Sarah Kerrigan (Co-op Missions)

Sarah Kerrigan is a playable commander in the Co-op Missions mode of Starcraft II, introduced as a commander in the Legacy of the Void expansion. She is controlled as a hero unit during missions akin to Heart of the Swarm, and has powerful zerg strains at her disposal.

Overview
"Slay them all... your Queen demands it!"

- Kerrigan

Info

 * Recommended for players of all skill levels
 * Control Kerrigan on the mission with aggressive abilities
 * Lead a powerful army of the toughest Zerg units
 * Use the Omega Network to besiege your foes from multiple directions

Mastery

 * Power Set 1
 * Kerrigan's Energy Regeneration: +1.5% – 45%
 * Kerrigan's Attack Damage: +1 – 30


 * Power Set 2
 * Reduced Combat Unit Vespene Gas Cost: -1% – 30%
 * Immobilization Wave Increased Damage: +3.33% – 100%


 * Power Set 3
 * Reduced Cost and Research Time for Evolutions: +2% – 60%
 * Primary Ability Damage and Attack Speed : +1% – 30%

Game Unit
As a hero unit, Kerrigan is devastatingly powerful, and grows stronger and stronger as upgrades and talents are unlocked. With her attack damage and attack speed bonus maximized, and especially Psionic Shift, Kerrigan can quickly tear through large numbers of weak enemy units, and Leaping Strike can strike down tougher enemies. Leaping Strike also allows Kerrigan to quickly leap into engagements and retreat if overwhelmed, and her ability to leap up and down cliffs makes her very mobile.

Overall, Kerrigan's biggest weakness is a severe lack of crowd control abilities and vulnerability to large number of enemy air units. While her basic attack and related bonuses allow her to hold off handfuls of air units, she simply lacks the control or DPS to handle large forces, as Leaping Strike and Psionic Shift only affect ground units. When faced with a substantial enemy ground force or air force, Kerrigan must use Immobilization Wave to stun them and kill them while they are immobilized; otherwise she had best retreat.

Kerrigan takes 4 min to spawn at her base. If Kerrigan is ever killed, she will respawn 60 seconds later at the player's primary hatchery/lair/hive.

Abilities
Kerrigan has the following abilities.

Units and Structures
Kerrigan has access to the following units and structures:

Talent Progression
Kerrigan acquires the following talents as she levels up.

Strategies
Kerrigan is the most beginner-friendly unit of all the commanders. Because the player actually controls Kerrigan, she will become a central unit for much of the early and mid game. Due to her versatility and strengths, Kerrigan can make up for a lot of her unit composition deficiencies. She can easily solo the first 4 enemy attack waves; during the midgame, she is the cornerstone of her army. Take advantage of the fact that she can solo the early waves, by upgrading tech and getting a stable economy going early game.

In terms of her available army and related upgrades, the strongest over-arching characteristic is speed. Kerrigan's forces are fast and light, and if the player makes a point of spreading Creep over as much of the map as possible without interfering with their partner, Kerrigan and her army can be a "fast reaction force", focusing on defeating an enemy wave in one key area then rapidly re-deploying to another. The player should get resource production as strong as possible, get multiple lairs up and quickly replenish lost units whenever necessary; being lighter units Kerrigan's forces will take a notable amount of losses as they go.

Power Set 1: Kerrigan Attack Damage
 * Recommended masteries:
 * ☀Kerrigan Attack Damage (+1 damage per level, up to +30)
 * Non-Fury: 60.67 DPS (with full Mastery)
 * Fury: 91.00 DPS (with full Mastery)
 * Full points in attack damage significantly increases Kerrigan's effectiveness vs. air units, which are Kerrigan's greatest weakness. Energy Regeneration is better against certain ground enemy compositions, but this options requires more Kerrigan micro to achieve the same results.

