Style[]
Raynor is a powerful offensively-themed commander, with an early game carried by his strong calldowns and his late game defined by high DPS units that can be instantly reinforced anywhere on the map. His relative lack of supportive capabilities means that he can do equally well with or without a cooperative ally. This is a great commander for playing with randoms.
Benefits to co-op buddies[]
Raynor's biggest bonus in co op play is the fact that his medics can heal everything, do it for basically free, and can be spammed. This synergizes extremely well with Artanis' Guardian Shell, for example, which prevents units from dying for a short time while leaving them on very low health, which can then be replenished quickly. Conversely he is a bad teammate for Stukov, who has droves of timed minions that die anyway.
Raynor also has scans on command, giving omniscience as far as detection is concerned, but the less he uses this and relies on his teammates, the better. Each scan costs 1 MULE, or 6 marines!
Specializations and Prestige[]
Standard[]
Raynor has a slow starting economy but a very strong late game eco--possibly the best in the game. Start off focusing exclusively on minerals, with just enough marines to survive, and dump the rest of the money on getting extra CCs. With four orbitals and two saturated bases, the minerals should be coming in like crazy and everything should be easily afforded.
What should be afforded is a large chunk of barracks, double engineering bays, a factory and an armory. Typically I go two rax-->ebays and factory-->four more rax-->armory. Spam marines, medics, and marauders. Firebats are circumstantial and become more useful the more small enemies there are. With this many barracks behind you, maxing out should be a breeze. Any extra minerals mined during this time can be spent on more orbitals, and then correspondingly more barracks. Given that marines can be trained nearly instantaneously on higher levels, more than 10 rax should be unnecessary--they can train 150 marines in just 2 and a half minutes, not counting reactors! Generally, 4 CCs and 6 rax should be plenty, but on maps of attrition more may be necessary.
Raynor's strength of cheap, spammed units is also his greatest weakness. Marine counts can dwindle alarmingly quickly, and a bad Raynor player may not have the economy and infrastructure to replenish them quickly. A great Raynor, however, can bounce back even from total army destruction extremely rapidly.
To supplement his infantry, Raynor has siege tanks and vultures for defense. His air game is also strong, with vikings being extremely good anti air, and battlecruisers extremely strong generalists. Consider using these units instead if the enemy is running strong ground splash damage.
Ultimately, the default setting is the best for going bio for a strong player. It is also naturally the most flexible, as it has the second best mech and air, giving Raynor a wide variety of tools for any map, against any opponent.
Backwater Marshal[]
Doubles the life of biological units in exchange for losing use of MULEs. MULEs are a significant economic advantage for Terran in multiplayer and they're even better here, coming back with 270 minerals total rather than 225. There are several disadvantages to not having MULEs: it is no longer possible to build multiple orbitals for the sake of expanding the economy in the late game, and in the early game the lack of MULEs is a severe handicap for growth. It turns Raynor from a commander that has a weak early game and a strong late game thanks to income to a weak early game...and a mediocre late game.
It's also important to note that 2x life on bio units does not equal two times the effectiveness. A marine with twice as much health is still doing the damage of one marine. If you can keep your bio ball relatively healthy, there is materially little advantage to the extra life (easier said than done on harder difficulties). In the early to mid game, it will take you longer to build up an army, and you are essentially trading damage for more durability. Medics also don't play as nicely and can drain their entire energy reserve on just a few units; I found myself needing to train more medics to ensure that my beefier units stayed alive long enough to justify the loss of MULEs.
The other major disadvantage is that using anything that's not bio is effectively harder. On harder difficulties, the A.I can run builds that counter the bio ball relatively well, and in those cases you are fighting an uphill battle thanks to the inflexibility.
In summary, if you find yourself constantly forgetting to use MULEs, this is the build for you. Otherwise, however, the sheer power of 3-4 CCs dropping MULEs constantly is too good to justify losing. An optimal Backwater Marshal build might run into some stiff resistance and lose a third of his army, then train it back up with ~5-6 rax. An optimal default Raynor would lose half his army in the same fight, but instantly replenish thanks to his 10 rax supported by his 4 CCs. The only exception is if playing mutators that deal damage to your troops, as the fragile default marines tend to die quickly from those--but in these cases, going air might be better regardless.
When running this build, focus on the Research Reduction Cost (less turnover means that the speed boost from drop pods is less useful) and Medics Heal Additional Target power sets.
Rough Rider[]
Turns the Backburner ability into essentially StimPack for vehicles, giving them a massive attack speed buff in the short term in exchange for 10 HP. The lengthy cooldown is reduced by 50%. The biggest drawback, however, is that units no longer cost 20% less vespene gas. This is a significant handicap as mech Raynor is often badly gas starved by default.
This variation is much less disruptive to Raynor's basic bio ball playstyle, in fact leaving it basically unchanged. It greatly alters mech playstyle on the other hand. Vikings were already probably the best anti-air of any unit in the game, and now they are almost literally twice as good. Battlecruisers have much more consistent speed output and can terrorize groups of units in even relatively small numbers. Siege tanks can temporarily completely shut down choke points. It's a shame that Raynor didn't get some of the more mindless mech fodder, like goliaths or diamondbacks, to use with this prestige.
Ultimately, this is more or less tied with P0 for best prestige when using a predominantly infantry army with some mech support. Outside of specific maps and allies, the gas cost is too prohibitive to effectively mass any sort of anti air, and you'll be struggling to reach 200u of units even by the end of most maps if you build mech specifically.
