Elite Enforcers for Shipmaster.

Ayo.

I have seen several people make the suggestion that Shipmaster should have his Jump Back Brutes replaced with Elite Enforcers. After discussing this with some friends of mine, we all reached the conclusion that this could be an excellent shift for Shipmaster, for a couple of reasons.

From a lore perspective, it makes more sense for Shipmaster to have control over Elite units, rather than Brute units. Similar to how the switch to Elite Grunts Squad from Brute Grunt Squad make Shipmaster and Arbiter feel unique in the sense that they have control over more Elite units than the other Banished leaders. I feel this change would have the same affect, making Shipmaster feel more like an Elite leader. Additionally, Shipmaster is described as leader that specializes in "rapid attack against his foes". I personally feel Elite Enforcers follow that theme much more than Jump Brutes.

Side note: what does everyone think about increasing Elite Grunts damage towards scout vehicles with their Cloaking upgrade? Without Shrapnel Mines, Grunts can really struggle against masses of scout units (excluding JR's), and since the scout player will likely upgrade their scouts, detection will have little to no effect (especially with the buffs to detection coming). I have noticed that Shipmaster can struggle against scout spam, forcing the Shipmaster to play a quick tech into Hunters and/or Banshees. I am aware that Honour Guard has a higher multiplier against scouts to compensate for the lack of Shrapnel Mines, but it doesn't feel like enough to me, as the Honour Guard can be rammed to death rather quickly. Food for thought.

Anyways, back on track, this change may also help make Shipmaster a little more viable, as he is currently struggling, when compared to some of the stronger leaders. While Jump Brutes are a good unit, with the changes to stuns and mines, his already mediocre early game will be crippled even more. Currently, most Shipmaster players pick leader points in the following order (roughly);

1. Banished Raid I
2. Extraction or Scout Mine
3. Teleport or Extraction
4. Spirit Support or Displacement
5. Displacement or Spirit Support
6. Etc.

As we can see, Shipmaster doesn't have a whole lot aiding him in the early game. For example, when looking at other leader's early game; Cutter has UNSC Raid, Mines, and ODST's; Decimus has Vortex and Siphon; Voridus has Goo Mine, Combat Spoils, and Greandier Drop, etc.

I would like to quickly summarize why I believe Shipmaster's early game to be... meh.

• Teleport has little to no use in the early game for Shipmaster. Sure, TP + Sui's is a ton of fun, there's really no need to utilize this combo when the "charge" range and speed of Sui's is so high. Moreover, with the nerf to TP a little while back, sneaking Jump Brutes onto base isn't all that effective and simply running them to the base with usually gain a similar result.
• Banished Raid is just meh. It's, essentially, a knock-off of Jerome's Recon Training. While Banished Raid III is all sorts of cool, that doesn't help in the early game, and who's going to dump three points into that? Not me, dawg.
• Scout Mine is a strong mine, but, as stated above, with the changes to stuns and mines, Scout Mine will be much less effective, hurting Shipmaster's early game. After the nest patch, it is likely that Scout Mine will not be worth picking up.
• While extraction is an excellent ability, it doesn't do a whole for the first few minutes of the game. Extremely situational.
• Honour Guard is an extremely slept on leader, in my opinion, but he's not going to impact the early game anything like a Spartan, Pavium, Forge Hog, etc.
• (I promise I'm going somewhere with all this)

Replacing Jump Brutes for Elite Enforcers would be, without a doubt, be a sizeable buff to Shipmaster, but because of the all the above, I believe this buff is warranted.

Why would this be buff, you may ask. Well;

• While Elite Enforcers have a lower damager towards structures, on a per population basis, being ranged units allows them to target structures much easier. More importantly, Elite Enforcers do not have that awkward habit of running in circles, that Jump Brutes just love to do. Elite Enforcers > Jump Brutes, basically.
• Having access to Elite Enforcers would allow Shipmaster to play infantry much easier. As many know, Shipmaster has excellent infantry; arguably one of the best. However, playing infantry can be incredibly awkward, as there is next to no base damage, so pushing a base can be near impossible. Elite Enforcers transition vey well into the mid game and would allow Shipmaster to play a stronger mid game with just his infantry, because, let's be real, who is going to build Jump Brutes with their Hunters when fighting mass Warthogs? Having a ranged anti building unit also allows for more "all unit" use, which we all love so much.

And that's about all, folks. Would love to hear opinions/thoughts on the matter.

Thanks for reading my rant, assuming you made it this far <3.

Well this is a very cool idea it shipmaster should copy too much from arbiter I agree with the elite enforcers but I have a feeling there could be more maybe arbiter and ship master could have banshees controls by elites but the catch is they are deal slightly less damage and have slightly less health than the normal brute controlled banshees but are faster or at least for shipmaster as arbiter can abuse while shipmaster doesn’t have good passive buffs like decimus. edit: I wish shipmaster’s gimmick was that he has slightly weaker units but has a higher speed and an other idea I have is give shipmaster upgrades unique to him like elite rangers having shields

You know, despite what I commented on in the update patch thread last night regarding this idea, I like it. Think I was just being to much of a pessimist last night. It would give a proper reason to upgrade his teleport sooner.

Just wanted to post my response here to this idea last night. Hoping someone can point out faults in it.