Power Set 2: Combat Unit Vespene Gas Cost / Immobilization Wave Damage
 * ☀Reduced Combat Unit Vespene Gas Count: (-1% per level, up to -30%)
 * ☀Augmented Immobilization Wave (+3.3% damage per level, up to +100%)
 * Immobilization Wave damage is usually the better choice in most maps. At full mastery it deals 200 damage which is sufficient to kill most units, especially against Zerg. With only a 144 second CD (after upgrades), it is an extremely powerful ability - using Immobilization Wave, popping an Omega Worm, and then unloading your army will guarantee the entire area is swiftly cleared.


 * Gas reduction is best used with 30 points in vespene gas mastery, and only for rushing gas-intensive units in some niche situations.


 * For optimization, a 19/11 split in Immobilization/Vespene Gas masteries are ideal for a mass Ultralisk/Hydralisk build. This split provides you with a 163 damage AOE nuke, hitting a breakpoint that lets you one-shot key units such as Banshees, Stalkers, Swarm Hosts, and siege tanks. Other useful splits include 13/17 and 25/5 to get over 140 and 180 damage, respectively. Note that 1 point above the apparent threshold is necessary due to a rounding error in the damage calculation.

Power Set 3: Primary Ability Damage and Attack Speed Mastery
 * ☀Expeditious Evolutions (-2% time and cost per level, up to -60%)
 * Faster and cheaper upgrades for Kerrigan and her army works great, no matter what the strategy is; Ability Efficiency's 120 July 27, 2024 upgrade at full points becomes 48July 27, 2024! It allows the player to fully "double upgrade" everything, including all tech paths at an accelerated rate and for a much cheaper cost. This mastery can always immediately queue up all research once the tech structure is ready, making your army stronger earlier in the game, while Kerrigan's damage is powerful enough to clear most maps into the early and mid game.

One Woman Army
Kerrigan takes the field herself as a hero unit, and is very powerful. Her leaping strike is best used to rapidly destroy hybrids and other similarly powerful enemy units, while psionic shift provides crowd control against swarms of 'light' units. Assimilation Aura provides extra resources and its efficiency will improve as the difficulty increases because there will be more units that to kill; its a short cooldown, so it should be used frequently, especially when engaging large numbers of enemies. Immobilization wave will allow her and her ally to attack enemy bases or face dangerous waves safely; it also has a short cooldown time of 3 minutes (with improved capacity efficiency, it will only have a cooldown of 2:24 minutes) so it can be used frequently. As Kerrigan levels up, more abilities and upgrades become available to her, some requiring mutating at the evolution chamber. All of these should be mutated as resources allow, since good use of Kerrigan is critical to success.

I Am The Swarm
Kerrigan's core offensive primarily consists of zerglings with smaller numbers of hydralisks or mutalisks for anti-air support; hydralisks are faster and cheaper to build than mutalisks. At higher levels once her ultralisk upgrades unlock, consider adding a few of them to her unit composition to support zerglings. Lurkers and queens are only useful for "defense maps" against terran and zerg, but against protoss are of limited use. Even against terran and zerg, lurkers should not be mutated in large numbers; only several are needed to defend ramps and other choke points. Queens should still be used for Spawn Larva and creep tumors, though. Brood lords are good for overwhelming enemies if the player has a small ground army, but otherwise hydralisks, fully upgraded, out-damage them.

Lead From The Front
Keep Kerrigan close to her brood to aid them with an overseer hovering above her; and have her tank hits while her other units support her. Micro her expensive ultralisks and brood lords to avoid losing them recklessly, and keep replenishing her more expendable forces as needed. Good micro of Kerrigan is critical to victory, so have other units just attack move while focusing on controlling her directly and make the most of her abilities. With the proper unit composition, Kerrigan and her brood can easily overwhelm enemies and do well with most any type of map.

Slay Them All
Kerrigan's nydus worms should also not be neglected. Once she gets the Omega Worm upgrade, she can almost instantly transport a massive army to the front lines, quickly overwhelming any defense. Kerrigan's allies can use these as well, giving both commanders almost infinite mobility. As well, it can act as a 1000 hp meatshield.