The loss of HP is not important on battlecruisers or siege tanks, but is highly important on banshees and vikings. To circumvent this, having a group of medics follow as best as they can will save a lot of resources in the long run. A group of SCVs following around is also useful if mineral income is not a problem--and in the late game, it rarely is. If they are unavailable, MULEs can be dropped down to assist.
Definitely saturate all gas for this. Try to pair with a Swann, Kerrigan or Han/Horner for more gas income, and for maps that have extra bases, grab them just for the refineries. Even with a Swann ally and all 8 gas saturated with drones, 3 starports is plenty. On the other hand, CCs are far less important, and just 3 is enough to generate more minerals than you'll ever need.
Rough Rider is mainly viable for mech/air specifically with an ally that helps you get more gas: Swann and Kerrigan. Commanders that can keep your units alive, such as Karax, Stettman and Swann again, is second best.
Rebel Raider[]
All the things needed to make starport units no longer have a tech requirement, save the fusion core, and you no longer need barracks for orbitals. Combat units need 30% less gas but 50% more minerals. So coupled with the innate gas savings from other traits, BCs go from 400m/240g to 600m/168g. To cap it off cooldowns for the Hyperion and Dusk Wings are decreased by 1% for each supply used. I usually saturate both bases (51 workers), so that's potentially ~150% faster! The faster cooldowns work well with the air force, with Dusk Wings supplementing the expensive anti-ground fire from banshees and covering for vikings, while the Hyperion buffs all units with more damage, particularly battlecruisers.
BCs seem to do everything the marine ball does but better: it has better mobility, is not constrained by terrain, has far more survivability, and can periodically demolish everything at a long distance with yamato. BCs also play better with allied ground armies because no one is getting crowded out. Their only weakness is that they are built much more slowly and that they are much more expensive per DPS. BCs are interesting because they can fire while moving, so A+left click is often not as good as simply right clicking past enemy units in the interest of saving time.
The problem is that even with the gas reduction and fully saturated bases, you can only have about 3 starports making BCs continuously. It takes a LONG time, upwards of 20 minutes, to max out on BCs and SCVs alone, compared to maybe 10 minutes with infantry. Losing just one BC is a painful proposition: 600 minerals is more than an orbital, and the gas cost sets you back tremendously on the road to maxing. Maps with more expos can help, as well as playing with Kerrigan, Horner, or especially Swann (who, with 8 sets of drones on all expos, effectively gives you ~1.3 extra geysers worth of gas, allowing you to probably get away with one more starport producing BCs). Karax or Abathur is also a good buddy to heal your BCs. After you get a couple, it's best to focus on upgrades: they're comparatively cheap, don't require supply, and you want to get them by the late game anyway.
You will find yourself constantly mineral-starved in the beginning, but after you use up your initial gas stockpile, minerals quickly start building up. Max out on supply depots, and if your minerals are still too high, supplement your base defenses. Have a couple of SCVs at a designated "repair area" so that badly damaged BCs can teleport back and repair up instead of dying. Repairing is cheaper than building a new BC.
After getting the first 3-5 BCs, the game gradually snowballs into a victory as you get to cast call downs with greater and greater frequency. Level 14 Raynor gives +2 attack to all units near the Hyperion, and this means +2 attack for each of the BC's little lasers, so it represents a huge damage buff. However, losing some BCs is a huge setback: with competent teammates, you may finish without even getting the chance to max out before the mission is over, so every loss is effectively a permanent loss to your firepower. Be careful of situations where losses may occur, such as when taking out hostile optional objectives, dangerous enemy abilities such as Yamato, and environmental hazards such as the lava spouts on the Vermilion Problem.
On maps where you max out on 150u of BCs and start stockpiling huge amounts of resources, you could consider sacrificing some SCVs to free up supply for even more units, though I've found this unnecessary. You can also pull SCVs from both bases and follow around to heal.
SCVs vs Medics[]
Raynor's medics, when upgraded, can heal literally all units. This makes them useful for practically all co-op commanders, save maybe Stukov. Medics can bleed their energy quickly if not enough of them are built; once they run out of energy, they're basically useless and can be allowed to die off naturally as Raynor pushes into objectives, to be replaced by fresh ones. Preemptively training medics can allow them to save up some energy early on, and the rapid deployment mastery gives them a buff to energy generation.
On paper, medics are much more useful than SCVs for healing damage: they heal a tremendous amount for basically free, are much more durable than SCVs, and can heal from a safe distance. However, only one medic can heal one target a time, whereas a swarm of SCVs can repair one unit. Thus, battlecruisers are often more suited to being repaired by SCVs than from medic healing, unless the damage is widely spread out. A combination of both medics and SCVs is fine: with good macro you can usually expect 20-25 battlecruisers in the late game, so 10 medics is plenty.
MULEs repair at the exact same rate as SCVs, yet are much better at gathering minerals. Only use MULEs to repair in emergencies; otherwise, have a group of SCVs follow around battlecruisers, in a separate control group so that they don't die as soon as enemies make contact, and retreat individual battlecruisers that are badly damaged to them during engagements. I initially saturate both bases with SCVs, but toward the mid-late game where I'm gas starved with 2000+ minerals in the bank, I think it's a good idea to pull SCVs from both bases so that there are just two to a patch instead of 3, and rely on MULEing for emergency minerals in the late game. That's a total of 13 SCVs for repair, which is enough for 24-25 battlecruisers to survive all but the most intense engagements on brutal.