Awesome / StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

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The Firstborn shall fear you no longer!

As the climax of the story of one of the most epic space RTS in existence, and its focus on a brave Proud Warrior Race, Starcraft II Legacy Of The Void is full of awesome moments.

For the original StarCraft, see here. For Wings of Liberty, see here. For Heart Of The Swarm, see here.

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Trailers and pre-release cinematics

• It's the first time these iconic words have been uttered during a cinematic... and it. Is. Glorious.
  Archon: Power... OVERWHELMING!
  • The newly born archon proceeds to slaughter an entire wave of zerglings with no effort at all. And when an ultralisk proves too much for him, he self-destructs black hole style, making all matter in a certain radius around him (ultralisk included) cease to exist, leaving a huge hole where there used to be a wall.
  • The entire fight leading up to the sacrifice is no less incredible. highlights include the Archon catching one of the Ultralisk's blades with one hand, and then neck-lifting a damn Ultralisk with the other.
  • The Archon also uses a psionic shockwave to cut off one of the ultralisk's blades. Ouch. The ultralisk actually flinches from this.
• In that same cinematic, Kaldalis (the one-eyed zealot) is the lone surviving member of team ^{their fates} the high templars merged into an archon and disappeared along with the ultralisk, the one zealot got his face melted off by a baneling, Probius likely ran like hell after setting the pylon, and another zealot is just straight up forgotten , and yet he's standing tall, staring down literally thousands of Zerg, with an expression that's practically daring them to do their worst. Fear is for the enemy indeed.
  • He readies his psi-blades... and then the Pylon behind him finishes warping in. Cue first a few, then a dozen and then hundreds of flashes of light as an entire army warps right into the field around him. For all the 100 gate proxy pylon jokes, it's a truly awesome moment that shows that despite the setbacks the Daelaam have suffered, they are still not a force to be trifled with.
    • Kaldalis' reaction heavily emphasizes exactly what happened: he glances back at the warping-in pylon, then slowly looks back at the Zerg and you can tell his thoughts have gone from "I'm Taking You with Me" to "we win".
  • Made even better as the army charges into battle, Protoss still warping in all around, and begin carving up Zerg, with Artanis' narration making clear that Aiur will be theirs again.
    Artanis: Today, we retake our homeworld! And with it, our legacy!
    • Kaldalis actually lags behind two of the newcomers in the final charge, only to put on a burst of speed and leap ahead of them to be the first into battle. And that's after being the last survivor of the vanguard force. for being such a minor character, the guy went out in one hell of a blaze of glory.
• After decades of hearing "My Life for Aiur", the Reclamation trailer uses it with real feeling and it is awesome.
  • In particular, Kaldalis answering Artanis' doubts by revealing exactly how much the ideal of reclaiming Aiur means to him and how much he is willing to sacrifice for it, as well as the final shot of the trailer:
  Kaldalis: The lives lost tomorrow will be the price of our future.
  Artanis: An easy sentiment from one who is not sending them to die!
  Kaldalis: From one who is being sent to die! I will be among the first to spill Zerg blood! I am a Khundelar, the tip of the spear!
  Artanis: Khundelar... few will survive the first wave. Why?!
  Kaldalis: Because I know of no higher honor. I volunteered for a chance to give my life for our home, to make a world for all Protoss once more. You made me believe in that.
  Artanis: A world for all Protoss once more... it will be because of warriors like you.
  Kaldalis: Come back, Artanis. Lead us home.
  Artanis: Kaldalis...
  Kaldalis: My life for Aiur. (warps out)
  Artanis: (quietly) My life for Aiur. (warps out, camera pans to reveal the Golden Armada in all its glory above the moon he had been standing on)
• TL;DR: They really shouldn't have had Kaldalis die during the first attempt to reclaim Aiur.

Campaign

• The first mission in the main campaign involves the Protoss going all-out in reclaiming Aiur, in all its suitably epic glory. Granted it doesn't last long due to Amon corrupting the Khala, but nonetheless you catch a glimpse of the Protoss at their best even for a relatively brief moment. Made especially awesome by this mission blowing the opening missions of the other campaigns straight out of the water in terms of sheer scale. Wings had Raynor and a squad of Marines performing minor sabotage, and Heart had Kerrigan derailing Valerian's lab experiment. Legacy instead opens with a huge Protoss army sweeping across the surface of Aiur, destroying everything in their path.
  • During the escape from Aiur in the previous game, the bleak atmosphere is set by swarms of Scourge flying over the survivors as they struggle to reach the warp gate. In this mission, however, the atmosphere is instead set by Phoenixes chasing down fleeing swarms of Mutalisks and even Brood Lords. A subtle Call-Back, but an immensely cathartic one.
• When Artanis comes to Karax's rescue on Aiur, he doesn't mess around. He finishes the encounter by tearing a zergling to shreds with his bare hands in a Gory Discretion Shot. Zeratul's death left him with grief and fury, and this scene shows it.