Your Queen Is Under Attack
Kerrigan's exceptional power as a hero unit should be taken into account when considering the formation of her army. A player investing primarily in zerglings while building more powerful hydrlisks or ultralisks will rapidly find themselves exasperated by how quickly the zerglings fall against enemies, even with Kerrigan soaking up the majority of enemy fire. This can quickly lead to Kerrigan's death on higher difficulties, making her early game strength inaccessible until she resurrects.

Protoss Commanders
Artanis is an effective teammate for Kerrigan. Shield Overcharge and Guardian Shell helps to protect and prevent expensive losses with ultralisks. On higher difficulties, area-of-effect abilities like psionic storm and hunter-seeker missile are common from enemies, and Kerrigan's hydralisk swarms can be crippled quickly. Artanis' Guardian Shield will protect them from these abilities, and give the Kerrigan player time to retreat her mutalisks so they can regenerate and return to battle.

Karax is an effective teammate for Kerrigan. Chrono Boost accelerates the mutation speed of Kerrigan's higher-tier units and the many upgrades they need to be effective. He can also use colossi and immortals to support Kerrigan's units with siege or anti-armor capabilities as needed, and his energizers with chrono beam can rapidly buff her stronger units to very dangerous speeds.

Vorazun is an effective teammate for Kerrigan. Black Hole can set up enemies for Kerrigan's hydralisks, and they can combine Time Stop and Immobilization Wave for a prolonged stun of enemies. Vorazun also powers up Kerrigan's lurkers with her passive talents to buff cloaked and burrowed units. Vorazun can make up for Kerrigan's anti air and detection weakness with corsairs and oracles. The teleport to a dark pylon allows Vorazun to quickly return to defend allied bases if cloaked cannons are unable to cope.

Alarak is an effective teammate for Kerrigan. She has a strong anti-air presence with hydralisks and mutalisks, while Alarak provides crowd control she lacks with ascendants and vanguards. Kerrigan's raptors and upgraded torrasques can bypass Alarak's supplicants to get into melee range easily, while hydralisks fire from behind them and ascendants from behind them, thus their armies synergize perfectly in battle. Havoc support to increase their attack range and damage to select enemies is also of great benefit, on top of negating the necessity of overseers. Immobilization wave will also minimize damage received, keeping supplicants in high numbers much longer. Together, Kerrigan and Alarak can decimate enemies as hero units, especially when both are level 15 at which point all of their ability cool-downs are either super fast or nonexistent. Omega worms are also a perfect alternative for rapid army transition without the Death Fleet to teleport units.

Fenix and Kerrigan have mediocre synergy. While the resource boon helps Fenix, the larger gate for Fenix's army is usually the time it takes for him to construct an army. Both have a strong early game and rely on hero units to take early waves, with Kerrigan having a bit more reliable defense against air. The benefits of Fenix's recall overlap with Kerrigan's ability to use omega worms for full map mobility. In the late game, the two armies work great, and zerglings and ultralisks are able to soak damage while Fenix's larger army of colossi, carriers and adepts or immortals can choke up enemy attacks. Immobilzation wave allows Fenix to push into tough positions and wipe them out with ease.

Terran Commanders
Raynor is an effective teammate for Kerrigan. Raynor's infantry forces mesh well with Kerrigan's zerglings and ultralisks, who can leap/burrow charge past Raynor's infantry to reach targets, and ultralisks provide damage tanking to defend Raynor's fragile marines. Raynor further has medics to heal Kerrigan and her brood, making them a dangerous combination.

Swann is a questionable teammate for Kerrigan. Swann's reliance on mechanical units clashes with Kerrigan's biological zerg; they have few synergistic abilities to directly support each other. Swann's vespene harvesters are invaluable; allowing Kerrigan to upgrade and train mutalisks and ultralisks in large numbers. Swann's goliaths and thors are superior to Kerrigan's hydralisks as ranged support, so the Kerrigan player is better off building an army to supplement Swann's ground forces. Additionally, Kerrigan's Omega Worms can help Swann's slow army reach the front lines much more quickly.

