades, and try for early kills. Don't waste your lives though, you'll have plenty of kills later on. Once you have three civs get your second spell. Only use this when your stunner stuns someone. Night time is gank time, you and your stunner should be out picking up a kill or two at night. Next 4-5 (depending on how much you use your l2's and l1's) civs go to mana.

After getting 140-160 max mana, you'll be going hitpoints and armour. By the time marines pop you should have about 12 armour and anywhere from 12-17 attack upgrades (and don't forget attack speed for mutants; 120 mana on new versions). Keep going hitpoints till you're at around 2200 max hp; you should be near unkillable at this point and should have picked up a few kills along the way. Once the next night (third or fourth night depending on how well you fed) starts it's base breaking time. Time your runs to go with your spawn, or just run in regardless. L2 on the cannons from the top right of the cannon for best effect. You should pick up a couple cannons each time, then go back and heal. The enemy will notice and try stop you; your team mates should be around to help and you can tank and run off with that nice 2200 HP and 12-19 armour (more than 19 is useless). Continue till either everyone's dead or you've killed their temple.

While not as simple as lurkers, and while seeming more dangerous, this build is extremely powerful as your survivability against stuns is much better than standard lurker builds. Your DPS is also higher, and you use less mana. The downside is that heroes like mech and assassin are nigh impossible to kill with this style, whereas lurkers are more powerful against those heroes. However, late game you're very powerful and can base break much quicker than lurkers; if you have a stun you can pick up kills and elims along the way.

Comments and critique welcome. I'll try post a Let's Play of this on youtube sometime.

I do that build a lot. I call it anti-cannon mutant. You only need 18 armor though.
tl;dr - you sacrifice your ganking power and exponential late game exp for early-mid game reliability.


CAFG's cwazy mech build:
Put everything into minerals, and sim the map. You can already 2 hit spawns with your base att. Most people's mass sim starts involves them getting enuff ups to 1 hit spawn first. Fuck that.

CAFG's cwazy assault build:
Same thing, but with +1 up.

CAFG's Light Mageech build:
Mech can be more of a Lv2 LM than a LM. Put everything into mana and some attack and actually aim the tanks (separate their attacks so they splash more). After you're +100 over them in exp, go back to standard hp/spells lv ups.

Alchemist

Unit: Fenix (Dragoon)
HP: 3900
SP: 150
Atk: 37 + 6 (Explosive)
Size: Large
Armor: 0

L1 (Alkahest Elixer): Sets shield points to maximum for all units owned by alchemist. -1 second on stun counter.

L2 (Gold Transmutation): Turns a nearby allied spawn into +15 minerals. +4 minerals if used away from spawn.

L3 (Homonculus): Summons two Homunculi (max 8).

Homunculus

Unit: Zealot
HP: 100
SP: 150
Atk: 30 + 2 (Normal)
Size: Small
Armor: 5

L4 (Philosopher's Stone): Has a variety of effects, depending on current minerals.

0 - 49: +70 minerals.
50 - 99: +100 minerals to all allied heroes.
100: level up.
101 - 199: next cast spell for each enemy hero instead summons three infested terrans.
200: sets enemy temple HP to 50%.
200+: Grants infinite mana for a short time, drains minerals.

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Strengths

The ability to generate money from mana is always an invaluable ability, and can put a definite punch in physical stats and generate nice pocket change to spend on sims/defenses. This causes exponential growth that becomes obscenely powerful at later levels, when he has the mana to support a ludicrous income. L1 and L3 also add a decent variety, with respectable synergy. His dynamic L4 is quite powerful and flexible, good Alchemists are known to stack level 4 L4s to increase potency and make the spell-reliant suffer. Late game, his level 2 L4 can give allies a strong money boost, and can even the playing field against stronger opponents.

He has a strong attack, albeit explosive. His massive upgrades can wreck havoc on larger units; it's not uncommon for a late game alchemist to reach 25 - 30 upgrades with only a handful of sims, which may even be difficult for low HP small units to handle. He can often boast a strong defense limited only by his mana. Every 25 mana increment can be thought of as an extra 150 HP. With 450 mana, an Alchemist can be considered to have an extra 2700 HP.


Weaknesses

Alchemist's slow start can make it difficult to acquire the momentum to gain a much needed early game edge. Without a strong attack and low mana, he is vulnerable to stuns and most battle-oriented units that are faster. A player must take care not to die early on, even if it means sacrificing middle. He'll need a strong battle unit to back him up.

His shields, while granting a nifty mana to HP conversion, take 100% from all attacks, and can be completely bypassed by an attack with extremely high DPS. Because of his heavy reliance on mana, HP is only upgraded after mana and spells have been maxed, which can leave him at a fragile 720 HP. In addition, an inability to manual through a stun renders him susceptible, even late game.

Alchemist's L3 is quite a liability, and offers enemies a juicy exp boost. Mistakes during mid-game with L3 can be extremely costly. His L4, also, is a tricky spell. Attaining level 3 or 5 is quite difficult, although not entirely impossible. Maintaining a consistent level 4 L4 is also difficult when playing against heroes that enjoy spamming spells or have the mana to perform regular checks to help ensure safety.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 30 2011, 2:22 pm by Sacrieur.

We're talking about builds...

Haha, sorry, Jack wanted it posted up here so he could read it. I'll add some strategic advice soon, promises.

http://www.staredit.net/topic/6408/0/&sess=c858c4d7578c23c08e867c5d137bbd4d

I requested the creation of a new thread in case that was outdated in reference to the older TS maps.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Aug 30 2011, 2:23 am by DevliN.

Yeah I figure a ton of it is changed at this point but it's probably still a decent source of material.

I just played the newest G version, and honestly I don't like it. Every hero is changed at least %10. I can't even do my favorite builds anymore.

And to imagine the percentage of things I wanted to change in TS eventually!

A guideline for what an effective build for a hero is nice and everything but the most important aspect is to be flexible.

For example, I tend to notice that very few people will get HP upgrades for Volt but this is very critical when they are up against Mech/Archer.

HP upgrades are doubly important against mech, archer, or power alchemist. Anything that can blast you hard from a good range. One of my favorite things to do is armor + HP war and tank mutant's l2. Always throws people for a loop.

Remade part 2 of temple siege basics. Also, I may be doing some commentaries on replays soon; if you have any amazing games post them and I may choose them to commentate on.

K IM OFF AGAIN

Air.Nike's Power Archer:
120 mana. All civs to mins. Enjoy