• On that subject, Zeratul's death itself. Artanis has been taken over by Amon, and it seems there is no hope. The only way to save Artanis, and by extension the rest of the Protoss, is to cut his nerve cords to free him from control. So Zeratul fights him one on one, being badly injured, but finally managing to cut the cords at the cost of his own life.
  Amon: This body, all protoss, are mine! I will shatter this corrupt cycle. You shall not stand against me.
  Zeratul: My life... for Aiur!
• Then there's the Spear of Adun itself. Everything about it is awesome in one way or another.
  • It's a gigantic^note Official sources list it as 74 kilometers long. For comparison, the Zerg Leviathans Kerrigan used in Heart of the Swarm are between 7-10 km long. Arkship designed at the height of Protoss civilization, housing a legion of that age's greatest warriors and cultural minds who voluntarily left behind everything they knew to be put into stasis aboard it. It makes the Leviathans used by Kerrigan in Heart of the Swarm look small next to it, which is impressive considering that the Leviathan itself already makes the Hyperion battlecruiser look tiny.
  • Why was it even built in the first place? Because the ancient Protoss who built it had the foresight to realize their golden age might not last, and that instead of just resting on their laurels their entire lives, they should do everything in their power to give their descendants a fighting chance even in the absolute darkest of times.
  • How advanced were the ancient Protoss? Take one look at the Spear of Adun's power core and you'll know. It's a bona-fide Dyson Sphere around a synthetic star. The ancient Protoss were so advanced that they could build miniature stars to harvest energy from, and given how Protoss "eat" sunlight for nourishment, this means it can also sustain the entire Arkship's population with its light.
  • It is capable of manufacturing everything the Protoss can think of in such a scale that you won't even notice it when Shakuras is blown up. All those structures you wre warping in which were originally built on Aiur for quick deployment, and then on Shakuras following the fall of Auir. After the latter is blown up, only the Spear of Adun remains; and it is capable of rivaling the construction of an entire planet's worth of Higher-Tech Species engineers.
  • You might think an 'Arkship' would be little more than a glorified transport shuttle and engineering bay. Wrong. The Spear of Adun packs everything from highly maneuverable warp drives, to orbital lasers capable of glassing a planet, to a chronosurge that deca-tuples the flow of time for absurd production speeds, to reconstruction beams for repairs mid-fight.
  • The Spear of Adun is Made of Indestructium. This is a vessel capable of going up against multiple ambushing Terran battlecruisers and coming out victorious looking only a little worse for wear. Only the entire Golden Armada ramming it does any meaningful damage, but even that was still repairable (The vessel is back in shape in the epilogue campaign).
• A retroactive one for the Terrans during their own campaign; Karax, an engineer from a race of super advanced aliens, is shocked that the Terrans were able to rig the Xel'Naga artifact to act as a weapon. He claims that the artifact was never designed to be used in such a way, but that didn't stop us from doing so.
  • Another retroactive one for the makers themselves. While the Xel'Naga designed the Keystone to be essentially a glorified map and awakening device, they left enough overdesign into it such that both the terrans and the protoss (one of the ward races under their guardianship) were able to re-calibrate the device using their relatively limited technologies to save their races (literally in the protoss's case).
• Although she never engaged in physical combat, Rohana deserves serious kudos for single-handedly fending off Amon's influence for the better part of the campaign, even though she could have been free of him at a whim by severing her nerve cords. She not only held her own in a mental battle against an Eldritch Abomination, she did so voluntarily in spite of numerous mind rapes. In the end, she not only managed to kick Amon out of her body multiple times, (something Artanis couldn't accomplish even once) but also managed to wrestled some crucial information from his mind which helped save the day. Listen closely the first time Rohana forces him out of her mind; she made Amon ''scream''.
• This scene as Artanis is about to overload the Xel-Naga Temple of Shakuras resulting in blowing it up is pretty awesome itself. After he overloads the temple, a bunch of Zerg overrun him. He manages to take them on, but he gets buried under a pile of Zerglings. He then channels Dark Templar energy to take out the rest of the Zerg right before the explosion occurs, with even an Unflinching Walk occurring shortly before he warps out.
  "But none of us are ever truly alone."
  • Further enhancing Artanis’s bravery is the fact that, thanks to Protoss teleportation tech, he could have fled the battle on a whim (something most rational beings would have done upon being buried under a living carpet of berserk zerglings). This is one Protoss who won’t leave a fight until he’s good and ready, numberless swarm be damned.
  • Furthermore, after this moment, Vorazun acknowledges that the feat that Artanis has performed is basically a hardcore version of a ritual that Dark Templar undergo to prove their readiness, meaning that Artanis has now become worthy of both the Khala and Dark Templar, much like Tassadar before him. Taking Zeratul's narration during the fight into account, this moment also serves as a Passing the Torch situation for Artanis, who was mentored too by Zeratul in the ways of the Nerazim, not to mention he's the last Protoss to ever perform the Shadow Walk ritual on Shakuras.
    “You stood alone, as dark templar, risking your life for the many. You have walked as we have. You have walked the shadowed path already Artanis. You no longer have the Khala. You, are dark templar.”