Nova is an excellent teammate for Kerrigan. as her Assimilation Aura will let her give Nova precious resources to get off the ground. Her Malignant Creep can also help Nova's army in sustaining itself, while Kerrigan's zerglings and ultralisks tank damage for Nova's troops. The creep can also help Nova by providing vision, letting her use airstrikes and nukes more easily. Immobilization Wave can set Nova up for a nuke, and Nova can provide detection so that Kerrigan doesn't have to get overseers. Kerrigan's nydus worms create some redundancy with Nova's Tactical Airlift.

Han and Horner and Kerrigan have moderate synergy. Kerrigan has a strong early and mid-game with her hero, and Han’s mercenaries can help tank damage as she operates, as well as clear out any rocks needed to expand. Kerrigan’s assimilation aura also allows Han and Horner to start deploying Horner’s air units quicker, allowing him to transition into the late game faster and get his research completed. Omega Worms give some power to Han’s mercenaries, but as most of Horner’s forces are air and have a tactical jump, it doesn’t do as much for Han and Horner as other commanders.

Zerg Commanders
Zagara is a questionable teammate for Kerrigan. Everything Zagara's units can do, Kerrigan's units can do better and they will generally emerge with far fewer casualties. Even Zagara's banelings and scourge pale against Kerrigan and her upgraded hydralisks. However, Zagara's queens can use Inject Larva on Kerrigan's hatcheries to give them extra larvae, and Zagara can still benefit largely from Kerrigan's Malignant Creep. Mass Frenzy can also still be very helpful for Kerrigan's units.

Zagara can offer Kerrigan early crowd control with Banelings, as well as mutalisk and ultralisk support via corrupters and aberrations. But ultimately Kerrigan's army will outstrip Zagara's forces by the end of the game. With full mastery, Kerrigan exceeds Zagara even in the cost saving area: Kerrigan's ability to lower the vespene cost for her units and upgrades provides her with a tremendous advantage.

Abathur is an excellent teammate for Kerrigan. Kerrigan herself can cover the early game with little assistance from Abathur. This allows Abathur to spend resources on teching up rather than focusing on early game defense. Kerrigan's assimilation aura allows Abathur to gain a large resource boost. Malignant Creep can benefit the overall speed and performance of Abathur's army, and allow him to respond to threats faster. In late game, Abathur can provide a frontline army while Kerrigan supports from behind. It's also noteworthy that Kerrigan allows for Abathur's nydus network to be upgraded to Omega worms, allowing for malignant creep spread, detection, and global transportation of ground units.

Stukov is an excellent teammate for Kerrigan. Kerrigan's Malignant Creep and Stukov's Infinite Creep greatly augments both forces to close greater distances. Kerrigan's early-game dominance allows Stukov to fast-track his research. Stukov's late-game infested are a protective screen for lurkers and hydralisks. Stukov's cooldowns aid quick strikes done through Kerrigan's Omega Worms. Stukov's mineral heavy forces are greatly supported by Kerrigan's Assimilation Aura, and Immobilization Wave allows infested forces to encircle enemy defenses unopposed.

Dehaka and Kerrigan are a good combination, in spite of both focusing on a hero unit. Both Kerrigan and Dehaka benefit from hunting down groups of enemies in the early to mid-game, and the resource bonus Kerrigan gives to Dehaka can help him move into strong late game gas heavy compositions. Kerrigan can give Dehaka global mobility with her omega worms, while Dehaka can also deep tunnel to clear defended areas the omega worms can't reach. The only time the two struggle is in the mid game, where Dehaka is between getting his primal dens constructed and Kerrigan is beginning to construct her army.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft II Sarah Kerrigan as Co-op Commander (Co-op Missions) Quotations

Patches

 * Patch 4.4.1
 * Severing Glaive: Severing Glave has been reworked.
 * Now remove the damage penalty from each bounce but will no longer increase its damage.
 * No longer provides 100% bonus damage to armored units.