As much as I would love for the shipmaster to have a complete sangheili army like the Arbiter, I think enforcers would be too tircky with him. Enforcers are really far, far more effective then locusts at wiping bases. With Let you can use his teleport, extraction, and gateway to just hop around the map and never engage the enemy army. While this is a typical strategy with something fragile like locusts there's two major differences.Locusts come out later in the game, wheres enforcers you can use right off the start if you want. The second would be that locusts are horribly slow and said before, fragile. If they get caught by an enemy army, they are almost certainly doomed. If an army of enforcers gets caught however, you can micro-manage them to just stun the ground units and run off.Or just outright extract them, heal, then head right back out to attack. It pretty much almost boils down to cheap price and speed vs slowness and range. I would hope, while obviously a very bleak hope, that perhaps the shipmaster could have something sangheili and just as good to replace those jetpack brute at some point.

DeathRitual4977 wrote:

Sadder Joker wrote:

I agree he is somewhat weak but the buff to Grunts will help him alot. I would hate to see Enforcers be constantly teleported and exstracted around the map. This would be a nightmare.

Enforcers being teleported around the map would be no different from Locust being teleported around the map, only Locust do more structure damage and have a longer range. Keep in mind, these Enforcers wouldtn't be affected by COR, so they wouldn't be as strong as The Arbiter's Enforcers.

YellowMallard73 wrote:

Well this is a very cool idea it shipmaster should copy too much from arbiter I agree with the elite enforcers but I have a feeling there could be more maybe arbiter and ship master could have banshees controls by elites but the catch is they are deal slightly less damage and have slightly less health than the normal brute controlled banshees but are faster or at least for shipmaster as arbiter can abuse while shipmaster doesn’t have good passive buffs like decimus. edit: I wish shipmaster’s gimmick was that he has slightly weaker units but has a higher speed and an other idea I have is give shipmaster upgrades unique to him like elite rangers having shields

I may be mistaken, but I believe Banshees are already piloted by Elites. That would be a cool concept, though, it would be extremely tough to balance.

CarsandCameras wrote:

Read the title as was like "Hell no!"

Read the post and was like "Hell yeah!"

:')

Ado Ulamee wrote:

You know, despite what I commented on in the update patch thread last night regarding this idea, I like it. Think I was just being to much of a pessimist last night. It would give a proper reason to upgrade his teleport sooner.

Happy to hear you've changed you tune :).

Darktempler0 wrote:

I also like the idea, but in my opinion snippy will dominate the early Game in which he is very strong even more, while falling off in the lategame.
I also think it is hard to balance this, cause of shippys displacements and teleport.
I can imagine elite enforcer wreck your base with their now even higher movement speed while you are out on the map and before catching them they get teleported home or your units to the other side of the map.
But if 343 could balance this somewhat out o would strongly agree with you. Snippy needs love and the enforcer would fit lore wise and characteristic to him.

As I explained in my OP, Shipmaster has a very mediocre early game, this change is aimed at helping that. Even with this change, Shipmaster's early game would not surpass Kinsano, Cutter, The Arbiter, etc. Shipmaster will always have a strong late game because of the trifecta of Teleport, Extraction, and Displacement.

Telport and Displacement with Enforcers would be no different than with Locust, so I don't see an issue there. Shipmaster's whole theme is to be rapidly attacking foes, so this would fit perfectly. Besides, these combos would be nothing compared to COR, Deci Banshees, etc.

I think his shield ghost are pretty darn good and can be rushed pretty good. But that's just my point of view.
I died so much to theses rushes ^^

Hmmm... Makes sense to me. Definitely don't want to #MakeShipKillEveryoneAgain, but I like the idea of for sure. I think it would have to change slightly because of the stasis abilities on them as well as other things. But I definitely like the idea.

Postums wrote:

Hmmm... Makes sense to me. Definitely don't want to #MakeShipKillEveryoneAgain, but I like the idea of for sure. I think it would have to change slightly because of the stasis abilities on them as well as other things. But I definitely like the idea.

I'm not entirely sure if this is feasible or not, but perhaps passing off a more conventional grenade or shrapnel mines to enforcers?

Also, something that might help both Arbiter and Shipmaster would be a mass cloaking buff to the passives or duration. That way they'd have an army buff late-game. Arbiter needs this much less so, but it could be great on shippy to give him some better late game capability.

DeathRitual4977 wrote:

Sadder Joker wrote:

I agree he is somewhat weak but the buff to Grunts will help him alot. I would hate to see Enforcers be constantly teleported and exstracted around the map. This would be a nightmare.

Do you really have to quote the entire OP just to write 2 sentences? I hate when people do that -_-

On topic: Sorry Joker as cool as it would be it seems very unlikely solely because Elite enforcers are a unique unit to Arbiter and people pay money for Arbiter. In a way, people are paying for the unique units that are Elite Enforcers.

Not saying I'm against the idea just saying it seems unlikely solely because Arby costs $

Sgt Palooggoo wrote:

Postums wrote:

Hmmm... Makes sense to me. Definitely don't want to #MakeShipKillEveryoneAgain, but I like the idea of for sure. I think it would have to change slightly because of the stasis abilities on them as well as other things. But I definitely like the idea.

Isn't their upgrade called Arbiter's champion?
That might have to be changed also considering the Arbiter isn't ship master.
Any ideas for what the new name should be for the elite Enforcer's upgrade?

It wouldn't really matter. The voices in the game are done, so it's not like Shippy could announce it as anything other than "upgrade complete."

So anything in the lore to do with Elites would probably suffice.