  • That "But none of us are ever truly alone." line above? That gets spoken after Artanis is buried under the pile of Zerglings, and it ends with him re-igniting his psi-blades through the skulls of two Zerglings before hurling the entire pile away. And he follows that by annihilating the remaining Zerg with a gigantic psionic storm.
• Kerrigan gets an Offscreen Moment of Awesome in the Xel'naga Temple on Ulnar. While she's shown struggling against a single hybrid, she later mentions that she's been fighting them for days. Kerrigan is now so powerful that the Hybrid, a race that canonically annihilates all opposition in their path and against whom the best solution before they can annihilate your entire army is the liberal, concentrated application of heavy firepower, are reduced to throwing as many Hybrid at the Queen of Blades as possible in order to wear her down through attrition and hope that, eventually, one of them gets lucky. Essentially, the Hybrid were reduced to doing a Zerg Rush on the Queen of the Zerg.
• Speaking of the Ulnar questline, these missions also give us the glory of Artanis and Kerrigan teaming up to make their way through the temple, and slaughtering entire armies of Hybrids, Tal'darim and Moebius minions of their own in the process, with no army to back them up.
  • The cutscene that precedes the mission. An exhausted Kerrigan is getting flung around by a Hybrid, but then Artanis leaps in and starts effortlessly picking the monster apart. And just when it looks like the Hybrid is about to make a comeback, Kerrigan gets her second wind, impales the Hybrid from behind with her psionic-charged wing blades, hoists it into the air and tears it in half. Bonus points for him watching as she gets hammered, as he clearly hasn't forgotten all she's done, and even holding his warp blade on her when she finally lands in a heap next to him before calmly walking into battle as if to say "relax, I got this one."
    • It's worth noting that, while Kerrigan did help Artanis by killing the hybrid, he did not need it in the slightest. The hybrid had him in a deadlock, but his left arm was still free and wielding a psi blade, while the hybrid was stupidly getting close enough for him to stab it in the face.
  • The cutscene at the end is plenty awesome as well. Both Artanis and Kerrigan succeed in reaching the Xel'Naga, only to find that they are all dead]], at which point Amon forces a vision into Artanis of his new host body and basically telling Artanis that he will bring an end to all life in the galaxy. Artanis falls to the ground and the door opens behind them to the roar of the Hybrid, only for him to simply stand up and deliver this succinct reply, punctuated by igniting his psi-blade and Zeratul's warp blade.
    Artanis: My will is not so easily broken, Amon! The Firstborn shall fear you no longer!
• The duel between Alarak and Ma'lash is one of the most creative, unique missions in the game, with great atmosphere. The two are dueling in an arena spanning the map, where the winner must drive his opponent back to the edge of a pit and knock him into it. By the laws of the duel, outsiders can't directly interfere, but they can lend their psionic energy to the duelist they favor to aid them. The mission thus amounts to the player providing an "escort" of units to lend their power to Alarak as he slowly beats Ma'lash back and eventually throws him to his death, while the Tal'darim aid Ma'lash to allow him to do the same.
  • After Ma'lash is thrown to his death in the Pit of Sacrifice, Alarak addresses the Tal'darim with a speech so awesome the Tal'darim were cheering for him after he finishes.
    Alarak: Tal'darim! By the Rite of Rak'shir, I am your Highlord! Listen and obey! Ma'lash promised you lies. There is no ascension. The Tal'darim will never be uplifted and become hybrid. Amon betrayed us, and for this, He. Must. Die!
  • Shortly before the ending cinematic, there's an awesome Badass Boast from Alarak.
    Ma'lash: Our master has already won, Alarak! You will lead our people to their doom.
    Alarak: You are right about one thing, Ma'lash: I will lead them!
• Karax after the platform mission. He has to destroy the Moebius asteroid base without any real support and barely any minerals available for mining on the map. While the Protoss caste system would not allow Artanis to bestow the title of Templar on a mere engineer, Artanis basically says Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! and bestows the title anyway. Even Alarak seemed impressed by the feat Karax pulled off.
  • Karax transforms from a timid engineer to a confident commander within the span of a single mission. He even starts making badass boasts halfway through.
  Hybrid: DIE IN THE NAME OF AMON!!!
  Karax: No. I will leave that to you.
• Artanis gives some pretty awesome and much needed Shut Up, Hannibal! to Amon in this game, with this one being the best:
  Amon: You actions have not eluded my gaze, Artanis. Your plans are not hidden from me... and You Are Too Late. Behold the form of your god. The culmination of a cycle set into motion when the stars were born. As I was your beginning, so shall I be your end. Know the truth, Artanis: your people, your beliefs, your Khala... everything, a lie. There is nothing left of you.
  Artanis: You are wrong. We are finally free to become something more, and you will not stop us. Brace yourself for the full might of the Firstborn!
• Notice that while Amon talks / boasts a lot, his threats have little bite after the protoss are done with their objectives. After acquiring the Spear of Adun]], the protoss are actually raking in victories that matter (integrating the Purifiers, rescuing the Nerazim and allying with the Tal'darim). In short, the protoss are Punching Out their uplifter throughout the main campaign.