 * Patch 4.4.0
 * Omega Worms: are now detectors.
 * Assimilation Aura: Resource Drops can now be picked up by air units.


 * Overlords: Ventral Sacs upgrade now drop their cargo if they are destroyed.
 * Pneumatized Carapace research cost decreased from 100/100 to 50/50.
 * After Pneumatized Carapace is researched, Overlord movement speed increased to 3.38, up from 1.88.
 * After Pneumatized Carapace is researched, Overlord acceleration increased from 1.0625 to 2.125.
 * Mutalisk range increased from 3 to 5.
 * Vicious Glaive: now increase each Glaive's search radius from 3 to 5. It previously increased it to 4.
 * Sundering Glaive: upgrade renamed to the Severing Glaive upgrade.
 * Severing Glaive: Each subsequent bounce of the Mutalisk's attack now deals 10% additional damage.
 * Brood Lords: now always attack with two Broodlings, up from two with the first attack and one with each subsequent attack.
 * Porous Cartilage: upgrade now increases the acceleration of Brood Lords from 1.0625 to 1.875 in addition to the current functionality.

The following mastery powers were removed:
 * Prolonged Mutating Carapace Mastery: -3.3% degeneration per level, up to -100%

Kerrigan has new mastery powers which are:
 * Primary Ability Damage and Attack Speed Mastery: +1% damage/attack per level, up to +30%
 * "Increases the damage of Kerrigan's Leaping Strike and Psionic Shift and Kerrigan's attack speed."

''Developer Comments: Kerrigan is fairly well-rounded and powerful commander, but as some have noted, her Spire units may leave a bit to be desired. Though the changes for Kerrigan are few, we think they’ll be especially impactful, especially for Spire players."


 * Patch 3.17.0
 * Leaping Strike: no longer targets cloaked or burrowed units without detection.
 * Ultralisks: (Torrasque Strain) now benefits from Artanis' Guardian Shell before it enters its rebirth cocoon.
 * Broodlord: now benefits from Karax's Energizer Chrono Beam and Zagara's Frenzy.

''Developer Comments: We are adopting a multiplayer change we made from a while ago that helps Zerg Queens against air units. This should give the Queens a bit more help in trying to avoid those Liberators attacks.''
 * Patch 3.13.0
 * Queen: Anti-air range Increased to 8 (from 7).

Kerrigan has new mastery powers which are:
 * Patch 3.11.0
 * Augmented Immobilization Wave: Increases damage of Immobilization Wave
 * Expeditious Evolutions: Reduces the research time and cost for evolutions
 * Prolonged Mutating Carapace: Decreases degeneration of the shields from Mutating Carapace

The following mastery powers were removed:
 * Assimilation Aura Duration: +0.5s – 15s
 * Larva Spawn Rate: +2% – 60%
 * Reduced Kerrigan's Birth and Respawn Time: +0.5s – 15s

Developer Comments: This is a co-op ability that helps your allies as well as Kerrigan's units. It should now properly affect all unit types. We also increased the life gained.
 * Patch 3.4.0
 * Malignant Creep: Gives a flat 1 life per second to everything.
 * Malignant Creep: Affects all friendly bio and mechanical ground units.

Malignant Creep Tumor has had its sight radius slightly reduced.
 * Patch 3.3.0

Kerrigan's initial birth time has been reduced from five minutes to four minutes.
 * Patch 3.1.3
 * Mutating Carapace - Life steal increased from 25% to 30%.
 * Ruthlessness - Doubles the damage of Leaping Strike (from 150 to 300); doubles the damage of Psi Shift (from 50 to 100).
 * Assimilation Aura - Now costs 0 energy. Generates 100% more gas than before.
 * Immobilization Wave - Cooldown reduced from four to three minutes. The 100 damage it does is now dealt up front rather than over 10 seconds. Kerrigan is now invulnerable while casting this ability.
 * Frenzy - Hydralisk ability set to autocast by default.