• When Alarak takes a break from being a walking Funny Moment with all of his snarky trolling, he has these moments too:
  • His introduction aboard the Spear of Adun; he easily handles Vorazun and a hapless zealot, then when Vorazun traps him in an on-board mini prison, he simply breaks free as if it was nothing (not before offering a deal to Vorazun, however).
    • The "hapless zealot" deserves some credit as well. Not even a second after Alarak warps in, while Vorazun is still disoriented, the zealot has already ignited his blades and is charging the lord of the Tal'Darim. He doesn't accomplish much, but give him credits for bravery and quick reaction time.
  • When Vorazun and Alarak fight their way through the Citadel of the Executor to destroy the psi-matrix power unit, they find the door to it is sealed, when Alarak has an idea and orders Vorazun to guard him while he charges energy. You're expecting him to charge power to break down the door, right? Wrong. He charges power and blasts a laser through the door into the power unit and obliterates it. Even Vorazun is stunned.
  • Alarak repeatedly yells in Amon's face without fear, not at all shy about letting him know that he has betrayed the Tal'darim and he will pay dearly for it. This is from "The Host" if you clear the location that becomes his forward position:
  Alarak: Amon's downfall is at hand... Tal'darim, your Highlord demands the Dark God's blood! Do not disappoint me!
  • And of course, during the final battle:
    Alarak: So, Amon intends to lay siege from all directions. Step forth, Dark One, and face Alarak, Highlord of the Tal'darim!
• Three words. En Taro Artanis!
  • Double points for Artanis being the first ever living Protoss that is honored/addressed this way, because the phrase ("in honor of" in Khalani) is usually reserved for dead legends among their race: Adun, Tassadar and Zeratul.
• In the penultimate mission of the main campaign, the part when the entire freaking Protoss fleet, including Cybros, a.k.a. the Purifier Space Station (which has purged all Zerg life on Endion in one shot) fire their weapons on Amon's physical body to destroy it, sublimated by his pain scream. To be fair, he deserves this pain.
• Prior to the final battle, Artanis gives a speech to the assembled Protoss that mirrors his speech in the Overmind's vision from "In Utter Darkness," and at times he directly quotes it. However, it's even more awesome here: in the vision, Artanis was giving the speech to the Protoss as they fought to the death against impossible odds; here, he gives it as they prepare to purify Amon from the Khala and free the rest of their race from his control.
  Artanis: "My brethren, hear me! For there is little time left. All that remains of our race, of our civilization, are those that stand beside you now and those corrupted on the surface below. Our kind once stood as stewards of a galaxy full of promise. In our pride and division, we failed that sacred charge and fell to ruin. The Khala, designed to bring unity, ultimately only aided those divisions. Its hope was a lie. Today, that lie must come to its end, And with it, our prejudice and arrogance must become a thing of the past. For we now fight in the belief that our kind has not seen its end. That we Protoss can stand bound by a belief in unity. And that we Protoss can forge a mighty new civilization. Trust each other in the fight ahead. Strike as one will! Let our Last Stand burn a memory so bright that we will be known throughout eternity"
  • It also serves as a complete counterpoint to how the Protoss began their struggle against the threat Amon presented in the original campaign, being divided among themselves as the Conclave would rather watch the Protoss fight fruitlessly against the Overmind and go into a civil war as a final desperate attack is committed by Tassadar just to buy Artanis and his people some time to survive and find refuge in the lands of their enemy only for their divisions to cause a second bloody civil war that resulted in the deaths of Fenix, Raszagal and Aldaris. Here they are more united than ever against the Zerg and Amon's forces and they will win and be free from Amon's control.
  • For that matter, the final mission itself. It directly mirrors "In Utter Darkness" in terms of gameplay, with the player defending against endless waves of Zerg with the help from Protoss units, but the story is a complete reversal. The Protoss are defending the Keystone as it charges to expel Amon from the Khala, freeing the Protoss from him and dealing him a crippling blow that will basically shut down his plans for the time being.
  • And a Fridge Brilliance reason for why the final mission mirrors "In Utter Darkness". In that mission it was implied that the Protoss were the last stand against Amon because by that time he had used the Zerg and the Hybrid to kill all other life in the galaxy but the Protoss. Here, Amon's army consists of primarily Zerg because they're all he has left — Alarak has taken control of the Tal'darim and joined Artanis, Moebius Corps is destroyed, and their Hybrid production facilities are in ruins. And Amon only sends the Golden Armada at you in small waves because with the psi matrix destroyed he can't warp them back to Aiur, he's using what he has as they arrive the slow way. And for that matter, Amon's Brood isn't in the best of shape anyway with substantial numbers of them being destroyed on Shakuras and Cybros. This mission isn't about the Protoss mounting their final stand against Amon before they die, it's about Amon throwing everything he has at the Protoss in desperation, trying to break them before he is defeated — and it isn't enough.
  • Artanis gets more awesome right as the mission starts:
  Karax: Hierarch, the zerg surround us, but what of the Golden Armada? Disabling the psi-matrix delayed their return, but-
  Artanis: Amon will bring the full might of the Great Fleet to bear against us, of that there is no doubt. But we shall not break. We are the Daelaam, united as never before. En taro Adun! En taro Tassadar! En taro Zeratul!
• The end of the main campaign also banished the notion that the protoss was a stagnant, Dying Race. The integration of the Purifiers meant that one does not even have to be of flesh and blood to be counted as protoss. The old caste system was abandoned, meaning now all Protoss can train as warriors. Also, with the abandonment of the Khala, the protoss become truly free, but will exercise their new-found freedom cautiously due to the mistakes of the past.
  Artanis: Together, we are strong!
• The ending of the main campaign. Amon's banished to the Void, the Purifiers and Nerazim take up their rightful places as equals in protoss society, and reconstruction on Aiur is on at full speed.
• The epilogue campaign has all three races entering the Void itself to get rid of Amon for good. Fighting him on his home turf is tough, but between the three races, they pulled it off. It was also an awesome subversion of the Not Quite Dead trope. Blizzard loves to bring "killed" villains back to life, and Amon had the perfect excuse of belonging to an entire race where Death Is a Slap on the Wrist. Given his importance to the lore and the certainty of a Starcraft III, he seemed a shoo-in for a Recurring Villain.[Yet Raynor, Artanis, and Kerrigan refuse to put up with that crap, and go the extra distance to ensure that the bastard won't be coming back.
• In the Epilogue chapter, Valerian sent his men into the freaking Void to help Raynor. At long last, the main terran faction finally established itself as being able to do good. Big good.
• The confrontation between Stukov and Duran/Narud gives fans the exchange they've wanted for years, before Stukov personally deals the killing blow to the bastard.
  Stukov: Hello, Duran. Do you remember what you did to me?
  Narud: Stukov... you have come to gloat, haven't you.
  Stukov: No. I've come to say good night, you son of a bitch.
• Kerrigan finally killing Amon for everything he's done. Considering that Amon is directly and indirectly responsible for EVERY tragedy in the series that his dark taint was largely to blame for Kerrigan's atrocities in Brood War and to a lesser extent Heart of the Swarm, it's great to see the villain finally fall for good at the hands of a mortal who became a god.
• Even in the Prologue, Talis, a praetor who we only know for a short time, launches into a You Shall Not Pass! against the masses of Tal'darim and hybrid so Zeratul could escape the temple and go on to save their people before making a presumed Heroic Sacrifice, and as she does, in true, badass Protoss fashion, Talis looses a massive "FOR AIUR!".
• Artanis wielding a Khalai psi-blade one one arm and a Narazim warp blade on the other and using them to kick ass represents the Protoss putting aside their petty differences to fight as one.
• The return of the Dark Archons in the main campaign is notable for multiple reasons: They're now as durable as regular Archons, they now have a decent attack, and their spells are now better than ever, with two variants of their Mind Control powers. Notably, their primary Mind Control power is able to override Amon's influence over a unit, allowing a rescue of sorts to save lives that would otherwise be lost. It's unclear of the specifics, but in universe, this would likely give Protoss the opportunity to sever their nerve cords and be allied again without the influence of a Dark Archon. Indeed, their Mind Control alone would be just what Artanis wished for to save Protoss lives.

Co-Op Missions

• Pretty much all of the Co-op commanders get something particularly awesome:
  • Karax, once he reaches an appropriate level, can have pylons, shield batteries, photon cannons and khaydarin monoliths all warp in instantly. At that point Karax no longer needs fighting units; a single probe is capable of warping in an entrenched position right on the enemy's doorstep in under ten seconds.
  • Artanis has the ability to warp in his forces instantly. Even Immortals, Reavers, and Tempests. He can have an entire army within seconds. Coupled with his innate ability to project a pylon power field anywhere with vision, he can instantly reinforce or launch attacks. Even better, his apex upgrade sets his supply count to 200. Forget constructing additional pylons, Artanis can just stockpile his resources and warp in a giant Protoss deathball on the enemy's doorstep.
  • Swann gets the Drakken Laser Drill as a heroic structure. You know, the drill from Wings of Liberty that could kill most anything in seconds? Swann gets it in every mission for free, and can upgrade it to not only have higher damage output, but to give it special area-of-effect abilities that can hit all the way from across the map. That's firepower rivalling Artanis' there, and remember that Artanis' special abilities are orbital bombardments from the Spear of Adun! As for his standing army, he's basically the classic "Marines Medivacs and Marauders" Terran with a twist. The twist is Humongous Mecha in the place of Red Shirts. Watching a gigantic death-blob of Goliaths and Thors (or later, just thors) rampage through enemy lines while science vessels beam endless healing and the occasional shield down, and any thor that actually does bite it just brush itself off and get back into the fray for a pittance of gas almost makes you feel sorry for the enemy. Almost.
  • Raynor gets to call down the Hyperion to mow down enemies, and it does a terrific job at that. Drop it on top of an enemy base, and that base likely won't be there for very much longer. Even better, the Hyperion still has the ability to perform short distance warp jumps, except that here the jump can take the ship all the way across the map, allowing it to potentially level several enemy bases in succession.
  • Kerrigan once again takes the field personally, and she's even more powerful than she was in the Heart of the Swarm campaign due to being able to take several abilities that were mutually exclusive in the campaign and use them in tandem while also allowing her units to do the same. Oh, and her ability from Heroes of the Storm to gain temporary shields upon dealing damage shows up here as well, making her very difficult to take down. And just as the icing on top, she gets Torrasque-strain Ultralisks to chew up anything she happens to miss.
  • Vorazun can call down Dark Pylons to cloak nearby units and buildings, and has various abilities augmenting cloaked units (including her Dark Templar, which combine the abilities of all three variants from the Legacy campaign). Combined with the ability to use the Spear of Adun to freeze all enemy units in time or suck them into a black hole, she can decimate enemy armies without ever giving them a chance to fight back.
  • Remember those ridiculously powerful Brutalisks and Leviathans from the campaigns? Abathur can turn any of his units into one of the two if it collects enough biomass (although only three of each). Of course, biomass on its own can make a unit ungodly powerful even if it doesn't gete to transform; combined with his Mend ability and Swarm Queens to keep units alive, he can potentially have an army of ultra-powerful Zerg that simply trample everything in their path, completely shrugging off the enemy's attempts to kill them.
  • Alarak gets the Tal'darim arsenal, including calling in the Death Fleet to lay waste to everything in its path. And unlike the other Protoss commanders, Alarak isn't watching from orbit. Instead, he marches into the fray himself and rips the enemy to shreds, empowered by his units, and so long as he has his servants to sacrifice, he will not go down. And then you get to his Ascendants, which can with a certain upgrade turn themselves into what is basically a single-Templar Archon with a spammable Yamato Cannon taped on.
  • Fenix ^note  The Purifier, the co-op missions apparently being set before he changes his name to Talandar enters Co-op in style. Not only does he come with three separate bodies, each with their own different abilities, but he commands a group of six Protoss champions. Every single one of those champions is a character seen previously, drawing from sources as old as the Nintendo 64 version of the original game (Taldarin), Enslavers (Mojo and Warbringer), and as new as Reclamation and the Legacy of the Void opening cinematic (Kaldalis), prologue missions (Talis) and the campaign itself (Clolarion). It really gives you the impression that you're commanding true heroes of the Protoss, each with their own unique abilities. And if any of them die, their AI personality can just jump into another body and get back in the fight.
  • Dehaka can be considered to be the most powerful hero in the game and that is saying something. He doesn't seem this way at first but give him some essence and he could solo bases himself. At his strongest he is incredibly difficult to kill, heals units that are close by, is a detector, and is big enough to Melee Attack Aircraft. And that is not including the New Primal Pack Leaders.
  • Tychus, fresh from an alternate timeline where he didn't get shot in the face, managed to patch things up with Raynor and put together a new Heaven's Devils squad to fight the good fight. Basically, the writers just went "screw canon, we're bringing Tychus back because he's awesome". Aside from the Devils, Tychus doesn't even have an army. Not that he needs one, because Tychus, four of his buddies, and one Odin can do just as much work as any other commander's army, charging into forces that outnumber them dozens of times over and coming out on top.
  • Zeratul is also from yet another alternate timeline where he didn't die freeing Artanis from Amon's grasp. Having searched the prophecies of the Xel'naga and their artifacts all this time, he now wields their legacy, fielding extremely powerful units and a powerful Legendary Legion.
  • The unlikeliest of them all is Stetmann himself, leading a legion of Mecha Zerg, all infused with potent special type of energy that he himself dubbed Egonergy. This army is spearheaded by his mechnum opus Gary. He can also deploy 'Stettelites' that can massively strengthen his own army as well as his allies. Simply put, he is the ultimate supporter, though hardly a slouch in direct confrontations.
• Pretty much all the co-op commander Pre Ass Kicking One Liner lines for their ultimate abilities:
  Raynor: I'm calling in the Hyperion! / Sendin' down the Banshees!
  Nova: Eyes up! Our ride's here! / Time to call down the thunder! / Two Ghosts are better than one!
  Han: Surprise! Your present arrived!
  Horner: *triumphant music playing* Commencing fleet manoeuvres!
  Mengsk: Irradiate the very ground they walk on. / Fire the missiles! Fire again! Fire them all! / We do what we must. Unleash the Zerg.
  Kerrigan: I've stunned the enemy! Kill them!
  Zagara: The Swarm descends!
  Abathur: Evolving Brutalisk. Threat maximised. / Evolving Leviathan. Sky will belong to Swarm. / Regeneration commencing. Will heal armies.
  Stukov: I call this the Apocalisk! See it in action! / The Aleksander flies again!
  Artanis: I am activating emergency shields! / Face the power of the Spear of Adun!
  Vorazun: I am stopping time, now! Be ready to attack!
  Karax: Purifier Beam activated!
  Alarak: I am as strong as any army! / *Evil Laugh* Witness the might of the Death Fleet!
  Fenix: Deploying onto the front lines! / Our enemies will burn! / The skies are mine!
  Tychus: The Big Dawg's off the leash!
  Mengsk: You left me no choice! Say good bye to your constituent atoms!
• Any time you use one of your co-op player abilities to come to the rescue of your partner. Whether its' calling down the Hyperion to shore up a defensive line, using the Purifier Beam to soften up an enemy attacking force or sending in your commander personally to cover a retreating force, it'll just reinforce the concept that you're not just working alongside each other, you're in this together.
• When Fenix researches one of the AI personalities for the heroes fighting beside him in the co-op mode, he will introduce them in awesome fashion:
  Ah, Kaldalis. Among the bravest Zealots I have ever known!
  Praetor Talis, you have command of the Adepts!
  Taldarin's valor is eternal!
  Reactivating the Warbringer!
  Our enemies cannot hide from Praetor Mojo!
  Glory to Clolarion! Glory to the Purifiers!
• The new Commander Prestige mechanic is this, though somewhat held back by the excessive grinding needed to unlock them all. Simply put, they flip certain aspects of the commanders on their side, opening up new gameplay options that were previously impossible or unpractical:
  • Raynor's first prestige, Backwater Marshal, while depriving him of the good old MUL Es, lets him command an absurdly tanky infantry army, even capable of withstanding multiple psionic storms in the face.
    • His second prestige, Rough Rider, essentially enables his mechanical units to use stim packs, briefly doubling their attack speed.
    • His third prestige, Rebel Raider, enables to field a stupendously large fleet, with said fleet also drastically reducing the cooldown of his top bar abilities, to the point where the Hyperion can be called upon almost constantly in the later half of a game.
  • Swann's first prestige, Heavy Weapons Specialist, refers to the magic that is the modified Draaken Laser Drill: the beam now does splash damage, slows all affected units, and locks on targets almost instantly. Although this one is more subtle and has its fair share of drawbacks - losing Concentration Beam and Pulse Cannon altogether - the ability to effortlessly subdue entire squadrons of enemies or dangerous shapeless horrors safely is by no means something to be taken lightly. Over time, this prestige has now grown on many Swann users, and even its haters cannot deny that it excels at least in its own niches.
  • Nova's first prestige, Soldier of Fortune, finally enables her to field a large army: more specifically, although her maximum supply remains the same, she can now pick one part of her tech tree and massively speed up production from it, at the cost of slowing down everything else even further. She can now choose to lead a full company of elite infantry, an army of ground vehicles, or a massive squadron of starships and planes.
    • Her second prestige, Tactical Navigator, lets her use the Griffin's transport four times as often, at the cost of quadrupling the cooldown of the Griffin's airstrike. This gives her a nearly unparalleled mobility, being able to instantly move her entire army to anywhere almost whenever she wants.
    • Her third and final prestige, Infiltration Specialist, turns her into a master of stealth and sabotage, being able to devastate entire swathes of enemy territories with Sabotage Drones and Tactical Nukes, which can be called in much more frequently while having even larger blast radii. The fact that she now cannot use her assault mode and its shotgun can be more than made up for with careful army composition and some quick thinking.
  • Han and Horner's first prestige, Chaotic Power Couple, is still considered their best, even despite its crippling glitch where the mercenaries' dying attacks are never augmented as they should. This is solely because of how their Mag Mines now arm and fire almost instantly, thus being able to be thrown right in the enemies' faces and almost never missing. These improved mines are so powerful, easy to use, and versatile, that they are often considered to more than make up for the massively increased cost of Horner's already expensive starships.
  • Tychus' second prestige, Lone Wolf, turns each and every one of his gang members into this: his outlaws gain massive damage output buffs and damage reduction buffs when they are far away from each other. Tychus' new Heaven's Devils was originally a small yet tough team that, together, could take on entire armies. Now it has become a pack of lone wolves, each capable of taking on entire armies single-handedly.
    • His third prestige, Dutiful Dogwalker, lets him bring the Odin around almost constantly, without needing Tychus himself to pilot it. The Big Red Button being unavailable is more than made up by the overwhelming presence of the titanic engine of destruction leading the charge. It is little wonder that it is considered one of his most reliable prestiges, and is often the go-to choice in Brutal+ modes, being able to counter almost any randomly generated combination of mutators. Combine it with the percent health healing from Rattlesnake and watch it simply eat the best Amon can throw at it without so much as noticing.
  • The tyrannical Mengsk has three prestiges that allow for truly bombastic displays of power:
    • The first one, Toxic Tyrant, specializes in Earth Splitter Ordinances and their Contaminated Strikes. He can now not only constantly level enemy armies and bases with unrelenting bombardments, but also terrorize the enemy with near-constant Contaminated strikes, forcing them to run around helplessly at the complete mercy of your own artillery shells or your ally's finishing attacks.
    • The second, Principal Prolateriat reduces the cost of his Royal Guard significantly and doubles their experience growth at the cost of making them take up half again as much supply. This is of little consequence as fully leveled Royal Guards are just that strong, and are no longer nearly as limited by the need to gather experience to reach their power spikes. Feel free to laugh like a maniac your ludicrously elite unit of supersoldiers minces Amon's best without so much as slowing down.
    • By far the most bombastic is his third prestige, Merchant of Death. You essentially rig your own troopers with self destruct mechanisms, which release missiles that track the nearest enemy down and blast them to oblivion. Every equipped trooper Amon slays is sure to take his enemies with him.
  • Kerrigan's second prestige is called Folly of Man, and rightly so: it turns Kerrigan into a psionic monstrosity, who, when her powers are used properly, can fry entire armies and bases as well as stunning them with a single leap or dash.
    • Her third prestige, Desolate Queen, is a more subtle but potent, switching out her Leaping Strike and Psionic Dash with Kinetic Blast and Crushing Grip, enabling her to either snipe dangerous enemies safely or stun large chunks of enemy forces.
  • Zagara's first prestige basically goes all out on the concept of disposable army waves: You can't use Zagara and her abilities at all...not that it matters when you now have 150 max supply instead of 100, and your Baneling Nest now produces twice as many free banelings as before, as well as the Scourge Nest now able to do the same thing, giving Zagara free ground and air kamikaze bombs all the time. Oh and she can spawn four Zerglings instead of three per egg now. Make way for the tidal waves of flesh that will wash over Amon's armies.
    • Her second prestige, Mother of Constructs, refers to her aberrations and corruptors that have become much stronger while somehow costing less, at the cost of no free banelings from baneling nests. With this prestige, it is not uncommon for Zagara's army to charge straight into an enemy attack wave and emerge without losing a single unit. This prestige also helps massively with her early leveling process, where she would normally be extremely vulnerable due to having much weaker units while lacking the production buffs that enable her to endure extreme attrition.
    • Her third prestige, Apex Predator turns Zagara into a monster capable of tearing whole armies and bases all on her own. Her units might cost a bit more resources to make, her Mass Frenzy might only affect her summoned units(Hydralisks and Roaches), but that's a small pittance to pay for the upgrades Zagara get: Increased attack and energy regeneration, ability cooldowns reduced to the point where you can have Hunter Killers active all the time, and if that wasn't enough, she now has Deep Tunnel which lets her teleport around the entire map without requiring vision, on a rather short cooldown too!
  • Abathur's second prestige, Tunneling Horror, lives up to its name by enabling every ground unit (except for swarm queens)to Deep Tunnel anywhere in the map without requiring vision. Swarm Hosts are also massively buffed, with their Locusts gaining massively increased attack range, movement speed and duration. It is not uncommon for only about a half a dozen fully leveled Swarm Hosts to drown an entire enemy attack wave in locusts.
  • Stukov's third prestige, named Lord of the Horde, is the single most extreme example of We Have Reserves in all of RTS history, period: every single bunker becomes a factory that spawns Infested Troopers every 8 seconds for free, of which most Stukov players build at least a dozen every game. This eventually results in a neverending tide of infested marines all the way from your base to the mission objective, drowning anything caught in the way in infested terrans. Post-mission statistics will consistently show that Stukov produced over three thousand units each match.
    • His first prestige, Frightful Fleshwelder, is more Boring but Practical: while it deprives Stukov of the Infested Civilian Compound, the main source of Stukov's free units, it allows him to produce infested vehicles right off the bat at a much cheaper price (30% discount). The degree to which this allows him to nearly effortlessly No-Sell difficult mutators that used to give him so much trouble - such as the infamous Propagators - makes Frightful Fleshwelder well deserve to be on this list.
  • Artanis' fist prestige, Valorous inspirator, makes all active abilities twice as effective, while making his units 30% more expensive. The most notable are the Psionic Storms, which, along with the ability to stack on top of each other, have become so absurdly powerful that they can even melt entire fleets of capital ships almost instantly.
    • His second prestige, Nexus Legate, essentially gives him mass recall, enabling him to instantly teleport an entire army, though the large amount of energy needed to do this forces it to be used very sparingly.
    • His third prestige turns his orbital strikes into a true force of destruction, capable of leveling entire bases and armies in mere seconds, though at the cost of the trustworthy Guardian Shield.
  • Alarak's third prestige, Shadow of Death, is the most extreme example: For a small price, you can call in the Tal'darim Mothership that stays with you throughout the rest of the game, and even better yet, said mothership can actually build Destroyers. After all these years of being mocked as the Death Taxi for its underwhelming firepower, the Death Fleet has finally become the ultimate weapon that truly deserves its grandiose name.
    • His second prestige, Tyrant Ascendant, while overshadowed by the Shadow of Death, is not something to be taken lightly either; at the cost of the ability to summon the Death Fleet, it halves the cooldown of Empower Me, which lets Alarak draw on the strength of his (and his ally's) army, turning his abilities into a true force of destruction. The near complete loss of mobility is a surprisingly small cost when your slow army can nearly instantly tear down anything it comes into contact with and grind the rubble into dust.

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